In the Middle of a Journey: Readings in Unitarian Universalist Faith Development

Copyright © 2013 by Richard S. Gilbert.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Unitarian Universalist Religious Education:

A Brief History

The Sunday-School Discourse

Nineteenth And

Early Twentieth Century Religious Education

Unitarians Face A New Age

It Matters What We Believe

The Beginnings Of Mysticism In Children’s Growth

A New Ministry To Children

The Method Is The Message

The So-Called Wasted Hour

Freedom Is Still The Issue

The Theological Dilemma

In Religious Education

Introduction To

The New Beacon Series In Religious Education

Assumptions In Liberal

Religious Education

Comprehensive Plan Of Education For The Unitarian Universalist Ministry

A Strange Source Of Dynamite

The Free Church

In A Changing World

What’s Next In

Religious Education?

The Book Is Not The Course

Our Ways Of Education

We Never Cease Learning

The Bible In Our

Church Schools

Consider Identity

And How It Grows

Is Our Religious Education Religious?

It Reflects Faith

In Man And The Future

Too Much Freedom:

Children May Need Indoctrination

Children Learn What They Live

Why Teach Tradition?

Relating To Our World

Parish Ministry And Pedagogy

1823-1983

Moral Decision-Making In The Modern World: Implications For Unitarian-Universalist Religious Education

Guardians And Transformers: Toward A Rabbinical Understanding Of Ministry

In Praise Of Community

From Notes On An Unhurried Journey

Cornrows, Kwanzaa And Confusion: The Dilemma Of Cultural Racism And Misappropriation

Putting The Children

Into Our Very Midst!

Educating To Counter Oppressions

Spiritual Teaching

Our Religious Education

Forty Years Of Uu

Sexuality Education

The Smart Church:

Three Facts

Afterword

Annotated Bibliography

Liberal Religious Education 1988-1998

Annotated Bibliography

Also by Richard S. Gilbert

Thanks Be for These

In the Holy Quiet

How Much Do We Deserve? An Inquiry in Distributive Justice

The Prophetic Imperative: Social Gospel in Theory and Practice

In the Holy Quiet of This Hour

Building Your Own Theology (Volumes 1, 2 and 3)

Life is more a journey than a guided tour. Nonetheless there are those who help us on the way. We stand on their shoulders as others will stand upon ours.

Frontispiece

For Those Who Have Reared Us

We give thanks for those who have reared us,

Who have nourished us through sleepless nights and restless days,

Who have seen us through the good times and the bad,

Who have celebrated our triumphs

And suffered through our defeats.

We are grateful for their nurturing spirit,

Their gentle touch and their firm hand,

Their familiar laugh and their sympathetic tears.

We acknowledge the unpleasant times as well,

Our struggle to separate ourselves

As children who must make their own way in the world.

We realize our times of ingratitude and selfishness

And resolve to make amends.

We pay silent tribute to the loved ones no longer among us,

And speak soft thanksgiving to those who are.

May we who have been nurtured

Also be nurturers of those who follow;

May we be part of that current of humanity

That courses through time and space.

May we be gardeners of the spirit (May Sarton)

Even as we have been tended by loving hearts and hands.

May we commingle gratitude for those who nourished us

With commitment to those who receive gifts of life and love from us.

May we be worthy.

Richard S. Gilbert

For my friends in religious education

and dedicated to the memory of

Sophia Lyon Fahs

and

Angus Hector MacLean

This book is published thanks to generous grants from

The Fund for Unitarian Universalism

and

The Unitarian Sunday School Society

Special thanks to

The St. Lawrence District of the Unitarian Universalist Association

and

The First Universalist Church of Rochester, New York

for their assistance

INTRODUCTION

In an essay on religious education, Dr. Angus MacLean discusses how he was accosted by a friend who said sarcastically of Unitarian Universalist efforts in the field, You don’t know where you’re going, but you’re on your way. MacLean acknowledged that his critic was closer than he thought, because the spiritual journey is open-ended, as is the universe. We, and it, are always arriving. In response he quoted religious writer William Christian: The liberal has a problem on his hands, but he is not in a dilemma. The liberal is not the man in the middle of the road, but, instead, the man in the middle of a journey. MacLean concluded, Our faith may not know the end-all of life, but if it has assurance of direction, it has what matters most. It is the nature of that journey that is at the core of this anthology.

