#discovery list

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Award-winning documentary INVISIBLE HANDS exposes child labor and trafficking within the supply chains of the world’s biggest corporations.

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The 10 Most Vital Food Documentaries on Netflix

If you're thinking about getting rid of your streaming due to a price hike, make sure to watch these documentaries first.

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“The central threat is that Trump substitutes a fantasy world of his making for the real one. This is the number one defining mark of the fascist temperament, which made it possible for fascists of the 1930s to achieve their goals: “Fascism says what you and I experience as facts or what reporters experience as facts are irrelevant. All that matters are impressions and emotions and myths. And so when the president and his aides set out to create a world of alternative factuality, that is the catalyst which helps us slide from one system to another.

On Tyranny puts it more analytically, citing Victor Klemperer, a Romance languages scholar who chronicled Germany’s descent into fascist barbarism. Klemperer said truth died in four modes in Nazi Germany, and Snyder says the same thing is happening today in the United States. The first mode is to be openly hostile to empirical reality, brandishing fabrications and lies as facts, which the president does “at a high rate and at a fast pace.” Number two is shamanistic incantation, the constant repetition of crude smears and slogans such as “Lyin’ Ted,” “Crooked Hillary,” and “Lock her up.” Number three is magical thinking, a byproduct of exalting feelings over reason, such that one believes contradictory things and one’s own fabrications. Number four is misplaced faith, as in “I alone can solve it,” an oracular idea of truth impervious to evidence. Snyder is old-school about reason and evidence, pleading: “Post-truth is pre-fascism.” His lessons are decidedly personal, small-bore, and insistently empirical, eschewing the willful language of heroism, until he gets to the end. His 20th lesson, “Be as courageous as you can,” offers a single sentence of commentary: “If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.”

Recently Snyder made news by contending it’s “pretty much inevitable” that some version of the Reichstag fire moment is coming. Trump will declare a state of emergency that nullifies democratic institutions and usurps as much control of the government as he can get. It’s hard to imagine that Trump will not take the path of the dictators he admires, since he does not respect democratic institutions and does not take counsel from anyone outside the realm of military affairs. Snyder is right to stress the indispensable importance of early resistance—opposition that from the beginning assumes the worst without getting hysterical or panicked.”

https://www.christiancentury.org/review/books/trump-threat-democracy-how-can-we-defend-it

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Anonymous ex-Christians open up about their damaged sex lives

For ex-Christian blogger Ruby Claire and those who've opened up to her, breaking free from a sexually repressive Church community was not liberating – it was awkward at best and traumatic at worst.

When I was 18, I was in a committed Christian relationship, destined for marriage, pure in my virginity and commitment to serving the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Growing up, I went to Bible Study on Tuesdays, Youth Group on Fridays and on Sundays, I sang about my love of Jesus at Eagle Vale Anglican Church in Campbelltown, Sydney.

At youth group, boys and girls were separated for “special talks”. Girls were spoken to about modesty, about wearing shirts over bikinis lest their bodies “cause men to stumble”. No spaghetti straps. No short shorts. If we knew our brother in Christ liked perfume, we were told not to wear it in case it “causes him to fall into sin”. Sex, we were taught, was sacred. It must be reserved for the man you marry. I lived by these rules, and when I eventually became a leader at youth group, I enforced them.

But when I was 21, I lost the virginity I had desperately clutched to during my hormone-fuelled teenage years. No, I didn’t submit to temptation. I was raped. After the rape, I used sex to regain control of my body. I had a lot of sex attempting to suppress the experience where I was not in control. This was difficult to justify as a young Christian. All sex before marriage was punishable by death (Romans 6:23), regardless of whether you were doing it for fun or to heal.

When I was 22, I left the church. I started blogging about my frustrations with sex, and the site quickly gained the attention of other lapsed Christians. I learned that for some, leaving the faith meant throwing themselves headlong into a world where sex toys and video cameras and fetishes reigned. But for most, liberation was awkward at best and traumatic at worst.

