Will Our Children Have Faith Westerhoff

Title: Will Our Children Have Faith?

Author: Westerhoff, John H.

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Synopsis

Originally written in 1976, revised in 2000, and translated in six languages, this classic critique of Christian education is newly revised and expanded and includes Westerhoff’s overview and perspective on the state of Christian education over the past forty years—plus his role in that history.

According to Westerhoff, instead of guiding faith formation within the family, the church, and the school, we relegate religious education to Sunday morning classes. There, children learn the facts about religion, but how will they learn or experience faith? How can we nourish and nurture the faith of children, instead of only teaching the facts?

Content

The shaking of the foundations update

• Beginnings
  • 1903 the Religious Education Foundation was founded in recognition of problems with "Sunday school"
  • Modeled off of public school "modern pedagogy"
  • in 60s & 70s church schools flourished
• The Problem
  • Since the turn of the century, in spite of nods to other possibilities, Christian educators and local churches have functioned according to a schooling-instructional paradigm.
  • Other models have been considered but have not caught on.
  • John Dewey began his important career by assuring us that all of life educates, and that instruction in schools represents only one small part of our total education.
  • A church school with teachers, subject matter, curriculum resources, supplies, equipment, age-graded classes, classrooms, and, where possible, a professional church educator as administrator, has been the norm. All this must change.
• Anomalies
• The small church
  • church schools became divorced from the people and from church life
  • Small churches don't have resources to do "church schools"
• Ethnic cultures
  • embrace local, cultural norms
• A broken ecology
  • in early part of the century (assume 20th)...
    • typical community life
    • Second, the family was basically secure, extended, and stable.
    • Third, most public schools were Protestant parochial schools. Roman Catholics, in turn, supported their own parochial school system to educate their children.
    • Fourth, there was the church.
    • Fifth, a great number of popular religious periodicals provided the major source of "entertainment" and religious education in the home.
    • Sixth and last, the Sunday school completed this ecology of institutions deliberately engaged in religious education.
  • These six institutions intentionally worked together to produce an effective educational ecology.
  • Now churches are heterogeneous and families have changed

So we are left with a church school (or parish Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (C.C.D.) program) struggling to do alone what it took an ecology of six institutions to do in the past.

• The hidden Curriculum
  • This paradigm eliminates the processes of religious socialization from the concern and attention of church educators and parishioners.
  • Education correctly understood is not identical with schooling. It is an aspect of socialization involving all deliberate, systematic and sustained efforts to transmit or evolve knowledge, attitudes, values, behaviors, or sensibilities.
• The wrong Questions
  • But education grounded in Christian faith cannot be a vehicle for control; it must encourage an equal sharing of life in community, a cooperative opportunity for reflection on the meaning and significance of life.
• Religion or Faith
  • Faith is deeply personal, dynamic, ultimate. Religion, however, is faith's expression. For example, religion is concerned about institutions (churches), documents, statements of belief (Bible and theology), and our convictions and moral codes.
  • You can teach about religion, butt you cannot teach people faith.
• A Bankruptcy
  • A new paradigm must be found
• Update
  • Committed to adult education
  • a new paradigm is needed, and what I call a community of faith-formation paradigm is the one that best addresses the needs of our life.
  • I neglected the importance of the intellectual way of thinking and knowing. Christians do need to know the content of Scripture and how to interpret it; they need to have knowledge of ethical principles and to be able to make moral decisions; they need to know historic Christian doctrine and how to think theologically.
  • how cognitive skills develop.
    1. First comes knowing — being able to repeat what I am told or read;
    2. second, comprehension — being able to put what I read or am told into my own words;
    3. third, application - making use of what I have learned in conversation and the sharing of ideas;
    4. fourth, analysis understanding how another person thinks and has arrived at a particular position and being able to compare and contrast different positions;
    5. fifth, synthesis — being able to put together various positions and make my own considered opinion; and
    6. last, evaluation being able to judge the value or worth of different positions.
  • I have more questions than in 1976 but am more hopeful

Beginning and ending with faith update

• We face a crisis on our theological foundations
• Historical Roots
  • A number of liberal theological presuppositions laid the foundations and gave vitality to the religious education movement.
  • In the 30s a new theological voice was heard. Liberalism had reached its zenith and neo-orthodoxy was born as a necessary corrective to its extremes.
  • The impact of neo-orthodoxy on the church's educational ministry was great. Religious education was transformed into Christian education.
• A decision
  • Today, liberation theology makes possible a synthesis of these two historic theological movements liberation theology makes possible important coalitions between Roman Catholic and Protestant (witness the ecumenical character of its adherents); liberals and conservatives (witness the continuing concerns of the ); majorities and minorities
  • I contend that liberation theology provides the most helpful theological system for Christian education today.
  • Liberation theology also shares three common perspectives on the experience of God in history. First is the biblical promise of liberation. God is the one who sets people free, and the Gospel announces the good news of liberation. God is biased toward the marginal people—the have-nots, the oppressed, the hurt, the out- siders. Christ has set and is setting the captives free. Second, life is understood as centered in history and is changing and changeable. That is, life is s a series of events moving the world in the direction God intends. Liberation theology asserts that we have hope because we have a memory of God's past acts in history; and we have purpose because God has given us a vision of the future God intends. Third, salvation is a social event in the present, not an escape from history but an engagement within history.
• God
  • the written words of the Bible are not our final authority, nor are the doctrines of the church, nor are our own personal inner experiential convictions. While each provides us with one aspect of the authority upon which Christian faith is founded, it is God's historical liberating action in Jesus Christ that is the final authority and the foundation for Christian faith.
  • The Bible must once again become our one and only "textbook,
• Persons
  • The human self, like God is an agent. We know God through his actions
  • Because God is in relationship with all persons, we cannot be in full community with God unless we also identify with and seek the good of all persons.
  • Historically, Christian education has vacillated between a con- cern for conversion and a concern for nurture. With the birth of the religious education movement, nurture through teaching became the dominant underlying purpose.
  • We have expected too much of nurture, for at is very best, nurture makes possible institutional incorporation.
  • Conversion, I believe, is best understood as this radical turning from "faith given" (through nurture) to "faith owned.'
  • we need to understand that both conversion and nurture have a place in religious education if such education is to be Christian.
• Church and Society
  • One Christian is no Christian, for we cannot be Christian alone- we are created for community. The church is best understood as a creation of God, a commu- nity of corporate social agents called to bear witness individually and corporately in word and deed to God's intention for human
  • Today, as in every age, the church struggles to be faithful to God in the political, social, and economic world. We must not equate Christian faith with any nations way of life or with opposition to the ideologies of other nations. Nor can we afford to equate Christian faith with any economic or social system.
  • We are charged to root out racism and prejudice from individuals and institutions, to correct the disparity between rich and poor nations, to stand with women and men of all races, ages, classes, and nationalities as they struggle for dignity, respect, power, and equity.
  • Only an educational paradigm that supports and encourages such an understanding of the church can be defended or advocated.
• Implications

• Update

Other facts

• Used for: History and Theory of Catechetics II TRS 751C
• Purchased: August 2015

Bibliographic info

• Personal name: Westerhoff, John H.
• Main title Will our children have faith? / John H. Westerhoff III.
• Edition 3rd rev. ed.
• Published/Created: Harrisburg, PA : Morehouse Pub., c2012.
• ISBN: 9780819228000 (pbk.)
• LC classification (full): BV1475.3 .W47 2012
• LC classification (partial) BV1475.3