Where's the "R" in Religious Education?
On a number of occasions recently, people new to our movement have stopped by our
office or called me on the phone to inquire about Unitarian Universalism--what kind
of religion it is, how it relates to other, more traditional religions, what we expect
of our members, in terms of beliefs, and financial support and all the rest. Such conversations
always present a challenge to me; I am never sure just how much detail people want--whether
to dump the extended version upon them, or to risk misrepresenting our faith in the interest of brevity. I try to explain that we seek to maintain a religious
community which does not depend upon conformity of belief for its cohesion, but rather
upon a willingness to be open to the graciousness of the world and the significance of our own experience as sources of spiritual growth. I try to explain that
we are much more concerned about how we live together on this earth than we are about
agreeing upon the nature of ultimate reality or providing fire insurance in some
future life. Often, after I have done my best to describe who we are and what we cherish,
the newcomer will comment that this sounds like an interesting approach for adults,
but it is difficult to see how this kind of religion could be communicated effectively
to children. What are the goals of our Religious Education program? How do we go
about it?
In responding to these questions, I find myself acutely aware of the fact that over
my years as minister of the church, I have seldom addressed the matter of religious
education from the pulpit. I have fallen into the pattern, which our geography makes
so seductive, of accepting a division between what happens at this end of Waldron Avenue
and what goes on at the other end of the street. In truth, I believe that in many
ways the measure of a religious community is to be found in its ministry to its children. And so, this morning, when the future of our education ministry is so much on
our minds, I would like to think aloud with you about the religious education mission
of this congregation.
Let me begin by suggesting that I hold as a basic assumption that religious education
is not confined to a program for children. It is my firm conviction that all of
us are always in the process of growing, changing, incorporating new insights, struggling with new problems, confronting unexpected challenges, and therefore we are always
in the process of learning about and building a faith. That is why we refer to our
program of religious education as a life-span" program--to combat the assumption
that religious education is something we do to children rather than something that happens
to all of us, all the time. Having said that, however, let me confess that the focus
of my concern this morning is with the program we offer our children.
The truth is that adult programs have a built-in corrective. If those programs are
inadequate or fail to meet our needs, people stop attending and the program is changed.
With children, however, there is not so direct a self-corrective mechanism. Children often are a captive audience and the result is that if we are not careful, by the
time they are old enough to let us know what they think of our program, we will have
had ample time to teach them that religion is dull, boring and totally unrelated
to their daily lives.
One of the great handicaps we face in devising a program of religious education for
our children is a persistent conviction--perhaps growing out of our own experience
with higher education--that religious education should be focused on a body of information which is to be imparted to the client (or, depending upon your point of view, the
victim). It is often assumed that religious education aims at providing the student
with data concerning something called religion; and therefore, the success or failure
of the program ought to be amenable to pragmatic evaluation. Can the students who
have been through the program repeat the ten commandments? Do they know the Buddha's
eight-fold path? Can they recite the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes? Do they
know anything about the Bible, the Koran, the Bagivad Gita, the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching?
Can they identify Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Isaiah, Amos, Lao Tse? Do they know who
George de Benneville, Joseph Priestley, Augusta Chapin, Faustus Soccinus, Francis
David, Abner Kneeland, Caroline Soule and Mary A. Livermore were and the role they played
in the history of our movement? (It is assumed, of course, that we adults know the
answers to these questions sufficiently well to teach them.) The success of the
program may be judged by how many of those questions can be answered affirmatively.
There are a number of problems with this approach to religious education. To begin
with, in our free churches, there is seldom a firm consensus about what is important
for people to know about religion. One individual wants the focus to be on Bible,
the Jewish and Christian traditions, and learning a few religious classics, like the twenty-third
psalm. Another is more concerned about world religions and the truths they all share
in common. Yet another wants to be sure children learn about Unitarian Universalism and still another wants the focus to be on ethics and morals and how they
apply to contemporary issues. The danger is that sometimes we end up with a program
which bows gently in the direction of those who are most vocal, which seeks to give
as little offense as possible to those who differ and is thus a program of uncertain thrust
and direction. Worst of all, it can be a program which treats our children as a
captive audience, which has a primary goal of meeting the needs of adults and the
institution rather than the children.
