And How Are the Children?

During his report at this year’s General Assembly of Unitarian Universalists in St. Louis, Missouri, UUA President Bill Sinkford talked about a lot of things. He mentioned that:

Twenty-five years ago, the UUA Board of Trustees issued a resolution rejecting the political tactics of the “new religious right,” which states “We object to the assumption that human beings can know with absolute certainty the will of God on particular public policy issues. We submit that to charge one's opponents (as these groups have) with being ‘anti- family’ or ‘anti-God’ merely because of divergent views inflames and polarizes our society.”

He also noted that

Ten years ago, our GA passed a resolution supporting full legal marriage for same sex couples. At the time Marriage Equality seemed a distant dream to even its most ardent advocates. Today we have couples who have been fully and legally married in the state of Massachusetts during the past two years.

He talked about the work the UUA and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee have done in responding to the devastation wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Rita…the self-funded UUA Health Plan for all of our congregational employees…the new Tapestry of Faith lifespan faith development curriculum series, which will be available free and online. He mentioned the Consultation on Ministry To and With Youth (which our district will be participating in next April at our Annual Meeting in Minneapolis)…and he noted this sad but not surprising statistic from a recent survey of UU youth—over 50% of our youth do not consider their congregations their spiritual home. He talked about the state of our theological schools: Starr King and Meadville Lombard; and he mentioned that each of our congregations will have the opportunity to make an investment in them by taking a special offering to support the theological training of our ordained and lay leaders through a new “Sharing Our Ministry” program.

Bill Sinkford covered a lot of things during his report at this year’s General Assembly in St. Louis. But what really interests me is that of all the things he talked about, this is how he concluded his report:

A good colleague of mine, the Rev. Patrick O’Neill, had a friend in college who was a Masai from Africa. His friend told him a bit about the Masai culture. The Masai are renowned as warriors, for their prowess on the battlefield. But when two Masai warriors meet on the path, they greet each other with the simple question, “How are the children?” “How are the children?” they ask each other. And I was so struck when I heard this story that I thought, this is not a bad way for us to think about what we’re called to do these days.

How are the children? How are the children in Darfur and Sudan, who have been uprooted from their homes, many of them killed and many young girls raped, in a genocide that the US could stop? How are the children? How are the children of Iraq? Living in violence and chaos as a result of an ill-conceived and bungled occupation by US military forces. How are the children? How are the children of New Orleans? Those still in a city where the public education system has been effectively closed? And for the thousands and thousands who are part of the largest diaspora this nation has ever seen? How are the children of New Orleans?

How are the children of the United States, the many who go to bed hungry every night in this the richest nation the earth has ever seen? How are the children? How are the children who don’t have access to day care because our government funds day care at a stingy 1 billion dollars per year, instead the 2.5 billion that even President Bush agrees is necessary in this country. How are the children? How are the children who would benefit from Head Start, a program that’s being gutted even though, time after time, it has demonstrated itself to be effective? How are the children? How are the children who live in families where the parents earn the minimum wage? A minimum wage that has not been raised in ten years. A minimum wage that would have to be increased by 40 percent today to match its purchasing power in 1985. How are the children?

And how are our children? The lucky ones who mostly live in comfort, but who will inherit a crippling national debt and a planet ravaged by pollution and global warming? Would we continue to plunder the one and only earth we will ever have if we asked our selves, how are the children?

I appreciate President Sinkford’s concern for the children—all children, here at home and around the world. But I’d like to take that concern a little further and suggest that when we ask “how are our children?”, we need to consider more than “a crippling national debt and a planet ravaged by pollution and global warming.” Indeed, according to “Hardwired to Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities” (a report by The Commission on Children at Risk), the “mental and behavioral health of U.S. children” is deteriorating.

We are witnessing high and rising rates of depression, anxiety, attention deficit/conduct disorders, thoughts of suicide, and other mental, emotional, and behavioral problems among U.S. children and adolescents.

According to the report, these “rising rates of mental and emotional problems among American young people raise a red flag about how well we are nurturing our kids.”

While many American young people are thriving, many more are not, and there are worrisome signs that as a society we are losing rather than gaining ground. Notwithstanding sustained increases in material well-being and important medical advances in the ability to treat depression and other mental disorders, the rate of serious mental and emotional disorders among American children and youth has been rising steadily. Eight percent of high school students have clinical depression, 20 percent report having seriously considered suicide during the past year, and, according to the Surgeon General, 21 percent of 9- to 17-year-olds have a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder that will cause at least minimum impairment. A recent study of mental health problems among college students at a large Midwestern university found that over the past 13 years, the number of students being seen for depression doubled, the number of suicidal students tripled, and the number of students seen after a sexual assault quadrupled.

So, how are our children? “The lucky ones who mostly live in comfort?” Are they somehow exempt from the mental, emotional, and behavioral problems that are symptoms of the “toxic culture” we live in? If we’re honest, I believe we’d have to say, no.

Which brings me to the heart of this sermon: Connected Communities. You see the “Hardwired to Connect” report states that the cause of “this crisis of American childhood is a lack of connectedness—close connections to other people, and deep connections to moral and spiritual meaning.”

