I posted a link to this blog post yesterday on the Confirm not Conform twitter feed with the comment, "hmmm." Having had a little more time to reflect, here are a couple of things that strike me.

First of all, there seems to be an "either/or" situation being presented: either you do Bible memorization or you have games. Although I think Dr. Huizenga has a reasonable critique of youth ministry generally (as is fully explored by Kenda Creasy Dean in Almost Christian), he sells youth ministry short in saying it's either one or the other.

Secondly, he quotes Pope Benedict's forward to YouCat, writing, "You need to know what you believe." I absolutely agree; what concerns me about catechesis is that it doesn't necessarily explore what YOU believe, but what the church thinks you OUGHT to believe. In a strict focus on catechism there appears to be no room to compare the two.

In Confirm not Conform, we DO look at the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, but we do so in the framework of discussion and bringing our own thoughts and experiences to bear. We DO have youth memorize scripture and then recite it for their congregation. Their recitation is accompanied by their teaching, in which they share with their faith community what this passage means to them and what they have learned from it.

I agree with Dr. Huizenga more than I disagree. I think we can offer more meaty fare in our spiritual formation for youth. But I don't think a return to the catechism will work without also allowing room for discussion, and even disagreement. Our faith can stand up to that, and our youth have a great deal to teach us.

Laura Toepfer

I have some problems with Mr. Huizenga’s ideas. In his essay he says,

“You need to know what you believe. You need to know your faith with that same precision with which an IT specialist knows the inner workings of a computer. You need to understand it like a good musician knows the piece he is playing.”

This was, and still is, the major problem with the RCC and it’s fans. They think that faith is about knowing answers, owning the truth, being the smartest guy in the room ready to take on all comers. They even have answers for questions no one ever asked.

They have zero idea that faith is a journey; that faith is about not having all the answers and being comfortable with that; that faith is about exploring and more deeply understanding our relationship with God and each other. They treat faith, as Mr. Huizenga states, like it is a computer. How cold and mechanical and disrespectful of the faith-walk of other people!

I think catechetics is pretty cool, to a point. It strikes me as the starting point for a mature discussion of our walk with God, not the end point.

(And pull out a catechism and tell a room of teens that you're going to have memory contests about it, and watch the room empty instantly. If it waddles like homework and quacks like homework, it's probably really is more homework!)

Kevin McGrane

1. There's nothing wrong with memorization in its place. Anyone learning virtually anything is faced with some memorization, and that applies to fields like music and language as much as IT.
2. Kevin, you seem to be no more respectful of others' "faith-walk" than you accuse others of being. I'm pretty sure that there are plenty within the RCC and its "fan"-base that have more than "zero idea that faith is a journey."
3. Just as having all the answers is not the essence of Christian faith, neither is willful ignorance. Modern American religion is full of people who love Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan's famous dictum "The past has a voice, not a veto." A good percentage of them, however, have no real knowledge of what the past is saying. You can't even really disagree with religious tradition meaningfully until you know what that tradition is.
4. Faith is a journey. Part of making a journey is having a good map of the area, even if it's just so you know what swamps you want to avoid.
5. Just as people ought to be taught not to slavishly accept everything in religious tradition, we ought to taught not to account every "spiritual insight" that occurs to us as being a pearl of wisdom, worthy of being lived out and passed on to others. People think an awful lot of crap; this is no less true in the realm of the "spiritual" than it is in politics, philosophy, or history.

The bit about the computer parts seems to have been from Pope Benedict's introduction, not Huizenga's own reflections. I agree that it's an unfortunate metaphor. Nevertheless, our faith has a content, one that we pledge in our baptismal vows to learn and teach (BCP 1979, pp. 304-305). Far too many faithful laity--not to mention clergy--have only a faint sense of what we mean by "the apostles' teaching." I hardly foresee a mass return to rote memorization and recitation of the catechism, but we would do well to try to recover something of the common grounding in the faith once conveyed by its systematic use.

Warren Woodfin

I would suggest that having someone provide you with all the answers is a form of willful ignorance.

Or that knowing your faith "with razor precision" is a form of willful ignorance.

