Category Archives: Liberal religion

Teaching kids how to be religious, part two

Part one: Link

Here in North America and Western Europe, we have been wholly seduced by Jean Piaget’s understanding of persons. Piaget saw children as little scientists, investigating their worlds as solitary researchers, gradually building up adequate models of how the world works. One of Piaget’s insights is that children develop their little models according to a timetable that is more or less the same for every child. Thus the role of adults is to help children work through the standard development schedule.

Piaget’s insights are extraordinarily useful in classroom settings (although it should be noted that classrooms have been set up according to Piaget’s notions, so there may be something of a tautology here). But in Eastern Europe, Lev Vygotsky came up with another possible insight into how children learn and “develop.”

Living in Russia in the early 20th C., Vygotsky was deeply affected by ideas of collective human endeavor. The West reviled Karl Marx and glorified the extreme individualism of free market capitalism; Eastern Europe and Russia reviled capitalism and glorified collectivism. Unlike Piaget, who was from Western Europe and saw human beings as disparate individuals, Vygotsky saw human beings as part of a collective.

Needless to say, Vygotsky’s research was utterly rejected by the West until the fall of Marxism in Eastern Europe. This was unfortunate, because while much of Vygotsky’s research is now outdated, he did discover one very important thing:– children can perform above their expected level of competence in certain social settings.

In my own work as a religious educator, I have found both Piaget and Vygotsky help me to understand how children learn to be religious. Children do change and develop in certain fairly predictable patterns as they grow older, just as Piaget’s model predicts. At the same time, when you put together a group of children of mixed ages, the younger children can perform above their developmental stage, due to the influence of the older children. The same is true for children who are in a multi-generational setting, such as in all-ages worship services (for example, school age children in certain unprogrammed Quaker meetings can and will sit in silence for the first twenty minutes of meeting for worship).

In the past twenty years, some psychologists in the West have gone beyond Vygotsky’s work, and developed a theory of “distributed cognition.” In this theory, cognition or thinking is distributed through out socially-created objects and institutions. A concrete example of a distributed cognition is an axe:– when you pick up an axe, you are holding the accumulated cognitive insights into how to cut down trees, accumulated by generations of human beings. Yes, someone has to teach you how to use that axe, but there’s a sense in which the axe also teaches you; there’s a sense in which as you learn to use the axe, you gain access to the accumulated wisdom of generations of thinkers.

I still use Piaget’s insights into human beings. But when it comes to teaching kids how to be religion, I also use the insights of distributed cognition. Like an axe, a congregation represents the accumulated wisdom of a certain religious tradition. This is another way of getting at what religious educator Maria Harris said:– curriculum isn’t just what’s written in the text books in the Sunday school, the whole congregation is the curriculum.

To be continued…

Teaching kids how to be religious

The very title of this little essay is an absurdity. You don’t teach kids how to be religious, because they already are religious. At least they’re more or less religious, depending on their personalities:– some of them are already quite advanced religiously by the time they’re seven, while others (as the philosopher Richard Rorty admits of himself) are “religiously tone-deaf.”

Absurdity though it may be, I’m forced to talk about how to teach kids to be religious because my denomination, and much of institutionalized religion generally, believes that that’s what you do. My denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, has a department called “Lifespan Faith Development.” They want to “develop” kids, just like real estate developers “develop” old farms or woodlots or deserts into housing developments and shopping malls, because houses and malls are the “highest and best use” of the land.

“Lifespan Faith Development” has another fatal flaw:– it uses the term “faith development” as an integral part of its name. “Faith development” was conjured up by James Fowler, and still has a following amongst older male psychologists who began their careers when Fowler first published his book and who still try to do research on how faith develops, psychologically speaking. Problem is, Fowler never adequately defined what he meant by “faith.” To make matters worse, his model posits a highest stage of faith development for which his research found only one representative person; hardly an adequate sample size on which to base an adequate theory.

