Nebraska: Bright Lights in America's Heartland

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 11 May 2011 3 Comments
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Question

A recent question in your column from Mark Dickinson of Ottawa touched a very sore nerve in me. I am an Anglican priest in Ontario and have, for many years, observed the need for intense revision of what is taught in our Sunday schools. Taking the position that a plant starts from a seed and grows into a tree, for example, the process evident is that the seed must be nurtured in order to achieve its potential. It must come from the bottom up. Having been raised Roman Catholic and converting to Anglicanism after my four years’ service during WW II, I can attest to the extreme difficulty in wrenching what I was taught about religion out of my gut. I say gut because there it is and there it remains to this day. It is a constant battle. Therefore, it is imperative to me, at least, that we must reverse the process. More emphasis must be placed in educating the children than trying to reverse age-old teaching in the minds of adults. Yet I have never seen a comprehensive Sunday School curriculum developed and promoted for use in Sunday School. I suspect some may say that the minds of adults must be changed in order for a new approach to teaching children be accepted. Perhaps if a good curriculum is presented to adults for consideration not only will the children receive enlightened teaching, but it will surely rub off on adults. I have long thought that the poorest paid teachers, those in the lowest grades, should be the highest paid. The emphasis should be on teaching the desire to learn. If done well the rest will be so much easier. That applies to all the books you have written (which I have read) and also books that Crossan, Borg, etal have written: "A Little Child Shall Lead Them.” Have we overlooked a vital link in our religious education of the flock?

Answer

Dear John,

You raise a difficult issue, but I would approach it very differently. I think you start in church with the adults and teach them the scriptures in a comprehensive and scholarly way. You remove the legends, the myths and identify them for what they are. You make no attempt to “preserve” the immature Sunday understanding of God that most adult churchgoers seem to have and you make it difficult to replicate that kind of understanding in Church School. You introduce those parts of the Bible that are morally repugnant to the modern consciousness - the denigration of women, other religions and homosexual persons. You face the conflicts between biblical “truth” and scientific knowledge. You look at the literal nonsense found in the pre-Copernican biblical stories that assume God lives above the sky (The Tower of Babel, manna in the wilderness, the ascension of Jesus.) You force the miracles to be in touch with what we know of how natural law operates. You chronicle the contradictions in the virgin birth and resurrection narratives. You seek to discover the God experience and the Christ experience beneath the words of scripture. When that educational task is complete, you ask these people to teach the children in Sunday School. Only then will it make much difference what curriculum you use.

Most Church School material is institutionally produced and its dedication is to institutional well-being, that is, “do not sow doubts!” I am glad that ProgressiveChristianity.org has produced Church School material. It is quite good, but placed into the hands of an uninformed pre-modern teacher, it will not overcome the present existing at handicaps.

My experience teaches me that I start with the adults. This is the arena in which I believe the “trickle down” theory works. Trickle down economics usually trickles only from John D. Rockefeller to Nelson Rockefeller. Ideas trickle down, however, to convert and educate the parents and the children will be the recipients.

~John Shelby Spong

 

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