I think it would be a very bad thing if anyone—the government, your friends, relatives, or neighbors in your community—could force you to go to church.
Not on the theoretical question here because I'm no ethicist. I considered NOT making my kids go to church because I think that, if anything, churchgoing as children turns the off from religion. The boring goody-two-shoes Sunday school, religion as a means of social control enforcing parental authority, and the dullness of the whole business. I would never have gotten religion if I'd grown up with the kiddie version of it. In adolescence I was looking for what lots of my peers were, which I thought of as 'the spooky' or 'metaphysical thrills'. The exotic, the out-of-this-world, the escape from the ordinary. That's how I saw the church because I wasn't raised with it and why I joined.
Who should have recourse against the parent, of what sort, and when?
My answers: someone willing to take full responsibility for the child should be able to sue for custody when they can show evidence of abuse. This seems like a case where the usual model of legislating behavior and punishing violation with fines or jail time clearly fails.
The general issue is whether and how to respect child autonomy. And an appeal to reasonable rejection goes nowhere because, as adults, they can reasonably reject both sides: having their autonomy respected and having it ignored.
That view of autonomy sounds good on paper, but taken to this extreme it seems to argue that the ethical way to raise your children would be in a perfect vacuum. Which would be not only impossible, but also obviously damaging. Going out of your way to not provide any sense of meaning to your children is clearly pathological.
Not on the theoretical question here because I'm no ethicist. I considered NOT making my kids go to church because I think that, if anything, churchgoing as children turns the off from religion. The boring goody-two-shoes Sunday school, religion as a means of social control enforcing parental authority, and the dullness of the whole business. I would never have gotten religion if I'd grown up with the kiddie version of it. In adolescence I was looking for what lots of my peers were, which I thought of as 'the spooky' or 'metaphysical thrills'. The exotic, the out-of-this-world, the escape from the ordinary. That's how I saw the church because I wasn't raised with it and why I joined.
“…but few will assert a positive right on behalf of the child against mandatory church attendance.”
Wouldn’t it be a negative right?
ah, yes
Who should have recourse against the parent, of what sort, and when?
My answers: someone willing to take full responsibility for the child should be able to sue for custody when they can show evidence of abuse. This seems like a case where the usual model of legislating behavior and punishing violation with fines or jail time clearly fails.
The general issue is whether and how to respect child autonomy. And an appeal to reasonable rejection goes nowhere because, as adults, they can reasonably reject both sides: having their autonomy respected and having it ignored.
That view of autonomy sounds good on paper, but taken to this extreme it seems to argue that the ethical way to raise your children would be in a perfect vacuum. Which would be not only impossible, but also obviously damaging. Going out of your way to not provide any sense of meaning to your children is clearly pathological.