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Starting Adult Religious Education

I am looking to re-start the Adult Religious Education program at my (fairly small) church. I'm looking to start with the Tapestry of Life materials.

Some of the phrasing, while I can see that it is looking to be inclusive of those with theistic and nontheistic beliefs, makes me cringe or eyeroll. Has anyone worked with ARE materials before? If you strip out all of the supernatural language (including the stuff about energy flowing through a group or spirit of life), does your workshop size shrink?

And, have you ever taught an ARE program solo. Most of the Tapestry courses seem pretty insistent on at least two teachers, although the activities don't seem to require two leaders.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by UUMom on June 13, 2011 at 5:18pm

My husband was having a crisis years ago when he was exposed to materials he thought would kill him. He was "not religious". He went to our UU church and they were using Building Your Own Theology. At the end of the course, he was confirmed in his atheism. "Building Your Own Theology" may be old, but it has attracted people to our church out of curiosity when they were questioning. It was promoted in the local papers and through fliers and brought in fellow agnostics/atheists besides some others, but I don't think it was promoting "spirituality" as the newer curricula apparently does.

Permalink Reply by Adrienne on July 27, 2011 at 3:44pm

Some of the work of the course is on defining the terms for oneself, and some of the work of the course just uses the terms without defining them. My co-teacher and I are sometimes a little confused as to what to do with these terms when they are just used. For instance, are sacred and spiritual intended to indicate something different? That sort of thing.

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