curricula

Environmental curriculum for congregations ready

The Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth has created a five-session environmental justice curriculum. Called “Our Place in the Web of Life,” the curriculum was developed to help congregations meet the environmental justice requirement of the Green Sanctuary program. It provides an introduction to environmental justice concepts and a process to identify community needs so that a congregation can develop a local justice project.

The curriculum also emphasizes racial and ethnic relationships in doing environmental justice work. It is available as a free download from the UUMFE website. The curriculum was designed by Dr. Mark Hicks of the Meadville Lombard Theological School and Pamela Starr, environmental justice consultant.

UUMFE, an independent affiliate of the UUA, supports congregations in environmental justice work, including Earth Day activities and providing environmental resources for religious education and worship.

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Children’s immigration curriculum coming

A children’s religious education curriculum on immigration justice will be available by February 1 from the UUA’s Ministries and Faith Development staff group. Gail Forsyth-Vail, Adult Programs director for the UUA, says the curriculum is tentatively titled With Justice for All. Information could be available as soon as mid-January on Forsyth-Vail’s blog, Cooking Together, Recipes for Immigration Justice Work.

The curriculum is a part of the resources the UUA is developing for the 2012 Justice General Assembly in Phoenix in June. The sessions, to be available online, will be suitable for Sunday morning RE as well as retreats and multigenerational gatherings. There will be four sessions for children in grades 1-3 and four related sessions for those in grades 4-6, all by Mandy Neff, director of religious education at First Parish of Cambridge, Mass. They will emphasize compassion and fairness and are grounded in the Buddhist practice of loving-kindness meditation.

The sessions will give children an opportunity to explore their own family traditions and stories of migration and dislocation, reflect on fair and unfair rules, and examine the concept of human rights. The program engages parents and families, culminating in a family event where children share what they have learned.

For more information email Forsyth-Vail.

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People who made the world better

A new book, Stirring the Nation’s Heart: Eighteen Stories of Prophetic Unitarians and Universalists of the Nineteenth Century, describes how these 18 religious folk, from Julia Ward Howe to Theodore Park and Dorothea Dix, had an idea about how the world could be better, and made that change happen.

Written by Polly Peterson, a freelance writer and member of First Parish in Concord, Mass., Stirring the Nation’s Heart will be useful for religious educators as well as UUs and others wanting to learn more about the big ideas that began with many of our spiritual forbears, including reform of education and treatment of the mentally ill, women’s suffrage, and antiracism work. These were social reformers who played key roles in UU and U.S. history and whose life work made the world a better place. Each chapter includes discussion questions.

Stirring the Nation’s Heart is published by the Unitarian Universalist Association and is available from the UUA Bookstore for $15.

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‘Building the World’ curriculum about transformation

Building the World We Dream About is a new UUA curriculum that supports the creation of multicultural congregations. The program seeks to transform how we relate to one another across racial and ethnic differences in our congregations and beyond.

Adult congregants engage in either 13 or 24 two-hour workshops. There are also take-home activities between sessions. The curriculum is available online at no charge as part of the UUA’s Tapestry of Faith curricula. For more information email Janice Marie Johnson, director of the Office of Racial and Ethnic Concerns.

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‘What Moves Us’ adult curriculum ready

A new adult curriculum, “What Moves Us: Unitarian Universalist Theology,” by the Rev. Dr. Thandeka, is available online through the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Lifespan Faith Development staff group’s Tapestry of Faith program.

The curriculum uses ten 90-minute sessions (expandable to two hours) to explore the life experiences and theological writings of historic and contemporary UU theologians, highlighting those moments that caused them to have a change of heart, a new hope, or a deeper understanding of their faith. What Moves Us invites UUs to engage in their own theological reflections through examining their own experiences.

Theologians included in the What Moves Us curriculum are William Ellery Channing, Hosea Ballou, Margaret Fuller, George deBenneville, Charles Chauncy, James Luther Adams, Sophia Lyon Fahs, Forrest Church, William F. Schulz, and Thandeka. It is being field tested by 12 congregations and cluster groups, but is available for other congregations as well.

Thandeka has taught at Meadville Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago, San Francisco State University, Harvard Divinity School, Brandeis University, and others. She is the founder of Affect Theology, which investigates the links between religion and emotions, and the author of several books and articles including Learning to Be White: Money, Race and God in America.

Find out more about What Moves Us here.

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‘Harvest the Power’ Curriculum Strengthens Congregational Leaders

Harvest the Power, a new UUA curriculum created to strengthen the skills and confidence of congregational leaders, is available now as part of the Tapestry of Faith series of programs from the Lifespan Faith Development staff group.

Adult Programs Director Gail Forsyth-Vail says Harvest the Power will be useful for summer leadership retreats and other types of gatherings of leaders. “It also offers an intentional pathway for making leadership an opportunity for spiritual growth,” she says.

Harvest the Power is composed of 12 workshops structured in three units of four workshops each. Each unit explores progressively deeper aspects of leadership, beginning with helping leaders explore their own identities, then moving into the purposes of leadership, including how leaders can care for themselves, and finally focusing on learning skills and new ways of thinking which are helpful in leading congregations.

Forsyth-Vail adds, “Harvest the Power is not a program about the mechanics of leadership. It rather invites lay leaders to grow in spirit, in skill, and in confidence as they help congregations navigate changing circumstances. It is designed for maximum flexibility, so that leadership groups might do the entire program, or one of several combinations of three or four workshops, or even a single workshop.”

Harvest the Power, and other Tapestry of Faith curricula, can be found, free of charge, at uua.org/tapestryoffaith.

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