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The first striking thing for anyone prepared to read the gospels
is that Jesus was no supporter of family values. He rejected his
mother more than once, just as he rejected the rest of his family.
He had no qualms about taking his disciples away from their families.
The brothers James and John abandoned their father, leaving him
to manage as best he could with the fishing nets they had been preparing
together. On one occasion, a disciple asked permission to go and
bury his dead father: "But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let
the dead bury the dead" (Matthew 8:22 c/f Luke 9:60). Jesus then
refused another potential follower who asked permission to say good-bye
to his family before abandoning them (Luke 9:61-62). This attitude
was entirely in line with Jesus' purpose: "For I am come to set
a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her
mother, and the daughter in law against the mother in law" (Matthew
10:35). Jesus consistently taught that his followers should abandon
and despise their families. Everlasting life is promised to those
who leave their homes and families (Matthew 19:29, Mark 10:29-30
and Luke 18:29-30). The Luke author gives Jesus' summary of his
views on family life: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father,
and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea,
and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26, Cf.
Matthew 19:29).
Relying on biblical passages, early Christians inferred that family
life was worthless and hailed virginity as the ideal. Christians
set about the destruction of family life. Converts were lured away
from their parents, siblings, spouses, and children. The children
of rich converts were often left destitute, their inheritance being
diverted into Church coffers. This was a common complaint against
Christians in Roman times and is not unknown among Christian sects
in modern times. By the fourth century clergymen were occasionally
being expected to abandon their wives in emulation of St Peter and
the other apostles, all twelve of whom were believed to have abandoned
their wives and families. As Pope Gregory VII put it "The church
cannot escape the grip of the laity unless priests first escape
from their wives". Wives were often left abandoned. Many were so
desperate that they were driven to suicide. Those who were not abandoned,
if discovered by the Church authorities, were liable to be sold
into slavery.
In the Middle Ages ordinary men were encouraged to leave their
wives and families. When preaching the first Crusade, Pope Urban
II cited the words of Jesus from Matthew 10:37 and 19:29: "He that
loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…every one
that hath forsaken houses or brethren, or sisters, or father, or
mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall
receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life". In
other words a place in heaven was being promised to those who abandoned
their families. Preachers lured hundreds of thousands of men away
from their families to take the cross. When St Bernard preached,
women went in fear. Mothers hid their sons from him, wives their
husbands. Bernard proudly informed the Pope of his success: "Villages
and towns are now deserted. You will scarcely find one man for every
seven women. Everywhere you will see widows whose husbands are still
alive." We will never know how many of them died alone of cold,
hunger or old age, never knowing if or when their husbands and sons
had won a place in heaven.
After girls had been excluded from church choirs, the Eastern Churches
hit upon the idea of using castrated boys to replace falsetto soprano
voices. The idea was copied in Italy and Spain in the sixteenth
century. Popes and Church synods declined to prohibit castration
on the pragmatic grounds that without castrati churches would remain
empty. Castrati were entertaining Popes in the Sistine chapel into
the twentieth century. It was apparently of no consequence to the
Church that these boys, when they reached adulthood, were denied
the possibility of an ordinary family life or even married life.
The Church would not let them marry - on the grounds that they were
unable to father children, an explicit prerequisit for Christian
mariage.
The poor were not entitled to a family life either. In Victorian
times Anglican parochial charities found it perfectly consistent
with Christian teachings to split up the families who claimed poor
relief. Husbands would be sent to one poor house, women to another.
Untold numbers of married couples were split up in this way, never
to see each other or their children again. The hereditary sick were
also undeserving of family life. When Hitler discussed them with
Cardinal Faulhaber in 1936 the two men agreed that they were a problem,
but had different approaches to it. Hitler wanted to sterilise them,
but the Cardinal had another solution. The Catholic theologian Uta
Ranke-Heinemann cites him as saying "The state, Herr Reich-chancellor,
is not debarred from removing these vermin from the national community
in the interests of legitimate self-defence and in conformity with
moral law, but preventives other than physical mutilation must be
sought, and such a preventive does exist: the internment of the
hereditary sick". He was talking about what we now call concentration
camps. The cardinal's problem with sterilisation was that it would
allow people to enjoy sex without the risk of procreation, contrary
to the teaching of his Church. To this extent the sterilisation
option was morally unacceptable, but there was nothing wrong with
splitting up families in order to put individual members into concentration
camps.
