Religious parents raise a son or daughter, don’t transmit their values, send the offspring away to be educated. Six months or a year later the son or daughter is utterly transformed. The reverse is true as well. Raise a child in a secular home, don’t transmit a core of values, the child has no sense of self, of rootedness. Off goes the child, encounters the hot core of a religious cult, and is changed. It is difficult not to be swayed by an alluring core if you are only peripherally attached to your past, your beginnings, your self. That is a periphery-to-core culture confrontation.