Still worse, Fowler basically reduces “faith development” to cognitive (and maybe affective) development, ignoring such things as the transcendental experiences which burst in on you unannounced changing you forever in a discontinuous fashion that has nothing to do with his orderly linear “faith development”; ignoring such things as certain slow dragging years of no transcendence which can suck all religion out of you if you’re not careful. But if you really want to know about why faith development doesn’t work, you can read Gabriel Moran’s essays on the topic.

Worst of all, I believe the term “lifespan faith development” allows us to delegate teaching kids to someone else in our religious communities. “Lifespan faith development” implies that you have to know some arcane theories about “faith development” in order to teach kids. “Lifespan faith development” means you should rely on the experts to set up scientific programs for teaching kids. That term allows us to abdicate our responsibility to our children.

Yet it is you and I, not some expert, who teach children how to be religious. And we do teach children how to be religious, regardless of the theory we espouse. Or rather, we don’t teach them how to be religious, we teach them how to handle the religion they already have. We do that in a way that flies in the face of typical Western understandings of the psychological underpinnings of religion, and persons, and faith.

To be continued…

Water

With the heavy rains last night, everything in the woods was soaked. We had planned an activity where the third and fourth graders would be crawling around on the ground, but it was too wet for that.

As we walked over to the Grove, we passed a running stream of water that had been a dry ditch yesterday. I said: Let’s clean out some of these sticks so the water flows better. Some of the active boys jumped down and started pulling out sticks and even small logs. The girls and other boys weren’t far behind. We dropped sticks and and watched how fast they raced downstream.

I asked: Where does the water go? “Down there!” Let’s follow it and see. They all ran off downstream, stopping to clean out a few more snags. “It flows into this hole!” That’s called a culvert. “It keeps going over here!” We ran over to a ditch by the side of the main road. The children discovered that the water seemed to disappear under the road.

We carefully crossed the road to see if we could follow the water down to the ocean, but there was no water on the ditch on the other side of the road. We crossed back over to look again. Where does the water go? The children imagined all kinds of things that might happen to the water. But what really happens to the water? Who could we ask? The children thought about that, and one of the children who has returned year after year said, “We could talk to the guy who runs the campsite.” So we walked over to the garage, where we found Ed.

I said, Ed, the children want to know where the water goes. Ed explained that it runs into a sewer under the road, and then is pumped up to the sewage treatment plant where they process the water to make it clean. “They take all the poop out of it!” “Yes,” said Ed, “and at the end the water is so clean that you can drink it.” That was a novel concept to the children, and we talked about that for a while. Then it was time to follow the water upstream, to see where it came from. “Thank you, Ed!”

We ran back to the stream, and followed it the other direction this time. “I know where streams start, they always start in a spring in the mountains.” Well, let’s see how far we can follow this stream.

We came to a place where the bottom of the stream was sand. The sand looked orange. The children and I pulled sand up off the bottom, but when we pulled it up the sand was white. That means the water is orange: why? “It’s the leaves, they make it orange.” “And the pine needles.”

The stream got wider and wider, and flowed more and more slowly. Soon there were interconnected puddles everywhere in the woods — in the same part of the woods where we had walked dry shod yesterday. I suggested that maybe the stream started with all the puddles. But the children weren’t yet sure. So we kept going deeper into the woods.

“We should go this way!” said one child. “No, this way!” said another child. I asked, Which way does water flow? “Up–” “No, it flows downhill.” So which way is uphill? We figured out which way was uphill, and went that way to see if we could tell where the water started flowing. There was water everywhere. If you slipped on a root, you’d get wet. All of us got our feet at least a little bit wet.

Finally we got to a place where there were no more puddles. But there was no stream, either. Finally the children figured out what was going on: The woods turn into a swamp when it rains, and the streams drain the water out of the stream. I told them that the streams were actually ditches that people had dug in order to drain the swamp.

We stood in a circle, and went over what we had figured out. At the end of that, one child said, “I think we should always learn like this — being outdoors, and not having someone just tell us.” I said that I believed that children could figure things out for themselves (with adult help and direction).

It was time to head back. I said I’d try to find a dryer path for us to follow back. But there was water everywhere. Eventually, we had to turn around and head back the way we came. We got a little wetter, and we were fifteen minutes late for lunch. But the children had learned a lot more about the woods, and water, and what happens when it rains, and where water goes. They’ve learned about the water cycle in school, but this time they really got to see it in action.

