The Kingdom of Children: Comparing Religions

Symbols of different religions. Image source.

Chapter 6 of "The Kingdom of Children: A Liberation Theology," by R. L. Stollar, starts out with this quote:

Unquestionably, the central Christian assertion about the identity of Jesus Christ has been that he is both fully human and fully divine. This characterization is unique among world religions.

- Kristin Johnston Largen

I involuntarily rolled my eyes.

It's not that I think this statement is false. I wasn't even thinking about that. The reason I cringed away from this statement is that I have lots of experience listening to Christians' descriptions of other religions and why those other religions are all nonsensical and bad and shallow, not like our faith which is super meaningful and reasonable and powerful.

So any time I come across a Christian saying "here's why our religion is different from all the others, and is better", ugh. Most of the time, it's a total misrepresentation of what other religions teach. It's spreading misinformation. It's a caricature, meant to show how silly those people are who believe differently than us, haha, how silly and misguided they are, believing things that are so obviously wrong. It's just mindlessly repeating talking points that we heard from other Christians, rather than actually listening to people from other religions, to genuinely understand what they believe.

Okay, but, turns out Stollar actually shares my feelings on this. From pages 98-99:

Growing up, I was always interested in other religions. I accepted Jesus into my heart as a young child, yet I was nonetheless fascinated by faiths not my own. Some of my favorite books were the D'Aulaires' books for children on Greek and Norse mythology. I loved the fantastical stories they contained. The images of gods and goddesses fighting and playing filled my imagination with wonder and inspiration.

But the conservative evangelical world I grew up in did not encourage me to pursue my interest in other religions. As I grew older, the only context in which I studied them was to learn how to attack them-- allegedly for the sake of Jesus. When I attended summer worldview camps as a teenager, for example, I was taught flimsy, cardboard caricatures of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. And even then, I was only taught those caricatures of other faiths in order to memorize catchphrases with which I could supposedly refute them.

Now that I am an adult, I have a greater appreciation for world religions. Part of my journey toward this appreciation was getting a master's in Eastern Classics at St. John's College, where I studied religions from China, India, and Japan. For the first time in my life, I appreciated freely religions other than my own. No one was telling me what was "wrong" with them. No one was interrupting my train of thought by insisting, "But Jesus!" I simply learned what other people and cultures think about the world.

I encourage you to give the children in your family, faith community, or religious organization the opportunity to learn about other religions. As I have argued throughout this chapter, learning about other religions is essential to teasing out both the very real differences and similarities between them. This pursuit helps us understand and embody our own faith that much more deeply.

This is so real. "Learning" about other religions, in a conservative Christian context, just to memorize arguments about why those other religions are obviously wrong.

So Stollar understands that, and that's not what he's doing in this chapter. What is he doing in this chapter, then? Well, it's about child gods- ie, religions that have a god character who is a child. Comparing these stories to the Christian story of Jesus being fully god and being born into this world as a human child- and pointing out aspects of these where the Jesus story is "better" than the stories from other religions. (For example, the Jesus story is "better" than the stories where the god had the appearance of a child but still had the mind and powers of a god- Jesus was an actual child, really, going through all the developmental stages. And the Jesus story is "better" than the stories where it is prophesied that the child will *someday* be the savior- Jesus was *already* the savior, even as a child.) I don't think the book actually uses the word "better" but that's how I'm summing this up.

It seems like we *should* be able to talk about this, right? I'm just really skittish here, as an ex-evangelical, ex-apologetics-nerd. But it seems like there should be a way to talk about, hey, I'm a Christian, so logically that means I believe there are aspects of Christianity which are "better" than other religions, there are things about Christianity which are true while other religions are false... ugh... I'm just... I just cringe so hard at this line of thinking. This sounds like an apologetics argument, and I don't do apologetics arguments any more.