Non-Christians were not entitled to a family life either. When
Christian missionaries failed to make an impact on the locals they
could always kidnap children so that the next generation could be
indoctrinated into the Christian faith by force. A missionary called
Symeon pioneered this method around the Euphrates in the sixth century,
scorning the objections of local villagers. Parents who objected
started to die in mysterious circumstances, and the rest gave way.
The abduction and indoctrination of children became a standard technique
when missionaries could make no impact on adults, and this technique
would be used with effect for many centuries. Children of members
of any faith might be seized by Christian authorities. Sometimes
whole families were seized. During the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries Jewish families were taken, often by force, by Christian
authorities and subjected to what we would now call brainwashing.
If half of the family converted and half did not, they were split
up never to see each other again. Sometimes wives never saw their
husbands again, sometimes parents never saw their children again.
As late as 1858, acting under clerical instructions, the Bolognia
police seized a young boy, Edgardo Mortara, from his Jewish family.
Despite an international outcry the kidnapped child was kept in
Rome by the Catholic Church, and "re-educated". His re-education
was so successful that he eventually became a missionary priest.
From the age of seven until his death he was never to know a real
family, either as son or father. His life was regarded by the Roman
Church as a great success, and presumably still is.
Jews were not the only victims. With the complicity of the state,
Christians were kidnapping non-Christian children well into the
twentieth century. This practice is generally justified by claiming
that non-Christian parents are somehow unsuitable. North American
Indian children were being taken from their families by the Canadian
authorities until at least the 1950's. Aboriginal children were
being taken from their families by the Australian authorities until
the 1960's and put into Christian orphanages. A Roman Catholic organisation
in Switzerland was kidnapping Romany children and sending them to
be adopted by Catholic families into the 1970's. The children were
routinely told that their parents were dead, and that they had no
living relatives. The same thing was common amongst the children
of unmarried mothers around the world - from New Zealand to Ireland
and Brazil. Children were taken by force, generally with the complicity
of the authorities, and given up for adoption as "orphans" to the
mainstream western Churches. In Britain children were not taken
by force, but by deception. Stigmatised single mothers were encouraged
to leave their children with Christian organisations, either to
be adopted or to be cared for until the mother could take the child
back. Many of these organisations sent children to the colonies
without their parents' consent or knowledge - even when the mothers
had stated explicitly that they would return to take their children
back. The children were told, falsely, that their parents were dead.
They were described as orphans and they grew up believing themselves
to be orphans. They were not given their birth certificates or other
identification documentation. Sometimes they were provided with
new names and even new birthdays. Sometimes their files were burned.
In some cases when parents came back to reclaim their children they
were told, again falsely, that the children were dead. In other
cases mothers were told the truth, but no effort was made to bring
their children back. Sometimes two or more brothers and sisters
were sent out at the same time. Usually they were split up - destroying
the last vestige of a family relationship. These children were to
remain in institutions throughout their childhood. When Australian
families came forward to foster them, traditionalist Churches preferred
to keep the children in institutions. An official report in Western
Australia in 1959 indicated that "practically all children could
be adequately fostered if the institutions were not loath to part
with them…". The last child migrations to Australia took place in
1967. By then between 100,000 and 150,000 children had been shipped
around the world, away from their roots and their families. As middle-aged
adults, many of these "orphans" discovered in the 1980s that they
were not orphans at all, and some that their parents were still
alive. Parents discovered that their children were not dead, as
they had been told. The emotional turmoil caused by this deliberate
"deceit and deception" was documented by Margaret Humphreys in her
book Empty Cradles.
So there it is. Over the centuries, Christianity has been responsible
for an untold number of abandoned wives, divided families, and stolen
and disinherited children. The current attachment to family values
is an innovation, and runs contrary to both Jesus' teachings and
the historical stance of all mainstream Churches. It is only since
the 1960's that the Churches have found it expedient to adopt this
position. As Don Cupitt, a leading liberal churchman, noted: "The
idealisation of the family is a modern cultural creation, which
the Churches have validated, and now no modern bishop would dream
of publicly endorsing Jesus' views about the family."
Among Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Methodist and Baptist theologians
much creative imagination goes into the pretence that the gospels
do not mean what they plainly say: that followers of Jesus must
hate their families. Except for a few men and women who abandon
their families to become hermits or anchorites, or monks or nuns
in closed orders, there are now virtually no Christians who follow
Jesus' teaching about family life. The only significant group keeping
up the old traditions are Christian missionaries, still quietly
breaking up families around the world, telling new converts to leave
their non-Christian spouses, siblings, parents and children - just
as Christian missionaries have done since Roman times. As they will
proudly tell you, they are doing exactly what Jesus wanted them
to do.
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