Evolutionary biologist and Atheist advocate Richard Dawkins lately has stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy in arguing that religion is a form of child abuse.  He argues that indoctrinating children with their parent's religious doctrines is a form of child abuse and that "forcing a religion on your children is as bad as child abuse."  Most people will feel that he has overstated his case, but Unitarian Universalists may also approve of some of what he has said.  He acknowledges that "telling children they're going to hell...is of course, totally harmless if they don't believe it."  But if they believe it, "That's abuse because you are threatening a child with unspeakable horrors that never end."  And he quotes from a letter sent to him by a woman whose childhood friend died while being a member of the wrong church and who had been led to believe that her friend would go straight to hell: "... the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear.  ...I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to hell.  It gave me nightmares."

Dawkins also says, "What a child should be taught is that religion exists; that some people believe this and some people believe that."  And "There is a value in teaching children about religion. You cannot really appreciate a lot of literature without knowing about religion."

Perhaps the proper question is not "Is religion a form of child abuse?" but "When does religion become a form of child abuse?"

In his autobiography, our Universalist forbear, the Rev. John Murray described the anguish and despair that beset him starting in his childhood and until his discovery of Universalism.  He was raised by two strict Calvinist parents whose religious instruction caused him to believe, as he recounted in his autobiography, that he was "a reprobate, predestined to eternal perdition."  He added, "I believed that I had nothing to hope, but every thing to fear, both from my Creator, and my father; and these soul-appalling considerations, by forcing a conclusion, that I was but making provision for alternate torture, threw a cloud over innocent enjoyment."  In short, he wrote, "my soul frequently experienced the extreme of agony."

When I was a child, I and my sister were required to attend adult services in my mother's Pentecostal church.  The pandemonium of whooping and hollering and people dancing up and down the center aisle and everyone praying out loud at once was something I could take in stride.  But there came an occasion when a visiting evangelist led the service with a more disturbing effect.  At the end of his sermon, the preacher issued an altar call, inviting members of the congregation to come forward and seek salvation.  Again, pandemonium.  People went forward and sprawled headlong on the steps before the altar.  Multiple voices were praying loudly.  There was bawling and shrieking.  My sister and I had not been prepared for this and had no idea what was going on.  My sister was scared.  I thought someone was dying.

On another occasion, I was taken to participate in a week-long Pentecostal summer camp.  Somewhere during the week all the kids were gathered in a large tent for an evangelistic service.  And at the end of the service, there was an altar call again.  It began with an invitation: "All those who are saved come forward and gather around the altar to pray with us."  So far so good.  I was unobtrusively located amongst a large number of kids still sitting in the folding chairs under the tent.  Then came the second invitation: "All you who want to be saved come forward to gather around the altar and pray with us."

Now there was one extremely embarrassed little boy sitting in the back of the rows of chairs all by himself.  After a brief interval, I got up and slunk out of the tent hoping that no one would notice me.

No child should be subjected to those kinds of experiences, especially in the name of religion.

And what a contrast between that way of treating children and the way advocated by our Unitarian forbear the Rev. William Ellery Channing:

And I wonder if anyone has sent Dawkins a copy of Channing's words.  I suspect that he might approve of them.