Will Our Children Have Faith?

John H. Westerhoff

• Publisher: Morehouse Publishing
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780819228017
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This classic critique of Christian education is revised, expanded and includes Westerhoff's overview on the state Christian education over the past forty years. According to Westerhoff, instead of guiding faith formation within the family, the church, and the school, we relegate religious education to Sunday morning classes. There, children learn the facts about religion, but how will they learn or experience faith? How can we nourish and nurture the faith of children, instead of only teaching the facts?

CHAPTER ONE

The Shaking of the
Foundations

The immediate future of liberal Protestant education is uncertain. Despite its appearance of modernity and relentless relevance, mainstream Protestantism is rooted in the ethos of the last century. [The issue that faces us is] do we have the courage to acknowledge the shaking of the foundations?

Robert W. Lynn

It is a truism that Christian faith and education are inevitable companions. Wherever living faith exists, there is a community endeavoring to know, understand, live, and witness to that faith. Still, an accurate description of education in the church today is difficult. Here and there exemplary educational ministries flourish, but in many more places anxiety, confusion, frustration, despair, and even failure exist. While generalizations may be difficult, few would defend the contemporary health and vitality of Christian education within mainline Protestant Churches. Since 1957 when Life magazine dubbed the Sunday school the most wasted hour of the week, increasing numbers of church persons have admitted that their educational ministries are less than adequate for the day. The church school, despite numerous bold innovations and even a few modern success stories, is plagued with disease. There may be disagreement over the severity of the illness and the prognosis of recovery, but there is no debate as to whether or not all is well. Differing diagnoses, however, do exist. For example, it appears that many church educators are sure that we are dealing with a surface infection, while I am convinced that we face a very serious disease.

This conviction is not entirely new. Colloquy (an ecumenical magazine on education in church and society) was born in 1968 and for eight years, as founder and editor, I advocated the need for radical change in church education. In 1970, just before the walls of mainline Protestant church education began to show its cracks, I published a series of works which boldly suggested that an alternative for church education was needed. I have now concluded that it is not enough simply to conceive of alternative programs for church education; fundamental issues once clearly resolved need to be explored afresh. No longer can we assume that the educational understandings that have informed us, or the theological foundations that have undergirded our efforts, are adequate for the future. A continuing myopic concern for education, understood primarily as schooling and instruction and undergirded by increasingly vague pluralistic theologies, will not be adequate for framing the future of religious education. Today we face an extremely radical problem which only revolution can address. We must now squarely face the fundamental question: Will our children have faith?

BEGINNINGS

The roots of our problem go back to the turn of the century and a joke: “When is a school not a school?” The answer: “When it is a Sunday school!” Coming when it did, this characteristic comment triggered a reaction throughout mainline Protestantism. A new generation of leaders, in what was commonly referred to as religious education, emerged. They were embarrassed by the Sunday school and impressed by the emerging public school system with new understandings of child development and pedagogy. The Sunday school, they believed, was outmoded and needed to be replaced. The times, they concluded, called for both the birth of a new church school (modeled after the public schools) and the introduction of religious instruction into the nation’s common schools. Thus in 1903 the Religious Education Association was founded with the dual purposes of inspiring the religious forces of our country with an educational ideal and the educational forces with a religious one.

The church school envisioned by these women and men of the progressive era conformed to an image of the best in public education. A new profession was born to create and sustain the church school. Seminaries developed departments of religious education and conferred degrees, directors and ministers of religious education were employed by the churches, and denominations responded with a new educational bureaucracy. The old-time people’s Sunday school had begun to be transformed into the professional’s church school. Soon religious education, influenced by liberal theology, was identified with church schooling and the instruction of children, youth, and adults according to the methods of modern pedagogy.

Gradually the theological foundations of the religious education movement began to crumble, and by the late 40s and 50s most mainline denominations had adopted, in varying degrees, the theology of neo-orthodoxy. Religious education changed its name to Christian education, but the image of the church school and religious instruction remained intact. Large educational plants modeled after modern public school architecture and equipped with the latest in educational technology were built wherever economically feasible. More professionals were hired by local churches to direct these burgeoning educational institutions attached to local churches, and denominational curriculum resources erupted as big business.

During the 60s a few significant voices spoke out for a broader understanding of Christian education—Randolph Crump Miller, D. Campbell Wyckoff, C. Ellis Nelson, Robert Havighurst, Roger Shinn, Ross Snyder, Rachael Hendrilite, and Sara Little, to name a few. They boldly attempted to make the case that effective programs of Christian education needed to be planned in the light of the total mission and ministry of the church. They acknowledged that the church teaches most significantly through nurture in a worshiping, witnessing community of faith, and they clearly explained that explicit instruction in the church schools was only a small part of Christian education. Nevertheless, even they placed special emphasis on the church school and on instruction; few heard their call for a broader perspective.