But perhaps the major problem with this approach to religious education is that it
misunderstands the meaning of the term "religious" in the title. It is my firm conviction,
after nearly four decades in the trade, that religious education programs never can convey sufficient information about religion to justify the time, money and effort
spent upon them. The fact is that the most conscientiously faithful participant
in our children's religious education program will be in class for about fifty minutes
every Sunday for approximately thirty Sundays a year. A quick check with the pocket
calculator demonstrates that we have, at most, 25 hours a year for formal instruction.
And most children, of course, receive considerably less instruction time. Add to
this the fact that religion is not a simple subject to teach, and that its basic texts
are among the most complex, arcane and sophisticated materials ever produced by the
human race. Given the time constraints, it soon becomes obvious that children in
our church schools will learn little about religion as a subject, and because of the complexity
of the material, much of what they learn may be so over-simplified as to be simply
wrong. They may learn to repeat the Lord's prayer or the beatitudes or the ten commandments or the twenty-third psalm, or even the golden rule in its various versions
from the world's religions, but they probably will not understand where those things
came from, what they mean, why they have been considered important, or why we find
it so difficult to live by their precepts. They will be like the little girl in the
first church I ever served who proudly repeated the Lord's prayer each Sunday, imploring,
"Lead us not into Penn Station, but deliver us from people."
Lest you conclude that I am preaching a counsel of despair, and suggesting that there
is not much beyond baby-sitting we can hope to accomplish with the time available
to us for religious education, let me assure you that I believe that there is much
for us to teach our children on Sunday mornings. But if we are to use the time that is
ours effectively, I am convinced that we must begin where the children are--taking
their lives and experiences seriously, as the primary resource with which we work.
Much is happening to them every day of their lives that is profoundly religious. Beginning
with that fact, our goal should not be to fill their heads with information--however
useful and valuable and self-affirming we have found that information. Rather our
intention should be to awaken within our children a religious dimension, a religious
perception of the world, of the myriad life forms which share the planet with us,
and of the human venture itself. It is my conviction that the success of any religious
education program is demonstrated not by how much an individual knows about religion,
but rather by how equipped that individual is to see existence from a religious perspective.
Let me see if I can be a bit clearer about the point I am trying to make. I do not
believe that knowing about the history of religion makes one religious. I do not
believe that being able to repeat various religious classics from memory makes one
religious. I do not believe that being able to identify the people on someone else's list
of the ten most important religious leaders, or being able to explain some point
of theological nicety makes one religious. These are intellectual pursuits which
have their own rewards for those drawn to them. Religion, on the other hand, lies much closer
to the heart than to the head. As someone has said, "Religion is not taught; it
is caught."
In my judgment, a religious individual is one who has developed a sense of reverence
and awe for this marvelous universe in which we find ourselves. A religious individual
is one who perceives the necessity to live life under the guidance of a moral code which is the result of his or her own searching and is not subject to the vagaries
and tyrannies of current opinion. A religious individual is one who is able to see
incarnated in every human being some revelation of the sacred reality which bodied
forth this universe. A religious individual is one whose value system is strong enough
to sustain a life time of choices and decisions and opportunities and relationships.
A religious individual is one who is able to intuit the unity which underlies the
apparent diversity of existence, and who is able to feel compassion and empathy for all
the suffering and all the sorrowing on this living planet. A religious individual
is one who lives with a conscious sense of gratitude for all that which dies in order
that we might live, and who finds this conscious and inescapable gratitude an imperative
to live life with reverence, determined to make of existence a gift for all others.
A religious individual is one who searches the world of personal experience for
its unique revelation of truth, and while accepting the testimony of others as a guide,
is never willing to settle for a second-hand faith. A religious individual is one
who can see the ultimate absurdity of existence and escape from bitterness into humor.
