• Home
• Visitor Center
  • Frequent Questions
  • Contact the Church
• Sunday Morning
  • Upcoming Services
  • Recent Sermons
  • Announcements
  • Newsletter archive
• Our Church
  • Directions
  • Giving
  • Art Gallery
  • Board Reports
  • Church Documents
  • Brief History
  • Architecture
• Music
  • Music Program
  • Our Choir
  • Guest Soloists
  • Sunday Concerts
• Our People
  • Minister and Staff
  • Our Congregation
  • Board of Trustees
  • Photo Gallery
  • UUCS Columnists
• Social Justice
• Activities
  • Committees
  • Chalice Groups
• Learning
  • Religious Education
  • Freethinkers
  • Lifespan Education

Sermons by Rev. Don W. Vaughn-Foerster

To Teach One Another (A Homily)
Rev. Don W. Vaughn -Foerster
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
May 20, 2007

Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil's Dictionary, defines "education" as "that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." Bierce observed that education can produce both those who understand and those who only think they understand. It is to be hoped that, when we UUs conduct religious education, we do "understand" and not just "think" we understand. We certainly want our children to know enough about the religious world not to be like the youngster who thought Shirley Temple was a synagogue for children.

We all have a stake in religious education whether it is the education of children or the continuing education of adults. But, do we understand what makes religious education "religious" in the first place? Let's picture the human being as divided into two parts: an inner and an outer. Let's call the "inner" the core and the "outer" the husk. By core I mean the person's innate being, the person's primary, original self or essence. Biblical theology calls this the soul or the spirit. By husk I mean all that about a person which is added to the person from outside. This part of us is sometimes called "personality" -- our means of relating to the outside world.

It is the outside part (the husk, the personality) that most parents, teachers, ministers, and friends seek to teach -- to mold, develop, and admonish. This is the part of the person that is easy to see. The inner core, is too hidden from us (too subjective) easily to identify or be concerned with -- or so it seems. More often than not, we only tinker with that which is external to the person's real self and real desires. Consequently, what we call teaching is likely to contradict the other person's true awareness of his or her deepest sense of self.

This may be a kind of "education", but "religious" it is not. Religion does not begin in that part of us that we take-in from the outside. Religion begins where we take the deepest looks into ourselves and where we ask the most pointed questions of ourselves. Religion begins in the core, the heart or soul, if you prefer.

It's a sad result that when all our attention is focused on our "outside self" -- as it is when we are concerned with learning by rote, or lecture, or superficial dialogue -- we easily lose the "feel" of who we really are and we forget how to think thoughts that are our own. If our education is to have anything "religious" about it, it must allow us to see the deeper dimensions of meaning within our inner sense of being.

In Unitarian Universalism we make great claims for the quality of our religious education, and much of it is justified. But it is just as easy for us to turn out "rote" liberals as it is for Methodists or Baptists to turn out "rote" conservatives. This is what we are likely to do if we do not touch our children or each other in the core of being.

We want the education of our children (and ourselves) to be more than merely superficial and informational -- we want it to be "religious." It isn't enough to learn teaching techniques nor to learn quantities upon quantities of subject matter and then pour all this onto someone else. All these are useful in their place, but for education to be religious, one thing more is necessary: we must open ourselves, our inner selves (our core) to those we would teach. We must speak from inner self to inner self.

The person who has the capacity to encounter and affirm others on this level already has the most important qualification to teach in the religious education program. If one has this, all the rest (the techniques and content) can be added.

If our religious education is to have a truly religious dimension, our aim must be to stimulate in one another an awareness and a morality that are not superimposed but that stem from within -- a spirituality that is not feigned but is native to the person. Ultimately, this is the only way in which we can "teach one another" in religious terms.