The Channing Connection:
Children's Religious Education
March 2008
Greetings from the Director of Religious Education
Hello!
I have come to think of our UU Principles as things toward which we all strive – not that we’re always there all the time, but that we are working toward them. Learning to hear the various voices within the UU community is huge. Learning to hear them respectfully and with an open heart is even better, although it takes work at times.
When I first came to your church, I thought I had been “around the block” enough to be truly UU – that I had rooted out my own prejudices and religious biases. But as they say, pride goes before a fall! How many of us can say that we are really unbiased? Upon further reflection, I realized that my reluctance to present Bible stories with violent images of God is a direct result of all the time I spent with Quakers. So is my firm belief in a loving God. While this matches the Universalist strand of UU theology, which says that God is too loving to damn us to hell, it also has the potential to deprive your children of the absolute choice to make up their minds about their beliefs – which is their right and their privilege as UU children. They need to be given all the facts so they can make an informed choice. Therefore, I decided to expand my thinking about this, to come more in line with our UU principles!
I talked about this with many of you as well, so that I could find out what you really wanted. At the startup weekend, a parent told me that she wanted her child to be able to make up his own mind about those stories. She wanted them to be presented without bias against negative images of God and to be told age-appropriately. This was eye-opening for me, but I spoke to other UU educators and learned to trust that it would be OK. So, when I told the story of David for Children’s Chapel, I told them why King Saul had lost the spirit of God: he had only followed God’s order to a certain point. God’s order had been to wipe out all the opposing people, including their sheep, and to leave nothing alive. However, Saul made the decision to disobey God and spare the sheep. This was the beginning of his downfall and led to the eventual crowning of King David.
I was concerned about how the children would react when they heard that part of the story. In fact, we built time into the curriculum to check up on them, to make sure they were OK. However, I need not have worried. Like true UU children, some of the older ones began to shake their heads. “That’s not right,” they said. “God could not have said that.”
So we stopped the story to talk. We discussed the reliability of Samuel, God’s prophet, who passed God’s order to Saul. We talked about the spirit of the times and what the Hebrew people needed to think about God, in order to feel safe during war. Some children felt that Bible stories were a bit like the game of “telephone” – after all this time and the many changes, who knew what was true?
We also talked about how this story fit or did not fit with their understanding of God. Some children felt that a loving God would not ask for so much killing and we talked about the goodness of their conviction. Some children felt that there was no God at all, and that everything bad that happened to Saul occurred because he’d made bad decisions. We agreed that this would also be an excellent interpretation.
What I have discovered is that my own view of the Bible tends to be Quaker -- I prefer stories with nonviolent images of God that match my experience. Like many of us, I am UU in my overarching theology but also have my own philosophical bent within that larger system. However, I have learned that UU children are perfectly capable of making up their own minds and that they can learn to think critically about these stores. From now on, I will present these stories in their entirety -- leaving out only what is not age-appropriate or does not further the lesson at hand.
The right to hear all the facts and to make an informed choice is a beautiful part of being UU. It is a privilege to help your children grow in their ability to discern their own truths. I trust that each of them will think differently and that we will celebrate this beautiful diversity.
Take care,
Christy Guenther, Director of Religious Education