And this was completely unplanned: spontaneous programming, arising out of the interests of the children, and their interactions with their surrounding environment.

Alone in the woods

Today we had the 5/6th graders for nature and ecology in the hour just before lunch. “What are we going to do today?” “Can we do alone time again?” “Yeah, where we walk single file and you tap us on the shoulder.” “Yeah, and spread us out so we can’t see each other this time!” [See below for instructions of how we set up alone time two days ago.] Alone time wasn’t on our lesson plan for today, but since one of our primary learning goals is to have the children spend time alone in the woods, Lisa and I were actually very pleased that they asked to do more alone time.

So we said: Sure, we can do alone time again. Do you want to do it as long as half an hour? “Longer!” “Yeah, the whole hour!” Well, we can’t go that long because we have to be at lunch by noon. “OK, but be sure to spread us out so far that we can’t see each other.” Then a worried look: “What if something happens, though?” Well, Lisa and I will spread you out so you can just see each other.

We actually let them go a little longer than thirty minutes. Then I asked what they did with their alone time. Some of them couldn’t quite spend that whole time alone and six of the eleven children wound up hanging out with a nearby child: “We built a fort together,” said one pair. Of the ones who spent the whole time alone, some spent time just looking at what was around them: “I wound up in exactly the same spot as the last time, so I finished looking at the things I started looking at last time we had alone time.” One or two just sat and enjoyed being quiet: “I just sat there on the ground and didn’t really do anything.” I mentioned that being alone in the outdoors is one of my spiritual practices (just so they would know that it can be a legitimate spiritual practice).

Later today, one of the girls in that group made a point of stopping me and saying that she really liked being alone in the woods. Don’t let anyone tell you that kids today only want to play video games.

*****

Alone time (with a group of children)

Give these instructions before beginning: “We’re all going to keep walking single file along the trail. One at a time, the Sweep will indicate to each child that he/she is to sit down in the trail, until everyone is spread out along the trail. Then we’ll all sit in silence of a time. When the time is up, the Sweep will start walking slowly, slowly, and gradually we’ll rejoin in a single file line again.” Sweep circles back around to be at rear of line again. Have children sit in silence for one to five minutes (depending on age and group chemistry). Older children can spread out quite far. Younger children will be more comfortable if they are closer together.

More eco-teaching

Religious Education Week, Ferry Beach Conference Center

Today we had the fifth and sixth graders first. We played the “Foxes, Rabbits, and Leaves” game that we did yesterday with the third and fourth graders — I learned from yesterday’s mistakes, and the game went much more smoothly today. After half an hour of play, the children didn’t want to stop, but Lisa and I eneded that game anyway because we wanted to give them some alone time in the woods.

So we lined them up single file, and walked out into the woods. One by one, Lisa seated each child along the trail, so they were all spread out — within sight of one another, but too far away too talk. After about seven minutes of quiet time, Lisa and I circled around and picked the children up one by one, and we all walked back single file, in silence, to a comfortable place in the woods, where we sat in a circle.

I asked: What did you do with you time alone in the woods?

“I picked up a big stick and I hit it against a tree again and again until it broke.”

“I sat and meditated for a while, then I opened my eyes and looked around.”

“I let an inch worm crawl on me, but then I squished it by mistake so I buried it.”

“I picked up a big stick and hit it again a tree too.”

“I swatted mosquitoes. Oh, and I listened to a bird that was nearby.”

I said: I love to spend time outdoors, and I’ve done all those things myself.

One of our goals is to give each group plenty of unstructured time more or less alone in the woods. A big part of our goal is to help children feel comfortable outdoors, in a natural environment — we want kids to like Nature and the outdoors. If they feel some spiritual connection with Nature, great, but just liking it is enough at this point.

