UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISIM: RATED PG-13?
June 11, 2006 The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
Every year at one of our fundraising auctions, I offer the opportunity for someone to choose the topic for one of my sermons. I then take the highest bidder out to lunch, where I learn what the topic is to be, and have a chance to hear their views about it. I always make sure they understand that while I will speak on the topic they’ve chosen, I give no guarantees as to what conclusions I may reach; we may end up on completely opposite ends of the subject!
This year, the highest bidder was Sindy Swerdlove. And like most of the sermon topics chosen by parishioners, Sindy’s poses a question not only deeply important to her as a parent and to me as her minister, but for our Unitarian Universalist movement as well. What she is asking is this: Is Unitarian Universalism – with its lack of a Creed or concrete answers to religious questions – too vague for young children? With only a set of Principles to guide them, does our religious movement provide a strong enough foundation for young children as they face some of the challenges of life? Where do they find security? What is it they can trust as a UU?
When I think back on my own religious upbringing, I remember a few important images. I remember my mother reading Bible stories to my siblings and me; and since I don’t recall being frightened by any of them, I assume that she emphasized the God of compassion and forgiveness, and downplayed the portrayal of God as angry and vindictive.
I remember bowing my head in prayer during adult worship (though I know that many times I had no understanding of what those prayers were saying), and singing beautiful hymns, some of which I would then carry home in my head and play on the piano.
And I remember Father Smith, and knowing how much he cared about me and my family – a comfort which remained with me long after I’d left the church and begun attending a Unitarian Universalist one.
And I wonder…Do Unitarian Universalist children ask for more than that?
There hasn’t always been religious education for children. Sunday School – as many of us probably called it when we were kids – first began in this country in the late 18th century as a secular school for children working in the factories the other six days of the week. It was apparently the Congregationalists in New England who began inserting teachings of morality and religion, and when some of them became Unitarians in the 19th century, the practice was carried over.
It was Unitarian William Ellery Channing who defined religious education for our movement, first by creating an actual “catechism” for children, but more importantly, by offering a new approach to the religious education of children that would greatly inform later religious educators. He said: “The great end in religious instruction is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth…not to impose religion upon them in the form of arbitrary rules, but to awaken the conscience, the moral discernment. In a word,” he wrote, “the great end is to awaken the soul, to excite and cherish spiritual life.”
Later, in the early 1950’s, Sophia Lyon Fahs expanded Channings approach, with her philosophy that appropriate subjects for children could be found in all of life, and that we needed only to let a child’s interests, questions and abilities serve as our guides. The first question we must always ask, she said, is this: “What is there in children’s own experience that is of importance to them?”
Her goal, according to religious educator Makanah Morriss, was to change “the conception of the educational process from one of indoctrination and acceptance of authority, to one of creative discovery, intelligent examination, and free decisions.”
It is this approach that still informs our religious education programs today. Unitarian Universalist curriculum for all ages, but especially for the very young, stresses not information and facts – though there is some of that, especially for older children; but rather a sense of taking seriously the questions that children ask, and their need to feel a sense of self-worth and an understanding of their place in the larger community.
One of my professors in Seminary, Til Evans, told a story from when she was serving as Minister of Education at the UU church in Walnut Creek. As I recall the story, one Sunday morning a young child came up to Til and said, “Til, to you believe in God?” And Til, not wanting to impose her beliefs on this impressionable child, responded, “Well, what do you believe about God?” And the child said, “I don’t know what to believe. What do you believe?” And again, in correct UU fashion, Til turned the question back to the child. “Tell me your thoughts about God,” she said to the youngster. And again, the child could come up with nothing. Finally it occurred to Til that the child wasn’t asking her for a definitive answer about the existence or nature of God; she simply wanted to know what Til thought about God.
UU minister Jeanne Harrison Nieuwejaar, in a wonderful little book called Tending the Spiritual Lives of Children, suggests that children “can abide comfortably with unanswered questions, with mystery and wonder. What matters is that their questions be heard, honored, and responded to.” And if that response is simply, “Y’know, I’m not sure about that;” or “I used to think __________, but now I’m wondering if ____________;” that’s perfectly OK. What’s important is to show the child that we take their questions seriously enough to enter into a dialogue with them.
The authors of the adult curriculum, Parents as Resident Theologians, reiterate that sentiment when they write: “It’s crucial that we companion children on their journey of changing ideas and concepts – that we be there to listen, hear, ask clarifying questions, and accept where they are. They need us to share our ideas with them without negating theirs.”
And all of this begins – especially for the very young – by simply learning what it means to be part of a religious community; to know that there’s a loving circle of adults that will provide a safe place for their questions, their fears, their joys, and their triumphs. This is the security we provide; this is one of the ways in which they learn to trust and to feel safe.
It occurs through such classes as “Celebrating Me and My World,” a UU curriculum that “provides preschoolers with experiences and opportunities to grow in trust and caring and to develop their self-identity and sense of connectedness with all of life.”
Or “Chalice Children,” which “helps young children learn what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist” through learning “about their religious community, engaging in sharing with others, and exploring a sense of belonging.”
Here at Emerson this year, we are using for our preschoolers a curriculum called “Rainbow Children,” which helps the children “explore sensory experiences, friends, family and the natural world.”
Our grade school kids have been working with one of the more popular curriculums, “Holidays and Holy Days,” in which they learn about world religions by celebrating various holy days of those traditions. As I recall, it often involves food!
