By Bonnie Withers
As we think about how we re-invent religious education, we might well seek guidance from one of our most influential forebears. Sophia Lyon Fahs was born on August 2, 1876 to missionary parents in China. She studied progressive approaches to education at Columbia, and continued those studies at Union Theological Seminary where she eventually joined the faculty.
Throughout the 1930’s, Unitarian membership was dropping and one reason was dissatisfaction with the religious education curriculum. Fahs began to work for the American Unitarian Association under the leadership of reformer president Samuel May Eliot, bringing an entirely new approach to religious education. Her project, The New Beacon Series, is credited with a resurgence in Unitarian membership in the post-war period.
What was so revolutionary about the educational philosophy of Sophia Lyon Fahs? One need only read her well-known responsive reading, It Matters What We Believe, (gray hymnal #657) to understand the innovative approach she embodied in the curriculum she developed for religious education in Unitarian (and later UU) societies.
It Matters What We Believe
Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.
Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies.
Some beliefs are like shadows, clouding children’s days and fears of unknown calamities.
Other beliefs are like sunshine, blessing children with the warmth of happiness.
Some beliefs are divisive, separating saved from unsaved, friends from enemies.
Other beliefs are bonds in a world community, where sincere differences beautify the pattern.
Some beliefs are like blinders, shutting off the power to choose one’s own direction.
Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration.
Some beliefs weaken a person’s selfhood. They blight the growth of resourcefulness.
Other beliefs nurture self-confidence and enrich the feeling of personal worth.
Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world.
Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life.
At age 83, Sophia Fahs was ordained at Cedar Lane UU Church in Bethesda, Maryland, where she preached her own sermon. She died at age 102 in 1978.
