Children and Religion

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Introduction

Individual followers of religions are no different than the rest of humanity. People are all a complex mixture of good and bad, the product of their heredity and environment - upbringing and culture. And like everyone religious people do good and bad deeds, think good and bad thoughts.

Where they are different from atheists, secularists and secular humanists, is that they support the ideas, policies and practices of their various religions. They do this because they believe that to be religious is to be better, more honest and caring, more moral than others, that their ideas are superior to those of people who do not believe in their gods and support their policies. It is this background against which this web-site is set.

As a result of the way religions present themselves and inculcate their beliefs, their devotees are usually unaware of the many malign effects of religion. They have been protected from this knowledge for centuries because of the systematic suppression of criticism. Atheists have been persecuted and punished, and their ideas censored. Even today the religions are doing all they can to keep atheist opinion from being widely heard.

The long history of censorship, is reflected in the lack of language for use in discussing secular humanism and there is a backlog of understanding or our case against superstition of which religion is the most widespread manifestation. There is no word in the English language for someone who is against religion.

This web-site takes one aspect of atheist criticism of religion, the way it's ideas and practices affect children.

Childhood

One could be forgiven for believing that before the Victorian family, and Charles Dickens, children did not exist. And to some extent that is true.

Once over babyhood, most children joined the grind of life of their parents and siblings. The few lucky enough to have been born to wealthy families had better living conditions, but were not treated as individuals as they are today.

Only with the rise of secularism in the 20th Century, did 'childhood' as we know it, become a reality for most children. And only in the latter half of that century were children expected to enjoy themselves. We still have relics of the centuries of belief that children should be seen and not heard, be unthinkingly obedient, suffer harsh chastisement, and work long hours along with the rest of their family. Upper class were children given over to nannies, and boarding schools to be trained, rather as gun-dogs today are sent away for training.

It is a short time in historical terms for people to have adapted their ideas on the raising of children. The concept of children's rights is still an anathema to many people. There is considerable confusion over the difference between giving guidance and loving discipline and respect to children, and either the strict disciplinary approach to children needing punishment and thoughtless training, and the careless over indulgence, and guidance free upbringing the result of which causes children so much distress when as adults they cannot fit into social situations.

These changes are due to science and secularisation not religion.

The Effects

Direct and Indirect

The effects of religion have been both direct - through the practices of religions, such as harsh punishment, and child abuse by priests, and indirectly - through the effects of poverty and punitive, rigid attitudes. Religious doctrines that prevent the limiting of families and contracting STDs, and the effects of religious practices and attitudes upon their mothers and in the wider society contribute to much 'suffering of little children'.

Past and Present

That children are individuals with human rights of their own, is a very recent concept. Since the earliest times children have suffered the effects of religion, from the conflicts and sacrifices of pre Christian religions to the fear and guilt of the hell fire and damnation branches of the church.. Traditional attitudes of ownership, that women and children were 'owned' by men to do with as they wished still leads many people to treat children and their mothers as belongings or to fulfil subservient roles. Society has changed however, and in many respects religion's effects have been reduced in the west as a result of secularism, but in developing countries the effects are probably much worse than they have been in the past.

At Home and Abroad

Just as the effects of superstitions and its most widespread manifestation religion, are not new, they occur in every country on every continent to a greater or lesser degree. While physical abuse still occurs in Western Christianity, and under Islam, the effects of poverty are worse in many respects. Today in the Central Republic of Congo children are suffering by being attacked for causing hardship because they are supposedly casting spells.

The grip religion has had on all aspects of family life, community organisation, politics, health, education , crime and punishment impinge upon the lives of children, and it is only since the rise of the secular state in Britain, that the lives of mothers and children have improved.

Membership, Confirmations, Baptisms and Promises

Can children understand and therefor be made a member of a religion?

Who or what decides to which religion a child 'belongs'?

Should children be received into a religion?

Joining a religion involves taking an oath, this should only be with full understanding, be of their own free will, and they should be legally of age, does this apply to a child?

