Little Bronze Books Launch with Title on Jesus and Digital Surveillance
This week marks the launch of Little Bronze Books, a new line of books by the creators of Stop Christian Nationalism.
They’re board books, the rugged, easy-to-pick-up short format initially designed for toddlers, but these board books are definitely not for children. Instead, they’re a satire of the religious titles offered by the classic children’s book publisher Little Golden Books.
Of course, many Little Golden Books are awesome. We have a lot of respect for the way that Little Golden Books has promoted literacy among young children. The Poky Little Puppy is awesome.
The problem is that Little Golden Books also has a line of books that are used to bring young children into Christianity before they have the critical thinking skills necessary to make an informed choice.
Little Golden Books’ Faith-Based books present children with a view of Christianity that has been highly curated to only include aspects of the religion that children will find comforting and enjoyable, leaving out the many unreasonable, frightening, controlling, and abusive aspects of the religion.
Some people will argue that because children shouldn’t be exposed to unreasonable, frightening, controlling, and abusive content, children should be learn only a soft and sweet version of Christianity when they’re young.
They’ll say that kids can confront the harshly negative, violent, and irrational parts of Christianity when they’re older.
What actually happens in practice is that most Christian families never teach children about the dangerous aspects of Christianity until it’s too late.
Too many children first learn about the ugly side of Christianity when they are themselves harmed by it.
We agree that children should not be exposed to unreasonable, frightening, controlling and abusive content. For that reason, we believe it’s irresponsible to teach Christianity to young children, because Christianity is systematically infused with violence, terror, and emotionally unhealthy teachings that are often used to groom young children for abuse.
It’s also why we are not marketing Little Bronze Books to children. Little Bronze Books adopt the form of children’s board books as a way to satirically comment, for an adult audience, on the irresponsibility of giving religious books to young children.
Yes, Christianity has some positive aspects, but those aspects can’t be separated from the religion’s aggressive negativity. To teach children only about the positive aspects of Christianity is misleading. It’s dishonest. Frankly, it’s manipulative.
It’s also worth noting that Little Golden Books doesn’t publish “faith-based” books that teach children about any non-Christian religions. There is no Little Golden Book called My First Torah. There is no Little Golden Book of The Buddha. There certainly isn’t any Little Golden Book for Widdle Wiccans. There has never been a Little Golden Book that teaches children about the possibility of living without any religion at all.
Teaching children that there is only one religion, keeping them in the dark about other kinds of religion, and about non-religious ways of living, is another form of manipulation. Little Golden Books’ Faith-Based line of Christian books runs contrary to the pursuit of true literacy, which includes awareness of the diversity of human experience.
We are launching a line of satirical Little Bronze Books that highlight the alarming aspects of Christianity that are left out of religious books for children.
Little Bronze Books will tell the stories from the Bible that no good parents would ever think about telling young children about, if they didn’t come from a religious source. Our board books will also comment on harmful aspects of Christian religious practice as it they happen in the real world.
The first Little Bronze Book, Jesus Lord of Surveillance, raises an alarm on the role of Christian Nationalism in supporting violent fascism and its systems of digital spying deployed against foreigners and Americans alike.
When Christian tech tycoons use conspiracy theories about the Anti-Christ to justify their unconstitutional seizure of Americans’ private data, and encourage the end of democracy in favor of authoritarian Christian Nationalism, the time for respectful silence about the excesses of Christian ideology is over.