writing in the dust

All practices are committed, and both express and inculcate beliefs. To pray is to be committed, but so is not to pray; to be prevented from worshipping a creator is as much an act of determination as to be constrained to offer worship. This week’s court ruling was doubly predicated on fiction: the fiction that circumcision is religiously determinative; and the fiction that it is possible to raise a child in a way that is not religiously – biased, if not determinative. The boy’s Muslim parents will, by a million conscious and unconscious practices, impart the message to their child(ren), ‘we are Muslims’; Heather and I would impart the message, ‘we Christians, Baptists, evangelicals’ to our daughters even if we tried not to. Of course, in fact we try to; my concern is not that, but instead that my discipleship is sufficiently poor that I unconsciously impart the message ‘but sometimes I don’t really believe that stuff’ as well… Religious neutrality is an unobtainable dream, perhaps utopian; I suspect more likely dystopian (true neutrality would demand a studied refusal to impart any account of ultimate values, and so any moral and ethical commitments…). Either way, it is not a possibility in the real world; every child’s upbringing will instantiate a set of commitments and values.