Warren: I am much more comfortable with your approach. :)

Kevin McGrane

I also don't think that we need to approach this with an either/or attitude. Yet I also worry that too many people have an insufficient grounding in the basics of our Christian tradition. I think it is important to examine our own experience in the light of Christian thought, but I think it is a mistake to say that so long as you love Jesus, anything you "believe" is ok. I'm sure that the Inquisitors also thought they loved Jesus. If there is any defense against the Fundamentalist vision it is a grounding in the doctrine of the church rooted in the patristics and scripture as Anglicanism is.

None of this is to say that the catechism is necessarily the best tool for accomplishing a better understanding of faith, but I think it is a move in the right direction.

Jon White

I think that this "back to the Catechism" and "Doctrine is back" is just more desperate "circling of the wagons" in the hope that this will blow some life back into the deflated balloon of authoritarian and old-paradigm Christianity. Do we really imagine that just making kids/teens memorize the cat-on-the-mat rote, dull and traditional viewpoint (and in my opinion, irrelevant) catechism answers would have stopped so many under-50's from joining the "church alumni association" or is it (as I think) just more hysteria from old paradigm Christians trying to convince themselves that the "old way" still works?
I would certainly love to see good biblical study, but that is not to be found in the catechism. Really coming to terms in the mainline traditions with modern historical textual criticism and analysis of the bible and how that might relate to a religiously lived life - yes, but that's not in the catechism. As for questions, I would much rather see youth and adults using a program such as "Living the Questions" (www.livingthequestions.com) than memorizing catechism answers that will be forgotten as soon as they are spouted back as the nearly-empty platitudes that they inevitably are. A real life lived in a community of faith and practice in the real (not some imaginary blinders-on catechetical flat earth) world with real questions and something other than pat answers - that might be worth doing. Going "back to the catechism" as a remedy to our educational problems is about as likely to succeed as going back to "readin', writin' and 'rithmetic all to the tune of a hickory stick" is likely to fix our problems in public education. Its just wishful thinking and a distraction.

Kevin, if you're implying I've written in support of either of the two things you label as "willful ignorance" (which is how your comment comes across) you should probably read my comment again.

Jeffrey, I think you're overstating your case when you say that memorized answers are instantly forgotten. I bet lots of folks reading this could still tell you the BCP Catechism's definition of a Sacrament. Calling the Catechism's answers nearly empty platitudes seems like overkill, too. Which of them in particular do you think fit that description?

By the way, the current BCP Catechism makes no claims as to having all the answers. It rather goes out if it's way to disavow being any such thing.

Look, as soon as someone says "authoritarianism" I know the discussion is down the tubes. Faith is not a journey, but perhaps our religious life is a journey. And as a journey it is not a random stroll through spiritual fields of flowers, but a hike in the direction of God. And we are given maps for that trip, and catechisms are simply those maps, summarized. Vague, roll-your-own-doctrine, believe-what-you-want faith-in-whatever religion is now the old paradigm, the religious milieu of a modernist past. It's time to grow out of that and accept that the doctrines aren't just there for control (and therefore to be rebelled against), but that we don't actually each get our own truth. Modern historical criticism is also now the past; it's an unclothed emperor of secular (and secularist) biases which claims a lot of territory it cannot conquer and to which it has no right. We spend way too much time rebelling against fictitious parents and justifying the impurity in which we live, casting the first stone over and over again.

I came into the church at a private school where I was required to take sacred studies classes, to the point where even when I skipped a grade I was still required to take that grade's religion class. We learned a lot of basic text crit stuff, but we also learned the creeds. My kids have mostly missed Sunday school because of a (IMO boneheaded) policy of attaching it to the guitar service, which both I and they can't stand; but my wife and I talk about religion all the time, and my kids talk with me about it. And I answer their questions, because the questions do have answers. Dr. Shy, if you forgot the catechetical answers as soon as you memorized them, I did not; and I think this reflects on you, not me. At any rate the choice of forgetting should be given the kids, instead of denying them the answers as you appear to propose.

The fact behind the argument here is that you don't have the same faith that I do. I believe that there is a definite ontological reality to God and His Son, and that we have been told what this is. And thus I believe it is meet and right and our bounden duty to organize our relationship to God around that revealed knowledge. Your words imply that you do not believe this to be known at all, and that it has to be sought, and that what we have been told is false. These are not different ways of approaching the same religion; they are different religions, and it seems to me that a catechism could be written delineating your faith, and that it would look nothing like an orthodox catechism.