I enjoyed reading this chapter of "The Kingdom of Children"- it does seem to be coming from a place of thoughtfully and respectfully seeking to understand the beliefs of other religions. And the parts where it talks about why the Jesus story is "better"- I guess we should read that as "well, this author is a Christian, so of course he believes the Jesus story is better than the other religions' stories, and these are his opinions about why" rather than reading it like... like he's saying you're not allowed to believe in these other religions because it's so obvious that Christianity is better.

Maybe I could try to write something like that. Maybe there is some way I could frame it which doesn't feel like a dishonest apologetics argument. Make it about why I'm a Christian, without making it about why you should be a Christian.

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Posts about "The Kingdom of Children":

"The Kingdom of Children" (a book about child liberation theology)
The Kingdom of Children: Comparing Religions

Related:

Taking My Kid To Church: "The Belief That Baffled the Best of the Buddhists" 

What is the purpose of apologetics?

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. On 310 Yuan a Day, She Builds China’s Towers — and Streams the Struggle (February 25) "This is her sixth year bouncing between construction sites across China. As one of the few young women in a workforce dominated by middle-aged men, she stands out immediately — not just for her age or gender, but for her determination to survive."

2. Remembering the Mothers of Gynecology (February 28) "But like a lot of early heroes of medicine, Sims was an absolute monster."

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Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. A Chance To Establish The Run Against Authoritarianism (February 12) This is something we can do to help the families who have been hiding for weeks in Minnesota. Donate to funds to help with rent.

2. The U.S. Men's Hockey Team Failed the Locker Room Test (February 25) "I can’t help but wonder how many of these players have daughters—and whether they’ve told them that they can be hockey players one day, too. How many have told them that the women’s game matters just as much? Do they think their girls will still believe them after they hear their dads laugh?"

3. Deadline looms as Anthropic rejects Pentagon demands it remove AI safeguards (February 26) "For months, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has insisted that Anthropic's AI model, Claude, must not be used for mass surveillance in the U.S. or to power entirely autonomous weapons, such as a drone that uses AI to kill targets without human approval. He has described those uses as 'entirely illegitimate' and says they are 'bright red lines' for the company."

OpenAI announces Pentagon deal after Trump bans Anthropic (February 28)

4. A nearly blind refugee is found dead after Border Patrol agents drop him at Buffalo doughnut shop (February 27) "'A vulnerable man — nearly blind and unable to speak English — was left alone on a cold winter night with no known attempt to leave him in a safe, secure location. That decision from U.S. Customs and Border Protection was unprofessional and inhumane,' Mayor Sean Ryan said in a statement."

5. Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, And The Construction Of Political Crisis (February 21) [content note: child sexual abuse] "The broad Epstein files scandal is already salient. But the questions of how it will ultimately be understood, and where political accountability will fall, are still up for grabs. Is this mostly a story about elite impunity, bipartisan failure, bureaucratic incompetence and/or corruption? Or will it be just as much a story about how the country was deceived into electing a sex predator angling to cover up his own crimes and got caught. Where we look back and say there was a specific moment when the government had to decide whether there would be any consequences for this depravity, and we, the public, got to see in real time who tried to do the right thing and who sided with the dregs of humanity?"

6. Vanderbilt To Drop Major Gender-Affirming Surgeries For Trans Adults (February 24) "It was only after reaching out to VUMC that she received a message in her patient portal—a pattern seen across the country, where hospital gender care rollbacks have often been haphazardly announced through terse press releases from nameless hospital bureaucrats."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Kansas Sends Letters To Trans People Demanding The Immediate Surrender Of Drivers Licenses (February 26) "The Kansas letters arrive amid an accelerating nationwide campaign to strip transgender people of accurate identification documents."

7. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been killed (February 28)

3 American troops killed, and Trump says more 'likely,' in war against Iran (March 1)

8. Federal judge blocks new DHS policy that would allow arrest of thousands of legal refugees (February 28) "'The Government’s actions in this case beg the question: Why?' Tunheim wrote. 'The Government suggests that they are looking for terrorists, but there is not a shred of evidence in the record that the Named Plaintiffs or the putative Class they seek to represent pose serious national security risks.'"