“This is potentially of interest to anyone concerned with how we grow up, how we are shaped, and how the way that young people are drawn into whatever religious faith into which they are born, how this supposedly, avowedly benign process is enacted can have deeply malign effects on the individual and so on society in general.” “It tackles – head-on – an important and pressing subject… it’s vital stuff. It’s about how we safeguard young people, how we grow up, how we interact with others.”
Karl French, editor & Financial Times reviewer
“Awesome how far Augustine’s tentacles of sinfulness reach. Alone among the world’s civilised nations, Britons are allowed to physically punish children because bishops sitting in the House of Lords have said so.”
Carolyn Thompson, reader
“It takes us directly to a seemingly real situation with flesh and blood people. The menace in the good father’s every action is tangible, and what isn’t said adds to the sense of danger.”
Alan Wilkinson, editor & BBC scriptwriter
Due for release in summer 2021
1 Most adults born in Britain have had a Christian schooling. Before we are 24 years old, 99% of us reject religion,8 but the billions of neural connections made in our infant brains are not set free.9 Guilt can leave its sting on sensitive children, while moral confusion and bad casuistry will mark others. The author shows how Augustine’s dark ideas are yoked to British culture, normalising unhealthy thinking patterns.
2 Thanks to St Augustine’s hair-shirt ideas on penance, the Church of England service admits sin and begs forgiveness or mercy twenty-four times. Grace and love are said twice. Any suffering that has been caused by wrongdoing is disregarded.1 Faith schools often recite a shorter prayer, but pupils are still taught to cravenly say sorry and expect forgiveness, ignoring their victim.
3 89% of Britons identify as non-religious or notionally Christian,2 yet by law schools must join in Collective Worship.3 About half of all primary schools do so.4 In faith schools today, infants are ritually taught to feel guilt and shame, often by a cleric.5,6 Schools do not set out to sexualise pupils, but an authority figure causing a child to feel guilt and shame is a well-known method of child sexual grooming.7
4 Eastern Orthodox Christians believe Adam and Eve alone are guilty of lust (concupiscence).10 In the Western Church, Christians learn St Augustine’s doctrine. He wrote about the ‘filth’ and ‘lust’ he saw in infants.11 He claimed every child shares guilt from Adam and Eve’s original sin of sexual lust, which persists even after christening.12 Today, faith schools disgrace young minds with the mentally and spiritually harmful stain of original sin.13
A one-time altar boy and chorister, the author attended church schools in England and Ireland. Recounting his childhood indoctrination and abuse, the author suggests Christian rites and rituals might play a more influential role in clerical child sexual abuse and adult mental well-being than has generally been recognised. This well-researched book will dismay those who suppose Christianity is a benign influence. It might make open-minded readers think again.
