"I am well aware that many secular conservatives are convinced that they cannot believe in or practice any religion.
To these people, I say: So what?
Once you realize that America’s future depends on Americans affirming “In God We Trust” just as much as they affirm “Liberty” and “E Pluribus Unum,” you have to work on taking God and some religious expression seriously. You should emulate parents who are tone deaf who nevertheless give their children piano lessons.
“Fake it till you make it” is one of the many great insights of 12-step programs. The rule applies to everything good that does not come naturally.
Find a clergyman who shares your values and regularly take your child (or grandchild) to religious services.
Study the Bible with your child or grandchild on a regular basis. Lincoln rarely attended church, but he read the Bible every day. If you need a rational approach to God and the Bible, I suggest beginning with any of my three volumes of Bible commentary, “The Rational Bible.”
Say a blessing before each meal. Even if you’re secular, that shouldn’t be too difficult.
I promise you that whatever discomfort you experience acting religious pales in comparison to the discomfort you will experience if your child or grandchild ends up woke."
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Fastest way to alienate your kids from religion is to impose it on them at every opportunity, and especially if you make it explicitly political. That perfect combination of annoying, boring, and viscerally repulsive.
I don't know, everyone I know who was raised by religious helicopter parents is about 50/50. They either become completely estranged from their family and only visit on rare occasions, or they become an even worse more annoying version of their parents. I watched my family get worse over time actually.
I watched it happen throughout four generations to produce three of my cousins. My great-grandmother was a very typical non-denominational protestant born in the 1890s, very modest and old-fashioned, only book she ever read was the Bible. Her daughter was a Methodist whose only social circle revolved around church activities. She was a Nixon voter in 1960, sympathized with the civil rights movement somehow, but never vocalized it because she wanted to outwardly seem traditional/conservative. Her son (my uncle) is a complete chud businessman, also Methodist but the bad kind. Made his children do Bible reading exercises daily, made his three sons all dress the same, made them recite Bible verses in unison. Put them in daily church services and would make them do the pledge of allegiance before bedtime.
Anyway, well, one of my cousins is currently in the Klan. The other one is in a snake handler church cult that openly does conversion ceremonies where they "cure" gay people. That's how that turned out.
Do you mind if I share this the next time I come across someone who thinks that social progress will happen "once the old people die off"?
Yeah, you can edit it too if you want so it reads better or is more succinct. I take garden path sentences sometimes and I'm self-conscious about it.
I like garden path writing and read a lot of it, for what it's worth your sentences didn't feel egregiously meandering to me
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I guess more what I meant is you either get alienated from or you dive right all in with no real middle ground