Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie

Note: This is a preview of my column for the next issue of The Prairie Star...

There’s a new development in the Lifespan Program Area that I’d like you to know about—the premiere of a monthly electronic newsletter that I’ll be sending out to religious educators, youth advisors, and RE contacts in congregations around the district called Lifespan Faith Developments. The first issue was sent directly to all of the e-mail addresses we have in our database of folks working with children and youth. According to the report generated by the service we’re using to send the newsletter, the e-mail containing the newsletter was successfully delivered to 75 of the 78 religious educator and youth advisor addresses we had in our database. However, only 41 of the 75 recipients actually opened the message. So, if you don’t remember opening a message with the subject line “News from Prairie Star Lifespan Faith Development” sent from my e-mail address (plund@psduua.org), please check your old messages and your junk mail folder.

The reason it’s important for you to take a look at these newsletters is they’re going to be my primary way of getting information about lifespan faith development in Prairie Star out to the congregations. Of course, the newsletter is not for religious educators or youth advisors only. Ministers and lay leaders who would like to be informed about lifespan programming in the district are welcome to subscribe to the newsletter, too. Just send a message to plund@psduua.org, and I’ll be happy to enter you into the database. Once your e-mail address is entered, you’ll receive a new issue of the newsletter on the first of every month.

To give you some idea of the kind of information the newsletter will contain, here’s one of the articles from the January issue.

One of the main tasks of the Prairie Star's Lifespan Faith Development Council is to make sure that district religious educators, youth advisors, and Our Whole Lives facilitators have a reasonable number of opportunities for continuing education and trainings. Unfortunately, when these trainings are undersubscribed, the district has to pick up the costs. In an effort to keep those costs to a minimum, the LFDC is considering the following Cancellation Policy:

OWL trainings must have a minimum of 12 paid registrations one month prior to the scheduled training date or else the training will be cancelled.
Renaissance Modules and Youth Advisor Trainings must have a minimum of 8 paid registrations one month prior to the scheduled training date or else the module or training will be cancelled.
If a training is cancelled because of low registrations, the LFDC will provide scholarship money for religious educators, youth advisors, and OWL facilitators to help cover the cost of going outside of the district for an similar training.

As you can see, this is good information for religious educators and youth advisors to have. So please keep an eye out for the next issue of Lifespan Faith Developments. And if you’re not receiving it and would like to, let me know.
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I'm not sure if I've blogged on this topic before, but I've been meaning to for quite some time...and it looks like now's the time. I first stumbled across this concept a couple of years ago when I was browsing the web looking for resources on church growth. It's a brief article from the Spirituality & Health website which summarizes the work of sociologist John H. Evans of the University of California. What Evans did was test the theory that what really attracted people to congregations was the fact that the congregation offered them a clear sense of identity. Evans looked at a lot of mainline Presbyterian churches and found that the ones that were at least not declining in membership were the ones that did, indeed, offer a sense of identity, specifically, clarifying for members “the ways they differ from the general culture.”

Evans said that “although an evangelical might feel that there is no difference between a mainline Protestant and a secular person, in fact, mainline Protestants are anything but secular.” I think this is particularly important for Unitarian Universalist to consider. Is there no difference between a UU and a secular person? After all, the original Humanist Manifesto states that “the distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.” Consider this passage from Paul Rasor’s book Faith Without Certainty: Liberal Theology in the 21st Century:

This tension [between the sacred and the secular] is primarily a consequence of liberal theology’s long practice of absorbing and adapting to the culture in which it is located. This mediating posture—turning to the natural sciences, social analysis, the arts, and other cultural sources—has enriched liberal theology in many ways, and liberals have long insisted that this is precisely what makes liberal theology credible and relevant. One of the by-products of this approach has been a tendency to blur the distinction between religion and culture. Critics of liberalism often charge that this stance amounts to an accommodation or even a capitulation of theology to culture. As a result liberals are in constant danger of losing their religious identity.

I believe that we did, indeed, lose our religious identity somewhere in the 20th century, and unless we proactively take some steps to reclaim it, we are destined to remain a small, increasing marginal religious movement.