Jess*, a 24-year-old woman who once belonged to the Sydney Anglican dioceses, emailed me in response to a callout seeking experiences of sex post-religion for this article:

I can’t orgasm because I can’t relax. I’m literally thinking about hell. It’s been three years since I left Christianity but I can’t shake the thought that a guy who isn’t a Christian just wants me for my body… and I project that insecurity onto him … This is ultimately what ended my only two relationships.

When I asked her what she has done to regain control of sex, she told me about a recent sexual partner:

I made him pretend he was religious and didn’t want to have sex … I had to convince him it was a good idea. I made him pray at the end of the bed. Through that role play I was able to be the other person and that power allowed me not to freak out.

Alice, a passionate, sex-positive Christian commented on a Facebook post of mine:

If porn was ever discussed it was only for the boys and men. There was complete and utter silence when it came to women using porn, or getting addicted to it. So, when I stumbled across porn when I was 12, and continued using it compulsively until I was 22, I felt I had nowhere safe to turn. I truly believed I was the only woman struggling with it, I was a freak. I wondered if I had too much testosterone, if something was biologically wrong with me for liking porn. I lived in shame and secrecy. Which only made my addiction worse, and bred an intense self-hatred… If someone had just stood up from the front and said that women also use porn, and can get addicted to it, and there's help for them...my life would have looked different.

For Aurora*, a 23-year-old who left Catholicism in her teens who responded to a survey I sent to my blog readers in 2017:

…I was molested at a young age. Whenever I heard the minister talk about how it is a sin to not be ‘pure’ before marriage I would feel incredibly guilty and dirty, and this has distorted my views on myself and sex even to this day. I felt trapped, I felt as if I was going to hell or something even though it wasn’t my fault, and I find that I am still overcoming these feelings.

Dr. Josie McSkimming, Clinical Social Worker and author of Leaving Christian Fundamentalism and the Reconstruction of Identity told me that the enforcement of no sex before marriage can “lead to people marrying in haste, often experiencing enormous confusion and self-hate about their sexual feelings. When this is combined with God-given assumptions of male leadership and female submission, the possibility of abuse and violence increases.”

Over Facebook Messenger Tim*, a former Sydney Anglican who received a year of formal Biblical training with his Christian wife tells me that while he didn’t feel “especially unprepared” entering marriage, his wife was.

It was hard for her to transition from viewing sexual desire and action as deviant, to viewing it as healthy… She hadn't explored to find what gave her pleasure, so she couldn't give me much guidance, and she felt guilty about exploring herself… It has mostly only caused tension for me, as I've never really been able to get what I wanted - because my desire in sex is to be with someone who's also seeking their own physical pleasure, and who knows what they want, so I've always kind of felt unsatisfied. Since stepping away from faith, this has led me to bring up the idea of a more open marriage arrangement (just sexually, not romantically). But that's very much incompatible with my wife's religious views (and just her personal desires as well) so it's pretty unlikely to happen any time soon.

Mon*, a Sydney non-denominational Christian who married at 21 told me:

During the first few years of my marriage I definitely felt like a disappointment, or like there was something wrong with me, because I didn’t know how to make myself orgasm and I couldn’t give my husband any guidance either… I felt like it was directly related to the church.

Mon didn’t sleep naked for at least eight months after getting married. "I felt uncomfortable with my bare body. How are you supposed to navigate sex when you don’t even like being naked? If my cleavage can cause sin, how much more my entire naked body?”

For many who are not married and no longer religiously affiliated, this confusion and self-hate maintains a foothold on their sex life. Jake*, the gay son of an Anglican Minister in Sydney, tells me over Facebook Messenger that he struggles with sex:

I get nervous a lot of the time, sometimes I start shaking. But it's normally after [sex], I just want to distance myself from that person as much as I can. Sometimes I'll be a bit cold and distant because of the guilt I'm wrestling with internally.

Over Instagram, former Sydney Anglican Claire* tells me:

I never felt guilty before or during. Only after. And if things weren’t going great, I felt like it was the karma. I know it’s irrational, but we’ve been drilled into believing it’s for marriage only. I love [sex], but I feel like it makes me a bad person. Or a lesser person.

