In June 1858, Edgar Mortara, a 6-year-old Italian boy, was taken from his parents’ home to be educated as a Christian. The Mortara family’s young housemaid had confessed to her priest that she had secretly baptized the boy to save his soul. When the priest reported the matter to Rome, Inquisition officials gave orders that the child be taken forcibly from his parents so that he could be raised in the Catholic faith.

Papal soldiers arrived at the Mortara home and abducted Edgar. Despite protests from Jewish and non-Jewish leaders in Europe, the church refused to return the child to his family. Edgar Mortara was educated in a convent and later entered the Augustine order, preaching at the Vatican and serving as a missionary.
This is 2007 and such things don’t happen in our pluralistic and enlightened culture. We know better than to force our religion on others. How, then, are we to understand a call we received recently from a distraught parent. Her 8-year old Jewish child had accepted a friend’s invitation to attend an event at a church youth group. It was to be a social gathering and the friend would get extra points if he brought a visitor.
The mother, suspecting nothing other than an afternoon of fun and games, consented. The child returned home hysterical. There were no stories or games played or snacks consumed. Instead she told her mother that a teacher had informed her that she was a sinner and would go to hell unless she read the New Testament regularly, she believed in Jesus and went to church. This 8-year old was handed a booklet called “God’s Only Way to Heaven,” replete with child-friendly drawings that reinforced the notion that she was a sinner and that the only thing she could do about it was to recognize that Jesus died on the cross for her sins and accept him as her savior.
More and more we are hearing about Christian youth programs being announced over the loud speakers in public schools, of fliers being distributed in classrooms inviting students to presumably social activities sponsored by religious youth groups, but whose intent is to proselytize youngsters in a particular faith. The gatherings take place after school, but are held on school property and often led by teachers. While many of these activities pass legal scrutiny, there are serious moral issues at stake: the overstepping of parental boundaries and manipulation of children’s minds at an impressionable age.
Our public schools are reluctant to teach religion in the classroom for fear of transgressing the separation of church and state. But under the pretense of wanting kids to engage in healthy activities, religious youth groups are infiltrating schools and neighborhoods and working through churches in an attempt to convert children.
It is unfortunate that certain groups misappropriate the openness of the public school and the public square to promote activities that betray the sacred boundaries of respect for the beliefs, values and practices of a religiously diverse community. Public places should be settings of trust where parents can send children without fear of them being taken spiritually hostage.
All religious groups are entitled to educate their children about their beliefs and socialize them into their communities of faith. However, religion ought also to teach children to take the beliefs of others seriously and their own with humility. When groups seek to indoctrinate and brainwash children whose families are affiliated with other faith traditions or none, they are not saving the souls of sinners; they are kidnapping the souls of innocents.