Some types of Christianity involve no indoctrination, no terrorizing with hell, none of the things that you think are essential to Christianity. I was raised in this tradition. Belief is not coerced, it is always a matter of choice. You are also not induced by reward either. It is difficult for you to imagine a child could be introduced to Jesus’s words without any threat or promise of reward and a person would believe for life because your tradition requires fear for people to believe. Given your preferences, you would reject this type of Christianity but one can certainly transmit it as a religious faith.
I think you’re confusing two things. You’re confusing doctrines of eternal punishment with the kind of harm that I am describing, which is the result of people, operating in misunderstanding, or being in communities of any kind. If we suppose that speaking of Christianity, absent doctrines of eternal punishment will remove the harm that people do to one another in ordinary ways, we are profoundly mistaken. I take this to be one of the mistakes of a Christian philosophy or ethic which does not have a doctrine of sin, namely, the loss of an ability to speak about how we harm one another.
I think I may misunderstand what is behind the trauma people describe. It is also possible I misunderstood your post.
I assume the trauma has to do with the coercion involved in Christianity that has a very specific concept of the doctrine of eternal punishment, and where this is connected with control of children by causing them to fear quite a large number of things if they fall outside a set of highly detailed notions conveyed to them as ultimately resulting in damnation. They experience their faith as being mostly this kind of coercion. (Unfortunately, as they describe it, it can also involve a lot of corporal punishment, which is probably a major thing that does the lasting harm. This is mixed up with the religion, so they associate it with the religion.)
This is what they seem to describe, anyway. The ones that continue to be Christian also try to describe to other people who are similarly traumatized that there is a version of Christianity without these elements. They’ll say ‘God loves you. Theirs is not the only kind of way to be a Christian,’ etc.
You mention that the problems arise from harmful communities, which is true but you were also mentioning that you didn’t think you could convey certain beliefs while leaving room for questioning (sorry, I can’t see the post so I can’t quote you directly) so if you gave up certain aspects of belief transmission you would have no ability to pass on the faith.
I don’t think this is true for certain kinds of Christianity. They regard certain actions as sinful without the idea of eternal punishment. The child would internalize the beliefs by coming to appreciate them as true and good, but not because something terrible will happen to them if they don’t believe them. This also may remove some of the incentive for corporal punishment since there would be no point. If you think physical correction is necessary to create the mindset that will be more likely to be saved from eternal punishment then it won’t seem so bad to do it—but if you believe in universal salvation then there would be no point in that.
Not to say that everyone that believes in eternal damnation will use physical force and those that don’t won’t use physical force but that’s one of the arguments for using physical force on a child.
Anyway, these are the examples people give when they talk about being traumatized. I didn’t have the experiences so I cannot speak for these people—this is my impression of what they are trying to say about their experiences.
There are different ways to speak about the harm we do to one another. Sin is one way but people can describe what was done to them without referring to sin. Surely, these actions that cause harm are sinful but not referencing sin does not cause a loss of the ability to speak about them altogether. You don’t even have to blame perpetrators to describe harm—you can merely say what happened to you, and the effects that they had on you.
Also, some of these people may believe in eternal damnation but with a greater emphasis on forgiveness or a different set of views about what causes eternal damnation, one that doesn’t cause a child to fear when they are being taught the basics of their religious faith
"When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about our not. When we do not know, or when we do not known enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts." -- T.S. Eliot (1920)
Some types of Christianity involve no indoctrination, no terrorizing with hell, none of the things that you think are essential to Christianity. I was raised in this tradition. Belief is not coerced, it is always a matter of choice. You are also not induced by reward either. It is difficult for you to imagine a child could be introduced to Jesus’s words without any threat or promise of reward and a person would believe for life because your tradition requires fear for people to believe. Given your preferences, you would reject this type of Christianity but one can certainly transmit it as a religious faith.
I think you’re confusing two things. You’re confusing doctrines of eternal punishment with the kind of harm that I am describing, which is the result of people, operating in misunderstanding, or being in communities of any kind. If we suppose that speaking of Christianity, absent doctrines of eternal punishment will remove the harm that people do to one another in ordinary ways, we are profoundly mistaken. I take this to be one of the mistakes of a Christian philosophy or ethic which does not have a doctrine of sin, namely, the loss of an ability to speak about how we harm one another.
I think I may misunderstand what is behind the trauma people describe. It is also possible I misunderstood your post.
I assume the trauma has to do with the coercion involved in Christianity that has a very specific concept of the doctrine of eternal punishment, and where this is connected with control of children by causing them to fear quite a large number of things if they fall outside a set of highly detailed notions conveyed to them as ultimately resulting in damnation. They experience their faith as being mostly this kind of coercion. (Unfortunately, as they describe it, it can also involve a lot of corporal punishment, which is probably a major thing that does the lasting harm. This is mixed up with the religion, so they associate it with the religion.)
This is what they seem to describe, anyway. The ones that continue to be Christian also try to describe to other people who are similarly traumatized that there is a version of Christianity without these elements. They’ll say ‘God loves you. Theirs is not the only kind of way to be a Christian,’ etc.
You mention that the problems arise from harmful communities, which is true but you were also mentioning that you didn’t think you could convey certain beliefs while leaving room for questioning (sorry, I can’t see the post so I can’t quote you directly) so if you gave up certain aspects of belief transmission you would have no ability to pass on the faith.
I don’t think this is true for certain kinds of Christianity. They regard certain actions as sinful without the idea of eternal punishment. The child would internalize the beliefs by coming to appreciate them as true and good, but not because something terrible will happen to them if they don’t believe them. This also may remove some of the incentive for corporal punishment since there would be no point. If you think physical correction is necessary to create the mindset that will be more likely to be saved from eternal punishment then it won’t seem so bad to do it—but if you believe in universal salvation then there would be no point in that.
Not to say that everyone that believes in eternal damnation will use physical force and those that don’t won’t use physical force but that’s one of the arguments for using physical force on a child.
Anyway, these are the examples people give when they talk about being traumatized. I didn’t have the experiences so I cannot speak for these people—this is my impression of what they are trying to say about their experiences.
There are different ways to speak about the harm we do to one another. Sin is one way but people can describe what was done to them without referring to sin. Surely, these actions that cause harm are sinful but not referencing sin does not cause a loss of the ability to speak about them altogether. You don’t even have to blame perpetrators to describe harm—you can merely say what happened to you, and the effects that they had on you.
Also, some of these people may believe in eternal damnation but with a greater emphasis on forgiveness or a different set of views about what causes eternal damnation, one that doesn’t cause a child to fear when they are being taught the basics of their religious faith
"When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about our not. When we do not know, or when we do not known enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts." -- T.S. Eliot (1920)