Most of the people I spoke to didn’t have an issue with the belief that sex should be saved for marriage. The primary concern was with the way this was communicated by their church, predominantly during childhood. As a result, a number of Sydney Christians are stepping up within traditionally conservative structures, such as the Ministry of Sex, to challenge the way that sex and purity are discussed.  

I still grapple with bouts of guilt and, like Jake and Claire, this often arrives after a sexual experience, when my partner has fallen asleep and I’m lying there bleary-eyed, overwhelmed by the uninvited Bible verses and sermons filtering through the bed sheets.

However, I have spent considerable time unpicking learned beliefs with therapists, vibrator-gifting friends and understanding partners. Consequently, I have built a new code of sexual ethics separate from faith and I can proudly say that I feel in control and empowered through sex, in all its passionate glory.

Ruby Claire is a freelance contributor. She blogs at The Gravity of Guilt. *Names have been changed for privacy.

The Feed reveals the Australian operation of the secretive Korean church headed by a convicted rapist with multiple young 'spiritual brides'.

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Psychological Harms of Bible-Believing Christianity

By Marlene Winell and Valerie Tarico “I am 30 years old and I am struggling to find sanity. Between the Christian schools, homeschooling, the Christian group home (indoctrinating work camp) and dif…

“I am 30 years old and I am struggling to find sanity. Between the Christian schools, homeschooling, the Christian group home (indoctrinating work camp) and different churches in different cities, I am a psychological, emotional and spiritual mess.”   –A former Evangelical

If a former believer says that Christianity made her depressed, obsessive, or post-traumatic, she is likely to be dismissed as an exaggerator. She might describe panic attacks about the rapture; moods that swung from ecstasy about God’s overwhelming love to suicidal self-loathing about repeated sins; or an obsession with sexual purity.

A symptom like one of these clearly has a religious component, yet many people instinctively blame the victim. They will say that the wounded former believer was prone to anxiety or depression or obsession in the first place—that his Christianity somehow got corrupted by his predisposition to psychological problems. Or they will say that he wasn’t a real Christian. If only he had prayed in faith believing or loved God with all his heart, soul and mind, if only he had really been saved—then he would have experienced the peace that passes all understanding.

But the reality is far more complex. It is true that symptoms like depression or panic attacks most often strike those of us who are vulnerable, perhaps because of genetics or perhaps because situational stressors have worn us down. But certain aspects of Christian beliefs and Christian living also can create those stressors, even setting up multigenerational patterns of abuse, trauma, and self-abuse. Also, over time some religious beliefs can create habitual thought patterns that actually alter brain function, making it difficult for people to heal or grow.

The purveyors of religion insist that their product is so powerful it can transform a life, but somehow, magically, it has no risks. In reality, when a medicine is powerful, it usually has the potential to be toxic, especially in the wrong combination or at the wrong dose. And religion is powerful medicine!

In this discussion, we focus on the variants of Christianity that are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. These include Evangelical and fundamentalist churches, the Church of Latter Day Saints, and other conservative sects. These groups share the characteristics of requiring conformity for membership, a view that humans need salvation, and a focus on the spiritual world as superior to the natural world. These views are in contrast to liberal, progressive Christian churches with a humanistic viewpoint, a focus on the present, and social justice.

Religion Exploits Normal Human Mental Processes.

To understand the power of religion, it is helpful to understand a bit about the structure of the human mind. Much of our mental activity has little to do with rationality and is utterly inaccessible to the conscious mind. The preferences, intentions and decisions that shape our lives are in turn shaped by memories and associations that can get laid down before we even develop the capacity for rational analysis.

Aspects of cognition like these determine how we go through life, what causes us distress, which goals we pursue and which we abandon, how we respond to failure, how we respond when other people hurt us—and how we respond when we hurt them. Religion derives its power in large part because it shapes these unconscious processes: the frames, metaphors, intuitions and emotions that operate before we even have a chance at conscious thought.

Some Religious Beliefs and Practices are More Harmful Than Others.

When it comes to psychological damage, certain religious beliefs and practices are reliably more toxic than others.

