How to Throw an Atheist Confirmation Party

my son makes me, his confirmation teacher, look bad

Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash

This is the exciting conclusion to last week’s post. Check that out here if you haven’t yet.

When we last left off, I was feeling a bit delulu¹ about co-teaching our church’s first-ever confirmation class. But if there’s anything that can pop a parent’s swollen expectations, it’s a surly almost-teen.

My husband and I had tried to explain to our son why we wanted him to participate in confirmation, even pointing out how this dovetailed nicely with his Boy Scout requirements. But my son is, for better or worse, just like me: singularly focused on a lofty, far-off goal. For me, it was becoming a Broadway actress; for him, it’s qualifying for the Army Rangers.

Any activities that don’t help him achieve this goal are a “waste of time.” This includes everything from the 7th grade to emptying the dishwasher to, yes, confirmation class.

“Well,” I replied, “I guess we’re going to waste your time some more.”

Luckily, the church’s other tweens were more willing to participate, particularly when plied with chicken nuggets and flavored seltzer. We took turns meeting at the students’ homes, invariably being distracted by pets and jokes about Tang—a beverage the tweens found inexplicably hilarious.

Pastor Darla and I were endlessly redirecting the tweens away from toys and cats and back towards spiritual matters. It was chaos and confusion punctuated by occasional moments of insight. Our confirmands didn’t know what day church was on and whether or not Jesus had lived to see old age, but they were certain that God is nonbinary and that God cares about things like homelessness and climate change.

As we neared the end of the school year, time was drawing near to plan the church service for Confirmation Sunday. I pictured my son wearing an adorable l’il suit, earnestly vowing to be a faithful church member as his extended family looked on, tears in their eyes.

Never mind that my son 1.) hates talking in front of people and 2.) has worn a camo baseball cap 24/7 since COVID lockdowns.

When I brought up the actual confirmation service and a hypothetical party afterwards, my son promptly declared, “I’m not joining the church, Mom, I’m an atheist!”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes and tell him to stop being a twerp. He was punishing me for “wasting his time,” aka making him shut off the Xbox and go to confirmation once a month. I, likewise, was annoyed, so I decided to drop it for the time being.

Only, he didn’t change his mind. Over the next few weeks, he kept insisting that he didn’t believe in God and that he wouldn’t be joining the church. Even my husband, himself an agnostic, grew annoyed by our son’s attitude, saying there was no point to hosting a Confirmation Party when our kid wasn’t getting confirmed.

The whole situation bothered me for reasons I struggled to articulate. My ego was bruised: did it look bad that the assistant confirmation teacher’s son was now LOUDLY declaring his atheism?

His refusal also made me realize that, despite my declarations of being a “chill” and “free-range” mom, it was an all an act: I’d secretly hoped that my radical honesty and non-coercive tactics would be the things that convinced my child to believe exactly what I did.

Instead, his declarations of atheism dared me to actually put my values into practice: I had to respect his spiritual autonomy.

On the one hand, I don’t believe in Hell, so it’s not like I was worried about damnation. But on the other hand, I felt sad; I’d hoped this would be something we could share. His choice to go his own way, spiritually, was coming on the heels of his (age-appropriate) differentiation—he walks ten feet ahead of me at all times, everything I say is cringe². It stings to go from being your child’s hero to the MOST EMBARRASSING HUMAN ALIVE.

I happened to get into a conversation about this with the comedian Ophira Eisenberg after a Moth show in Seattle. She joked that the only way to get my son to become a Christian was, obviously, for me to embrace atheism.

When I brought up the confirmation party dilemma and my husband’s opinion that we shouldn’t celebrate, she only replied with a disappointed, “Aw, he doesn’t get a party?”

Her reaction struck me. I asked myself: what is the purpose of this ritual? My son was, indeed, coming of age; he was making his own decisions about his beliefs. He’d done the work for confirmation class, including his service project. Wasn’t that worth celebrating?

I consulted with several Exvangelical online groups, asking, “would you throw your atheist son a confirmation party?” And the consensus was, “Why don’t you ask your son what he wants? Duh.”

Oh, right.

My son replied that he wanted our immediate family to have lunch at McDonald’s after church. And he wanted to order a burger and a McFlurry. Easy enough!

More difficult was ironing out the confirmation church service. Pastor Darla put a lot of thought into creating a new confirmation liturgy. After some discussion (and input from my son) we decided not to have the kids take vows or recite the creeds.

Instead, Darla framed the event as an invitation to the kids to continue their life in the church, with the congregation vowing to help and guide them. That felt like an age-appropriate, non-coercive way to conclude confirmation. Also, there was cake!

My son didn’t ask for it, but I wanted to get him a gift. When I was confirmed, I got a fancy bible and a gold cross necklace. Obviously, that wasn’t going to work here, so I tried a different tack.

One of the things I feared when my son confessed his atheism was that he might lack for moral role models. But then I remembered the times he’d shown interest in my research for this Substack—he’d found Existentialism particularly interesting. Maybe philosophy could be a good, non-religious scaffolding for him to understand ethics? I bought him a copy of Michael Schur’s hilarious How to Be Perfect and a necklace with the four Stoic virtues on it.

We presented him with these gifts at McDonald’s over a plain Big Mac and an Oreo McFlurry. And for a non-Xbox-related gift, he seemed pleased.

When Darla and I had initially thought about this class, I’d lamented the pressure that many churches put on kids to have their spirituality completely figured out by age 13. And, despite my big feelings, I still believe that’s true. Adolescence is about trying on identities and figuring out who we are. I’m glad my son felt safe enough to be honest with me, and I hope that our family can model that we love and respect his journey, even if he chooses to go his own way.

I won’t pretend that respecting my son’s spiritual autonomy has magically brought us closer. He still thinks I’m a skibidi NPC with negative aura³, but he does ask me, most mornings, to clasp his necklace for him. As much as I want to wrap him in a bear hug and never let go, I’m learning that I have to be the safe harbor for him to return to, not the anchor holding him back.

1. delulu = delusional

2. cringe = embarrassing

3. skibidi = bad, NPC =non-player character (in a video game). A background actor, basically. Negative aura = similar to lacking rizz (charisma)

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BONUS MATERIALS:

• check out Ophira’s hilarious podcast called “Parenting is a Joke”

• Feeling nervous about parenting teens? I like this take on “potted plant parenting” from Lisa D’Amour:

  “…with teenagers, it’s not always easy to know how to connect. By their nature, adolescents aren’t always on board with our plans for making the most of family time and they aren’t always in the mood to chat. Happily, the quality parenting of a teenager may sometimes take the form of blending into the background like a potted plant.”

  read the full article here