What did you learn in church today? It is a perennial question asked by parents of their offspring on a Sunday afternoon. The younger generation might well ask the same question of their elders. We might all ask this of each other, we who cherish the liberal religious movement. The point is that one of the central expectations of all who frequent Unitarian Universalist congregations is to learn something. Life-span religious education—or faith development, as it is frequently called—is at the heart of the liberal religious enterprise.

This is one of a pair of books on Unitarian Universalist faith development. The other, Growing Up Absorbed: Faith Development among the Unitarian Universalists (to be published in 2013 by iUniverse), is the philosophy of religious education which has guided me through my half-century in the ministry. Growing Up Absorbed includes a brief history of Unitarian Universalist religious education philosophy, a survey of religious developmental tasks over the life-span, a discussion of critical current issues, and a philosophical statement to inform the Unitarian Universalist future.

My interest in religious education stems from my growing up in the Bristol Universalist Church, a small-town congregation in Western New York State. That church was literally a stone’s throw from the house in which I was raised. I played football on its lawn, broke its windows from time to time with an errant pass, and attended its church school, growing up with Sophia Lyon Fahs’ How Miracles Abound curriculum, among others. It was there I received several perfect attendance pins and the church/Boy Scout God and Country Award (now Religion in Life for Unitarian Universalists). And it was there at the age of sixteen that I taught my first church school classes in what we called the Upper Room. My first in a very long series of sermons was preached from its pulpit in 1951, when I decided to become a minister.

With this background it was foreordained that I major in psychology at St. Lawrence University and in religious education in its theological school. When I entered as an undergraduate, I anticipated earning my bachelor’s degree from the university and my ministerial degree from the theological school in six years, taking one course a year for four undergraduate years in the theological school and then spending two full years in seminary, receiving dual credit for seminary courses. This I did, except the program changed and I spent three full years in seminary. That unexpected extra year gave me the good fortune of spending more time in class with Angus H. MacLean, Professor of Religious Education and Dean. I was even more fortunate upon graduation to be selected as Assistant Minister at the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland, where Angus had just been named Minister of Education. His office was right next door to mine for my three years there. It has been sometimes hard to know where his ideas end and mine begin. At the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly in 1984, I was honored to receive the Angus H. MacLean Award for Religious Education.

While my main professional responsibility has been the preaching ministry, I have always been deeply immersed in religious education for all ages. In seminary I taught church school classes. Sunday mornings during my parish ministry I participated in and led family worship, visited and taught church school classes and youth groups when I could, and co-led the Religion in Life Seminar for younger high school students.

I have served on a committee of the UUA that developed a philosophy for the Tapestry of Faith curriculum and a task force of the Liberal Religious Educators Association (LREDA) that studied the education of religious educators. Writing extensively on the topic in Liberal Religious Education and other publications, including the Essex Conversations book, has been a career focus. My interest in adult religious education culminated in the Building Your Own Theology series. Having been involved in many religious education conferences, I have had the opportunity to observe at first hand the commitment of religious educators. During this time I have often had the feeling that religious education is a poor cousin in the church, taking a back seat to adult worship, pastoral services, administration, and social action. Often I observed the silo effect in which church school and youth activities were seen as spiritually distinct from the rest of the church program, as classrooms were usually physically separate.

My understanding of the whole process of faith development informed my preaching, my counseling, my administration and my social justice work. I was further impressed by the words of educator Harold Taylor, engaged by a committee to study Unitarian Universalist theological education, who wrote of Unitarian Universalist religious education as

the process by which religious values themselves are recreated by the continual infusion of fresh thinking and new ideas from the sources of contemporary knowledge and contemporary culture. Otherwise it has no place from which to draw its own spiritual nourishment and sustenance, being itself an enterprise devoted to extending the frontier of religious discovery and in this way differing from other organizations of Western or Eastern religions. (The Committee to Study the Theological Education of Unitarian Universalist Ministers. Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 1962, pp. 27-28)

Hence, I see ministry through a religious education lens.

Religious education is that life-long process of growing our own values, meanings and convictions in a community of faith. It is a life-long endeavor. Such an understanding is central, fundamental, indispensable. Having been a participant/observer in faith development/religious education over the years, it is only natural that I reflect upon and write about those experiences in ways that might be helpful into the future.

I hope this book and its companion volume on my own RE philosophy will

* spark a new conversation on the place of religious education in the Unitarian Universalist movement

* deepen faith development philosophy

* enhance educational practice

* become a practical tool in the hands of RE directors, ministers, seminary professors and students, and those dedicated lay people who find religious education absolutely central to their identity as Unitarian Universalists.