Janet Heimlich is an investigative journalist who has explored religious child maltreatment, which describes abuse and neglect in the service of religious belief. In her book, Breaking their Will, Heimlich identifies three characteristics of religious groups that are particularly prone to harming children. Clinical work with reclaimers, that is, people who are reclaiming their lives and in recovery from toxic religion, suggests that these same qualities put adults at risk, along with a particular set of manipulations found in fundamentalist Christian churches and biblical literalism.

1) Authoritarianism, creates a rigid power hierarchy and demands unquestioning obedience. In major theistic religions, this hierarchy has a god or gods at the top, represented by powerful church leaders who have power over male believers, who in turn have power over females and children. Authoritarian Christian sects often teach that “male headship” is God’s will. Parents may go so far as beating or starving their children on the authority of godly leaders. A book titled, To Train Up a Child, by minister Michael Pearl and his wife Debi, has been found in the homes of three Christian adoptive families who have punished their children to death.

2) Isolation or separatism, is promoted as a means of maintaining spiritual purity. Evangelical Christians warn against being “unequally yoked” with nonbelievers in marriages and even friendships. New converts often are encouraged to pull away from extended family members and old friends, except when there may be opportunities to convert them. Some churches encourage older members to take in young single adults and house them within a godly context until they find spiritually compatible partners, a process known by cult analysts as “shepherding.” Home schoolers and the Christian equivalent of madrassas cut off children from outside sources of information, often teaching rote learning and unquestioning obedience rather than broad curiosity.

3) Fear of sin, hell, a looming “end-times” apocalypse, or amoral heathens binds people to the group, which then provides the only safe escape from the horrifying dangers on the outside. In Evangelical Hell Houses, Halloween is used as an occasion to terrify children and teens about the tortures that await the damned. In the Left Behind book series and movie, the world degenerates into a bloodbath without the stabilizing presence of believers. Since the religious group is the only alternative to these horrors, anything that threatens the group itself—like criticism, taxation, scientific findings, or civil rights regulations—also becomes a target of fear.

Bible Belief Creates an Authoritarian, Isolative, Threat-based Model of Reality

In Bible-believing Christianity, psychological mind-control mechanisms are coupled with beliefs from the Iron Age, including the belief that women and children are possessions of men, that children who are not hit become spoiled, that each of us is born “utterly depraved”, and that a supernatural being demands unquestioning obedience. In this view, the salvation and righteousness of believers is constantly under threat from outsiders and dark spiritual forces. Consequently, Christians need to separate themselves emotionally, spiritually, and socially from the world.These beliefs are fundamental to their overarching mental framework or “deep frame” as linguist George Lakoff would call it. Small wonder then, that many Christians emerge wounded.

It is important to remember that this mindset permeates to a deep subconscious level. This is a realm of imagery, symbols, metaphor, emotion, instinct, and primary needs. Nature and nurture merge into a template for viewing the world which then filters every experience. The template selectively allows only the information that confirms their model of reality, creating a subjective sense of its veracity.

On the societal scale, humanity has been going through a massive shift for centuries, transitioning from a supernatural view of a world dominated by forces of good and evil to a natural understanding of the universe. The Bible-based Christian population however, might be considered a subset of the general population that is still within the old framework, that is, supernaturalism.

Children are Targeted for Indoctrination Because the Child Mind is Uniquely Vulnerable.

“Here I am, a fifty-one year old college professor, still smarting from the wounds inflicted by the righteous when I was a child. It is a slow, festering wound, one that smarts every day—in some way or another…. I thought I would leave all of that “God loves… God hates…” stuff behind, but not so. Such deep and confusing fear is not easily forgotten. It pops up in my perfectionism, my melancholy mood, the years of being obsessed with finding the assurance of personal salvation.”

Nowhere is the contrast of viewpoints more stark than in the secular and religious understandings of childhood. In the biblical view, a child is not a being that is born with amazing capabilities that will emerge with the right conditions like a beautiful flower in a well-attended garden. Rather, a child is born in sin, weak, ignorant, and rebellious, needing discipline to learn obedience. Independent thinking is seen as dangerous pride.

