Discuss amongst yourselves...

From Inhabitatio Dei, via the Boar's Head Tavern:

"A bit harsh perhaps, but coming from a background of being highly socialized into Christianity, and knowing full well the kind of irrational protectionist mentality that persists in the church about the young people “falling away” if they are allowed to actually experience the world, I think there’s a good point in here somewhere.

"If we think the church can only be sustained through concerted social and psychological manipulation of our children, then the church isn’t worth preserving. After all, if we don’t really believe that the church lives by the power of the gospel to call people out of the world, we’ve lost the gospel altogether.

“[Much of the church] fears that if the young person, especially in adolescence, is permitted to become acquainted with the world and its lures, he is sure to be lost. This prediction is, in all its intended realism, a lack of faith and a surrender to determinism. If the Gospel cannot call people out of the world, it is no Gospel. If what we preach to our young people cannot call them out of the world, then we must ask ourselves if what we are preaching is the Gospel. If placing people in a context of choice where it is possible to choose the wrong is unwise, then God himself made the first mistake when he created Adam and the worst mistake when he let people kill his Son. At the bottom of it all, this pessimism means placing oneself fully on the level of the world. It means agreeing with the world that all human development is determined by physical and psychological necessities; agreeing with the world that Christian faith is a matter of behavior patterns and of truths to be passed on; agreeing with the world that there is no miracle of resurrection, no miracle of faith, no Holy Spirit.”
----John Howard Yoder, “Christian Education: Doctrinal Orientation,” in Concern for Education, Forthcoming from Cascade Books.