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By Natalie Pearson

June 16, 1999 | Elena loves Jesus. She loves him with all the fervor of a headstrong 4-year-old.

"Oh yeah," she reminded herself the other day, midway through a conversation about taking care of pets. (We were about to acquire a guinea pig named Brownie.) "Taking good care of animals is not the most important thing. The most important thing is always listening to Jesus."

As is often the case with these "Jesus conversations," I couldn't bring myself to ask Elie what she's been hearing from Jesus lately. I'm fairly sure that she only hears from him at preschool, a sweet, gentle place run by local Lutherans. Near as I can tell, the curriculum consists of three things -- play, snack and Jesus. And although my husband and I are Unitarian Universalists, we appreciate (mostly) the lessons in kindness, generosity and faith she is learning at that distinctly Christian institution. But there are moments, such as the time the Lutherans for Life bookmark fell out of her pink Barbie backpack, or when they had the birthday party for Jesus or when Elena's best friend and fellow non-Lutheran preschooler, Lauren, announced that she wanted to be born again -- "just like Jesus" -- when I start feeling a little uneasy.

In our rural Iowa town (population 2,400) there are only two preschools. Elena's is just a block from our house and the teachers are as kind as they are devout. But try as I might, I cannot get comfortable with surrendering my beautiful, intelligent little girl to Christian fundamentalism for her first official taste of school.

"Jesus or God is the boss of everybody, even the president," Elena told me several times after coming home from preschool during the Clinton impeachment hearings. And the other day on the way home from dance class she asked, "You and Daddy talk to me about Jesus at home, don't you, Mommy?" There was a note of disapproval -- mixed maybe with a bit of pleading -- in her squeaky little voice that didn't seem altogether natural in a 4-year-old.

Our older son, Andy, went to the same preschool for a year, but none of it seemed to sink in. Quiet and unimpressionable, Andy is a born Quaker by temperament. It's also in his nature to pay no attention to things until he hears them four or five times. Elena is nothing like her brother. She pays attention to everything, and she is always responding to the spirits that move her. They move her to sing, to dance, to watercolor the wall of her lavender-and-white room electric blue, to throw a tantrum because it is Sunday and she wants it to be Tuesday, to tell me I'm fired one minute and the best mom in the whole world the next -- and to really mean it both times. If her quiet and thoughtful brother is a Quaker, Elena's firey and extreme approach to life makes her a natural-born evangelical.

Like the rest of the family, Andy steers clear of the whole Jesus thing. Elie works away at him with the zeal of a white-shirted young Mormon, even molding her message to his worldview. "Andy, you like soldiers," she says and proceeds to tell him the story of the soldiers sticking their weapons into Jesus' wounds as he hung on the cross. "You like that story, don't you, Andy?" she asks, hoping to entice him. Though he shrugs, he has to admit that it kept his interest.

Perhaps most disconcerting to me is the way Elie has completely bought into the idea of a Jesus-centered life. She wants Jesus, Mary and Joseph to decorate her birthday cake next October. Since seeing "The Sound of Music," she talks about being a nun so she can marry Jesus. I'm not sure what to say when she puts the biggest sucker and her only "Best Friend" card into Jesus' box at the preschool Valentine exchange. She turns to Jesus to stop her bad dreams (unsuccessfully, the Unitarian in me has to point out), and she often starts off dinner by giving us all lessons in the various ways to hold your hands when praying.

Maybe her fervor makes me uneasy because it seems to overpower my own wishy-washy faith. My husband and I attend Unitarian services fairly regularly and Elie and Andy love to go to the religious education program. Last Sunday they talked about honoring trees; before that their class spent a month on the importance of helping others. But compared to fundamentalist Christianity, the message is just too diffuse. In our liberal tradition, we tell many stories, honor many heroes -- including trees -- and leave a lot up to what goes on inside each person's own heart. If we do any of it with conviction, it is the conviction of the not-entirely convinced.

That is why I have tried to squeeze around my personal issues with Christianity. Part of me is really glad that my daughter has found faith, which has eluded me but has much to recommend it. Still, I cannot get beyond my discomfort with how she has found it, with the way Jesus is ingratiated into virtually every preschool activity except potty time. I understand what they are doing, and it is perfectly reasonable: They are trying to raise good Missouri Synod Lutherans. Short of being born again, can non-believers fit into such a program?

Next page | Can parents or preschool really mold kids for life?