Last April, when I was the candidate for the ministry to Evergreen Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, I visited with many of the groups in the congregation. But one group I didn't get to meet with was the Intermediate Sunday School class. So they very kindly gave me a book they had made, "Getting to Know Us." It contains mini -autobiographies, lavish illustrations, and a few photos. As I tackle the awesome subject of whether or not children need religion, I'll be quoting rather liberally from this book. And you can decide for yourself whether these children are getting all the religion they need!<

"I am caring, fare (sic) artistic, athletic and friendly. I am joyful, but sometimes sad. I am 11 years old, 4 ft. 11 inches, and I am, and most of the time I am just I am." By Jenny Chadsey.

I have a confession to make. When I was a child, I went to Sunday School exactly one time. I was eight, and had gone to one or two services at the Congregational church with my mother. I loved sitting in the eighteenth- centu ry stone church with the adults and feeling very serious and grown-up. Then Mommy learned about Sunday School, and against my will, I was sent to a class. It was a miserable experience. I sat with a bunch of strange kids who all seemed bigger than 1, and who boisterously made and threw paper airplanes for an hour. After reporting on that experience, I was allowed once again to attend regular church services.

I don't suppose I understood a tenth of what was going on in those services, but they must have had some impact on me, because I remembered to pray when I had the worst crisis of my life. On Easter Sunday when I was nine, I went for a ride on my new bicycle on our freshly graded dirt road, and had a rather spectacular accident. I was in excruciating pain for several days until our doctor figured out that I was bleeding internally and rushed me off to the hospital. There I had an operation to remove my spleen. After ten days I was well enough to go home, and my dad came to pick me up. I was sent into the bathroom on the ward to get dressed, and I remember falling to my knees on the tiles and thanking Jesus for letting me live.

I don't remember going to church again after that year. The next big event in my religious life happened in seventh grade. I chose to do a study of comparative religions for social studies class. I read up a little bit on several world religions, and found that every one of them thought they had the only answer and all the rest were wrong! So I came to the conclusion that if they all thought they were right, they must therefore all be wrong. By the time I handed in the report I had become a dogmatic, though silent, atheist.

That was a hard year for many reasons. My sudden loss of faith had a great deal to do with the feelings of isolation and anxiety that had started to bother me. Having abruptly lost my belief in an afterlife, I worried about death rather obsessively, crying while reading newspaper accounts of fatal accidents. But I never talked to anyone about it. I just didn't have the language, or the place.

Gradually my lonely existential angst was subsumed by the normal social anxieties and excitements of adolescence. I went on to become a pretty happy high schooler. My diehard atheism was to last until I was in my early thirties. But that's another story.

"Dear Amanda, My name is Andrew A. Gaskin. I have one brother and a mom and dad and a pair of size 6 shoes (sic). (They kind of smell ya (sic) know.) NOW on to bisnes (sic) I play second base at baseball. Andrew Gaskin."

Now on to business, indeed. The business of religion, some would say, is answering the BIG QUESTIONS. You know the kind. Here's what one parent has to say: "It really is inevitable. And every parent knows that. We just never know when it will happen. Perhaps at night, looking at Saturn or Jupiter through a friend's telescope with a preschooler. 'Mom, where ARE we? Why are we here?' Or perhaps you're sitting in your car, with the shopping list in your pocket; your kindergartner idly looking out the window. 'Mom, why was I born?' How do you react? Most of us are struck dumb. Awe-filled.

Even those of us who have yearned to have this conversation, to share our own insights, our own questions. At times like this we are filled with the awareness that we have no definite answer. That there isn't a definite answer. And we're not even sure what the question is. But we know however we respond to this young human being will have a lasting impact on how they perceive their world and their place in it. It is in moments like these that the most committed agnostic thinks longingly to find a circle of wise spiritual teachers.

But how to find that "circle of wise spiritual teachers"? For this generation of parents, the Baby Boomers, the question is not so easily answered. Many of them have turned away from, been turned off by, the religion in which they were raised. Many no longer believe the explanations they were taught as children. Some believe that they can do a better job of nurturing their children's spirituality on their own, without passing on a lot of baggage.

Martha Fay writes of this effort in her fine book, Children and Religio : "It is ... for many in this generation, as if we fear being found out -- found foolish, found naive, found wrong. We are plagued with the idea that, as with all other things, there is a right way to [teach our children about religion]; that just as it is possible, with the right sort of information, to protect against dental plaque and arterial plaque, against birth defects, nuclear war, and being taken for a ride when buying a new car, there exists a way not to repeat the mistakes of our parents, a way to avert both religious resentment and spiritual ennui, to give children what they need but not what will trap or limit them."

And she tells of her own struggles to answer her daughter's Big Questions: "Intending not to proselytize, we found ourselves prisoners of our own consistency and of a small child's logic and sometimes exhausting curiosity. You never really understand how handy the story of Adam and Eve is until, barely grasping the matter yourself, you've explained evolution to a fouryear-old and been rewarded with 'But how did the first person get born?' Nor is it possible to fully appreciate what a social lubricant the assumption of a shared piety is until you've tried to climb back out of the hole you've dug for yourself by broad-mindedly announcing, "No, we don't believe in God, but lots of other people do.' 'Why do they do that?' was her initial followup, later to alternate with the equally blunt, but surely more pertinent, 'Why don't you?"

"Hi! My name is Kaisa Tauscher (sic) my mom's the D.R.E. Did you ever know that the chalice has lice.(sic)"

(That piece of information gave me quite a start until I realized that Kaisa was referring not to some actual infestation of our beloved symbol of Unitarian Universalism, but simply to the spelling of the word chalice!)