When things really soar

Here at the annual religious education conference at Ferry Beach Conference Center, I’m one of the adults leading the children’s program. Along with Lisa, I’m doing nature and ecology with the elementary age children. At the end of the morning today, we had the third and fourth graders for an hour. The plan was to play a game for half an hour that would teach about cycles of life, and then going out into the woods and giving the children some alone time. As can happen with children, we went astray from the plan.

The children were feeling active today. We started playing the game, called “Foxes and Rabbits,” and the children got so excited and were having so much fun I had trouble getting them to transition from one round to the next. I didn’t want them to descend from excitement into chaotic lack of structure, so I really worked hard to get them to stay focused. I was getting a little frustrated with them. Fortunately, they’re a cheerful group so they tried hard focus a little more even though they were getting a little frustrated with me. It was one of those teaching situations where the children were pulling in one direction, and I was pulling in slightly different direction.

But we were all having fun, in spite of the frustration. I looked at my watch and fifty minutes had gone by — we had to wrap things up pretty quickly. So I asked the children to sit in a circle, and we talked about the game. And they came up with some wonderful insights about the cycle of life, about what might happen if humans destroy part of the web of life, about birth and death, just a wonderful free-for-all discussion. It was one of those times you sometimes get while teaching:– with the whole group, kids and adults, soaring together.

Fifty minutes of frustration for ten minutes of soaring. That’s the way it goes in teaching.

*****

If you’re curious, below are the rules to the game. It’s both simple and really quite complex, and part of the frustration we all experienced was my inability to explain the game quickly and concisely.

Game: “Foxes and Rabbits” adapted from Steve van Matre’s book Acclimatizing

Divide the group into Foxes, Rabbits, and Leaves. (If you have a group of ten, a good proportion would be 4 rabbits, 3 leaves, and 3 foxes.) Give the Rabbits tails (pieces of white cloth to stick into back pocket).

The Rabbits start out crouched down in the middle. The Foxes start out in a loose circle around the Rabbits. The Leaves stand (with their hands in the air so everyone knows they are Leaves) in a loose circle outside the Foxes.

Each round begins when a signal is given. During each round, the Rabbits try to “eat” (tag) the Leaves. The Foxes try to catch and “eat” the Rabbits (by pulling tail). The Leaves are are rooted in place and cannot move.

During each round, Rabbits are safe and cannot be tagged when they are frozen in a crouched position. However, the Rabbits may not move or “eat” Leaves unless they are standing up. Each Rabbit must get food in each round, or s/he will die from hunger. Each Fox, too, must get food in each round or s/he will die from hunger. A Fox may only catch ONE Rabbit each round.

The round should last no more than five minutes, or when all the Leaves are eaten. The Leader calls out “End of Round!”, all play stops, and then you tally up those who got eaten or who starved to death:

  • LEAVES:
  • If a Leaf is eaten by a Rabbit, in the next round she becomes a Rabbit.
  • (All other Leaves remain Leaves.)
  • RABBITS:
  • If a Rabbit is eaten by a Fox, in the next round she becomes a Fox.
  • If a Rabbit is does not manage to eat a Leaf during a round, he “dies” and becomes a Leaf.
  • (All other Rabbits remain Rabbits.)
  • FOXES:
  • If a Fox fails to catch a Rabbit within the round, he “dies” and becomes a Leaf.
  • (All other Foxes remain Foxes.)

Play three to five rounds (or more, if it’s going well).

Religious Naturalism

One of the papers that’s on my summer reading list is “Religious Naturalism in a Unitarian Universalist Context,” a paper presented at General Assembly under the auspices of Collegium, June 23, 2006, by Jerome A. Stone [full text]. Here’s a short critical summary of my reading:–

“Naturalism,” according to Jerry Stone, is a “set of beliefs and attitudes that focuses on this world.” Stone says that naturalism rules out an “ontologically distinct and superior realm.” Religious naturalism, of course, concerns the religious aspects of this world “which can be appreciated within a naturalistic framework.” [p. 2]

Religious naturalism is of particular interest to Unitarian Universalists for two reasons. First, there are many people associated with Unitarianism or Unitarian Universalism who can be considered religious naturalists, including: Henry David Thoreau (raised Unitarian), Henry Nelson Weiman (theologian who joined a UU fellowship), Frederick May Eliot (president of the AUA), Stone himself, and others.