We now find ourselves in the 70s with the foundations of neo-orthodoxy eroded, and seemingly unable to envision any significant alternative to the church. Rachael Hendrilite reminds us that we can’t go home again, C. Ellis Nelson emphasizes religious socialization, and Randolph Crump Miller shifts his attention to theological foundations. A few voices, like Edward A. Powers in his book, Signs of Shalom, repeat the earlier call for a broader understanding of Christian education and an attempt to provide a new theological foundation. Nevertheless, local church folk still ask for help in revitalizing their church schools without any particular theological foundation. A host of panaceas in the form of methodologies or new variations on the church school, such as family clusters, flourish for a time and denominations still strive to produce curriculum resources.

Vast amounts of money continue to be spent on teacher training, educational technology, and buildings. Numerous colleges have developed degree programs in Christian education to supply churches with economical semiprofessionals to save and revitalize their church schools. Denominations develop public relations campaigns to save the church school, and salvation by a new curriculum is still promised. A few reversals in past trends, or even a leveling off in the attendance decline, give people new hope, but still our educational ministries flounder. A broader perspective from which to evaluate, plan, and engage in Christian education is still not understood, or accepted. Some continue to offer a prophetic word and preach about alternatives, but little appears to change. Why?

THE PROBLEM

I am convinced that the very foundations upon which we engage in Christian education are shaking. And while a host of builders attempt with varying degrees of success to shore them up, there is a dearth of architects engaged in designing new structures. The church’s educational problem rests not in its educational program, but in the paradigm or model which undergirds its educational ministry—the agreed-upon frame of reference which guides its educational efforts.

Every field of endeavor operates out of some common frame of reference or identity. Most often we take this orientation for granted; it guides our work, helps us shape our questions, and provides us with insights for solutions to our problems. The paradigm within which we labor tells us what to do and provides us with a language to share our efforts with others.

Religious educators hold in common certain assumptions about their endeavor. The language of religious education subject matter, what we want someone else to know—is an expression of those understandings. The set of assumptions, orientation, and frame of reference which informs us is expressed in the paradigm by which we engage in educational ministry. Since the turn of the century, in spite of nods to other possibilities, Christian educators and local churches have functioned according to a schooling-instructional paradigm. That is, our image of education has been founded upon some sort of a “school” as the context and some form of instruction as the means. Seminaries, denominational bureaucracies, educational professionals, and local church lay persons have all shared this common perspective.

Within the confines of this model, a great number of imaginative, important, and relevant contributions to Christian education have been made; and a significant influence on the lives of adults, youth and children can be observed. It is only natural, therefore, that we have assured ourselves that improving the techniques and resources of schooling and instruction will continue to solve our education needs. But, limited by a once helpful model, we have blindly and unconsciously proceeded as if there were no other possible way. Attempts to broaden that perspective, while intellectually acknowledged, are functionally resisted, and so we continue to let the schooling-instruction paradigm define our problem and establish the criteria for choosing questions to be addressed. As a result, particular issues are acknowledged and only certain questions answered. The schooling-instructional paradigm isolates us from new possibilities while continuing to occupy most of our attention in teaching, research, practice, and resource development. To compound our difficulties, we find it functionally difficult to imagine or create any significant educational program outside it.

Of course, this is not uniquely a problem of the church. The church mirrors the society in that education in the United States operates according to a similar paradigm. Any attempt to de-school society or question the adequacy of instruction is either ignored or met with hostility. The schooling-instructional paradigm has dominated our thinking for some time, but not always. Recall that Plato, in all his discussions of education, gives little attention to schools. As far as Plato was concerned, it is the community that educates, by which he meant the multiplicity of formal and informal forces which influence persons.

In this century, John Dewey began his important career by assuring us that all of life educates, and that instruction in schools represents only one small part of our total education. Furthermore, he insisted that there were many forms of deliberate education. At that point Dewey was a Platonist, but late in his life, confronted by urbanization and the technological revolution, he reflected on education in American society and contended that education in the home, church, and community was no longer adequate for the day. Supported by this conclusion, he made the great twentieth-century theory jump: the school must do it. From that moment on the education in the United States has been functionally coexistent with schooling and instruction. If persons are killed on the highways, we add driver education; if girls have children out of wedlock, we add sex education. No matter what the problem or need, we organize a course. Schooling and instruction have become the panaceas for all our needs. Of course our schooling and instructional methods are continually reformed, but our faith in them is never questioned.

The church, mirroring the culture, operates according to a similar paradigm, and for about the same reasons. Professional religious educators at the turn of the century didn’t feel that the old school, with its dependence upon other related institutions—home, country, church, and public school—could do the job. Thus, they focused their attention on a reformed church school that could do the job by itself. Consequently, no matter what the church’s needs, our typical solution has been to develop courses of instruction for the church’s school.

I contend that we have become victimized by this schooling-instructional understanding of religious education and imprisoned by its implications. As long as it informs our labors, significant alternatives will have difficulty becoming born or sustained.