It is important to see where we have come from. When I began considering this project, I was unable to a single collection of accumulated wisdom in the history of UU faith development. This anthology seeks to address that issue by collecting in one volume some of the critical efforts to state a basic philosophy of religious education at multiple life and professional stages. These essays are critical building blocks for better understanding who we are as religious people. This study may in turn help us determine where we want to go.

THE PROCESS

As a member of a religious education history group I spent time at the Andover Library of Harvard Divinity School perusing historical documents pertaining to RE philosophy. My tendency to collect and keep materials has resulted in files full of seminary class notes, sermons, pamphlets and monographs on this topic. Bookshelves which frame my office groan with curriculum books and philosophical tracts gathered over the decades. Despite this plethora of material I was faced with the task of transforming many of them into digital form for printing or posting on-line. Scanning, despite the miracle of technology, is a laborious task. At the same time it was an occasion for reviewing materials old and new. Most difficult of all was selecting which essays would be included in this book and which would be posted on a website.

The criteria for selection of these essays are:

(1) American. While Unitarian Universalism is represented world-wide, these essays are selected from American sources.

(2) Philosophical. These selections deal with the religious rationale for Unitarian Universalist faith development. They deal primarily with why we do what we do rather than with history, curriculum or technique. Quite obviously, there is overlapping with other themes, but religious education philosophy is the central motif. An attempt has been made to include a variety of theological and educational perspectives.

(3) Classic. These essays have been chosen because they have been seminal in the development of Unitarian Universalist understandings of religious education. From Channing’s Sunday School Address to the works of Sophia Lyon Fahs and Angus H. MacLean, these words have been formative in our history. Some might be considered bridge essays which mark the beginning or end of an era.

(4) Accessibility. For the most part, these essays are not readily available in other places. For example, material from the Essex Conversations is not included as it is easily obtained from UUA headquarters. On the other hand, copies of Liberal Religious Education, UUMA Selected Essays and Journal of the Liberal Ministry are not easily found.

(5) Unitarian Universalist Authorship. The essays are, with one notable exception (Harold Taylor), by Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists. It is not that we have a corner on wisdom, but I think it important to sort out and gather what we have said about ourselves and our mission in the world.

Many scanned essays not included in this book will be available on line at http://rsgilbert.wordpress.com/, or subsequent websites.

Following the Afterword are listings of annotated books and essays by Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists, by non-UU’s who have provided insights, and a reference to essays from Liberal Religious Education.

What follows is a collection of tracts on the Unitarian Universalist philosophy of religious education in essentially chronological order, beginning with an historical survey by the late Elizabeth Anastos and updated by Elizabeth Strong. Following this historical survey is a collection of short quotations mostly from Unitarians in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. The bulk of the essays is from the second half of the twentieth century. It is quite a journey from Channing to the Tapestry of Faith! One can read these essays sequentially to get a taste of historical development or pick and choose based on author or topic. In either case, enjoy the journey.

Please note that these essays were written in the context of their time and are thus generally non-inclusive in terms of gender. In addition, for the sake of brevity, certain incidental comments have been deleted to focus on the heart of the message. Ellipses mark the deletions.

Special thanks are due to Barry Andrews, Susan Archer, Mary Benard, the late Helena Chapin, Margaret Corletti, Betsy Darr, Natalie Fenderson, Mark Hicks, John Hurley, Mike McClone, Makanah Morriss, Eugene Navias, Roberta Nelson, Robin Pugh, Donald Southworth, Elizabeth Strong, and, of course, Joyce Gilbert, my editor.

UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST RELIGIOUS EDUCATION:

A BRIEF HISTORY

M. Elizabeth Anastos, 1981—Adapted with additions and notes by Elizabeth M. Strong, 2009

Both documents published by the Unitarian Universalist Association

Elizabeth Anastos (1927-2004) was a religious educator in the parish and at the denominational level. A prominent Minister of Religious Education, she was the UUA Education Consultant from 1980 to 1982 and the UUA Co-Coordinator of Curriculum Development from 1982 to 1992. In 1981 she wrote a brief history of Unitarian Universalist religious education. Elizabeth Strong, MRE in Rochester and Syracuse, NY, and RE Consultant in the Massachusetts Bay District, in 2009 updated and adapted what Anastos had written. Ed.

