A strange thing happened to me on the way to wilting this article. A woman from one of our churches approached me with the question, “Is it true, Bishop, are you really against Christian education?”
Becoming used to being misquoted or quoted out of context, I asked her where she had gotten such an idea. She said that someone had interpreted my remarks regarding Christian education as meaning I was against the enterprise of educating our young Church people.
As a former professional Christian educator at the secondary, college and seminary level, I found the question to be a curious one. In the brief conversation which followed, some clarity began to emerge. In my remarks I had questioned the institution of the Sunday school and suggested that perhaps we needed to take another and deeper look at what we call Christian education within the Church.
Risking the same potential for being misunderstood, the intent of this month’s column is to raise some of the same questions because I passionately care about the present state and future of Christian education in the Diocese. No, I’m not against Christian education. I care about it so much that I am willing to raise difficult questions that need to be asked in order to ensure and strengthen its future within the Diocese.
As a related aside, I hope that the article in this month’s ChurchNews on the Niobrara Summer Seminary is an indication of just how serious I am concerning this important area of SWEEPS. I shall state the obvious: Christian Education is an essential and central aspect of all the categories of SWEEPS.
An appropriate subtitle for these brief thoughts on Christian education might be, “Some radical questions and traditional answers for Christian education.” The subtitle provides a clue to what lam up to this month.
First, I shall raise some questions that other professional Christian educators have raised in recent years and, I think, are probably on the minds of many folks within the Church. I shall then attempt the beginnings of a brief practical theology of Christian education by offering some innovative answers which are actually very traditional and very conservative. I offer no definitive answers. My intent is to provoke with the hope of evoking fresh discussion.
The questions:
—Why is it that Christian education is generally seen as a serious problem in most parishes and dioceses? If we just had a good Christian ed. program . . .
—Why do we spend so much time, effort and money to find the right program, curriculum or person for the right Christian ed. program? Why don’t we ever seem to find the right program, person or curriculum?
—Why is it that Christian education is normally equated or synonymous with Sunday or Church school? Does Christian education happen elsewhere? If so, where?
—Why do we have classrooms in our churches that resemble public school classrooms (complete with blackboards, bulletin boards, felt boards and, let us not forget, maps of the Holy Land)?
—Why, if Christian education is so important, is it normally restricted to one hour (or less) of one day a week?
—Or is It really that important?
—Or do we say it is that important but act otherwise?
—Why is it that small churches (the majority of the churches of this Diocese) feel guilty if they don’t have Christian education programs that resemble larger church programs?
More substantive questions:
—What do we mean by the term Christian education?
—What do we teach in our Sunday/ Church schools?
—Why do we teach what we teach?
—What is the goal or anticipated outcome of Christian education?
—Why, for the most part and in spite of our best intentions, do the majority of our Christian education programs generate little interest and small attendance?
—Why are many of our classrooms empty?
—Why do we have a hard time recruiting Sunday school teachers?
—Why do we tend to recruit professional educators (or at lest try to) to teach Church school?
—Why is it, when searching for a new priest, that we insist that the person be a caring pastor, competent priest and stimulating preacher but require little, if any, ability to teach?
—Why do ordained ministers tend to teach the adult classes?
—Why don’t clergy teach young children?
—Who is responsible for Christian education?
a. Clergy
b. Director of Christian education or his/her counterpart
c. Church school teacher
d. parents
e. Godparents
f. members of the church
g. all of the above
h. none of the above
—Why do we generally think of Christian education in terms of younger children?
—Is confirmation a graduation from Christian education?
—Why do we have religious/Christian/Episcopal schools (e.g. All Saints, St. Mary’s) and how are they religious, Christian and Anglican?
—Why do we support Episcopal colleges (e.g. Sewanee) and what do they teach or offer that is unique?
—Are our seminaries primarily schools for training professional ministers for ordination or do they have a role and responsibility to the ministry of the laity?
—What has the Diocesan Christian Education Committee been up to in the last ten years? five years? past year? Why did it change its name from Christian Education Task Force to Committee? Should it be a diocesan commission? If so, what should it be commissioned to do?
Such a basic examination of Christian education could continue ad infinitum. I do hope that these questions might generate other related questions. However, all of the foregoing questions can be summarized by asking six more fundamental questions.
Six fundamental questions:
—What is educational about Christian education?
—How is such education Christian?
—What do we teach and how do we teach it?
—What is the subject matter or object of Christian education, religion or faith?
—Who is responsible for Christian education?
—Should some or all Christians be taught?
A final and more vexing question that, I suspect, informs many of the foregoing questions: “Will our children have faith?”
Let us now consider briefly, a beginning response to some of the questions raised. John Westerhoff, a well known Episcopal priest and Christian educator at Duke University, raises some of the same questions in his book entitled Will Our Children Have Faith? (Seabury Press, New York, 1976).