Should a child be bound by a solemn vow that their age makes it impossible to keep?

The churches call becoming a member being in a 'state of repentance'. Is a child mature enough to repent, and what 'sins' should they repent?

The act of Christening puts a child on the church's register and regardless of any commitments entered into at what is taken now to more a naming ceremony, these numbers are used in the church's claims to privileged status.

A ritual ceremony to name a child and introduce named adults to whom the child can turn in need can be provided just as well with a secular ceremony, which can be made more personal and meaningful than empty religious promises to bring up a child in one particular relgion..

How do children become assigned to a religion?

Chance, be it luck or unlucky, determines which religion a child will be assigned to. Chance as to who they are born to, and in which country will add them to the statistics of one or other of the religions. These chances will define their heredity, upbringing and culture, be it in affluence or in poverty. In South America 95% chance of being Catholic, in Mauritania or Pakistan near 100% Muslim. To claim that ones religion is a matter of thought and choice is to misunderstand the nature of religion.

Richard Dawkins makes this point admirably on:- http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,625743,00.html

Religious 'Education', Faith Schools and Community Facilities

One example of the lack of respect for children as people in their own right, is in the indoctrination of children. in schools, even state schools and the control they often extert on community facilities such as Scouts and Playgroups

Children have a right to expect adults to be totally honest with them and not teach anything in a biased way. To do so even if you love your children, is an abuse of their trust. Teachers in particular should know that there can be no place in education for the teaching of opinion as fact on any subject. The trouble is that religious people do not think that the existence of their gods and the truth of their scriptures is other than factual, and because politicians are afraid of the consequences of alienating organised religion, they dare not resist their pressure to keep and even increase the number of 'faith' schools.

There are many problems associated with segregating children by the religion of their parents, for children, their parents, teachers and the wider society; among them divisiveness and ghettoisation, discrimination in employment, transporting children to and fro where schools are at a distance; control by religious leaders and worst of all the segregation of children into religious groups, made worse where the religions are also along ethnic divisions. (see www.c.s.e.freeuk.com)

Some religions in some countries today confine learning about relgion to instruction of children in their religious texts, and the all religions lose no opportunity to indoctrinate them into their beliefs at an early age. In many countries the religions prevent girl children from being educated at all. They teach 'creationism' as if it were true, and on many issues take a very reactionary stance, such as totally unrealistic and dangerously narrow views on contraception,abortion and sexual health.

The religions, are vociferous in opposing the dropping of 'Section 28' which prevents schools supporting young people who are becoming aware that they are gay. This encourages homophobia and does nothing to counter the prejudice and bullying they may suffer at school and in later life from their heterosexual peers. Only distorted thinking can come up with the idea that it is not appropriate for gays to live a lifestyle in keeping with their gender orientation.

While religion continues to be promoted in schools, young people never hear the views of atheists, secularists or humanists. Religious education should include an honest assessment of it's bloody history, and the many reasons why it is time for people to give up believing in superstition because of the harm it does.

Why be 'Born Again' when, you can 'Grow Up'?

Community

The church seeks to pressure non-believing parents and punish their children, and adults who want to help to run them by excluding them from what should be inclusive community activities. Children's social, recreational activities are a prime example.

The Scout and Guide movement has insisted that children must affirm belief in god in order to join, this has been a thorn in the side of British non-believers since its inception. This condition has also prevented atheists and humanists becoming leaders in these youth movements. Prejudice and discrimination that is unacceptable. While the Guides do now accept non-believers, at least for children joining, but the scouting movement still sidesteps the issue and in many groups the rules are broken and a blind eye is turned in order for them to survive. In the US the Scouting movement is said to be controlled by the Mormon Church, and they actively exclude both non-believers and homosexuals. They get away with this blatant discrimination because they are legally a 'private organisation'.

