John H. Westerhoff

THE CHURCH AND THE FAMILY 1

1 This essay was originally delivered as the Robinson Orr Lecture at Huron College in London, Ontario, Canada.

Reflections on the Anniversary of REA

We humans are historical beings. We all influence history in some manner and our experience of history influences us. This history, as we reflect on it, has two dimensions, historical fact (often debatable) and historical memory. Both are relevant and important. Of course, what we forget is as significant as what we remember and what we remember is necessarily a consequence of personal interpretation. Therefore, any insights or implications we draw from our reflections on this real and imagined past must be acknowledged as ambiguous and open to various alternatives. Like all of us, I am my imagined past, and this imagined past will influence my judgments on the present and my imagined desirable future. This reality, of course, is complicated by two temptations. The first is nostalgia for the past that I remember and the second is a selfserving analysis of the present and future. I hope I will avoid them. There are also important differences among those of us who are concerned about and have committed our lives to the established discipline (or is it a practical field of endeavor?) that has been known as religious education, Christian education, church education, or Christian religious education. So let me begin by sharing some biographical information. Born into the Dutch Calvinist tradition, I graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1958 and was ordained in the United Church of Christ or more particularly, the Puritan congregational tradition. For eight years I was the pastor (whose self image was as a rabbi or teacher) in three New England congregations. I then joined the staff of the division of education in the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries where I was the founding editor of Colloquy, a journal on education in church and society. After another eight years, I became an Episcopal priest so that I might unite the Protestant and Roman Catholic in me, and I earned a doctorate in the foundations of education at Teachers College, Columbia University with a focus on history, philosophy, cultural anthropology, and their intersection with theology.

LEARNING AND PRAYER 1

1 A paper read at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education, at the Washington Hilton, October 27, 1974.