While admitting that learning takes place in many ways, church education has functionally equated the context of education with schooling and the means of education with formal instruction. The public schools have provided us with our model of education, and insights from secular pedagogy and psychology have been our guides. A church school with teachers, subject matter, curriculum resources, supplies, equipment, age-graded classes, classrooms, and, where possible, a professional church educator as administrator, has been the norm. All this must change.

ANOMALIES

While some paradigm is necessary if we are to engage in any significant endeavor, any particular frame of reference may limit our awareness of new possibilities and act as a barrier to alternative understandings. Unaware of the character and limitations of the paradigm which informs our efforts, we are in danger of missing the anomalies—irregularities or deviations—that question our frame of reference. Even as we operate according to some agreed-upon understanding, it is important to be aware of the anomalies that question its viability. Of course, anomalies are not easily spotted or acknowledged.

Jerome Bruner once carried out an experiment in which he took a deck of cards and flashed them on a screen at differing rates of speed. In that deck he had placed a red ace of spades and a black four of hearts and at first no one saw the unusual cards. Rather, they corrected them and reported a black four of spades and red ace of hearts. Some sensed that something was not right—that an anomaly was present—but even when Bruner flashed the cards slowly, one at a time, some persons couldn’t spot any anomalies. In a similar way, assumptions can limit our awareness, and while assumptions help us to achieve a stable consensus, they are typically conservative and so make it difficult to alter our understanding and ways, even in the face of compelling evidence that we should do so.

This, I contend, is the problem we face in Christian education today. We have accepted the assumptions of the schooling-instructional paradigm and missed the anomalies which make it no longer viable for our educational mission and ministry.

THE SMALL CHURCH

Following the lead of the public school movement, religious educators focused their attention on church schools—new educational institutions. Soon these institutions were divorced from the people and from church life, and rarely were they able to meet the needs of any but our larger, sophisticated, suburban churches.

Recently, I discovered the large, important world of the small church. As a professional church educator, I had often ignored these thousands of small churches and, like other church educators, I had gotten used to talking about educational plants, supplies, equipment, curriculum, teacher training, age-graded classes, and learning centers with individualized instruction. Lately, I’ve been confronted by churches which share a pastor and will probably never be able to afford the services of a professional church educator. At best they have a couple of small inadequate rooms attached to their church building, no audiovisual equipment, few supplies, an inadequate number of prospective teachers, and not enough students for age-graded classes. The Sunday church schools in these small mainline Protestant churches are sick—in part because they have tried to become modern church schools and failed. The Sunday school “statistics board” in the front of their churches dramatizes their situation and denominational programs, most of which they are unable to use, and creates feelings of inadequacy and failure.

Depression results from the realization that the great majority of Protestant churches have less than two hundred members. Many of these churches have nevertheless faithfully striven to turn their Sunday schools into church schools and have failed. The severity of the problem is great. One anomaly, the schooling-instruction paradigm, can be seen in the realization that most small churches will never be able to mount up or support the sort of schooling and instruction upon which religious education has been founded since the turn of the century.

ETHNIC CHURCHES

Also consider the numerous ethnic churches in our country. At one time I was the liaison person for the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries with our churches in Hawaii, and on one of my visits I met with the members of a number of small native Hawaiian churches. They still called their church schools Sunday schools, although through the years they had obediently and faithfully striven to develop a Christian education program, like that recommended by the church’s educational professionals. They struggled to raise money to build classrooms, they bought the denomination’s curriculum resources, and they sent their people to teacher training workshops and lab schools. And yet attendance continued to drop, teachers were difficult to secure and, more seriously, the faith was not being adequately transmitted or sustained.

They asked me why they were failing, and I was stunned. They were doing everything we had suggested and still they were unsuccessful. In desperation, I asked them to tell me about the days when they were succeeding. They explained that a number of churches gathered each Sunday evening for a luau. Young and old came together to sing hymns, tell the Gospel story, witness to their faith, discuss their lives as Christians, minister to each other’s needs, eat, and have fellowship. They did almost everything natural to their culture except dance, which we had taught them was “immoral.” When they finished describing their old educational programs, I could think of nothing but to suggest they return to having luaus, knowing that those committed to schooling and instruction think me mad.

A BROKEN ECOLOGY

While most of our Protestant churches are small, some seventy percent of all church members reside in churches of three hundred or more people, and one might conjecture that the schooling-instruction paradigm is viable in these churches. During the last few years I have visited a number of large dynamic church schools directed by qualified, creative, professional staffs. And I have found that there are quite a few churches where the dream of “the perfect” church school has been actualized. In these churches, most of the teachers are well-trained and many have developed their own exemplary curriculum resources. The educational plants, equipment, supplies, and organization would make many a public school envious. Attendance at church school has not significantly diminished, and there is still enthusiasm for their many innovative programs. And yet, in almost every case they have evaluated their achievements and found them lacking. The modern church school at its very best is less than adequate for our day. The reason is another anomaly in the schooling instructional-paradigm.

During the first third of...