Many clubs and leisure activities are run in churches and by church members, because in many areas they are the only organisation with the traditional infrastructure that enables them to do so. This means that they can and in some cases do put conditions on the membership and leadership of such groups. Many playgroups for instance are run in this way and they 'naturally' have prayers, and religious sing-songs on their agenda. This is using subtle and unscrupulous pressure on small children, and their parents, since it is neither feasible nor desirable to start competing groups and make them more divisive. In order not to make themselves unpopular no-one complains even if they recognise what is going on.

Family Problems

Problems of religious conflict between parents and between families affect the children in those families. Conflict often arises between parents and families of mixed marriages that can badly affect their children. It is a common cause of rifts and feuds between families, and is a source of confusion to children.

The betrothal and marriage of girl children in childhood, forced marriages & attitudes of ownership of women and children with limitation of the freedom of women and girls are practices still maintained in Islam, not only in Asia, but wherever there are Muslim communities. Their religious control over women and girls remains strong and is a cause of resentment to many as are the different attitudes to and treatment of girls and boys.

Our social policy is only now, tentatively emerging from the influence of the punitive religious attitudes towards one parent families in general and single mothers in particular, attitudes that reflect the traditional view that the holy state of matrimony is the only 'right' and moral way to bring up children.

The position of children born out of wedlock, the concept of illegitimacy and the stigma attached to it has been a direct cause of untold suffering throughout the ages, and has done so even well into the second half of the 20th century. How many children were taken from their mothers and given away. Many more were brought up by their grand- mothers or aunts, the guilty secret blighted the lives of their mothers, causing poverty and guilt. The children who found out only in later life, were often traumatised and families suffered the effects into the future.

It is still common to hear sympathy for single parents who are 'not to blame', but to have children out of wedlock 'deliberately' is still seen by many as justifying economic punishment. Judging by many of the commonly expressed current political views, the notion of the undeserving poor is as strong today as it ever was.

At the time of writing the government is trying, against a tide of religious prejudice, to pass legislation that would allow children to be adopted by unmarried, and same sex couples, eager to provide loving homes for them.

Every Child a Wanted Child

This was the slogan of the Abortion Law Reform Association in the 1960s when it was campaigning for the right of women to choose to end accidental or unwanted pregnancies by early, clean, safe abortion..

Prior to this change, women died as a result of sepsis after illegal abortion, resorted to in desperation. Thousands of women did not die as a result, but suffered from chronic pelvic inflamation which frequently led to subsequent infertility.

Illegal abortion led to children being left motherless, and often living in poverty as a result of family poverty.

For women it was symbolic of their control over their own bodies.

Opposition to legalisation of abortion came almost entirely from the churches, particularly the Roman Catholic church. The Pope steadfastly refuses to bow to the needs and opinions of Catholic women who have to travel from Catholic countries to get abortions in neighbouring countries where is it legal.

Nor do they give up on their mission to prevent abortions, not just for those who believe it is wrong, but for those who think it is the sensible option under certain circumstances, a decision which only they are in a position to make the final decision. They are made to feel guilty for what may well be a difficult or selfless decision.

Fanatical anti-abortion activists in the US have even gone to the extreme of picketing clinics and killing staff.

Where abortion is still illegal, it causes considerable suffering and anxiety, difficulty in getting impartial counselling, and the stress of leaving home if only temporarily leaving their children in the care of friends or relatives..

Most women seeking abortions are in fact not single girls, but married women, many of whom seek termination of pregnancy because they already have all the children they can look after.

All this unnecessary hassle affects their children.

(Research reported in the BMJ on November 2002 shows that in Nigeria, where abortion is still illegal 600.000 abortions a year are considered 'unsafe'. Of these women, 20.000 die as a result. (See BMJ report)

Poverty and the Family

3.9 million children in the UK live in poverty.*

Christian Britain today still does not wholeheartedly, consider adequately the needs of the children in one parent families, poor families, or families looking after disabled or sick children, either financial or in ensuring community care, fostering, respite, day care or after school care for lone parents who have to work full time.

