Ways To Get Your Child Interested In Religion Whether you yourself have an interest in religion or not, there may

come a time when you consider it your duty to offer your child the chance to discover religi on for itself. You might be an atheist or you may have a particular creed or rel igion that you favour, but is that a reason to make your child emulate you? Most children do not connect church with fun (and you may well argue that fun ha s nothing to with it), so how to you inspire an interest in religion? There appe ar to be merely two ways: you can either make it more fun or you can force them. We all know that compulsion tends to have the opposite effect from the one desi red, so how do you make going to church fun or at least interesting? The uld you hes start of going to church alone for most children is Sunday School, so you co start there. This is not about you or your religious education, so whatever have faith in, you could go along to the Sunday Schools of a few local churc and find out what activities they do.

If the Sunday school is dull and boring, your child will not stay there and migh t become put off for decades or even life. Going to church or to Sunday schools should be about religious education and moral guidance not about compulsion and propaganda. You do not have to believe everything your religious teacher tells you to be a g ood, moral, religious person no matter which denomination you belong to. There a re not a lot of religious teachers in any church who would say that they 'know i t all'. If they did they would not have to to pray for guidance themselves! Activities that young children might find interesting are approximately the same as those they would do in a normal school, but with a slightly more religious b ent. These include: painting, drawing, singing, reading, story-telling, playing and sports. The extra reading practice at Sunday school may really give your chi ld the edge when it comes to the state school curriculum as well. Older children will like sport, dancing (barn dances, line-dancing, ballroom dan cing), singing, putting on plays and discussion classes. Children outside this e nvironment will probably never act in a play or never learn to Waltz in their li ves, yet it is a boon in life to have done it at least once. Debating is another skill that most individuals do not have either. Learning fun d raising and public speaking are excellent skills that are not taught often in state schools any more either. If your children do not like the Sunday school that you want them to attend, let them go to a different one. Any extra education is better than none or roaming the streets. In my case, my parents were Spiritualists, but my mother's family w ere Catholics. My school was Church of Wales (same as the Church of England), the Boy Scouts I was in were Methodists, but they went to a Baptist Church because it was closer. I enjoyed the singing in all the churches and I still know the songs 45 years l ater! Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, but is now involved with <a href="http://whatisreligiousbelief.com/korean-religious-belief .html">Korean religious belief</a>. If you want to know more go to <a href="http ://whatisreligiousbelief.com">What is Religious Belief</a>?