Because the child’s mind is uniquely susceptible to religious ideas, religious indoctrination particularly targets vulnerable young children. Cognitive development before age seven lacks abstract reasoning. Thinking is magical and primitive, black and white. Also, young humans are wired to obey authority because they are dependent on their caregivers just for survival. Much of their brain growth and development has to happen after birth, which means that children are extremely vulnerable to environmental influences in the first few years when neuronal pathways are formed.

By age five a child’s brain can understand primitive cause-and-effect logic and picture situations that are not present. Children at this have a tenuous grip on reality. They often have imaginary friends; dreams are quite real; and fantasy blurs with the mundane. To a child this age, it is eminently possible that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole and delivers presents if you are good and that 2000 years ago a man died a horrible death because you are naughty. Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, the Rapture, and hell, all can be quite real. The problem is that many of these teachings are terrifying.

For many years, one conversion technique targeting children and adolescents has been the use of movies about the “End Times.” This means a “Rapture” event, when real Christians are taken up to heaven leaving the earth to “Tribulation,” a terrifying time when an evil Antichrist will reign and the world will descend into anarchy.

When assaulted with such images and ideas at a young age, a child has no chance of emotional self-defense. Christian teachings that sound true when they are embedded in the child’s mind at this tender age can feel true for a lifetime. Even decades later former believers who intellectually reject these ideas can feel intense fear or shame when their unconscious mind is triggered.

Harms Range From Mild to Catastrophic.

One requirement for success as a sincere Christian is to find a way to believe that which would be unbelievable under normal rules of evidence and inquiry. Christianity contains concepts that help to safeguard belief, such as limiting outside information, practicing thought control, and self-denigration; but for some people the emotional numbing and intellectual suicide just isn’t enough. In other words, for a significant number of children in Christian families, the religion just doesn’t “take.” This can trigger guilt, conflict, and ultimately rejection or abandonment.

Others experience the threats and fear too keenly. For them, childhood can be torturous, and they may carry injuries into adulthood.

Still others are able to sincerely devote themselves to the faith as children but confront problems when they mature. They wrestle with factual and moral contradictions in the Bible and the church, or discover surprising alternatives. This can feel confusing and terrifying – like the whole world is falling apart.

Delayed Development and Life Skills. Many Christian parents seek to insulate their children from “worldly” influences. In the extreme, this can mean not only home schooling, but cutting off media, not allowing non-Christian friends, avoiding secular activities like plays or clubs, and spending time at church instead. Children miss out on crucial information– science, culture, history, reproductive health and more. When they grow older and leave such a sheltered environment, adjusting to the secular world can be like immigrating to a new culture. One of the biggest areas of challenge is delayed social development.

Religious Trauma Syndrome.  Today, in the field of mental health, the only religious diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is “Religious or Spiritual Problem.” This is merely a supplemental code (V Code) to assist in describing an underlying pathology. Unofficially, “scrupulosity,” is the term for obsessive-compulsive symptoms centered around religious themes such as blasphemy, unforgivable sin, and damnation. While each of these diagnoses has a place, neither covers the wide range of harms induced by religion.

Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS) is a new term, coined by Marlene Winell to name a recognizable set of symptoms experienced as a result of prolonged exposure to a toxic religious environment and/or the trauma of leaving the religion. It is akin to Complex PTSD, which is defined as ‘a psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged social and/or interpersonal trauma with lack or loss of control, disempowerment, and in the context of either captivity or entrapment, i.e. the lack of a viable escape route for the victim’.

Though related to other kinds of chronic trauma, religious trauma is uniquely mind-twisting. The logic of the religion is circular and blames the victim for problems; the system demands deference to spiritual authorities no matter what they do; and the larger society may not identify a problem or intervene as in cases of physical or sexual abuse, even though the same symptoms of depression and anxiety and panic attacks can occur.

RTS, as a diagnosis, is in early stages of investigation, but appears to be a useful descriptor beyond the labels used for various symptoms – depression, anxiety, grief, anger, relationship issues, and others. It is our hope that it will lead to more knowledge, training, and treatment. Like the naming of other disorders such as anorexia or Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), the RTS label can help sufferers feel less alone, confused, and self-blaming.

