RE & U(U)

1. RE for the whole church

Religious Education is something we do with the whole church. In many places, it's referred to as Life Span Religious Education. As Elizabeth Parish reminds us, it's unfortunate that religious education is only associated with the children's program - the church school. I think of the whole church as a classroom.

What we do in religious education, for everybody - children, youth and adults - is at least these two things: clarification and refinement. In no RE contexts do we try to convince anybody. I know there was once a time when some ministers tried to convince, convince anyone who would listen that there was a good way and better way to believe. And perhaps there is a time and place for this, but this isn't what I'm interested in and this isn't what we want to do when we experience the church as an educational setting. In both church school and adult enrichment as well as Sunday Celebration, we aren't trying to convince or change minds but through clarification and refinement we want to move people, we want them to be open to a transforming experience (which may or may not happen in the education or learning context which includes the setting of Sunday Celebration and Worship).

Think of religious education as a large house, with lots of doors. Which doors are open and closed can be shaped by life experience - the younger you are, the more doors that are open; the older you are, the more doors might be closed. Our approach to religious education is to lead you to and through different doors and when one is closed and may need opening, to motivate you to take the risk of opening it. (It may not need to stay open, you may decide to close it soon after it's open - but the church is here to move you to and through the house of faith and to its many doors).

So you can see, Fran, that I take a very broad, wholistic view of RE. But for you, you spend the bulk of your time in children's RE - do you see what you address as being significantly different from what adults focus on?

2. What we are teaching and how it's taught

As Unitarian Universalists we begin our religious education in a very unique place, a starting point that is quite different than most other faith communities. We teach our children - at every level - and I discuss with adults that our faith affirms that the cosmos - the world and universe we live in - is a "friendly" place. This means that it is not hostile to human life but that we can not only live in our cosmos but we can thrive, we can be vital.

And yet, so much that goes on around us seems to contradict this message: natural disasters that hurt and kill tens of thousands; shootings in churches, offices and schools; television, movies and music are filled with subtle and overt messages that warn watchers and listeners to watch your step or get abused; and now everyone is unsure what the stroke of midnight will bring on December 31 - will we be safe or not? Who says that our world is "friendly," that this is where we belong?

Unitarian Universalism says it and we teach and practice it. This is as essential to our history and message as anything else. But we have so much to overcome, our task is not an easy one. And frankly, this part of our religious education effort is most difficult with adults because we bring so much "baggage," so many preconceived ideas. This is why earlier, in describing the house of faith with many doors, I said that adults often have doors that are closed due to previous experiences with religion - especially for UUs. Those experiences were often negative ones and resulted in door closings.

In your experience with RE, do you find that both children and adults have barriers (or "baggage") that they bring to the curricula that we present?

3. Curriculum - P&P

I was speaking about UUism's quintessential belief in the "friendliness" of the cosmos and our living in the universe. No where is this better illustrated than in our Principles and Purposes. When the Principles were adopted in 1985, it was a milestone for our Association in so many ways. And it wasn't long after that people began devising ways for us to reflect on and discuss these core elements of our faith because they are so central not only to our beliefs but the way we "do" church, how we are as a congregation and how we interact in the larger community.

About a year and half ago, a new book was published entitled With Purpose and Principle. The book contains essays by seven ministers on each of the Principles. These short essays will be the centerpiece of a class I'm teaching beginning Thursday night at 7:30. This book of essays and the class is a perfect example of religious education at it's best: examining and discussing the principals of our faith. One of the things that I know will emerge from our discussions is that our faith is not stagnant, but is evolving, it's dynamic that is why it remains a faith with vitality. I hope everyone will try to join me on Thursday (the book is for sale at the bookstore in the lounge).

Both the OWL and P&P curricula are wonderful examples of what UU RE does at its best: providing a teaching and educating context for us to learn, discuss, and reflect on the elements of life-meaning that define what being human is about.

The challenges posed in addressing the essential values at the core of our faith are not done in isolation. We're all part of a faith community and so our reflecting, discussing, learning and searching are all done together. The character of what we do here is relational. There's a special way we come together and there's a special language that we use to describe this relationship - covenant. What's your understanding of covenant in our church context?

4. Covenant

We are a convenantal church, not a creedal one. This is a really important distinction and an historical truth for us. The way we come together - "walking together" - is something that we inherit from the Pilgrim mothers and fathers: freely they promised to commit to each other; they entered into community not out of creed, not because they felt a creedal obligation to love, support and work together, but because they knew this was the good and right thing to do. Their relationship was formed by covenant, not creed. And so it is for us today. We are a covenantal church, not a creedal one - our bonds are shaped and nurtured by the promises we make and not by promises imposed on us.

I don't know if most people know it, but a couple of Saturdays ago there were ten of us who participated in a workshop on covenanting. What was it that you feel was most significant about the workshop?

5. Fran and Fred's covenant

I covenant to support Fran in her position by:

Furthermore, I covenant with the congregation to support LSRE by

But of course, we were covenanting around specific RE issues which, though we both feel are very broad in scope, still there is the covenant that the whole congregation makes and keeps with each other. An example of this is in the preamble to our "Principles and Purposes" where it states that "As member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, we covenant to affirm and promote..." How do you understand covenant in the wider setting, in the context of the congregation?

6. Covenanting within the congregation

As we have already said, for a variety of reasons, a couple of Saturdays ago we examined covenant and then made promises of our own. This morning we've shared the promises we made to each other.

All of this is part of something much larger: The UUA is encouraging all its congregations to participate in a recovenanting process that's being called "Fulfilling the Promise." Clark Olson, a UU minister and member of the Fulfilling the Promise planning committee told the UU General Assembly several years ago: "What billions of people need today, perhaps more than anything else, is precisely the knowledge and experience of discovering how in deed and in faith to be together ... The 21st century story of UUism may be that in fulfilling our promise we provided a light for many of the world's peoples, now conflicted by faith and ethnic differences, to move toward a new understanding of how all peoples can be truly together ..."

The promise that Olsen speaks about, the promise that we talked about in our workshop, and the promise that I know you and I share, is about how to be together, how to "walk together," it's about coming together by making a promise. This is called covenanting. It's my hope that this winter we, as a congregation, might begin what could be a 2-year project of putting into words what it is that we promise to each other, what it is that that as members of UUCA covenant to affirm and promote.

Why now? Why covenant? Truthfully, I think it's a sign - a mark - of religious maturity: the recognition that we are not just a bunch of religious individualists, doing our own thing, pursuing our dreams and visions in isolation. But that we really are connected, there really is an interdependent web of which we all are apart - in the greater world and in this faith community called UUAC.

And we need to put words to it, of what the promises and commitments are that we make to one another. In so doing, we help to make it actual. The process that we follow in order to accomplish this, the path we take to build our covenant, is one of religious education. Several Sundays ago I reminded you that the root word of religious is religo meaning to bind or make whole. Religious education then is teaching, learning, exploring and experiencing what it is that makes for wholeness, for interdependence, as a community.

Fran and I made promises to each other and to you about this covenantal work which is religious education for the entire church. We look forward to walking together, with you, holding up the promises we have made and will make that will keep our faith community strong and that will make religious education something for all of U and uniquely UU.

© the Rev. Fredric J. Muir
October 3, 1999

Go back to the Sermons Archive or the UUCA Home Page
Send Mail to the Church.