Yet Another Unitarian Universalist and The Journey recently put up series of posts about Jim Fowler’s faith development theory. The Journey’s post is a good summary for those not familiar with it. Yet Another UU’s post is a good summary of some of its shortcomings. What follows is something of a reply to both, en lieu of a long comment on either.
We UUs seem, as a tradition, to only be interested in “developing” Fowler’s fourth stage, the Individuative-Reflective stage that first pops up around high school or so. We believe in that stage. We seem to think that stage is faith. All other orientations toward faith are immature, we seem to think, and unworthy of us.
But whether you buy Fowler’s stages or not, children and youth cannot skip stages. Yet we tend to educate our movement’s children as though Individuative-Reflective faith is the only way of doing faith. Perhaps we teach them as though they’re already at that level. Or perhaps we teach them as though children’s RE is valuable only insofar as it’s an IR faith prep program.
Some of you know that I worked for Fowler for five years, until his retirement a year ago. He seemed convinced—from his personal experience, not his research, mind you—that UUs were stuck in an overly cognitive version of IR faith. (Keep in mind that his work is criticized for being overly cognitive, as Yet Another UU notes.) He seemed to think that UUs reached the IR faith stage, decided that IR faith was a completely radical break from status quo faith, decided that their original religious traditions were completely devoid of resources for IR faith, and left to focus on a devoid-of-religious-content humanism.
I tried to assure him that this was not the case, or at least that it was no longer the case, that it characterized mid-century, modernist UUism, and that present day UUism was much more open to religious experience and traditions. Pagans, Buddhists, and all that.
And yet it felt disenguous as I said it. Even though we flavor our self-congratulatory IR faith with heterodox spiritualities now, we are overwhelmingly a tradition committed to IR-faith-ism. It’s only natural that our children’s RE programs would follow suit. You can’t say we don’t practice what we preach.
Yet Another UU is on to something with his talk of Vygotsky’s work on child psychology and the power of high expectations. In the church I grew up in, the youth group sat on the front few pews, catty-cornered from the preacher. We passed notes and caught the occasional case of the giggles, but there’s only so much mischief you can get into on the front pews. Every couple or three months the preacher might drop a non sequiter “young people” into the flow of his sermon as a way of telling us we were getting out of hand, but mostly we behaved, Sunday morning and Sunday night. We participated in the worship life of our community. The adults appreciated us being there and greeted our teenage behavior with appreciative smirks.
I made my own youth groups do the same when I was a youth director. At first you’d think I was forcing them to hold hands with their parents in the mall, and the congregation was only a little less wary. Yet after a month, it was as though there was no other way to do it. The youth valued having their own space, and the congregation valued seeing their youth up there at the front, worshipping with them.
When I suggest doing the same at my UU congregation, it’s as though I’ve suggested the impossible. Youth are too involved with doing IR-faith-ism, I’m led to believe, to do something as extraneous as worship.
And so we are a religious tradition with upwards of 90% newcomers, not because we’re just that popular but because we can’t keep our children and youth around. Is it any wonder? They’ve been taught that faith is IR faith, and they’re smart enough to know they can do that well enough on their own.
Both times I preached at the old UU church in Framingham, Mass., I was flattered and delighted that groups of teenagers sat in the very front of the wrap-around balcony — which meant that they were closer to me, standing there in that tall New England pulpit, than anyone else in the sanctuary. I could almost have reached out and touched them. It was one of the most wonderful preaching experiences of my life.
Chutney wrote:
-snip-
“Youth are too involved with doing IR-faith-ism, I’m led to believe, to do something as extraneous as worship.”
Chutney,
I’m surprised to hear a sweeping generalization like that. I’ve seen plenty of evidence of youth participation in worship.
Every district youth conference I’ve attended has had a youth-led worship component.
When I served as a youth advisor for our district’s summer camp in 2002 and 2003, we had a youth-led worship service every night.
I know of other congregations in my district where the youth regularly lead their own worship services and also lead at least one Sunday morning worship each year.
Locally, we’ve done worship services during lock-ins. Personally, I would like to see more worship experiences with our local youth programming. However, most of our local youth have not experienced worship except in the context of local church Sunday morning worship. When most of them hear the word “worship,” they think of what happens down at the other end of the building and view the word “worship” as being a negative one.
I think that my local youth need more resources for worship and I would love to have some of them attend our district’s “Spirituality Development Conference” next spring.
The UUA Youth Office provides the following description of SDC conferences:
“Spirituality Development Conferences are small working conferences for youth and adults. An SDC focuses on ways to design effective, creative & meaningful worship services; ways to integrate spirituality more deeply into youth programming and the lives of the participants. SDCs work to bring youth and adults together to share common worship experiences. Of the Six Components of Balanced Youth Programming (worship, youth-adult relations, community building, leadership development, social action & learning) the first, worship, is often overlooked or saved for Youth Sundays. This training helps youth and their adults put the R back in YRUU. (The ‘R’ stands for religious.) An SDC can greatly transform the tone and culture of a local youth group and congregation; people return from an SDC inspired to integrate worship more deeply into their program and congregation as a whole.”
The SDC workshop is designed for youth, adult advisors, religious educators who work with youth, and ministers.
Steve, I wasn’t talking about youth-led worship at youth events. At all.
I learned from Huston Smith’s book the World’s Religions that Hinduism says that there are four main paths to spirituality. They are psychological exercises, love, work, and the intellectual.
Of those four, I think that the personalities that are attracted to UUism are those that would be attracted to the intellectual path in Hinduism, and maybe to a lesser extent, the work path.
People of the “love” or devotional persuation find UUism sparse and cold, those looking for psychological exercises or discipline find us unfocused. Those “for whom ideas dance and sing” find UUism exciting and lively.
I don’t think we can appeal to everyone without losing our character. But we could develop more fully.
In our UU church, the youth are isolated from Sunday worship, and expected to not participate. As a direct result, I have observed 18 year olds leave the church, because they have graduated out of youth classes and don’t know or feel the Sunday worship.
When we express our concern, the reaction (except form our DRE) is that is the way it is done at UU churches.
Now I have insight on why.
Thanks.