Leaving the Fold. Breaking out of a restrictive, mind-controlling religion can be liberating: Certain problems end(!), such as trying to twist one’s thinking to believe irrational doctrines, and conforming to repressive codes of behavior. However, for many reclaimers making the break is the most disruptive, difficult upheaval they have ever experienced. Individuals who were most sincere, devout, and dedicated often are the ones most traumatized when their religious world crumbles.

Rejecting a religious model of reality that has been passed on through generations is a major cognitive and emotional disruption. For many reclaimers, it is like a death or divorce. Their ‘relationship’ with God was a central assumption of their lives, and giving it up feels like an enormous loss to be grieved. It can be like losing a lover, a parent, or best friend.

On top of shattered assumptions comes the loss of family and friends. Churches vary with official doctrine about rejection. The Mormon Church, for all the intense focus on “family forever,” is devastating to leave, and the Jehovah Witnesses require families to shun members who are “disfellowshiped.”

The rupture can destroy homes, splitting spouses and alienating parents from children.

For Women, Psychological Costs of Belief Include Subjugation and Self-loathing.

Christianity poses a special set of psychological risks for people who, according to the Iron Age hierarchy found in the Bible are unclean or property, including women. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the combination of denigration and subservience takes a psychological toll on women in Christianity as it does in Islam. Not only do women submit to marital abuse and undesired sexual contact, some tolerate the same toward their children, and men of God sometimes exploit this vulnerability, as in the case of Catholic and Protestant child sexual abuse. But most of the damage is far more subtle: lower self-esteem, less independence and confidence; abandoned dreams and goals.

Why Harm Goes Unrecognized.  What is the sum cost of having millions of people holding to a misogynist, authoritarian, fear-based supernatural view of the universe? The consequences far-reaching, even global, but many are hidden, for two reasons.

One is the nature of the trauma itself. Unlike other harm, such as physical beating or sexual abuse, the injury is far from obvious to the victim, who has been taught to self-blame. It’s as if a person black and blue from a caning were to think it was self-inflicted.

The second reason that religious harm goes unrecognized is that Christianity is still the cultural backdrop for the indoctrination. While the larger society may not be fundamentalist, references to God and faith abound. The Bible gets used to swear in witnesses and even the U.S. president. Common phrases are “God willing,” “God bless,” “God helps those that help themselves,” “In God we trust,” and so forth. These lend credence to theistic authority.

Religious trauma is difficult to see because it is camouflaged by the respectability of religion in culture. To date, parents are afforded the right to teach their own children whatever doctrines they like, no matter how heinous, degrading, or mentally unhealthy. Even helping professionals largely perceive Christianity as benign. This will need to change for treatment methods to be developed and people to get help that allows them to truly reclaim their lives.

This article was adapted from “The Crazy Making in Christianity” Chapter 19 in Christianity is Not Great: How Faith Fails, edited by John Loftus, Prometheus Books, October 2014.

______________________________________________________________________

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

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Does Christianity Harm Children?

We need to talk more openly about the abusive aspects of Christian theology

My daughter ran out of the large room, screaming in tears.

“Why did you bring me here?!” she sobbed. “Why?!”

She was five years old at the time, and just about as traumatized as I’d ever seen her.

It truly was a vault of horrors: blood, pain, anguish, wounds, gashes, torn flesh. Carcasses everywhere. And she was terrified.

Let me back up and explain.

It was about eight years ago. Our older daughter had a school assignment to visit a California mission. Built by the Catholics in the 1700s and 1800s, the California missions are a vital part of California history. And so we were excited to take our daughters to check one out, about 20 miles from our home.

And the mission was lovely: beautiful landscaping, old buildings, indigenous flowers, a trickling fountain. And then we walked into a large hall -- and that’s when my younger daughter lost it. The space was full of crucified Jesuses. Every wall, from floor to ceiling, was adorned with wooden and plaster sculptures of Jesus on the cross: bloody, cut, and crying in pain. Some were very life-like, others more impressionistic. But all exhibited a tortured man in agony. My daughter had no context to understand it; she had no idea what Christianity was all about and had never been exposed to this most famous killing in history. She just saw what it objectively was: a large torture chamber. And she burst into tears and ran out.

I followed her outside, and once I had caught up with her in the courtyard, she wanted any explanation.