The Unitarians and Universalist merged with and diverged from the mainstream of Protestant religious education philosophy and practice through the past two centuries. It has been mostly divergence however, and always toward the more liberal movements in theology, educational philosophy, and then psychology as it became an accepted science. An early divergence began in the 18th century when Jonathan Edwards and Charles Chauncy parted ways. These two men had widely different views on the nature of the child. Jonathan Edwards held that the child could come to know God and goodness only through a conversion experience, by an act of divine violence suddenly and miraculously recreating the human will, making it for the first time instantly and forever capable of good. He believed that children should be taught the Calvinist catechism and instructed from the pulpit, but that conversion was ultimately the only way to salvation.

Charles Chauncy, however, believed that one came to a gradual realization and understanding of religious truths through teachings. He denied that one was saved only by a conversion experience, and left the door open to the possibilities of growth through religious education. And another 18th century liberal Christian leader, Jonathan Mayhew, believed that humans had the capacity to distinguish right from wrong, to think for themselves in matters of religion, and to respect the religious conscience of others.

Despite these liberal attitudes, the catechism was the usual method employed in religious education until well into the 19th century. By means of the catechetical method in which church doctrine was stated in the form of questions and answers to be memorized by the child or adult being instructed, the learner was to come to an understanding and acceptance of religious truth. The method presented a closed, reasoned system, not allowing the potential learner the opportunity to question and explore other possibilities of religious understandings.

The late 18th and early 19th centuries saw the beginning of the Sunday School Movement. Originating in England in 1780, although there is some evidence that Theophilus Lindsay had a Sunday school as early as 1764, the idea soon spread to the United States. It was begun primarily to offer the opportunity of a secular education to factory children who worked the other six days of the week. In this country, the Congregational Churches of New England formed Sunday Schools and soon used them to teach morals and religion. Several of these parishes became Unitarian by 1827 when the Boston Sunday School Society, later to become the Unitarian Sunday School Society, was formed; there were several such schools in the Boston area.

Universalist Sunday schools were formed as early as 1790 in Philadelphia when Dr. Benjamin Rush was one of the founders of an organization known as the First Day School or Sunday School Society. In the same year the Philadelphia Convention of Universalists in its resolutions gave strong endorsement to schools of instruction for children. Soon Universalist churches in Boston and other parts of the country had formed Sunday schools. The content of the instruction was mostly the Bible and church history.

The first coordinated effort to produce a curriculum for the Sunday schools was undertaken by the Sunday School Society in 1833 with Henry Ware, Jr., President of the Society, as editor. It was a series of books which included his own Life of the Savior and others on the Holy Land and the Reformation. The next year he began a series called Scenes and Characters Illustrating Christian Truth. By 1850 the Sunday School Society had a complete course of instruction. The theology was that of Unitarian Christianity, the method was that of imparting information about the Bible and the history of Christianity, with some biographies of religious personages. There seems to have been no discussion or questioning of the possible meaning of the content, only factual questions on the content alone.

There were liberalizing forces at work during the 19th century, however. William Ellery Channing delivered a revolutionary discourse to the Sunday School Society in 1837 in which he stated that the Sunday school movement should be re-centered on a foundation that was liberal, Gospel centered, and responsive to the needs and capacities of children. Religious education should be

. . . to awaken rational and moral energy within (the child), and to lead (the child) to the free choice of the right, to the free determination of himself (or herself) to truth and duty… . The great end in religious instruction, whether in the Sunday School or family, is not to stamp our minds irresistibly on the young, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own… to touch inward springs; . . . to quicken and strengthen the power of thought… in a word, the great object of all schools is to awaken the intellectual and moral life in the child.

Channing shared amazing insights into developmental growth that were not put into practice in educational circles until the 20th century and the advent of John Dewey, G. Stanley Hall and George Albert Coe and their theories of progressive education in the public or common schools and within the churches.

Some advances were made. In 1852 the second Unitarian church school curriculum was published, a graded series of eight manuals. This was a first in religious education, for the mainstream denominations were developing the Uniform Lessons in which every class was taught the same Bible text on a given Sunday regardless of the age and developmental level of the students. Even so, several of our Sunday schools used the Uniform Lessons for many years for they included guides for the teachers and questions to ask of the students on the factual content of the material being presented. The teachers could also be trained and given certification which increased their teaching status.