It is my strong conviction that the duty of any adequate program of religious education
is not to try to provide young people with facts about religion so much as it is
to evoke those kinds of experiences which are central to a religious life. Thus,
it doesn't worry me very much if our children are not able to repeat the ten commandments
at the drop of a hat; most of us couldn't either. But it will disturb me deeply
if our religious education program does not challenge them to develop a code of ethics
by which their lives can be lived, and in terms of which personal decisions and social
policies may be judged. It doesn't worry me very much if the Lord's prayer doesn't
flow smoothly off their tongues. But it will disturb me profoundly if our religious
education program does not challenge them to think about the transcendent and their relationship
to that which provides the larger context of their lives and sustains their on-going
existence. It doesn't worry me very much if our children cannot recite the Buddha's Eight-fold path. But it will disturb me greatly if we fail to evoke a sense
of urgency about the definition of the good life and what that requires of us. I
find that I am not deeply distressed if our young people cannot relate the sequence
of events in the legends about Moses or Jesus. But I will be deeply disturbed if our religious
education does not challenge them to consider what values they would be willing to
serve in their lives, and what values are so crucial to their own self-respect that life without them would loose its meaning. I find that I do not expect our children
to develop a profound understanding of world religions as a result of their experience
with our religious education program, but I am convinced we will have failed if we do not instill in them a deep and profound and critical reverence for other people's
traditions. I find that it will not distress me if our children cannot explain who
Ecclesiastes was, or how his thought relates to Greek philosophy, but it will distress me if we fail to evoke that rich sense of absurdity which caused him to write "Vanity
of vanities, all is vanity." In short, I do not expect our religious education program
to teach our children everything they will ever want to know about religion. I do expect it to help them experience religion. I do expect it to help them lay the
foundation for a religious life.
This is no easy task that I am proposing. Indeed, in many ways, it is easier to hide
behind a content-centered curriculum which seeks to teach about religion. We must
begin by treating the content of our curriculum as a means to an end rather than
an end in and of itself. The content is not itself religious, but must be judged by how
well it leads the students to encounter the holy, how well it functions as a pathway
toward the sacred. The real focus of the program is to be found in the lives of
the children, and the interaction between the children and their teachers. Things of religious
significance are happening to our children every day of their lives, just as they
are happening to us every day of our lives. It is our job to lift the sacred and
the holy out of the everyday reality in which it is hidden and help our children to
see the marvel, the mystery, the wonder, the magnificence, the pain, the absurdity
and the joy of their world, of their own lives, of their very beings. In order to
do that, we must take our children and their experiences seriously. We must listen to them,
get to know them, enter into their world and invite them into ours, be prepared to
be challenged by their insights and their questions and their innate wisdom.
But we must do more than that. We must be prepared to give ourselves to our children.
Crucial to moral and religious development is the presence, every step of the way,
of women and men who can function as models and mentors and exemplars, lest each
generation find itself inventing the life-journey anew, knowing little of the struggles
and achievements of those who preceded them. In religious education there is an
opportunity to share the rewards and the challenges of the religious pilgrimage with
young minds just beginning the journey. To do that job, we must be willing to be vulnerable,
to share our own wonder and uncertainty and joy and sorrow. We must be willing to
allow our children to see us as something other than experts and authorities, but
as comrades on the journey. In the end, those who would teach religion have nothing
to offer except their own lives, the story of their successes and failures, of their
visions and dreams and how experience shaped their understanding and devotion. Our
church school should be a place where those of us who have been on the road to a moral
and meaningful life share our stories with those just beginning the venture. Our
duty is not to teach the ancient history of another people's faith, someone else's
revelation, but to open ourselves up that others may see the faith that is implicit in every
breath we take, the revelation which stands before us in everything we see. Our
chalenge is to prepare our children not to astound Grandma and Grandpa by how much
they know about religion but to celebrate the sacred in their own lives.
I began by saying that I was talking primarily about religious education for children.
As I think about what I have said, it becomes increasingly clear, that for me, a
program for religious growth and learning is the same for all ages. It does not
center upon imparting facts. It centers upon stirring up the mind and the spirit so that
we are able to confront the sacred and the holy in our own lives, so that we are
challenged to conform our lives to our convictions, so that we are invited to be
serious about life, but not to take ourselves too seriously. That is what I want for our children
and that is what I want for myself and for everyone of us. That, in my judgment,
is the goal of a program of education: to enable each of us to live a religious life.