As an aside, I enthusiastically recommend this book to all persons interested In Christian education in the Diocese. It is succinct, well written and provocative not only for the questions that it raises but more important for the direction suggested in addressing such questions.
Coincidently and most timely, John Westerhoff will be conducting a spring Christian education conference in the Diocese of North Dakota at Maryvale on May 13-14. Please attend if possible. I have worked with Fr. Westerhoff and found him to be stimulating and sensitive. He embodies that which he professes.
Will our children have faith Is not an innocent or emotionally neutral question. It strikes at the core underlying the questions that I have raised. Dr. Westerhoff in his book points to the inadequacy of what he terms the schooling-instructional method and model for Christian education.
An essential part of his argument is that faith is not taught but rather caught in a community of faith where interactions between generations are the means of nurture and education. Such education he calls enculturation”, a method which takes different stages of faith development seriously and points to a process of religious socialization or formation that has three goals.
The first goal is a personal experience and knowledge of the risen Christ as revealed in the Bible and the ability to use this knowledge as a theologian: to interpret the meaning of the experience in living our life with others.
Second, a personal knowledge of the Church’s tradition and the ability to interpret it in the way we live our lives as professed Christians.
Third, a personal knowledge of the theology of the Church (Creeds, doctrine and dogma) which will inform our behavior as practicing Christian ethicists.
Westerhoff’s concept of and method for Christian education are radically traditional and conservative. Traditional in the sense that long before the rise of contemporary professional Christian educators, the tradition was passed on by story and example by the community of faith through worship, precept and example. Conservative in that it recognized the importance of conserving our past and sharing It with each new generation if we are to understand who we are as Christians living in the present and anticipating the future.
All of this presupposes that we have some personal knowledge of the faith as individuals and as a community of believers called the Church. Said differently, we cannot teach or share that which we ourselves do not have or know. The teacher parent or church member may teach about Christianity but nothing will be taught or caught if he/she does not in some way embody the gospel. Children learn best by behavioral example; for that matter so do adults.
In the ancient Church, believe it or not, there was no director of Christian education, Sunday school program or salvific curriculum, The rabbi (meaning teacher—a title often given to Jesus and a function of ministry that desperately needs to be reclaimed by the clergy today) and the parents (to include the larger extended family—today’s Church family) had the responsibility for what we call today Christian education”.
Faith formation was a family affair and consisted of telling stories, rehearsing God’s gift of Torah, reading and reflecting on God’s Word and participating in the cult and ritual of the synagogue/Church. Actually all education, of which religious education was an integral part, was the primary responsibility of the family. It was neither relegated or delegated entirely to others.
Given the fact that we have delegated almost all of the education of our children to public or parochial schools and religious education to Church schools, it is hardly surprising that the foregoing questions make us a bit uneasy if not downright angry.
People frequently say, “After all, it’s their responsibility . . .my tax dollars (and in some cases tuition) are going to pay them to do it . . . that’s what the Church is for – to provide moral and spiritual education; it’s the responsibility of the clergy – that’s what we pay them to do . . .”
Beneath such protestations, I suspect, is a gnawing guilt. Guilt born of not knowing what to teach if we had to teach it. It surfaces in odd ways: “What our children need is a good Sunday school program, knowledge of the Bible, and an understanding of the Church.” I sense that those who speak such words the loudest are really speaking to themselves.
Said differently, we are fearful of admitting our own ignorance of the tradition while at the same time saying our Christian faith and the Church are (or should be) the most important aspects of our life. Or more bluntly, perhaps it is hoped that the sins of omission of the mothers and fathers will be made up for by the Christian education of the sons and the daughters.
What we have to teach and share with one another and our children is not a lifeless body of religious subject matter. What we have to give and receive is a living faith.
Religious knowledge in and of itself will not guarantee a living faith. A living faith however, seeks religious knowledge as a way to further deepen and share that which must be shared because it is loving, vital and crucial for our lives together.
There appears to be a growing consensus among the professional Christian educators that a new model and method for faith formation is in the offing. The older paradigms have not delivered what they promised. A new approach, for many resembling an older approach, is needed to conserve our tradition in a way that will enable us to face a pluralistic, rapidly changing world. Not a retreat to the past, but a faith for today formed and informed by the past.
The new paradigm for such formation is ecclesially based rather than simply being confined or reduced to the academy or school. The emphasis is on theological understanding supported by religious knowledge and not the reduction of Christian formation to simply religious knowledge.
All the other activities of SWEEPS are groundless if we do not know who and Whose we are in terms of such a Christian understanding. It is time that we look again to the Living Word and a living liturgy as the essential elements of a living faith seeking understanding leading to informed and faithful action in a broken and sinful world. Ecclesiastically