Secondly, religious naturalism is a theological position that encompasses both those who include the concept of God, and those who don’t, in their theologies. Many people think that if you believe in God you can’t find common theological ground with those who don’t spend time thinking about God, but religious naturalism proves this need not be so.

Stone identifies three basic types of religious naturalists, and his typology has to do with how different religious naturalists deal with the concept of God.

(1) The first type includes people like Henry Nelson Weiman, and they conceive of God as creative process within the world. Weiman was committed to common sense empirical inquiry and to scientific method. In the context of this kind of inquiry, Weiman wondered what allowed human beings to escape form evil (which we occasionally do manage to do). Weimen felt that individual human beings were not always capable of extricating themselves from evil, but that there was a transformative principle that could and did pull us out of evil. This he called “creative interchange” in his book The Source of Human Good; this he was willing to call by the name “God.”

(2) The second type of religious naturalist considers God to be the totality of the world, considered religiously. Stone gives Bernard Loomer as an example of this type of religious naturalist. In a 1987 essay, Loomer wrote: “If the one world, the experienceable world with its possibilities, is all the reality accessible to us, …then it follows that the being of God must be identified in some sense with the being of the world and its creatures.” Loomer, too, is committed to empirical inquiry as opposed to metaphysical speculation.

Stone believes Loomer coined the phrases “power with” and “power over” (the second phrase implies a relationship wherein one party has the power and uses it to dominate another party; the first phrase implies a relationship where the party with the power shares it with others, thus avoiding domination). Loomer also refers to an inter-connected or interdependent web of existence, and Loomer identifies this interdependent web with the concept of God. Thus, Loomer appears to be somewhat interested in creating a liberative theology.

(3) A third type of religious naturalism sees no need to use the concept or terminology of God. Stone himself is an example of this third type. He writes:

I hold that many events have what could be called a sacred aspect. I am not talking about a being, a separate mind or spirit. I am saying that some things, like justice and human dignity, and the creativity of the natural world, are sacred. This vision is very pluralistic. What degree of unity there is to this plurality I am reverently reluctant to say.

Stone is willing to allow for transcendence, but only relative transcendence. In other words, there isn’t anything that is absolutely transcendent, but in certain situations there are things that surely do feel transcendent. Stone says that if he were forced to choose between humanism and theism, he’d reluctantly choose humanism; but really he’s somewhere in between the two positions. Indeed, he has what he calls a “minimal definition of God” which he uses in ordinary conversation, when leading worship (he’s in fellowship as a Unitarian Universalist minister), and when talking with other “religious voices.” His minimal definition is as follows: “God is the sum total of the ecosystem, community and person empowering and demanding interactions in the universe.”

In order for me to be interested in a new theological position, I have to be able to understand how it will contribute to liberation. In this short paper, Stone does not adequately go into how religious naturalism might be applied to liberation (perhaps that will be a part of his book-in-process). But Bernard Loomer’s religious naturalism has definite implications for liberation; and Stone’s own religious naturalism could have as well. As attractive as I find religious naturalism to be, I can’t call myself a religious naturalist until I know more about how it will contribute to liberation.

What I did at General Assembly

The complete text of my General Assembly workshop, “Creating Great Content for UU Web Sites,” is now on my Web site, including written responses to questions asked by participants during the presentation — Link.

For my own reference, below are links to all GA events I reported for the UUA Web site. If you actually want to read some of them, the starred workshops were best.

  • Opening celebration: Link.
  • *1029 Capital Campaigns: If You Build it, They Will Come, But Will They Stay?: Link.
  • 2058 Why Here? Why Now? Why Us? The Urgency for White Ally Activism: Link.
  • 2084 Service of the Living Tradition: Link.
  • 3008 A Report on Youth Ministry in Our Association: Link.
  • *3062 Religious Naturalism: A New Theological Option (my report will be posted within a week, text of the presentation is up now): Link. Excellent, thought-provoking presentation.
  • *4012 Growing and Mid Size: Link. Excellent overview of growth issues.
  • 4044 Race, Youth, and General Assembly: What We’ve Learned: Link.
  • 4079 Defending Workers’ Rights: Innovations by Informal Worker Movements: Link.
  • 5002 Sunday Worship: Link.
  • 5011 Creating Great Content for Church Websites: Link.
  • 5048 Closing Ceremony: Link.

uuga06

Guerilla marketing for churches, pt. 6

More from Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing Excellence, as adapted for church marketing. Part 1 of the series has a general introduction to Guerilla Marketing [Link].

