Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie

Last week I promised to look at each of Robert Wuthnow's six "deliberate religious activities" families can do to strengthen faith. The first is simply sharing family meals together. As one author at homefaith.com put it: "Time and time again I come across data showing the extreme value of the family meal. When you sit down to eat together regularly, say grace before meals, and share information about your lives, you provide your children with one of the most potent ways of forming their faith."

Truth is, the benefits of family meals for developing faith in children and youth is only one part of the story. According to the Center for Families at Purdue University, "Whether a family comes together to share meals can have a significant impact on a variety of outcomes. Family meals are positively associated with improved dietary quality, prevention of overweight, enhanced language acquisition and academic performance, improved social skills and family unity, and a reduction in risk-taking behaviors."

Of course, a variety of forces in our culture seem to be deliberately conspiring to keep us from sharing family meals together. Fortunately for us, Unitarian Universalist Bill Doherty, director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Minnesota, has given the subject a lot of consideration. His 1998 article in the UU World, "The Intentional Family at Dinner," is an excellent place to start exploring the ins and outs of promoting family meals in our congregations.

Finally, while saying grace before a meal is becoming more and more natural among UUs, it still can be a stretch for some of us. The FAQ page for newcomers at the UUA website has a great answer to the question "Do Unitarian Universalists say grace?" My personal favorite is this little ditty from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

I like to sing it to the tune of the Old Hundredth from the Genevan psalter (#370 in our hymnal Singing the Living Tradition). And rather than ending with an "Amen," I prefer a rousing, "Thank You!" As Meister Eckhart said, "If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is 'thank you,' that would suffice."

I've posted my latest sermon ("The Future of Our Faith: A 50/50 Chance") on my Sermon Page. For those of you who may not be interested in reading the whole thing (something I completely understand--I'm not a big fan of reading sermons myself), I thought I'd give a summary of the major points in this post.

First, I used Wilfred Cantwell Smith (via Barry Andrews) to make a distinction between "faith" and "religion." Faith is personal thing, religion is a cumulative tradition. According to Andrews, Smith believes that while "faith is deeper and more personal than religion...it may be engendered by a religious tradition" [my italics]. The role of Lifespan Faith Development in our association is to engender faith in the Unitarian Universalist tradition.

My second point is that the influence of Unitarian Universalism on the general public may be waning because, even if we maintain our current growth rate (which is slowing, by the way) the percentage of UUs in the US population is likely to decline. Growth is an issue not because we want to be bigger, but because we need to be bigger if we are going to continue to be a viable voice for good in the world.

Third, the number of Protestants in the United States is diminishing. In fact, for the first time in the history of our country, the number of Protestants may have fallen below 50 percent of the population. Since most of our converts--a full 90 percent of adult Unitarian Universalists--come from Protestant churches, we cannot continue to depend upon them to replenish our numbers.

Fourth, in order to sustain ourselves, we must start keeping more of our children and youth. My proposal? Become a 50/50 religion--one that keeps 50 percent of its youth and grows by an equal number of converts each year. (As I noted in my sermon "The Devil's Playground," the Amish keep 90 percent of their youth, so 50 percent is definitely doable!)

Finally, how to keep our children and youth? By bringing Unitarian Universalism home. To that end, I suggest paying close attention to what Robert Wuthnow recommends in his book Growing Up Religious, published by Beacon Press. Wuthnow found six "deliberate religious activities" that, when practiced at home, reinforce the religious tradition of the family, thereby engendering a strong faith in individual family members. They are:

sharing family meals and saying grace;
spending a few moments before bedtime to share the joys and worries of the day;
having real conversations about what matters most in life;
adorning your living spaces with symbols of your faith tradition;
celebrating holidays in ways that the religious significance comes through; and
participating in your community of faith in ways that make it part of your family’s emotional support system.

I'll be looking at each of these "deliberate religious activities" over the next few weeks.

In Faith Communities Today: Growth and Decline in UU Congregations, the Rev. Charlotte Cowtan makes the following observation about a recent survey of UUs: "The only categories of participating adults less common than life-long UUs were non-white (Euro-American) racial/ethnic minority groups." That's something to think about in light of Skinner House Books' recent announcement that they're looking for an editor or editors to work on "a new book about Unitarian Universalism's progress toward racial justice and multicultural diversity" (see Journey From Calgary). The book is intended to follow the history of the Unitarian Universalist Association's struggle to become an anti-racist multicultural institution, from its beginnings at the 1992 General Assembly in Calgary to today.

I mention this because I can't help but wonder where we would be today if, in the early 1990s, the UUA had also made a commitment to become a "family religion," a religion that recognizes the importance of home and family in nurturing and sustaining life-long Unitarian Universalists. Perhaps if we had, books like Kate Tweedie Erslev's Full Circle: Fifteen Ways to Grow Lifelong UUs would have come out in 1994 rather than 2004. And rather than worrying about recent declines in the number of children and youth enrolled in the religious education programs of our congregations (as UUA financial advisor Larry Ladd has reported), we'd be celebrating an unprecedented influx of families of all formations into our communities of faith.

Of course this makes me wonder what the year 2014 will look like if, at the upcoming General Assembly in Ft. Worth, we made a serious commitment to Unitarian Universalist families in our congregations and liberal religious family values in our communities (and I proudly quote the late Christopher Reeve for my definition of family values: "We are all family...and...we all have value"). Much work has been done in our quest to become an anti-racist, multicultural institution in the twelve years since Calgary--and much work remains to be done. We've also got our work cut out for us in regards to families. If we make a commitment now, perhaps in ten years Skinner House will be looking for an editor for another book: Journey from Fort Worth: How Unitarian Universalism Became a Family Religion.

"Like all parents, I impose a faith upon my children merely by being alive," writes the Rev. Joel Miller in a letter published in the July/August 2004 issue of the UU World. He was responding to an article by the Rev. Victoria Safford from the previous issue of the UU World entitled "Living in Exile," specifically, to Safford's "assumption" that "all Unitarian Universalists are people who could not 'with intergrity abide imposed belief or imposed religious practice.'"

Miller says that, "in [his] experience, a faith not good enough to impose on a child is not good enough for me or anyone else," which reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams: "An unexamined faith is not worth having, for it can be true only by accident. A faith worth having is a faith worth discussing and testing."

I mention this because when I was "discussing and testing" my notion of lifespan faith development a couple of weeks ago with some folks at the UU Fellowship of Topeka, Kansas, I said that the first thing we needed to do was decide whether or not we wanted a religious education program to raise Unitarian Universalists. Not surprisingly, more than a few people said that we really shouldn't be deliberately trying to raise UUs. And not surprisingly, those who thought this were, indeed, "folks who could not 'with intergrity abide imposed belief or imposed religious practice...,'" that is, they were, like most UUs, "come-outers" from another faith tradition; therefore, they are suspicious of any religion--including our own--that actively seeks to "impose" itself on others...even our children.

These two quotes--"a faith not good enough to impose on a child is not good enough for me or anyone else" and "a faith worth having is a faith worth discussing and testing"--are related. Too often I've found that our congregations are places where adults are not expected to discuss and test their faith; nor are they places where children are expected to grow up Unitarian Universalist. What we need, I believe, is both--which is exactly what Lifespan Faith Development can bring to our congregations. We're expanding our vision to include children, youth, and adults who "affirm that they are part of a Unitarian Universalist religious heritage and community of faith that has value and provides resources for living."

If what we are part of truly is of value, then it is worth discussing and testing...and imposing on our children, as long as we keep Joel Miller's words in mind: "So I choose to impose Unitarian Universalism. I impose it gently, with love for their unique spirits."