Knowing God: Revelation and theological education

Religious Education, Summer 2001 by Seymour, Jack

Abstract

The author describes a public vision and task for religious education and Christian religious education. Using personal experience and the insights of ethnographic research and congregational studies, the author describes how religious education is grounded in a community, its story, and its practices. He illustrates how religious education often conflicts with the education that occurs in public life, and raises questions about how individuals negotiate the differences and build a religious education that nurtures public life and public conversation.

The year was 1964. The cultural challenges of the 1960s had not significantly affected small-town values in my hometown in Indiana. I was president of our church's youth group, which was vital and active, consisting of forty-five youths. We were part of a lower-middle to middle-middle class, evangelical Methodist congregation. Every Saturday morning at 71:00 a.m., a youth prayer meeting was held. Usually it was filled with care for each other and the world, yet it also consisted of a lot of gossip. On one particular Saturday, I arrived early to discover that I was the focus of the prayer that day. My friends were afraid for me. They feared that I had risked my faith by attending the high school prom the week before.

Beamer Methodist Church was a strict community of faith-a Christ-against-culture form of Christianity. A clear, precise theological message was taught. We were expected to live it. In fact, to protect us from worldly values, we were advised to read no book that questioned our faith. Instead of attending school dances and parties, our church sponsored alternative celebrations so that impurity would not infect us-and dancing, most of all, it was believed, led to impurity. Our adult sponsor told us how we could be seduced by music and dancing. She said, "Even traditional dances are dangerous. For example, the waltz is the rhythm of intercourse." (Little did she know that this spurred several of us to listen to collections of Strauss waltzes.)

For much of high school, these practices were not difficult to follow because I was not very popular. In fact, I could have been called a nerd. However, that year, my senior year, I had been elected to student council, debated, and worked in school theater, choir, and band. While I faithfully carried out the duties of the youth group, I had attended the spring dance. That act initiated their prayers for me.

Much about this story is quaint and funny. (Today, I enjoy dancing, even waltzes!) Yet, my high school friends and youth leaders cared deeply. They were not trying to be funny or dismissive. For them, faith and faithful living were one. I agree: They are, or should be, one. Church education at Beamer Church embodied those expectations. We prayed together, served together, and engaged in common practices to build up faith. We were a community of memory and support for each other. We called each other to faith and faithful living. We cared about each other and the witness we were called to provide for the world.

Our stories frame the ways in which we understand faith and education. In fact, ethnographic and congregational studies research has shown that we are ourselves instruments of research and ministry. Telling the stories of our education in faith grounds reflection on the meanings and practices of Christian religious education in concrete living. My experience was one of seeking to find a way to negotiate the faith of a "Christ-against-culture congregation" and the meanings provided in a large community high school in middle Indiana. Some of the meanings of these two communities overlapped, for example, rural values of hard work, family, and community responsibility. Many did not, for example, particular ways of living, deeply held values, and definitions of the goal of living, that is, salvation versus success.

I learned about religion in a way that defined how to stand over against cultural values. The community and values of the congregation competed with the community and values of the wider public world. And, as my story reveals, I had difficulty negotiating the terrain of these two communities. Yet, we are all in similar situations: If we take our faith and values seriously, every day we encounter people who do not share our commitments and even points of view that are diametrically opposed to our realities.

All communities teach. While religious education is about the precise and specific patterns of teaching and living experienced in a faith community, religious education is also about negotiating the terrains of faith and living in the midst of the diversity and conflicting claims in a public world. Can we discover ways of engaging public conversations of faith? Can we practice both particular and public forms of Christian religious education?

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS PRACTICING FAITH

Religious education does matter. Through it, character is formed. As ethnographic research has made clear, we experience and engage the world through the lenses of meaning by which we were formed and by which we live. Religious communities shape identities. Through explicit teaching and practices, faith communities teach approaches to living. Doctrines are important. Yet, most of all, practices and disciplines shape who we are.