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I go to church regularly and say things I don't believe. I justify this by saying that it's necessary to support an institution that I believe does more good than harm and that the usefulness of a statement is more important than its truth. I think my grounds are utilitarian and pragmatic, and do not share the vulnerability, among skeptics, of belief in the statements.

I am satisfied with my justification until I am asked to teach a seventh-grade Sunday School class. If I decline I leave it to somebody else, maybe as much a skeptic as I am, to give the support I want given. I can't do that, and don't expect a philosopher to give me a justification for it. If I accept the job I do the things that make me ask for help from a philosopher.

My question: How I can avoid harm, and if I can't will I do enough to tip the utilitarian balance and remove me from the church?

As I see it, I risk doing three kinds of harm. First, pedagogical harm. I will be teaching credulousness. They can't believe what I say (or repeat from the Nicene Creed) without suspending the tests for belief they know, or will soon learn, in general science. I, with the authority they still grant adults, will be teaching them "readiness to believe."

Second, the harm this leads to, civic harm. My church is in the Midwest, the Heartland, where the electorate’s readiness to believe President Bush’s statements about threats from Iraq had such dire consequences. I had to ask whether it was a coincidence that the region labeled by some British periodical (I think it was The Economist) “Jesus Land” after the election was also the region that carried Bush to victory for a second term. With all the other harm credulousness has done to nations (pogroms, etc.) I really shouldn't need the Iraq example to make me sensitive to it, but there it is, close to home.

Third, linguistic harm, the least clear to me but maybe the most important. I do this harm when I try to avoid the harm above by teaching my seventh-graders the non-literal ways of reading that skeptics attending the service upstairs use. I see it coming out like this: "There are ways to take these words, children, and ways you can use them to each other. The expression A doesn’t have to mean A and B doesn’t have to mean B. And C, that’s best left vague. Forget giving it a referent. You can be adult about this."

It seems to me I am teaching linguistic misbehavior, and I feel supported in my discomfort by what I remember J. L. Austin (I was a philosophy minor) calling the double performer: a backstage artiste. (HTDTWW, p. 11)

So there's my pain: I teach my thirteen-year-olds to be credulous dunces or I teach them to be backstage artistes. Is there consolation in philosophy?

Ohio English Teacher

February 4, 2010

Response from Jean Kazez on February 4, 2010

I have struggled with similar dilemmas, as a non-believing member of a Jewish religious congregation. It looks like you have four options--(1) leave the church entirely, (2) teach in the normal fashion, (3) teach non-literally, and (4) remain in the church but don't teach.

You've made up your mind against (1), and you're struggling between (2) and (3). I think you're right to be worried about (2). It concerns me the way Sunday school teachers stand before children and present religious stories exactly as if they were history teachers or science teachers. This does exploit the credulousness of children in a way that is problematic.

It's been way too long since I read Austin, so I don't know what he says about the "backstage artiste," but I think it's fine for children to be taught that religious material is "meaningful to us" but not historically or scientifically true. The problem is that I doubt other congregants would think it's fine (unless your church is extremely liberal). So I can't imagine (3) is really a viable option.

Which leaves (4). What's wrong with continuing to be a congregant, but declining to be a Sunday school teacher? Perhaps you're thinking that it couldn't make sense to continue as a congregant if you weren't willing to participate in the church's educational programs. But much goes on in a religious organization. There's no reason why every congregant must support and be involved in every activity.

Maybe you're thinking you'd be a free rider if you didn't pitch in. "What if everybody did it?" you may be asking yourself. But in fact, it sounds to me like you'd be perfectly happy if everybody declined to be a literal Sunday school teacher (most likely the only kind you can really be). You believe it would be better if no one were exploiting the credulousness of children.

So (4) seems to me like a perfectly good option. If you do belong to an extremely liberal congregation and can get way with (3), I would rethink your doubts about it, if I were you. When I take my children to religious services, I don't think I'm going wrong in any way by telling them that the stories are meaningful to us, but not true.


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