Many Sources

As a faith community, we as Unitarian Universalists draw from many sources, including these two around which our RE program is based this year:

 

• Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life; 
• Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Why?

• Because we want to share the wisdom we’ve found in these traditions with our kids
• Because we want our kids to know about these traditions in order to be culturally literate when religion (of any kind) is the topic or the context in school, community organizations, politics, news, etc.
• Because we want our kids to understand how these sources feed our living religion
• NOT ‘so they can choose a religion when they grow up’ – I know some families may have come here for this reason however I believe that as a congregation, as a fellowship, we are here to provide a religious home for our children, not a religious airstrip for them to take off from at some point in the future.

How?

• With the youngest kids, we celebrate holidays and keep the focus on our own community.
• As kids get older, we tell stories from the traditions with the most adherents in the world: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and relate those stories to our own faith journeys.
• Upper elementary kids are ready to learn more details about the stories and holidays to improve their cultural literacy.
• Middle school kids go on an odyssey of sorts, experiencing the worship life of different traditions first hand and relating it, again, to their own faith experiences.
• Youth may or may not explicitly participate in any programming around world religions, but will be exposed to lots about it in the larger community, etc.   Advisors are invited to take the ideas we’ve talked about here back to group for discussion/action.

What?

• We are learning FROM the wisdom of these traditions
• We are learning ABOUT these traditions and how they relate to the larger world and ourselves (individually and UUs)
• We are NOT learning to BE any of these religions
• We are NOT PRACTICING any of these religions (unless we are doing it WITH an actual practitioner of the religion who is voluntarily sharing his/her sacred ritual with us)