I have to say that I had a good news/bad news response to that notion when I first read it. I’ll give you the bad news first: as a minister and religious educator who has worked over the last ten years or so in a number of congregations around the country, I’d have to say that “connectedness” is not a high priority for most of our congregations. Unitarian Universalism has inherited a double dose of hyper-individualism, from the Protestant Reformation and from the American Revolution. In fact, our emphasis on “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” and the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” often times results in congregations that value the rights of the individual over the needs of the community.

The good news is that if any social institution in the United States has the potential to rebuild the kind of connected communities the “Hardwired” report calls for, it is our religious communities. In fact, if we really want to do something to help all of the children President Sinkford mentioned in his report—the children in Darfur, in Iraq, in New Orleans—the very best thing we could do is begin with those closest to us, the children of this congregation and this local community.

Here, then, are the characteristics of the kind of community the report believes would help us address this crisis:

·        [Connected] communities include children and youth.

·        They treat children as ends in themselves.

·        They are warm and nurturing.

·        They establish clear limits and expectations.

·        Their core work is performed largely by nonspecialists.

·        They are multigenerational.

·        They have a long-term focus.

·        They encourage spiritual and religious development.

·        They reflect and transmit a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person.

·        They are philosophically oriented to the equal dignity of all people and to the principle of love of neighbor.

Now we don’t have time for me to go through these characteristics one by one, but I believe that they pretty much sum up the elements of any healthy, vital religious community. But remember what I said about our congregations’ tendency to “value the rights of the individual over the needs of the community”? I can see two places in this list where some Unitarian Universalists are likely to say, “Hold on just a minute!”

One is around clear limits and expectations. To be brutally honest, Unitarian Universalists have pretty low expectations all the way around. We don’t necessarily expect people who regularly come to our congregations to become members, let along make any sort of significant pledge (both of time and money) to the general health and wellbeing of the institution. Of course that doesn’t mean that people don’t join our congregations or that they don’t make pledges or volunteer their time. But compared to some other religious institutions in our country—the Mormons, for instance (who, by the way, grow by an entire Unitarian Univeraslist Association in numbers every year)—our expectations for involvement in our congregations are pretty low.

The other item on this list that would make any rugged individualist worth his or her salt pick up their copy of Walden and tromp back to the woods is the part about communities that “reflect and transmit a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person.” In fact, it’s been said that one way you can tell that you might be a Unitarian Universalist is that you study the “ten suggestions” rather than the “ten commandments.” But I’d like to suggest that we do, indeed, have a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person—and it’s not our Principles. They’re a little too imprecise for that purpose. I’d like to propose that we look at the Vision Statement of the UUA’s Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group for a clearer sense of what it means to be a good Unitarian Universalist.

We envision children, youth, and adults who:

·        Know that they are lovable beings of infinite worth, imbued with powers of the soul, and obligated to use their gifts, talents, and potentials in the service of life;

·        Affirm that they are part of a Unitarian Universalist religious heritage and community of faith that has value and provides resources for living;

·        Accept that they are responsible for the stewardship and creative transformation of their religious heritage and community of faith;

·        Realize that they are moral agents, capable of making a difference in the lives of other people, challenging structures of social and political oppression, promoting the health and well-being of the planet, acting in the service of diversity, justice and compassion;

·        Recognize the need for community, affirming the importance of families, relationships and connections between and among the generations;

·        Appreciate the value of spiritual practice as a means of deepening faith and integrating beliefs and values with everyday life;

·        Experience hope, joy, mystery, healing, and personal transformation in the midst of life’s challenges.

Notice that this isn’t just about the children. This is a vision for youth and adults as well. And that, I think, is the best part. Everyone benefits when we honestly ask ourselves “How are the children?” And according to Family Ministry expert Diana Garland, here’s why:

The African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” became a political slogan pointing to the importance of community for children, but it does not quite go far enough. All persons, both children and adults, need community. Because children are dependent on others for their survival, their vulnerability in the absence of community is more apparent. As James Garbarino has pointed out, children are like the canaries miners used to take with them into mine shafts. Canaries are particularly sensitive to poisonous gasses, and if they succumbed, the miners knew the environment was dangerous (Garbarino, 1995). Like canaries in mine shafts without adequate fresh air, children “succumb” without adequate communities of nurture and support. Adults, too, however, need to live in community. Some seem to need community more than others, but even self-sufficient adults seek the company of others and need a community when they become ill, injured, or threatened.

I believe that creating and sustaining the kind of connected communities the “Hardwired” report calls should be a top priority for all of our congregations. Not just because it’s good for our children, but because it’s good for all of us. And since we are Unitarian Universalists, I believe that we need to start agreeing on some expectations for what it means to be part of a Unitarian Universalist community of faith, especially expectations around developing and encouraging “a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person.”

Even Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the poster boys for individualism in American, might agree. “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no [one] can sincerely try to help another without helping him- or herself.”

--The Rev. Phillip Lund