Thread by @JustSayXtian

As someone who is raising kids in this context, I can confirm that counteracting white-Christian hegemony is no small feat. And one of the things that makes it hard is that progressive Christians and Christian atheists sometimes confuse "strong connection" with "indoctrination"

https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1445792229876899843

And I do get the fear around indoctrination, especially from people who themselves grew up in authoritarian religious systems and are dealing with the trauma of that. It's a real thing, with real consequences, and it's not bad to watch out for it.

But a lot of the time, when you are raising kids in a non-Christian tradition in a hegemonic Christian culture, you have to be pretty clear and direct about saying 'this is OUR culture, these are OUR traditions, these are OUR beliefs. They are not co-equal options or curiosities'

Lots of well-meaning people, fully intending to be inclusive, present non-Christian cultures to kids as add-ons - like little bits of flair that add color to some people's identities, but are not central to them in the same way Christian culture is, by implication, to everybody

This kind of thing is really obvious around holidays. 'The Dreidel Song' gets tossed into the Holiday Concert. "Holiday Specials" of kids tv shows make brief mention that one character celebrates a different holiday (but they're also delighted to participate in the Main Holiday)

It's clear that the intentions here are good, and the message we're supposed to get is that it's okay for people to have different traditions. But there is also a message being conveyed, intentions aside, that those traditions are secondary to the hegemonic traditions.

All the time, in a million subtle ways, without any malice in most cases, kids from non-white-Christian traditions are given the message that they are part of the hegemonic culture, which is for everyone, and their culture is decoration on top that only crops up once in a while.

As a parent, it takes a lot of attention and work to counter that and instill a sense of identity and ownership of the minority culture. Some of the ways of doing so tend to ruffle feathers with well intentioned people who misconstrue it as anti-pluralism.

Sometimes it means pushing back against inclusion in the hegemonic culture - saying we don't want our kids singing Christmas carols, or watching 'holiday specials', or reading books with Christian themes, even if those books aren't *directly* teaching Christianity.

Very often it means active, frequent, very intentional inclusion in education, activities, and social groups that are specifically for and about our cultures. It means emphasizing our culture in our daily routines and habits. It means encouraging pride in that cultural identity.

There's so much daily messaging about how we're not that different that we sometimes need to overemphasize that we ARE different, and that it matters. When we do that, it can get labeled as 'indoctrination'

Progressive Christians and Christian atheists see us putting our kids into lots of specifically-our-stuff activities and limiting their involvement in not-our-stuff activities, and warning bells go off - which, honestly, I can understand.

If Christian parents were doing these kinds of things, it probably WOULD be a warning sign of indoctrination - but that's because Christianity is in no danger of being overwhelmed and suppressed by the normative culture. It IS the normative culture.

And I would like to make note here that it can be even trickier to navigate when you're raising kids in complex families. I'm raising Jewish kids in an interfaith family - so they DO have connections to the hegemonic culture. They ARE part of that, as well.

And what that means, practically, is that there's all the more reason to work hard to make sure that those experiences don't get so much weight and attention and affirmation by the rest of the world that their Jewishness is overwhelmed and sidelined.

None of this is to say that there is no fundamentalism or indoctrination in non-Christian cultures and religions. There is, and it's good to watch out for it. But the metric for how to identify indoctrination has to be different than it is for the hegemonic culture/religion.

Discouraging strong, consistent education in one's minority culture, or even trying to 'rescue' kids from that kind of upbringing can just end up reinforcing the dominance of the hegemonic culture, working directly against the intended goal of pluralism and inclusivity.