*****

Strategic alliances, Guerilla Marketing’s golden rule #28:

To assure your marketing success in the future, become more oriented to cooperation than competition.

As the owner of a business that engages in marketing, you’re out there amidst the competition all by yourself. It costs more to operate that way. And you options, as a loner, are more limited. So is the service you are able to provide. This is not good in an era when customers require more than ever in the way of coddling and follow-through.

Recently, we’ve been seeing groups of Unitarian Universalist congregations band together to buy billboard space, underwriting on public radio, regional Web sites, and so on. So far, many of these cooperative ventures have been pretty successful. Slowly, we’re getting over the idea that your Unitarian Universalist congregation is a cut-throat competitor with all nearby Unitarian Universalist congregations (to say nothing of liberal Christian and Jewish congregations, the local Buddhist group, etc.).

But I don’t think we’re going far enough. Beyond Jay Conrad Levinson’s broad assertion that you have to cooperate to survive, there’s an added factor for us: Liberal religion has its back to the wall right now. If we keep trying to cut the throats of other liberal religious congregations and groups, we’re all going to die.

For small businesses, Jay Conrad Levinson offers a list of potential partners in strategic alliances. I’ve modified his list to apply to liberal congregations. Consider making strategic alliances between your congregation and these groups:

  • Denominational and district authorities
  • Other Unitarian Universalist congregations in your area
  • Unitarian Universalist congregations outside your area
  • Other liberal religious groups
  • Other churches, synagogues, and places of worship on your street
  • Huge national organizations
  • Private individuals in your community
  • Your staff
  • Businesses and banks in your community

How can you make alliances with these persons and groups on the above list? Use this guiding principle:

In the book Guerilla Financing, co-authored by Bruce Blechman and me,… we define partnerism as “combining all the necessary resources to make a business successful.” A key point we stress is that you must consider everyone you deal with on a business basis as your partner — as a potential ally for a strategic alliance.

I’ve started thinking this way, and here’s what I have done so far:

(1) My denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, wants to build strategic alliances with congregations to promote growth, and they do this by offering lots of resources, so I take them up on their offers. Maybe what they have to offer isn’t exactly what I’d like to use, but I can’t afford to turn down the high-quality ad materials they offer at cost. Like the big banner we bought from them for $100 that says “Civil Marriage is a Civil Right” — if we got our own banner made, it would cost twice that.

(2) We’re beginning to cooperate with the Unitarian Universalist congregation in the next town as we plan advertising. In the past, the two congregations saw each other as competitors. Building an alliance helps us see how we can pool resources — for example, we’re working together on a campus outreach program at UMass Dartmouth, and already that strategic alliance has raised the visibility for both of us in the community.

(3) Recently, I heard from Donnis, who is a member of a Unitarian Universalist fellowship in Puerto Rico. She pointed out that their Spanish-language Web site gets thousands of hits from all over North America. She asks rhetorically: Why doesn’t every Unitarian Universalist Web site put a prominent link on their Web site to Unitarian Universalist Spanish-language materials [link]? So what if you can’t offer much to Spanish-speaking people in your area — you’ll still build additional credibility in your community, which can only benefit you.

(4) I’ve just begun talking with other liberal religious groups in our immediate neighborhood. We’ve just begun to explore how we can pool our resources to promote liberal religion in our area. With a big evangelical mega-church going in just a few miles away, we’re going to have to build alliances just in order to get our liberal religious message out in the community.

OK, now it’s your turn. How are you building strategic alliances? I’d especially like to hear from people who have organized successful regional ad campaigns — but feel free to share anything you want.