In Universalist circles there were those who were willing to have their children taught the same lessons that the children of orthodox neighbors learned, but others strongly desired courses with an emphasis on Universalist principles and beliefs. In 1888 a commission conducted a study of the lesson problem and recommended that the Uniform Lessons be used, but with an accompanying text by Rev. James Pullman offering an exposition of the Bible passages. The compromise was in effect in most Universalist churches until the early 1900s. The Universalist Helper and The Myrtle publications assisted Universalist teachers with the help they sought in providing the Universalist message to the Uniform Lessons. John Coleman Adams worked with Pullman as editor and contributor to these helps. By the late 1800 the impact of the Higher Biblical Criticism and Darwin’s theory of evolution and discoveries in the Science of Geology was felt in both Unitarian and Universalist educational efforts. Each denomination responded with vigor to these developments and the subsequent curricula demonstrated the influence of these disciplines. The scholarship of Professor Orello Cone at St. Lawrence Theological School was instrumental in the development of new ever more liberal material for the Universalists.

Another liberalizing factor for curriculum development was the Western movement of our churches, and in 1873 the Western Conference formed its Sunday School Association. In 1899, reflecting on the accomplishments of that group, A.A. Gould said:

First, it had helped our schools beyond the idea that all religion was confined to a chosen people and their scripture. Second, it had taught the idea that all life is religious, and that our own social institutions have fully as great religious lessons for our children as had the tabernacle of Moses. Third, it has shown that all nature is religious… and fourth, it was showing that all true art is religious… . A fine picture will speak to the mind of a child long before words will do so.

A final factor influencing the gradual liberal trends influencing the character of curriculum in the 100 years between the first curriculum of 1833 and that which was inspired by the educational philosophy of John Dewey was Dr. Edward A. Horton’s leadership in producing the fourth Unitarian curriculum in the 1890s. This was a one topic, three level curriculum. There were seven topics in the series. On a given Sunday, the whole church school studied the same topic at the primary, junior, or senior level. The subject matter was devoted to the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and Christian History. The method was didactic and the philosophy of education was that of imparting a body of knowledge. Little or no attention was given to stirring up the child’s mind, and it was fifty plus years after Channing’s address to the Sunday School Society! There was, however, a recognition of different levels of development, thus different levels of readiness for absorption of religious history and ideas.

By the turn of the century, Horton’s one topic, three level curriculum was extensively used and was being supplemented by other materials, especially for younger children, on nature, exemplary lives, and good deeds. Before retiring from the Unitarian Sunday School Society, Dr. Horton inspired a fifth curriculum series in 1909, the first to be called The Beacon Series. It drew from a variety of sources: myths of our own and other cultures, ethics, social service, citizenship, evolution; and it applied critical scholarship to the biblical materials. It was still predominantly content-centered and was not very progressive in drawing upon the experiences and interests of the children. It did not last long.

In 1912, the Department of Education was formed at the American Unitarian Association to assume administrative responsibilities and program development for religious education. This released the Unitarian Sunday School Society to concentrate on research. Under this new arrangement, the Rev. William Lawrence, president of the Sunday School Society, and Dr. Edwin D. Starbuck, consulting editor to the new department, joined forces to produce the sixth curriculum effort of the Unitarians called The New Beacon Course in Religious Education. Here the first glimmerings of the educational philosophy of John Dewey began to be felt. Lawrence, in describing the new series stated: Hitherto, lessons in religion have been largely material-centered. Our proposal is that these lessons shall be child-centered. The intent was not fully realized, for the materials used content-centered discussion questions. Few tried to elicit the child’s own thought to stir curiosity and imagination to seek out new insights. Activities are included in the lesson plans, mostly workbook type or simple art projects. The content was broadened to encompass more non-biblical material: study of other denominations, interest in the here and now with young children, science, study of great lives, and concern for the world and its problems as they affect young people. Grounded in theism and strongly Judeo-Christian in emphasis, its educational theory was that of classical realism or essentialism. Its aim was to pass on and to preserve the established tradition of the inherited culture; to acquire the knowledge and skill of intellectual discipline; to develop moral character and to help students adjust to life situations. The New Beacon Course in Religious Education was, however, a landmark in the development of curriculum materials for church schools, and well in advance of the materials published by most (if not all) of the other denominations, as Dorothy Spoerl wrote in a paper, Unitarian Curriculum Development in the 20th Century.

The Universalists in the period from 1889 to 1920 had formed several state Sunday School Associations to promote the work of education in the local churches. Clinton Lee Scott reports in his The Universalist Church: A Short History that lending libraries were introduced and children’s story books were produced in great quantities. The Universalist Sunday School Library Commission, appointed in 1883, served the denomination by encouraging the writing of books for Universalist libraries and recommending others suitable for use.