Poverty and lack of community support for families is one factor that drives lone mothers to resort to relying on men who want them to fulfil their own needs, but not their children for whom they may have to take some responsibility, and with whom they may have to compete for attention. This must contribute to the recognised phenomenon of the high incidence of children abused by lone mother's 'boy friends' .

The idea that if it is made too easy it will encourage young women to have children out of wedlock! So it is content to punish single mother and their children by depriving them from financial support.

* End Child Poverty Campaign - http://www.ecpc.org.uk/ and ................... ........Child Poverty Action Group - http://www.cpag.org.uk

Punishment

Western Christian countries cannot match the barbarity of Muslim states that still practice amputations as a form of punishment. But the impact of the religious attitude to wrongdoing and punishment, be it for disobedience to secular laws, religious doctrine or biblical injunctions bears down hard on women and children. They did and still do suffer disproportionately if harsh policies and penalties are served on their partners and parents, because of the paucity of adequate care to compensate for their loss, and the loss of income it entails.

Punitive attitudes and demands for retribution so much a part of the religious agenda, result in reliance on imprisonment as a punishment in countries where cruel physical punishmens are now not allowed. Where this is used for people, mothers or fathers who are more weak than wicked and not violent or threatening, it causes considerable trauma and hardship for women and children, when it is not they who should be being punished. As usual it is disproportionately worse for families who are already poor and may not be able to buy other forms of child care, or travel to visit an imprisoned parent.

In Ireland vulnerable children, boys and girls were subjected to cruel regimes of harsh discipline, physical and sexual abuse in 'schools' run by priests and nuns. This was going on up to the 1960s. Exposed in 2002 with a docu-drama and film based on factual evidence, of the Magdalen Laundries. Harsh treatment of children is deeply rooted in religious ideas, and the notion that 'naughtiness' or disobedience is the work of the Devil, 'little devil' and 'imp' are now thankfully only relics of widespread beliefs from the past that have passed into common language.

There are many children in puritanical religious families and their schools, who suffer personal violence or social exclusion, because of their parents fanatical religious beliefs which keep them segregated within their immediate family. Unfortunately too, extreme views that children need severe discipline still persist 'if the devil in them is to be kept at bay'. One of the worst examples was the case of Victoria Climbie, who was considered in need of exorcism by her aunt and her boy friend.

Belief in god and the devil is still rife, and even the Anglican church still has priests who practice exorcism, presumably on mentally disturbed adults though hopefully not of children, small mercy! There are regular reports of demands by Christian Evangelical sects, that harsh and cruel punishment of children by their parents and in their church schools should be allowed. And mainstream Christian church schools particularly those run by priests and nuns, have a reputation for punitive attitudes towards the disciplining of children and the maintaining of corporal punishment. 'Spare the rod' has been more the pattern than 'turning the other cheek' in the real world of the church.

The position of children born out of wedlock, the concept of illegitimacy and the stigma attached to it has been a direct cause of untold suffering throughout the ages, and has done so even well into the second half of the last century. How many children were taken from their mothers and given away, while many more were brought up by their mothers or aunts, the guilty secret blighted the lives of their mothers, causing poverty and guilt. The children who found out only in later life, were often traumatised and families suffered the effects into the future.

Child Protection

Is an area of social welfare in which the standards of care have still not reached modern notions of adequate responsibility of the community, relying as it does, on unreliable family structures, and high in current concern is the issue of child abuse and child killings. In the past the only community services were in the hands of the churches and where any action was taken it usually meant taking children away from their parents and putting them into institutions in which they were harshly treated and expected to be grateful for minimal care. The primacy of fathers who were in the past allowed by law to beat their wives meant that children were also entirely under their control. Even now notions of ownership of children by parents, prevents people intervening in cases of suspected child cruelty.