But this age group has also been learning about our Unitarian Universalist Principles, and some of the heroes and “sheroes” of our religious history. When Scott Kysar recently interviewed the kids in that class about their experiences in R.E., these are the responses he received from the younger ones:
A seven-year-old girl said: “What I like best about UU is learning about women and men from long ago and today whose lives remind us to be kind….What I like best about R.E. is that we get to learn about the Principles and how to have a good life.”
From another seven-year-old: “My favorite UU Principles are #7 & #2 (you can look those up if you don’t know which they are!) because I care about the environment and I don’t think that it is fair that people do hard work which they don’t have to do, but someone else makes them.”
And from a six-year-old: “My favorite UU Principle is #7 because people are polluting the earth and that’s not good.”
I must admit that I didn’t figure my grandchildren would have learned much about UUism, in part because they rarely come to church. But one day my 8-year-old grandson, Josh, was playing with the magnetic letters I keep on my refrigerator. After a while he called me in to see what he’d written with them, and there on the side of the refrigerator in bight magnetic letters, were the words, “Go now in peace.” Something had stayed with him after all – the image of adults singing to him and the other children as they leave the sanctuary for their activities.
In preparation for today’s sermon, I sent an e-mail to our R.E. parents, asking them to share with me any stories of their children that reflected our UU Principles. One parent wrote that she and her 5-year-old daughter had attended another UU church where the minister had told the children a story about a child who stopped to help her crying friend whose doll had just broken. While the child knew she couldn’t repair her friend’s doll, she did know that she could “cry with her.”
About two months after hearing this story, our Emerson parent and her daughter were leaving school one day when a child named Jacob began to cry. Our parent’s daughter turned to her mother and asked, “Can I go back and cry with Jacob?”
Another parent shared with me that his daughter’s favorite UU Principle is the 7th one, which affirms our “respect for the interdependent web of all existence;” he even heard her reciting it in the bathtub one night! She “feels a deep connection to the simplicity and beauty of nature,” he wrote to me, “and I know it matters to her that her church feels the same way.”
Parents are the first – and most important – “religious educators” of their children. How parents articulate and live their values – their Unitarian Universalist Principles – will have the biggest effect on what their children learn about those values. But it is in the safety and acceptance of the religious community that those values are strengthened and deepened.
Writes Nieuwejaar, “To be a religious and spiritual being means being in relationship with others. The central religious qualities of love and care, of compassion and forgiveness, become real only as they are tested, lived, and deepened in community.” It is this relational aspect of the spiritual life that our children experience first and foremost through participating in this religious community – both in classes with their peers, and in worship and other activities with adults.
That’s why it’s so important that our children experience many different adults in the church – not just the parents of the other children. I am deeply grateful – and I know Marlene is as well – to those adults who don’t have children in our program, but who have nevertheless taught classes, participated in the “Mystery Pals” program, served as mentors to our “Coming of Age” youth, or simply attended family game nights. All of you are contributing to the religious education of our children and youth; you are “companioning” them on their spiritual journeys.
Unitarian Universalism doesn’t give easy answers; it is difficult to explain to others, even for us adults. But in the end, the test of any religion isn’t whether we can recite it’s creeds or Principles, but how it helps us live compassionate and meaningful lives. Whether our children can explain our seven Principles isn’t what’s most important; what is important is that they learn that they are valued, and in turn learn to value all people and the world in which they live. And I believe they learn that most profoundly within the embrace of this religious community.
Like many of you, I began attending a Unitarian Universalist church when my daughter was around age 5, and beginning to ask religious questions for which I had no answers. And for a time, she seemed to enjoy herself in the RE program – though she did have trouble with UU identity. She reported to me once that when someone asked her what religion we were, she said we were “Sagitarians!” (Which wasn’t incorrect; it was just the answer to a different question!)
But most of Tiffany’s friends at school attended much more conservative churches. At some point, I remember her begging me not to let her friends know we were Unitarians. And as she grew into adulthood, she shunned my liberal religion – eventually joining a conservative Presbyterian church near San Diego with her husband, which had many more young adults in it than most of our UU churches.
But one day I received a phone call from her, asking me where in the Bible she could find proof that God is a merciful, all-forgiving God. She and her husband had attended a Bible study at their church, in which the leader was insisting that anyone who didn’t believe in their brand of Christianity would burn in hell. Tiffany argued that God wouldn’t send anyone to hell – a definite Universalist belief! She was the only one in the group who argued that understanding of God.
When I suggested that perhaps she was a Universalist, she adamantly denied it. But in fact, today she admits that she is a Unitarian Universalist, and would attend our churches if we just had a bit more diversity in them. Instead, she attends a large Religious Science church in Culver City, which has the ethnic diversity she longs for, as well as the liberal theology and peace and justice activism she now desires. I believe that it was not only the values with which she was raised at home, but the early experience she received in a UU religious community, that instilled those core values in her.
It has been said that the most profound message Unitarian Universalism offers in response to a world that is filled with fear, disillusionment and despair, is that of hope. An ancient Chinese philosopher once said that the “road called hope…doesn’t exist; but as people walk upon it, it comes into being.”
May we be companions to one another – especially to the children and youth who look to us as we journey alongside them and walk that Hope into being.
Amen.
© 2006 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