The problem of producing satisfactory lessons for children and youth was a continuing frustration for the Universalist churches. Finally, in 1901 a series of Universalist Graded Lessons were published. Between 1908 and 1912 the Murray Graded Sunday School Lessons were published. They were modeled on the Uniform Lessons but reflected the Higher Biblical Criticism and Evolutionary Theory that the Universalists insisted be included in the biblical content of the lessons. Other secular resources were also included in the lessons, along with teacher helps and developmental characteristics of the children and young people for whom the program was intended. They went out of print in 1920 and were not reissued because progressive education theory was being more widely used in educational circles.

Until 1913, religious education in the Universalist Church had been promoted and guided by volunteers, most of whom had had no special training for the task unless they had gone through the teacher training within the International Uniform Lesson System of the Evangelical Protestants. As the Universalists moved away from this System, mainly because of their insistence on using the Higher Biblical Criticism and Evolutionary Theory in the content, they needed to rely on their own resources to train teachers, and it was not adequate for the task. In 1913, in an effort to strengthen and raise the standards of religious education, the Universalist General Convention formally gave sanction to the organization of the General Sunday School Association, with funds for staff and publications. Its first Executive Director was the Rev. George E. Huntley, President of St. Lawrence Theological School, a position he resigned to take on the responsibilities of the GSSA. He was followed by Dr. A. Gertrude Earle, 1929-1931; and Susan Andrews, 1931-1949.

During the years of its existence, the General Sunday School Association made valuable contributions to the churches. Dr. Scott writes:

It operated in a period of tentative pedagogical theories and experimentation. It magnified the place of the child in the church, pressed for better housing of children’s classes, and enlarged the scope of religious nurture in the home and community. The Association was able to make the transition from Bible-centered to curriculum-centered to child-centered to experience-centered teaching, with a facility less readily achieved in the larger denominational bodies. (The Universalist Church in America: A Short History, p. 51)

By 1930 the educational and psychological world was moving rapidly ahead, and those concerned with our religious education were once more turning their thoughts toward a new curriculum. Behaviorism, Gestalt and Depth Psychology were now a clear part of the psychological picture; research on child development had proliferated and the findings were being synthesized into theory; the work of John Dewey was having a vast effect on all education, along with the laws of learning of Thorndike, and the increase of interest in free creative activity for children. All of these were to be reflected in the next forward step of the denomination. (D. Spoerl)

Dewey’s educational philosophy is called experimentalist. It advocates that the business of education is to replace chance activity with activity which leads to genuine knowledge and fruitful understanding. It is the teacher’s responsibility to organize, select, and direct experience so that participation in activity will effect a maximum of understanding and knowledge. Through the reconstruction of experience, the learner will grow. The experience of the growing individual, in self-identification, in association with others, and in utilization of the environment, constitutes the essence of education.

1935-1954

Two persons appear on the list of those working for the Unitarians in the mid-1930s who were to have a profound influence on liberal religious education for the next quarter century: Ernest Kuebler and Sophia Lyon Fahs. Ernest Kuebler was appointed in 1935 to be the new Secretary of the Department of Religious Education for the American Unitarian Association (AUA). Educated at Boston University and Yale in philosophy, social work, religious and character education, he brought to the position wide experience as an administrator and program developer, determined to be an educator-minister rather than a minister who was only incidentally an educator. Kuebler’s theological position was that of liberal theism grounded in free, individualistic life-enhancing methods of religious education. His educational philosophy was that of Dewey and Kilpatrick.

Universalist professor of religious education, Angus H. MacLean, at St. Lawrence Theological School, had a profound influence on ministerial formation at the school and on the philosophy of Universalist religious education. The graduates received extensive educational experiences in the field working with children, teachers and colleagues learning how to practice the method is the message in their teaching. MacLean also incorporated the progressive educational theories of Dewey, Starbuck, and George Albert Coe in his teaching. When students graduated with their Bachelors of Divinity they also received Certification in Religious Education. This model of educating prepared Universalist ministers for the educating and the preaching ministry.

It was on Kuebler’s recommendation that Sophia Lyon Fahs, a member of one of the AUA’s two Curriculum Committees, writer of articles, and author of three books on religious education, teacher at Union Theological School, and Acting Superintendent and teacher of the Junior Department of the Riverside Church, New York City, become the part time editor of children’s curriculum materials. Her educational philosophy was also that of John Dewey, for she had been trained at the Teachers College of Columbia University which espoused and applied Dewey’s philosophy.