After every case of child killing today there are prayers, bunches of flowers and church services, and the howl goes up from the British public and media "How can we make our children safer?" .The cry also goes up from the churches and religions against what they call the 'increasingly secular society', as if it were true that things are worse now that there is supposedly less religion. They jump on any bandwagon, taking advantage of any hint of hysteria engendered by tabloid coverage of these terrible events to urge people to return again to their religions, the panacea for all things wicked. What a cruel deception.

Governments are urged to bring in more and more draconian procedures aimed at assuaging the 'fear-of-the-stranger' as it reaches new heights in people's perception as the greatest threat to our children. In Britain, a country of 56 million people there are going to be cases of mad or evil people abusing or killing, whatever regulations, registers or legislation are in place; but there are things we could and should do. Unfortunately these remedies, non of which will prevent every horrendous event, are not the stuff of rhetoric, tabloid hysteria or emotional sermonising, but the grind of rational policy decisions, some of which involve people accepting the 'burden' of financing them.

In a letter to the Observer in September 2002, Professor Colin Pritchard of the Mental Health Group of the University of Southampton School of Medicine, pointed to four facts pertinent to child killing: that four out of five murdered children are killed within their families and not by a stranger, that serious neglect and abuse also occurs predominantly within families, nine out of ten seriously neglected and abused children are in families living in relative poverty and Britain has the highest proportion of children living in relative poverty in the European Union. (We also have the highest proportion of underage pregnancies). This is in a country in which 71% of the population ticked themselves as Christian in the last census

He could also have pointed out that failure to finance child protection at local level means that children known to be in danger, are not protected because there are not enough well trained social workers to ensure that they have realistic case loads. The refusal to recruit and train enough good child care staff for children's homes, and pay enough to attract enough good people puts children already traumatised by family breakdown or illness, at further risk from unqualified or otherwise poor quality provision.

He went on to say "If the media were sincere in their calls to make children safer they would campaign for targeted intervention to break the cycle of intergenerational child neglect and abuse."

That so much child protection work has to be done by the NSPCC and Kidscape two secular charities, not funded by local or national taxation, illustrates indifference to rational policies on this issue; and an indictment of a country where Christianity is the state religion, subscribed to by majority of the population for so long.

Child Abuse

The effects of religion have been both direct through the practices of religions, such as doctrinal beliefs and child abuse by priests, and indirect through the effects of poverty, religious policy that prevent the limiting of families, harsh punitive attitudes toward their chastisement, and the effects of religious practices and attitudes upon them and their mothers in the wider society.

Circumcision of men and boys and Female genital mutilation are practiced by several religions. It is a quite unnecessary bodily mutilation of children and young people before an age at which they can give informed consent and this if for no other reason is unacceptable in a civilised society. It is one of the issues that is frequently stifled on the grounds that it is 'cultural', an excuse that should not be accepted. Currently the practice of female circumsision is being taken up as a 'crusade' by Christian missionaries, and it is to be hoped they succede. What a pity it has taken so long and rescue is at hand by those whose prime purpose is to recruit them into their own forms of superstition.

Children in the chaos of war torn Congo Republic, are being accused of witchcraft when problems arise in their families. The answer to one superstition is another - exhorsism.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/575178.stm

The concept of 'original sin' led to the punitive attitudes towards children. That babies are born in a state of sin and that it is only through the church that they may be 'saved' - made good enough to enter the kingdom heaven has affected attitudes towards children. Much abuse of children is rooted in religious ideas, and the notion that 'naughtiness' or disobedience is the work of the Devil. One of the worst examples was the case of Victoria Climbie. Even the Anglican church still has priests who practice exorcism! There are also many children in puritanical religious families and schools who suffer for their parents beliefs.

Sexual Abuse

Revelations from Europe, including the UK, and across America of sexual abuse of children by Catholic Priests is a scandal that is only now becoming widely reported. One can speculate how much greater the outcry would have been had the people involved been politicians or other professionals!

The reverence with which religion and its clerics and enthusiasts are held is frequently used to mask their wrong doing.