When I went to seminary, I found that most of the students were, like me, late arrivals to UUism. But I also met several students who were lifelong UU's. I admired their selfconfidence, their tolerance, their readiness to speak their conscience respectfully, firmly.

Joel Miller told us in a class on religious education philosophy about his growing up in an extremely humanistic, rationalist fellowship in the Midwest. This group had a good religious education program, but it was based almost solely in the discoveries of science. Joel felt that he got a lot out of the Sunday school program at his church. He felt safe, nurtured, cared for. But he also remembers that when he would ask adults in his church about their religious beliefs, they would get nervous, and never give him a straightforward answer. They would always turn the question back to him: "What do you believe?" This left him feeling terribly frustrated.

I was exploring our classrooms and found a sign the children had made. It says "RESPECT." Obviously, a very high value for these young people. In a church without creeds, how do we respect both the children's need for answers and our own lack of feeling of finality about the answers we've come up with for ourselves?

Cathy Tauscher, our Director of Religious Education, tells me that, when a child asks her, for instance, what she believes about the afterlife, she will tell the child quite honestly that she just doesn't know what happens after death. But then she'll also tell the child about some of the beliefs that others have: that her daughter, for instance, believes in reincarnation.

RESPECT works both ways. We ask that children respect the community as a whole, we ask that they listen when others are talking. To be fair, we also need to listen when they talk.

At the church I served last year in Cleveland, I went to visit the second grade class one Sunday. We talked about being tolerant of each others' beliefs and opinions. (The second graders, incidentally, were a whole lot more respectful of one another's beliefs than the kindergartners were -- when I visited them, a huge controversy had erupted between the pro- and anti-Barney forces, Not a pretty sight.)

What I really remember about this second grade class was one earnest boy who said to me as we were discussing heaven and hell, "I can't believe there's a hell. If God made people, He would never want to hurt them forever like that." I have never heard such a succinct and clear exposition of Universalist theology.

Our faith doesn't pretend to give children all the answers to the big questions. UUism puts its faith in people's ability to explore the unknown together. It doesn't pretend to take away the mystery. It would be wrong to minimize either our children's vulnerability, or our own.

What starts out as an immediate need to respond to our children's big questions calls another question. What do we want for our children religiously or spiritually? Martha Fay said that she wanted her daughter to experience the sense of awe she herself felt as a child. Like all parents, UU parents want our children to develop a reliable sense of what's right and wrong. And we want them to be compassionate members of society and family.

But perhaps unlike parents who may be more comfortable in rigidly creedal-based traditions, Unitarian Universalists want our children to keep open to their own inner knowing, their own innate sense of spirituality, of connectedness. We want them to learn to trust themselves, the environment we bring them into, and ultimately to take responsibility to make their world more trustworthy. We want them to grow up knowing that it matters that they are alive; that they make a difference.

"Amanda, Thanks for Volunteering to be Our Minister (sic). My name is Kyle Nicholas. I like to draw, play soccer, and do good deeds. Sometimes. Hear's (sic) my picture."

Children need moral structure and feedback. They need to know what is right and wrong. And the structure needs to be consonant with the way their role models live their lives. We need to model for them respect for self and others, tolerance for others' views, and the importance of using their minds and hearts to determine what is right. As Unitarian Universalists, we don't give our children dogmatic absolutes -- ours is a religion that embraces paradox, complexity and diversity. Perhaps our absolutes are LOVE, the context of life, and HOPE, the creativity of life -- and, of course, RESPECT.

Is it possible to raise happy, healthy, socially responsible children without giving them any exposure to formal religious education? Of course. Is it possible to raise children without any exposure to the idea of God, or other religious concepts? Of course not. As Martha Fay says, "Children raised without religious instruction, or without parents who believe, discover God in the playground and at nursery school, absorb him by way of baby-sitters and friends, have their awareness of him reinforced by movies, television, and the casual profanity of the street. He is, indeed, everywhere, and parents who suggest otherwise are often surprised by the intensity with which their children insist on God's reality."

Those of us who are dedicated to Unitarian Universalist religious education are convinced that it is better for children to have the opportunity to process and develop their religious questions and ideas in the context of a structured, caring community.

When I heard the stories of my fellow students at Starr King who had been raised as Unitarian Universalists, I envied them greatly. I wished that I had not had to go through my year of doubt and anxiety all alone. I wished that I could have had a context for asking my questions and having the respectful guidance of caring adults, and of peers who would not have thought my questions weird.

At Evergreen, we strive to provide that religious community -- a safe place for children and youth to explore world religions including Judaism and Christianity, develop an identity as young Unitarian Universaiists, examine questions of morality, and learn a language with which to discuss and develop ideas about the Big Questions. To us, it is the most sacred work that we do.

Do children need religion? they already have their own religion -- a fragile, precious inborn sense of spirituality. As the father of a six-year-old said, "Watching Stevie chase a butterfly across a field, or bite into an apple, I can see that there is an innate spirituality, an embracing of life as a gift. I guess my main job is not to mess it up!"

Children already have religion. What they need is a religious community. A place for celebrating life, feeling safe, meeting new friends, exploring, and creating. And so, I submit, do their parents.

To close, some words from Esther Edwards.

"Hi Amanda! I am 11 years old and in fifth grade. I love reading and writing poems. Here is a poem that I have written.

GIFTS FOR EVERYONE
My gift for you is a flower blossoming out joy and happiness...
A rainbow that holds all of the hopes and joys of everyone...
And a whale that spouts out wisdom.
I give you a valley of crystals glistening with happiness...
A cheetah made up of gold and silver showing all the love in the world...
And a river flowing out all good and evil thoughts and feelings. I also give you a trunk of a sturdy tree that comforts you and holds you when you are in need...
A blackbird that calls so loud and sweet it makes you feel far away...
And love. Without love, what would the world be like?"

Amen!