So what does it take to project the kind of religious identity that attracts people to a congregation? Evans says that the Presbyterian congregations that are holding their own “draw boundaries against theological conservatives by having an identity as a theological liberal.” In other words (and this is the language that Evans uses in his study), they have an out group. Yikes! But doesn’t having an out group go against everything we believe in, which is, after all, that a person can believe anything he or she wants to?

Well, if that’s really what our religion is about, I can’t think of a compelling reason for anyone to come to one of our congregations. We could all be like Thomas Jefferson, “content to be…Unitarian[s]” by ourselves. But we do have some beliefs we share (they’re hidden in the Principles and Purposes and in our Sources), and they do give us some clues about what would constitute a out group for us. For regular readers of this blog, it will come as no surprise to hear that I believe our out group is comprised of those people who adhere to a “strict father morality,” as defined by George Lakoff.

This is also why I think speaking out against corporal punishment for children in our homes is part of drawing a boundary against theological conservatives like James Dobson and his ilk. Just look at the response to California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber’s proposal to ban spanking for children under three years old. If we really are a nurturant parent religion (and I believe we are), then we need to be clear about what that means. Speaking out against corporal punishment of children is a good place to start.
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Yesterday Henry turned 18 months old. Julia and I marked the occasion by singing to him the half-birthday version of “Happy Birthday to You,” which goes like this: Hap... Birth… to…, Hap… Birth… to…, Hap… Birth… Dear… -ry! Hap… Birth… to…. Of course Henry thought it was pretty goofy. Half birthdays are fun to celebrate, and we’re looking forward to making a bigger deal of them as Henry gets older. But this particular half birthday would be especially meaningful for Henry if I were a God-fearing, Focus-on-the-Family-loving type of father, because according to James Dobson (and many other authoritarian parenting “experts”), 18 months is the magical age that makes it okay for me to start using corporal punishment in order to break my child's will, which is, from the Strict Father Morality point of view, of the devil and not of God.

Here’s an example of how to properly use corporal punishment in a Godly way. It’s quoted in Alfie Kohn’s book Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason:

One Christian minister recounts how his eighteen-month-old son was “defiantly challenging” his authority by refusing to hold his hand in a parking lot. What followed was a “series of repeated spankings (with explanation and abundant display of affection between each one), until he finally realized that Daddy always wins and wins decisively!” This approach is described as “loving correction.”

Of course I’m not a follower of this type of parenting—as you may know from previous entries in this blog, I identify with George Lakoff’s description of a Nurturant Parent, which is, at the most, “authoritative” in parenting style, and which rules out physical coercion of any kind as a means of getting one's way.

So here’s the thing. Yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as well, and in my mind, I put together Lakoff’s Nurturant Parent model with King’s call for nonviolence to end oppression, and I decided (as many other folks have) that you can’t have one without the other. As Lao Tzu said, “If there’s going to be peace in the nations,…there must be peace in the home.”

Funny thing is, Unitarian Universalism has never officially taken a non-corporal punishment stance as a guide to parenting—at least I can't find one. Either it’s assumed that we already believe it (a bad assumption to make, by the way, because I’ve met a “Unitarian” father or two who advocated corporal punishment for children; I figure those folks are more “Libertarian” than “Unitarian”), or we’re so busy trying to bring about Justice with a capital “J” in the world that we haven't taken the time to really explore how the roots of any genuine sort of justice must grow out of our relationships with each other—and for parents, that definitely means how we treat our children.

Here’s a not-so-modest proposal: I think the Unitarian Universalist Association should take a public stance against corporal punishment of children, which would include encouraging parents who claim to be Unitarian Universalists to forego corporal punishment and employ more nurturing parenting styles. Of course there are many UUs would immediately say, “Wait a minute, you can’t tell us how to parent our children!” To which I would say, “Get thee behind me, Libertarian!”