Children have always been exploited physically sexually and economically and much of this exploitation has been carried out by its priests, and covered up by the church, a fact ignored by a new Archbishop of Canterbury when in his publicity statement on being appointed in 2002. He referred to abuse of children, not by priests or paedophiles, not by contaminating their education with religious indoctrination, or abusing their human rights not to be physically attacked by adults, but by commerce! True of course, but why no mention of the much greater abuse by Catholic priests a scandal the scale of which was played down not only by the churches themselves but the media generally.

No mention either of the vulnerable children, boys and girls who were treated so cruelly by nuns and priests, under the harsh regimes of the Irish Catholic institutions, the industrial schools and Magdalen Laundries This was going on up to the 1960s completely ignored by the rest of the Christian Establishment and British media.

Only when church finances took a hefty knock by having to pay massive compensation to people abused by its clerics did much of the media notice the extent of the problem, preferring to amuse its readers with mildly titillating 'naughty vicar' stories.

Much abuse of children is deeply rooted in religious ideas, and the notion that 'naughtiness' or disobedience is the work of the Devil, 'little devil' and 'imp' are now thankfully only relics of widespread beliefs from the past that have passed into common language. But there are many children in puritanical religious families and their schools who suffer personal violence or social exclusion, caused by their parents fanatical religious beliefs which keep them segregated within their immediate family.

Religious beliefs as a cause of child deaths

From Child Poverty and harsh punishment, it is but a stone's throw to child abuse and child killing. But there are other causes of young people dying as a result of the illiberal and reactionary views of the religions.

It is estimated that in the US as many as 5 children every month die, due to the religious beliefs of their parents or guardians -Christian Scientists, Jehovas Witnesses, some evangelical sects who rely on 'faith healing' and shun other proved forms of treatments first. Many religious people including many Roman Catholics and evangelicals, think that illness is caused by sin, 'god given' and that to interfere is impossible as it challenges their notions of a supreme and omnipotent god. If you doubt this go onto a religious newsgroup, forum or chat line and you will soon see that it is not just an out of date notion. They really believe it.

The US, nominally secular, but one of the currently most relgious, its government heavily influenced by the bible thumping Southern Christian fundamentalists, is one of only six countries in the world that executes juveniles who commit crime, the others are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria and Pakistan. Together they are six of the most religious countries in the world.

They(the US) even execute mentally retarded juveniles as well as adults and have not signed the UN Children's rights declaration because it prohibits the state killing of minors. Do they not see the contradiction in the fact that young people who are not considered to have enough maturity or judgement to sign legal contracts at the age of sixteen, should be treated as adults when it comes to being executed. In 2001 there were 70 young people on death row who were minors when they committed their crimes.

Children are dying in their millions because of starvation, and AIDS, and millions more are being orphaned (see relevant topics on this site).

They are not spared in sectarian conflict either. Thousands have died in every continent, one of worst atrocities was the sectarian genocide in Ruanda, while the supposedly Christian and Muslim countries stood by and did nothing.

Some of the blame for deaths from drug abuse can also be laid at the door of the religious attitudes that affect drugs policy. Their preference for punishment over evidence based programmes and policies result in lack of awareness of openness as an early enough age. It stops rational discussion of the practical ways that young people can be protected, and protect themselves.

Reliance on individuals being able to change themselves and their behaviour against all the evidence that the pressures they face need rational counter measures, does untold harm. The church's insistance that morality is only the province of religion leads many young people confused and at risk, instead of confident in their own ability to know what is right and wrong. And when it goes wrong, it costs young lives.

Unfortunately too, extreme views that children need severe discipline still persist if the devil in them is to be kept at bay. One of the worst examples was the case of Victoria Climbie, who was considered in need of exorcism by her aunt and her boy friend, who took her to their church, the UCKG shortly before she died. Killed by the most cruel torture and neglect imaginable, it is possible given people's naiveté about religion, that their Christian piety disguised their wickedness.