But how does a secular parent explain such gore to a five year old? Um, well, you see…there are millions of people who think that we are all born evil and that there is an all-powerful God who wants to punish us forever in hell -- but then he had his only son tortured and killed so that we could be saved from eternal torture. Get it?

The whole thing is so totally, horrible, absurdly sadistic and counter-intuitive and wicked. Not to mention baldly untrue.

And ever since that day, I’ve been acutely aware of the ways in which certain doctrinal aspects of Christianity can be harmful for children.

While this list is by no means exhaustive, here are some specific ways in which the more ardent/literal forms of Christianity can potentially harm children:

* Christianity teaches children that they are intrinsically evil; they did nothing wrong, but just by being born and being alive, they are evil. This is a terrible thing to teach children, not only because it is false, but because it is the exact wrong message children should be taught, which is that they are intrinsically wonderful, noble, and lovable, and that they have boundless goodness inside them.

* Christianity teaches children that there exists a powerful, evil Devil. A most dangerous demon. Beware! This horrible falsity infuses their childhood with needless fear and dread, and teaches them that the world is a dangerous place, with a malevolent demon lurking in the wait. In my own research, I’ve interviewed many adults who describe the whole Satan thing as a decidedly traumatic element of their children, and in some egregious cases, unambiguously abusive.

* Christianity teaches children that God killed his own child to make up for our wickedness. In other words, we are evil, and by killing his own child, our evil is somehow wiped away and forgiven. Our guilt is cleansed. But how does that work? If I abuse my wife, and then a cop comes over and kills my son, does that atone for the wickedness I committed against my wife? How so? Only I can atone for my own wrongdoings and harmful actions. If I abuse my wife, I need to make amends in order to earn her forgiveness. I can’t kill our cat instead. And besides, why couldn’t God forgive us without killing his son? Does he require a blood sacrifice, like some pagan ogre? The entire story of Jesus “dying for our sins” makes no moral or ethical sense, and it is an extremely confusing/disturbing tale to tell our children.

* Christianity teaches children that those who accept Jesus as their personal savior are good/saved/going to heaven and those that do not accept Jesus as their personal savior are sinful and destined for hell. This can cause children to feel smug, superior, self-righteous, judgmental, and to look down upon and condemn others – be they kids on the schoolyard, neighbors, or even relatives.

* Christianity teaches children that masturbation is evil. It is not. It is natural, normal, and healthy. And pleasurable. Teaching children to feel guilty or ashamed of masturbating, teaching them that doing so is disapproved of by a son-slaying God, and can even land them in hell – this is all nonsense, but more than that, potentially abusive.

I could go on – but that’s enough for now.

And despite everything that I’ve said so far, I could surely write many pages on all the good that certain forms of Christianity can do for children; Christianity can provide comfort and hope for children in dire straits, it can prod children to be charitable and altruistic, it can develop within children an ability to be forgiving. I would certainly not argue that all forms or manifestations of Christianity are harmful; I myself attended a progressive Episcopalian Christian summer camp every year of my childhood – and loved every minute it. The camp was full of smiles, warmth, and water fights, with nary a word about devils or sins to be heard. Many versions of Christianity focus on Jesus’s ethical teachings, foster love, and bring out the best in our kids.

But we know all this. The notion that Christianity is good for kids has been trumpeted for centuries, virtually unchallenged and uncontested.

What hasn’t been trumpeted nearly enough – nor studied nearly enough -- is the potentially dangerous aspects of Christianity, aspects that stem from the very core/central tenets of the faith.

As a secular parent, I believe that we need to talk more openly about the potential harm Christianity can do to kids – not just the potential good. We mustn’t shy away from such skeptical scrutiny for fear of offending people.

For further reading, I’d recommend Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment by Janet Heimlich, Forced Into Faith by Innaiah Narisetti, Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse by Philip Greven, and my own Faith no More: Why People Reject Religion.

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From Ida Lupino to Kathryn Bigelow – why women directors can be masters of suspense too.

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10 Black Female Directors You Need To Have On Your Radar

Let us introduce ten revolutionary talents — some you may know, others not just yet — whose films deserve your undivided attention.