Contents of A Life Between the Layers
Viewing Block Four.
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Block Four
From childhood religious threat to the larger questions of belief, coercion, children's freedom of thought and personal sovereignty.
Chapter 31 When Hell Becomes a Threat
Hell, damnation and Satan as ideas encountered by a child not as abstract theology, but as threats carrying the authority of adults.
Chapter 32 The Child of Satan
What happens when religious language transforms a harmed child into the supposed source of evil, danger or wrongdoing.
Chapter 33 What Adults Called an Exorcism
Genevieve, the experiences described as exorcisms, and the beliefs that may have allowed adults to treat a frightened child as though something evil had to be driven out.
Chapter 34 The God I Was Told About
The punitive and interventionist God of my childhood: obedience, sacrifice, punishment, fear and the religious meanings imposed upon suffering.
Chapter 35 Another Idea of God
Deism and the profound difference between the possibility of a creator and the personal, interventionist deity I was taught to fear.
Chapter 36 Teaching Fear to Children
The religious teaching of my school years: Hell, mortal sin, Satan, confession, punishment and obedience, examined through the materials and assumptions of the period.
Chapter 37 What Children Are Taught Now
A comparison between the religious teaching of my childhood and present-day Australian religious education, asking what changed and what remains.
Chapter 38 When Religion Becomes Abuse
How governments, researchers and safeguarding systems have begun to recognise religious coercion, threats of damnation and related practices as potential forms of harm to children.
Chapter 39 Australia and the Child's Freedom of Thought
Religious freedom, safeguarding and the less frequently examined question of a child's freedom of thought and protection from coercive belief.
Chapter 40 Personal Sovereignty
After a lifetime of adults and institutions defining belief, memory and identity, the question of who ultimately has authority over a person's inner life.
Listen to the book
The 56 published chapters have been recorded with David V, an AI-assisted Australian reading voice. The written chapters remain the primary published record.