This is my challenge, then. I would like to see a congregation make a Study Action Issue/Statement of Conscience proposal at General Assembly that says Unitarian Universalism discourages the use of corporal punishment by parents on their children for any reason. We passed a General Resolution about the abolition of corporal punishment in “in schools, juvenile detention facilities, and other public institutions where children are cared for or educated” back in 1973, but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing about encouraging our members to practice discipline methods that do not include corporal punishment of their children. Sound extreme? Well the Methodists have already done it. If the members of George Bush’s denomination have found it in their hearts to speak out against this, couldn’t we, as well? If you think you’d like to work on this, let me know and let’s make it happen!
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Every once in awhile I like to do a reality check of where we (and when I say we, I mean individuals, families, congregations, districts, and the entire Unitarian Universalist Association) are when it comes to family ministry. A useful tool in doing this check is to take a look at what other people (mostly mainstream Protestants and progressive Evangelicals) are saying about families and how congregations are (or could be) ministering to them. Then as a sort of thought experiment, I try to imagine how we're measuring up...and, more importantly, what we could be doing better. So here are a few quotes about the state of family ministry in the mainstream Protestant and liberal Evangelical world.

Here's what Julie Polter had to say in a recent Sojourners article entitled Family Matters: How to defend the family more:

…many liberal churches have tended to opt out of specific conversation about and programs for strengthening families—broadly accepting pluralistic forms of families, but not offering them much in the way of concrete support resources.

For a Presbyterian point of view, consider this from Forming Ministries with Families: A Planning Guide for Congregations, edited by Martha Miller:

In the church, we have tried to provide opportunities for faith growth for individuals members of the family and we have tried to provide individuals and peer groups opportunities to live out their faith. But we have not always done enough to help family units relate, grow, share, and live out their faith.

And finally, from my favorite family ministry expert, Diana Garland, in her essay “Family Ministry: Defining Perspectives” [pdf]:

Congregations need to make a shift from “Conceptualizing individual ego development as the underlying process of ‘faith development’" to “Conceptualizing faith as a dimension of family life as well as of individual experience.”

My point here is simple. If progressive Evangelicals are saying that liberal churches aren't "offering [families] much in the way of concrete support resources," and if mainstream Protestants like our cousins the Presbyterians are saying that "we have not always done enough to help family units relate, grow, share, and live out their faith," and if experts on family ministry like Diana Garland are saying that we need to conceptualize "faith as a dimension of family life," how much more do these word apply to us, being perhaps the most liberal, individual-oriented religious tradition in America.

So, while it's nice that the new UUA Lifespan Faith Development Resources webpage does have a listing for "Family Resources," it's a bit disheartening that those resources are listed last--after "Resources about Racism & Classism," "Social Action & Service Learning," and "Curricular Resources." These are, of course, important parts of our tradition. But unless and until we start prioritizing the offering of concrete resources to families, helping families live out their UU faith, and conceptualizing faith as a dimension of family life, all the other fine work we do in the areas of racism and classism, as well as in social action and service learning and developing curricular resources will be useful only to the relatively few individuals and families in America who find our brand of religious liberal individualism appealing.
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I’ve found a couple of paragraphs that sum up what I believe we should be doing when we minister to families in our congregations. It’s from Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting, by Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn:

We believe that children form their own broader societal values out of the atmosphere and culture of the family and from their expanding interfaces with the world. Just as we cannot impose values of peace and harmony in the family, we cannot inculcate values, such as generosity, compassion, non-harming, equality, and appreciation for diversity through moralizing and coercion. We can advocate for them, however, but ultimately, it is through embodying these values ourselves that our children come to have a direct experience of them and absorb them into their view of themselves and the world.

A positive family culture can provide children with a strong framework for moving out into the world and finding their own way. Our role as parents is to come to know what we most deeply value, and to embody that as best we can in our own lives and in our parenting.

These words resonate with me in multiple ways. As a parent, I agree completely with the idea that I—with my co-parent—must discern and embody what we deeply value in order to pass those values along to our child. And as a religious educator, I understand that it’s impossible to impose values on our children, but as part of the “expanding interfaces with the world” our children participate in, we can embody those values through are in relationships with one another. Finally, as a minister who cares deeply about the faith tradition that I claim as my own, I want to see the core values of this tradition (which our Principles and Purposes imperfectly articulate) passed on to future generations, and I understand that the best way to do that is by helping those who aspire to make this living tradition a lived religion embody those values as best they can in their own lives.

Family ministry means: being clear about the values on which our faith tradition is founded; helping individuals live out those values in their daily lives; and, most importantly, helping parents create a positive family culture for their children so they have a strong liberal religious framework for becoming responsible, empathetic adults.