Members from the General Sunday School Association (GSSA) of the Universalist Church of America served on curriculum committees within the Department of Religious Education of the American Unitarian Association and the joint efforts produced were used in both denominations programs of religious education. Susan Andrews and Harriet G. Yates represented the GSSA.

Theologically, Sophie Fahs had moved in her lifetime from evangelical Christianity to an appreciation of the religions of all times and places. She was a monistic, naturalistic theist. In her pamphlet, A New Ministry to Children, she stated:

We believe in freedom of religion—freedom to be honest in speech and action, freedom to respect one’s own identity, freedom to question, to investigate, to try to understand life and the universe… freedom to search anywhere and everywhere to find the meaning of being… . We join modern scientists in believing in a Living Universe. Either the Living Universe is the Living God or somehow within it the Living God abides. We feel what we call a Presence, a Power, a Creative Intelligence, Soul pervading all… . There is no division between sacred and secular. We have a duty to things as well as people. There is an excellent and a less excellent way of dealing with everything. There are no acts and no things outside the moral realm. Every deed included a choice. Everything presents an ethical challenge.

The New Beacon Series began with two books of creation myths: Beginnings of Earth and Sky and Beginnings of Life and Death. The co-author of the second, Dorothy Spoerl, would eventually succeed Mrs. Fahs as curriculum editor, but not for many years. Dr. Kuebler and Mrs. Fahs worked with a curriculum advisory committee, several members of which wrote books or pamphlets that became part of this series which included books for children, with guides for parents and teachers. Dorothy Spoerl, Lucille Lindberg, Angus MacLean, Elizabeth Manwell and Abigail Eliot were part of these endeavors.

Sophia Fahs and those with whom she worked in the development of the New Beacon Series of Religious Education believed that religious educators and others could validate a person’s growth religiously through interaction with carefully chosen materials and with the environment. It was not a course of study but rather a guide which helped teachers and children together to grow into an awareness of the spiritual meanings of living—this was the thrust of The New Beacon Series in Religious Education from 1937 to 1954. During that time 24 books for students with teacher’s guides, a song book and a worship guide were produced. They were attractive in format and illustration.

Two other significant books described the philosophy upon which the series was based: Consider the Children and How They Grow published in 1940 by Elizabeth Manwell and Sophia Fahs, dealing with the development of young children and their participation in religious experience; and Today’s Children and Yesterday’s Heritage, (1952) by Sophia Fahs. The latter book developed in detail the theology and the psychological and educational theory underlying the curriculum.

1954-1964

The Council of Liberal Churches came into being by a plebiscite vote of a joint assembly of the Unitarian and Universalist bodies in 1953. The Council was formed to administer the public relations, publications, and education materials of the two denominations. Thus, the two departments of religious education became one Division of Education with Ernest Kuebler as its director.

Sophia Fahs retired as curriculum editor in 1954, although she continued as a part-time consultant until 1964. For the next five years there were several part-time editors, but in 1959 it became apparent that full-time direction was needed, and Universalist Dorothy Tilden Spoerl was appointed curriculum editor.

Dorothy Spoerl had been associated with Sophia Fahs and the New Beacon Series since its inception. A Universalist minister, psychologist, and educator, she was well versed in child psychology and educational theory. A humanist, she brought a less theistic emphasis to the educational programming. She stressed the need of children finding meaning in their experiences and having help in forming their religious, social, and ethical values. She placed an emphasis on religious identity, the need to have a sense of belonging to the religious community, and a knowledge of its history and traditions. The materials produced in the early 1960s reflected Dr. Spoerl’s humanistic, historical and religious orientation.

1965-1980

When Dorothy Spoerl left the position of curriculum editor in 1964, most of our societies were still using the books and pamphlets of the New Beacon Series, although some, like the Martin and Judy books for preschoolers, were being criticized for their white, middle-class bias. We were in the middle of the civil rights movement, and about to become involved in the Viet Nam War with its resulting unrest among youth and other segments of our society. The Unitarians and the Universalists had merged to form the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961 and commissions had been appointed to study the needs of the new Association in six different areas of congregational life. Commission III, Education and Liberal Religion, reported its observations and recommendations with those of the other commissions in The Free Church in the Changing World in 1963. The Commission was supportive of the experimental, developmental philosophy of the New Beacon Series. It outlined what it saw as specific needs in each age group and suggested that more emphasis should be placed upon the following in curriculum: ethics, Unitarian Universalist ideals, theology—be it humanist or theist—freedom and responsibility, the natural order, and social relationships.