There is also an increasing awareness of child deaths associated with the ritual killings in Europe by followers of extreme sub-Saharan African cults, the last two in Britain in 2001& 2002. According to Europol (reported by Tony Thompson in the Observer 1/9/02), there have been at least nine in between 1992 and 2002. http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/children/harrison.html

Child Labour

Children are exploited as cheap labour in many parts of the world, religion does not itself cause the exploitation, but does it do anything to stop it? In the countries where this is worst, organised religions has been and is overwhelmingly influential for hundreds of years. There are of course charities run by the churches, but the sectarian nature of the way they use such activities for their own purposes is a matter of concern to some of us. When missionaries bent on converting people to their religions and subverting local traditions and politics, are called 'relief workers', it gives the whole secular 'relief effort' a bad name.

The Christian church has been an enthusiastic supporter of industrialisation and global capitalism, which exploits children as workers, and closes it's eyes to cheap labour in developing countries. Cheap labour abroad is also used to depress pay rates in all countries which contributes to child poverty.

Observation supports the view that the more religious the country, the less protection there is for children. Is it a coincidence that the countries in which one sees the greatest poverty with children starving, scrambling over refuse heaps and working long hours are also the most devoutly religious?

Most recently South America is witnessing the transformation of hundreds of thousands of homeless street children in Brazil, no longer just homeless, running wild and begging, but running wild obtaining drugs and guns in an ever escalating circle of gang wars and killing. Alex Bellos reported in the Observer in January 2003 that in Rio 'The city of God' population 5 million almost 3000 people are shot dead every year.

Poverty and the Developing World

This is an area in which religion has and does play a direct and crucial part in preventing the eradication of world poverty.

According to UNICEF a quarter of the worlds children live in abject poverty. 1 in 12 die before the age of five, mostly from preventable diseases and malnutrition. The status of women and the health of them and their children are key factors in alleviating poverty and over population.

Any policy that prevents women from limiting their families, improving their health, reducing the pressure on natural reserves of land for food and fuel, creates poverty, disease and deaths.

Poverty, poor health and over-population are intimately linked, most obviously and devastatingly in the developing world. The stripping of land for food and fuel further degrades the environment, exacerbating problems with hostile climatic conditions and commercial farming and resistance to land reform.

Sectarian conflict with religion at its heart, either as the direct cause, or as an indirect factor by its support for political elites or by preventing rational, negotiated settlements is a major cause of misery for the children who are recruited into armies, lose their parents and family, community, health, education and their lives.

The policy of the Catholic Church in opposing modern forms of contraception, especially its implacable refusal to sanction the use of condoms, and accept women's right not to continue with accidental and unwanted pregnancies is a major problem in several areas.

Their policies are a considerable obstacle to those who are trying to solve the related problems of population control, environmental degradation, women's rights, poverty and HIV/AIDS . Opposition to the funding of UN population control and health programmes that give contraceptive advice, facilitate abortion, and advocate the use of condoms, severely hampers the efforts of UN Agencies.

There are two aspects to this, the missionary activities on the ground, in individual countries, and the political pressure put on UN policy at national and international level. And at national and international level; the Vatican with it's privileged position has a seat in the UN and national delegations are influenced by organised political pressure brought on them by various religions, including most notably Catholics and Evangelicals.

On the ground, local churches and missionary run organisations, individual clerics, and Christian run schools and clinics put on pressure to prevent local uptake of UN health and population control programmes where they include contraception, abortion and sterilisation.

AIDS

Millions of children are dying or have died from AIDS acquired at birth, through sexual activity or through drug addiction.

The Catholic Churches policy against the use of barrier methods of contraception, condoms has prevented the concerted world-wide effort to control the spread of this disease.

It's refusal to address the need for health education at an early age, and its insistence on relying on a 'say no to sex and drugs' policy, has left children and young people in grave danger.

It has done this in two ways. At national and international level it has effectively cut the funding of UN health programmes where contraception and abortion advice are given and facilities offered. It's activists on the ground in individual countries have pressured people not to use condoms, and influenced local and national policy to stop education programmes.

