by Tim Shapiro
What will faith formation look like in the year 2020? That is the question that John Roberto poses and answers in his book Faith Formation 2020. Actually, Roberto’s question is something more like, What should faith formation look like in the year 2020?
Roberto is the president of LifelongFaith Associates. And for some time he has worked on thinking strategically about teaching the faith to all ages.
This book is about more than program ideas. Although there are some fine examples of effective religious education programs, the book, indeed the work of LifelongFaith Associates, is about how to think deliberately about religious education in a congregational context.
I’ve often thought that Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts have an excellent program of developmental education; learning that takes into account the capacity of the learner while at the same time moving the learner one step ahead. You start with simple tasks. Tying knots. Cooking dinners. Service projects that require just the right amount of sacrifice. Then through a systematic structure of rewards and increasingly more difficult challenges, committed Scouts learn more and more about their own expertise and the world in which they live. From tying knots they grow to larger projects that hold greater meaning: renovating a community homeless shelter. Living in the wilderness for two weeks. Researching family roots. It is not a perfect system, but it is designed to help teenagers grow into something closer to the full stature of personhood.
Roberto is interested in helping people of faith grow in maturity. It doesn’t happen in congregations by random programs based on what one can pull together at the last minute(“I’ll skip dinner and see if I can come up with something before the education team meets”). It happens through prayerful design, steadfast innovation, and attention to content that gets reinforced more than once a week in the sanctuary.
Provided in Faith Formation 2020 are many helpful charts and preparation sheets that assist a pastor or educator design an education program that will have positive impact on the religious behavior of participants. Roberto makes good use of a strategic planning tool called Scenario Thinking. This planning tool invites one to define the primary certainties and uncertainties involved in creating a comprehensive faith formation plan. One then develop scenarios that are most likely to meet the inevitable unexpected challenges. That is, one plans an education program by taking seriously the uncertainties. This method itself seems entirely consistent with the content of faith (we walk by faith, not by sight). By the way, congregational leaders might want to get know Peter Schwartz’s Scenario Thinking tool because it can be applied to just about any congregational issue.
I commend Roberto’s work as an excellent balance of theology, cultural critique, strategic planning and education theory all in the service of educating God’s people.
We may not make the rank of Eagle Scouts (Boy Scouts) or receive the Gold Award (Girl Scouts) but as educators and pastors we do carry responsibility of helping congregants grow in faith. It is a lifelong endeavor. And the resources available through LifeLong Faith Associates are thoughtful and grounded in solid strategic thinking.
Other resources:
“Provided in Faith Formation 2020 are many helpful charts and preparation sheets that assist a pastor or educator design an education program that will have positive impact on the religious behavior of participants…as educators and pastors we do carry responsibility of helping congregants grow in faith.”
Forgive me, but as an educator myself, when language like this is used regarding “religious education” for children only one word comes to my wind: indoctrination.
How is helping a child “grow in faith” and promoting “religious behavior” any different from essentially forcing them to believe the religion of their parents? Is there any space for “doubt formation” or “skepticism formation” or “rationality formation” alongside “faith formation”? How do these programs encourage exploration of DIFFERENT faiths and non faith-based worldviews? How, in short, do they promote freedom of thought rather than mental slavery?
Hi James,
The one premise I would challenge is that foregoing faith formation also foregoes indoctrination.
Parenting of all kinds (as well as education of all kinds) results in socialization and the development of furthering of a given worldview. I don’t understand why parents, if they are religious, shouldn’t or wouldn’t want to pass their values — including those religious — onto their children.
Should non-religious parents be asked the same if they bring their children up in a Humanist community?
We have to make so many choices as parents for our children before they have the fuller agency with which to do so that it seems inconsistent (or at least surprising) to single out faith formation.
All the best,
Josh
Hey Josh! It seems like you have taken responsibility for responding to me recently, for which I thank you!
First let me clarify something. You say “The one premise I would challenge is that foregoing faith formation also foregoes indoctrination.”
I didn’t mean to suggest this. Clearly, you can indoctrinate a child with political views, for example, as well as with a religious faith. So foregoing faith formation does not in my mind forego indoctrination, no.
But I don’t think it follows from that that any form of values education, or indeed any for af education at all, is necessarily indoctrination. I don’t think we simply have a choice between indoctrinating young people one way or another.
True education involves giving people CHOICES – and that’s what I see no evidence for in the “Faith Formation” program (although the website isn’t clear about what the product actually looks like, so I could be wrong – the questions I posed were not meant rhetorically).
Given this, it would be inconsistent to me to answer anything other than “yes” to your next question: “Should non-religious parents be asked the same if they bring their children up in a Humanist community?” Of course they should. They have the responsibility to expose their children to other ways of living and thinking so that they can exercise their judgment. Indeed it is central to Humanism that people question, debate, and try new paths.
Having said that (and this is where it gets more complicated!) there’s a particular problem with the idea of “faith formation”, because by my understanding of the term there isn’t much you can do to demonstrate the validity of a faith position. Humanism doesn’t to my mind, require any “faith”, and so the question doesn’t arise for parents who are Humanists. Whether there is a non-indoctrination way of encouraging people to “grow in faith” I do not know. I’d like to find out!
