UU Faith Works: Promising Practices for Lifespan Learning Communities

UU Faith Works Winter/Spring 2004 in print-ready PDF Format
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Dear Colleagues,

In A People Adrift, Catholic religious educator Thomas Walters estimates that a Catholic child spends about 390 hours in parish religious education between Kindergarten and Grade 12. That is 390 hours in 13 years. Compare this with 11,000 hours in public school and 15,000 hours spent watching TV by the time a child is 18. Three hundred and ninety hours over 13 years sounds about right for a UU young person who regularly attends a congregational religious education program and participates in a high school youth group.

The bad news is, 390 hours is not much time. The good news is, religious education happens outside the regularly scheduled religious education program. Maria Harris has taught us in Fashion Me A People that our curriculum is the entire course of church life. The church is the curriculum. We need to continually assess what our congregations are teaching children, youth, and adults through every aspect of programming and worship, architecture and art, music and hospitality, budget and staffing. Everything we do and say explicitly or implicitly teaches. Everything we don’t do or say teaches, too. What are our churches teaching without even knowing it?

And religious education happens in the home. Parents are primary religious educators in what we do and say, and in what we do not do or say. The rituals we enact, the holidays we celebrate, the values we act on,the reflection and discussion we engage in, the spiritual practices we model, the simple acts of attention to occasions of wonder, the authentic listening to our children’s explorations, all educate religiously. How are we supporting our families in Unitarian Universalist faith development? There are adult religious education resources, home worship resources, and family resources available from the UUA to support our ministry to families.

Camps and conferences offer another opportunity for religious growth, faith development, and UU identity formation. Whether at a UU Camp and Conference Center, a UU summer institute, an all-church retreat, a youth district or continental con, or General Assembly, being part of a large, intentional UU community can be an inspiring, even life-changing experience for UUs of any age. Are we supporting our families and youth in participating in these opportunities?

Every congregation has wonderfully ambitious goals for religious education: we want our children, youth and adults to be part of a safe, affirming community and a sustaining liberal faith. We want them to know Unitarian Universalism and articulate their own beliefs. We hope they will be empowered to live out their values, seek peace and justice, and be stewards of the earth. We want to nurture their spirituality and their authentic appreciation of religious and cultural diversity.

All this and more in 30 hours a year? Our programmatic RE time is precious: we need to engage the best resources, methods and people in the enterprise. We need to call the attention of the entire church to its teaching role. And we need to look outside the classroom for viable, lifelong faith development practices for all ages.

Yours in faith,

Judith A. Frediani, Director of Lifespan Faith Development