Philosophy of Religious Education Isn't half the job of becoming educated learning to ask the right questions?

Edith Hunter, 20th-century Unitarian religious educator

Ministering to children and youth focuses on growing their souls, through experiences and stories, exploration and education. The quote above helps me make sense of a tension I have in proclaiming my philosophy of Religious Education. The tension is between using the words Religious Education or Religious Exploration. Exploration fits the widest lens of my philosophy of making a container and allowing the content, and the questions, to come from within. Education represents the need for what is taught, the grounding, especially the history and identity of Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists, as well as lifes realities.

Working with Unitarian Universalist children and youth for ten years, I have had many experiences, and it is hard to choose one. The one Ive chosen is from a time when we had changed the methodology of the RE program to the Way Cool Sunday School model. One Sunday a month was devoted to Social Action. We wanted to integrate the childrens activities with the monthly recipient of the Share the Plate program chosen by the congregation and the Adult Social Action Ministry, and bridge a gap between generations. An adult member of the Social Action team would come to all the classes, introduce themselves, invite the children to talk to them outside of class, then explain the program, and receive the childrens feedback and questions. The organization I was most touched by was the Interfaith Hospitality Network(IHN), which provided housing and meals for homeless families. After hearing about it, some of the children asked their parents to provide meals, so they could help prepare and serve the meals, and go to the church housing the families, to eat, talk and play with the children there. The UU
Donna Renfro Page 1

children were outside their place of comfort and privilege, yet asked openly and respectfully what it was really like to be in the homeless shelter, and what the children there missed most. The homeless children told them the hardest part was not having phones to talk to their friends, to find out about homework, just to stay in touch. The UU children heard that, and wanted to find a way to have a phone available. They figured out how to get one that could have minutes added by a gift card, and how to have it be a part of the things that went from church to church hosting the families. Then they had a bake sale to raise the money for it, and got their parents to purchase it and present it to the IHN coordinators. This was Love made visible, where the intangible become tangible.

This experience touches on many things the Religious Educator Angus MacLean supported in a story, "The Wind in Both Ears," used in a current online Tapestry of Faith UUA curriculum, The New UU: (http://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/newuu/workshop3/workshopplan/stories/160304.shtml) This story is introduced by explaining who Angus MacLean was, and that his influence included a call for religious education to be relevant, to address problems in the world, and to support the family as the prime source of religious education. He rather poetically described this call thusly: We wonder about truth, about all the whats and whys and whithers of life. Wondering is very important, but it should bear the fruits of faith and thought, and it should turn our faces to whatever is coming down the winds of time and circumstance. We should be finding ourselves on the highway to the realization of great human goals, but there is no clear light on the highway except as an individual may see it for himself [sic]. This example brings in another important part of my philosophy - the need for intergenerational interaction, education, and exploration. The adults chosen to come talk in Sunday School are ones who are passionate about a particular program, and share that with the
Donna Renfro Page 2

children. They explain how this is living their Unitarian Universalist values. It forces them to show their emotional and spiritual connection to justice work, to the hurt and bruised world, the bad things that happen there. Children and youth need to see adults make those connections; they need to understand it as part of their Unitarian Universalist identity and values. When they dont have that, they often become distant from our religion, and leave it.

Children and youth need adults to be real with them, to be vulnerable, yes, even emotional. Children see the bad things that happen in the world, and even bad behavior in our congregations. They need to hear it addressed from trusted adults. Im reminded of an interview I saw once with Louise Fahs Timmons, who explained why she was no longer a Unitarian Universalist, even though her mother is the famous Unitarian educator and theologian Sophia Lyon Fahs. Timmons says:

"We spent 95 percent of our time studying good people doing good things, and skipped very lightly over the bad parts of humanity. I was taught not to be judgmental, not to observe or report on the bad behavior of others. Consequently, because of my education, I grew up ignorant about bad human behavior, incompetent to observe it accurately, unskilled in how to respond to it, and ashamed of talking about evil." I like to tell people about the connections to Unitarian Universalist of Barack Obama and his mother, that even though they dont give UU credit, they probably developed some of their deepest values from their UU exposure. The most recent UU World has an article by Thandeka that clearly addresses those connections, and lost connections. What Obama said about his mother in The Audacity of Hope is what I want for our children, and youth, and adults to be and to have: that she was the most spiritually awakened person he has ever known: she possessed an abiding sense of wonder, a reverence for life and its precious, transitory nature that could properly be described as devotional.

Donna Renfro

Page 3

Thandeka goes on to describe why Obama didnt stay with or come back to Unitarian Universalism what he found elsewhere: http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/220156.shtml feelings of loyalty, family, love, embrace, care, nurture, endurance, and also heightened experiences of salvation while still on earthevery Sunday morning during the worship service. Religious communities, he now realized, are not just sources of wisdom for moral ideas; they are also healing vessels for the regeneration of broken emotional souls. His new religious community didnt dampen his mind; it opened his heart. The community was now part of his emotional life raw emotional feelings, longing for recognition, reconciliation, and regeneration. I think it is important to understand that religious education happens everywhere in our congregations, not just in religious education classes. In the quote above, the importance of the worship service is lifted up. We need to provide worship experiences for our children and youth that engage them, that they can experience with all the congregation. I believe it is important for all congregants to know our history, as a means of forming their own identity. Stories are an important way for this to happen. Where I have seen children and youth most grasp this is when story is used to teach important figures in Unitarian and Universalist and Unitarian Universalist history, when the stories illuminate that the values and spirituality of those people. I do think it is important for children and youth to understand we are a religion with a history; that they are the inheritors of this grand tradition, and they are called and we expect them to live it in their worlds, worlds we cant even imagine. They need spiritual teaching for the journey, to grow their souls, as Rev. Dr. Roberta Nelson describes in her 2002 Berry Street Lecture: http://www.uuma.org/BlankCustom.asp?page=BSE2002 What does spiritual teaching have to say to the hurting world? For me, spiritual education is prophetica call to creative and courageous action. Spiritual teaching implies that we are "growing a soul that will free us to heal the world. It implies that we are grounded, that we are reflective, that we have taken the time to "see that which we have not seen before. Spirituality and justice are in constant dialogue. We are all members of the human family and we must respond to the needs of that whole family. Spiritual teaching and justice seeking are branches of the same tree, whose roots are inextricably intertwined you do not have one without the other.

Donna Renfro

Page 4