My concern here is the use of the word “indoctrination.” That’s a powerful word with a particularly negative definition.
Also, I’m troubled by this statement: “by my understanding of the term there isn’t much you can do to demonstrate the validity of a faith position. Humanism doesn’t to my mind, require any “faith”, and so the question doesn’t arise for parents who are Humanists.”
I believe it does, it many ways. Is poetry worth studying and learning? What’s the validity of studying poetry? I know of no way to “prove” it has value. What about music? Is the study of music “valid”? How do you prove that?
Perhaps in both cases one does that by pointing to improved grades, or improved critical thinking, or a number of other things. But these same things can be said about faith.
In fact, the point can be made that those who are not formed in faith are missing something vital in their formative years. Faith can help young people understand that there is more to life than themselves. Faith can motivate and inspire people to serve others, to work for those who are oppressed. And on and on. Is faith the only thing that does this? No. But I know of nothing that does it better.
The people at Faith Formation 2020 are not in any way about indoctrination. THey are about forming children with a healthy understanding of faith that leads to a appreciation for the points above. Grounded in a faith tradition that has served humanity well for thousands of years (not discounting the bad, but I know of no thought system that doesn’t have bad–on balance, I believe faith has served us fairly well).
This is not indoctrination. This is raising children in a responsible way.
Thank you so much for your reply, Martin. You raise some interesting questions.
I agree that “indoctrination” has a negative connotation, and all that would be required to avoid the suggestion is to provide evidence that the program in question actually does not indoctrinate but instead provides young people with the tools and understanding necessary to make informed decisions about the range of faith traditions and non-faith-based philosophies available.
The equation of “faith” with something like “poetry” is a poor move, it seems to me, because “faith” tends to be used to mean adherence to a set of propositions. One does not “study faith” as one studies poetry. One is expected to “have faith”.
When you say that Faith Formation is about “forming children with a healthy understanding of faith” what precisely do you mean? For me as a Humanist, such an understanding would be something like the following (and I’m necessarily sketching here):
The child would recognize that claims should be based on evidence and that reasons should be given in support of a given claim. Thus “faith” as commonly construed is not an adequate basis for knowledge or understanding.
I expect you wouldn’t be happy with that, though. To me, that is what responsible education means.
How can we get past this impasse?
It may be obvious, but I agree with James. Telling our children what they are and what they believe, before they can discover their own intellectual agency, is misguided. Parents do influence their children, one cannot avoid this, but we ought to influence them to think for themselves.
Kile and James,
It seems to me that you’re oversimplifying the issue a bit (though, as usual, doing so in a complex and insightfully inquiring way, haha).
Kile, you say: “Parents do influence their children, one cannot avoid this, but we ought to influence them to think for themselves. Telling our children what they are and what they believe, before they can discover their own intellectual agency, is misguided.” Are you honestly suggesting that *all* atheists influence their children to think for themselves, and *all* religious parents do not? Or, if not all, a majority? Come on. Raising children to think critically is not exclusive to atheists, and in fact I’ve met many atheist parents who’ve instilled rigid, dogmatic thinking into their children — just as some of the best parents I know, who encourage their children to follow their dreams, cultivate unique passions, and ask really hard questions, are religious.
Asks James: “How can we get past this impasse?” By encouraging religious communities to allow children to engage difficult questions — which many religious communities I’ve met do. (Though, to be sure, many do not. Yet.) The answer isn’t, however, to roundly dismiss “faith” outright. And it certainly isn’t in labeling faith formation as “indoctrination” — that means something particular, which you are unlikely to find in most Sunday schools. The language of faith may not work for you (or for me, for that matter), but just because it isn’t the framework that WE would use to describe notions of aspiration, imagination, and hope, doesn’t mean it should kept from children like a bottle of Lime-A-Way. 🙂
Your fellow atheist,
Chris
Managing Director, State of Formation
‘“How can we get past this impasse?” By encouraging religious communities to allow children to engage difficult questions’
I entirely agree. Allowing young people to wrestle with the questions is imperative and, as you say, many religious communities achieve this admirably. Frankly, regarding “faith formation”, I have little idea what it really means – hence my questions in the first reply, and my further question to Martin. I would be interested to hear more. Nonetheless, this is obviously a crucial issue on which reasonable people will disagree. I’m glad we raised it here.
Chris, you said:
“Are you honestly suggesting that *all* atheists influence their children to think for themselves, and *all* religious parents do not? Or, if not all, a majority? Come on. Raising children to think critically is not exclusive to atheists, and in fact I’ve met many atheist parents who’ve instilled rigid, dogmatic thinking into their children — just as some of the best parents I know, who encourage their children to follow their dreams, cultivate unique passions, and ask really hard questions, are religious.”
I never suggested anything like this. What I said was:
“Telling our children what they are and what they believe, before they can discover their own intellectual agency, is misguided. Parents do influence their children, one cannot avoid this, but we ought to influence them to think for themselves.”
This can be applied to everyone, atheists and religious persons alike. I never used the word “all.”
Thanks for your response though. Best.