It stressed the need for better scholarship in the preparation of biblical and historical materials, for better worship materials for children, and for more teacher training materials.

One of the members of that commission, Hugo Hollerorth, became the next director of curriculum development. Henry Cheetham was the director of the Department of Education, and had already begun to put into effect the recommendations of the commission. Hollerorth, formerly a Congregational minister, had served our Unitarian Universalist Church in Paramus, NJ as minister of religious education, and had most recently been Professor of Religious Education at St. Lawrence University’s Theological School in Canton, NY.

Hollerorth, in the educational tradition of Dewey, and in the existential theological framework of Tillich, produced religious education materials to meet the needs of the 1970s. He formed curriculum planning teams of educators, theologians and writers creating and publishing multimedia kits of curriculum resources for our Unitarian Universalist congregations. In response to Commission III’s recommendations, the first materials were in the subject areas of ethics (Decision Making, Freedom and Responsibility); culture studies (Man the Culture Builder I & II, Human Heritage I & II); social relationships (About Your Sexuality, The Invisible Minority); knowledge and meaning (Man, the Meaning Maker, Person to Person); personal religious and emotional development (The Haunting House); religious heritage (Focus on Noah, Adventures of God’s Folk); and Unitarian Universalist Heritage and Ideas (Disagreements Which Unite Us, Experiencing, Believing, and Celebrating, and Our Ways of Relating). Hollerorth also published a philosophical statement, Relating to Our World, in which he wrote:

The Unitarian Universalist religion is a process for achieving a life-enhancing orientation to a power-filled world employing: the power of the human mind; the creative interaction with oneself, with other human beings and with nature; the potentiality of human beings to be with each other in a relationship of freedom, love, sensitivity, honesty, independence, and adventurousness; the full range of human knowledge including the heritage of all the world’s religions, as well as the knowledge from the secular field of human inquiry; the diversity of thought within the human community.

Although the multimedia kits had their weaknesses, as does any curriculum, they provided the volunteer teachers of our church schools with several resources with which to conduct a class—statements of the goals and objectives of the course, background books, audio-visual aids, stories, activities, and other teaching aids.

Norman Benson, a Unitarian Universalist educator teaching at Southern Illinois University, came to the UUA’s Department of Education and Social Responsibility as director in 1967. During his tenure at the UUA and during the Administration of Robert West, the decision was made to develop our curriculum materials without any explicit denominational or religious references within the texts. It was hoped that this policy would provide a larger market for the distribution of expensive-to-produce curricula. Several curriculum kits were sold to secular institutions, although little financial advantage accrued to the UUA except the sale of About Your Sexuality, a course on human sexuality for adolescents, which was widely used by schools, other denominations, health and counseling agencies.

In the mid to late 1970s when Unitarian Universalist congregations began to seek educational materials that were explicitly religious and identified with Unitarian Universalism, the curriculum kits were found lacking. The needs and desires of the Association were changing.

Jean Starr Williams, religious educator at the First Unitarian Church in Chicago, IL and adjunct faculty in religious education at Meadville Lombard Theological School, became the director of the Section of Education within the newly formed Department of Ministerial and Congregational Services following a restructuring of the UUA administration in 1976. Leadership development programs were conducted throughout the continent with an emphasis on building religious community and assisting regional and local groups in the use of curriculum materials.

M. Elizabeth Anastos UUA 1981

1980-2000—THE RE FUTURES ERA WITH ELIZABETH ANASTOS 1980 TO 1999

The introduction of Elizabeth Anastos in Claiming the Past, Shaping the Future, describes her in these words.

Elizabeth served as Director of Religious Education in three congregations, beginning her career in 1959 in Haverhill, MA in 1959 and continuing in Weston, MA from 1962 to 1969. In 1980 while serving at Cedar Lane, in Bethesda, MD she was ordained to the Ministry of Religious Education. After eleven years she left to come to work for the UUA and was Director of Curriculum Development facilitating the creation of a new era in curricula

In the late 1970s new concerns about religious education emerged. Many religious professionals and congregations thought the UUA was not putting sufficient resources into education. Severe financial constraints had ended a concerted effort to produce a steady stream of innovative, quality programs… and a major effort was again required to meet the needs of our congregations.

At that time, many Unitarian Universalists were expressing a desire to learn about and develop an identity with Unitarian Universalist values, beliefs, history, and traditions, and to explore their own spirituality within a Unitarian Universalist community. Congregations were struggling with concerns for the elderly,