Religions have exploited AIDS to propagate their homophobic attitudes. This has held back the safe sex education to this particular group of young people. The stigma it encourages prevents many people seeking advice before it is too late to protect them from infection with AIDS or other STDs.

History

Since the turn of the last century, there have been dramatic changes in the UK and around the world: the population has expanded and is more ethnically diverse, people live longer and in smaller households, and education has improved dramatically.

The end of slavery is often cited a something for which we can thank good Christians of the time.But as with all such issues, for every Christian reformer, there were thousands of Christians who opposed change. They were rarely backed up by the church hierarchy, and one of their hardest jobs was to shame their own religious establishments. The Bishops and clergy were usually busy backing the political establishment.

Most of the people who fought so hard to frustrate efforts to end slavery , in trade, commerce, politics, the rich and powerful, who vastly outnumbered them, were Christians. Slavery was supported almost to the end by the Churches of the Day, even clerics such as John Newton, took part in the trade. Improvements in conditions and the freeing of the slaves of the northern states of America, proposed by other European colonists, were resisted particularly by the British Puritans, which prevented them being freed as early as might have been otherwise have been.

Not all slaves were black people imported from Africa, there were too, many white slaves, and endentured labour exploited by the good Christians in the building of the New World.

Harsh and unbending penal policy hit not only children themselves but affected them through their parents. Children as young as 9 & 10 were deported and imprisoned. They did and still do suffer disproportionately if harsh policies and penalties are served on their parents, because of the paucity of adequate care to compensate for their loss/

Atheism had been suppressed for centuries, and anyone who doubted or disbelieved kept their views to themselves. Certainly influential people would not have admitted to not believing in god, and had they done so would be very unlikely to have got very far in society, commerce or any other field of respectable occupation. (This is still the case today where employers can discriminate against non-believers, the BBC will not give air time to atheist views, and politics is another example). This means that we have no way of knowing how many of the humanitarian reformers were closet non-believers. though there were many courageous reformers who did risk exposing their non-belief such as William cobbet, robert Owen, Mary Wollstonegcraft and J.S.Mill and many more.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

She had so many children she didn't know what to do.

Give them some gruel without any bread,

Thrash them all soundly and sent them to bed.

I hope if you have read this far you will consider joining those of us who support the secular state, and against those who would use religion as a political tool.

If there is a place for religion it is in the home and church, among consenting adults.

Web-Site Links

http://www.babyworld.co.uk/features/life_y2k/life_y2k_new.asp

http://www.cwla.org/whowhat/default.htm Picture

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/childrensrights/help.shtml

http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/functions/wedo/main.html

http://www.antislavery.org/homepage/antislavery/childlabour.htm

Google Search for Magdalen Laundries

Two of Ex-Mormon Richard Packham's extremely useful sites, one on morality without religion 1)http://home.teleport.com/~packham/morality.htm ..........................

................and an invaluable list of biblical quotations that show that this book is NOT to be taken as a handbook for morality.

2) http://home.teleport.com/~packham/bible.htm

Deep thoughts of Scandinavian children (very amusing little site)

3) http://kundalini-info.org/religion.html

More Morality without Religion:-

4) http://www.arthurchappell.clara.net/children.and.religion.htm

5) http://www.americanatheist.org/columns/rm6-01.html Raising Children without Religion American Atheists

Missionaries in Thailand and interesting critique

6) http://www.akha.org/admin/factsheets/povertyandreligion.htm

Statistics:-

7) http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0855613.html

8) http://www.iol.ie/~pcassidy/ARC/stats.html

9) http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/children/harrison.html Child deaths from Religion

10) http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,625743,00.html Dawkins' speech on children & religion

11) http://www.c.s.e.freeuk.com - The Campaign for Secular Education in the UK

12) http://www.rootsofsexism.freeuk.com - The Roots of Sexism