@ Bill. It is not so much that I think what is in the catechism is wrong, but rather that it suggests that the essence of faith is to be found in assent to a set of intellectual propositions. It is not a feeling that all intellectual propositions are bad, but that this misses the heart of what "faith" or "believing" is about. The catechism 'right' answers also include the implication that other answers, in that they are "other" are the "wrong" answers.

@ C. Wingate. I think that you are confusing anti-intellectual nihilism with post-modernism. There may be a healthy skepticism about looking at assumptions and bias in intellectual endeavor, but it does not mean the abandonment of all reason in favor of so-called "revealed" truth, which is nothing more than a prior consensus opinion of some particular group. Our "revealed truth" may be equally some other's unorthodox ranting. Why not say that this is "my" truth rather than "the" truth? Why not defend your path on its own merits rather than as a deus ex machina with whom there is no argument? It is just this "my way or the highway" that is what is wrong with Q and A catechisms as we have them. Thanks also for tossing me outside the tent into the nether world of the unorthodox. :)

Rilke's " Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." is the spiritual journey for me. I am really not satisfied with "answers" that others give me - I always see another POV -- so living the questions brings me closer to the Holy

@Ann: Thank you for the wonderful Rilke quote. I know what's going on the Twitter feed tomorrow!

Laura Toepfer

"The catechism 'right' answers also include the implication that other answers, in that they are "other" are the "wrong" answers."

Well, yeah. To a great extent that's true, given the fact that lots of the Catechism addresses cold, sober fact for which there *are* right answers ("How many creeds does this Church use in its worship?" "What is the Summary of the Law?" "How is the Church described in the creeds?").

Others may not be as objective to society at large, but accurately reflect the Christianity professed by the Episcopal Church. For example, the question, "What are we by nature?" may be pretty open-ended in other contexts, but in a discussion of Christianity it's hard to assail the answer given: "We are part of God's creation, made in the image of God." Other answers to that question *may indeed* be wrong. For example, "We are divine sparks trapped in material form by the evil Demiurge" is, simply, wrong from a Christian point of view, no matter how sincerely held.

But it really does seem unfair to the Catechism to fault it for having a limited vision of "the essence of faith," since it doesn't seem to claim to deal with anything of the sort. It's not primarily about that sort of faith, not even the sort of "saving faith" that the Reformers talked about. "Faith" is one of those words with a wide range of meaning depending on context. The Catechism is "An Outline of *the* Faith" - its a short presentation of basic Christian teaching. As it says in its introduction, "It is a commentary on the creeds, but is not meant to be a complete statement of belief and practices..." As Warren pointed out in his comment, our faith does have a content. You seem to be comparing "the Faith" - i.e., Christian doctrine - unfavorably to experiential faith, which seems a bit of a straw man. It's like faulting the definition of prayer because it isn't, itself, prayer.

Dr. Shy, I think that you are wrong. It might be nice to have a world in which the truth of religion is something to puzzle out rather than something which is revealed, but that's not the world we have. Repugnance to a deus ex machina is an aesthetic value, which is appropriate to the theater alone.

When you say that the orthodox tradition is "nothing more than a prior consensus opinion of some particular group," you are saying that it is untrue. I do not disagree that it is the consensus position of a group, but I disagree that the existence of that consensus or the nature of that group are to be disregarded. But in any case, as soon as you say that it is untrue, you're just setting up a competing religion. I don't see a great deal of difference between you and the Jehovah's Witnesses on that point; you are both restorationists. And my problem with restorationisms of any kind is that, thus far, trying to skip around the history of theology leads to a choice between reinventing old heresies (often out of spite), or just making things up. And I do not admit standing in arguing against orthodoxy to anyone who cannot correctly state what the orthodox position is; to that degree, at least, catechisms are a valuable crutch.

The truth about the 1979 BCP catechism, as Bill says, is that the commitments that it asks for are pretty minimal. If you are willing to accept metaphorical interpretations of its answers, you can probably "accept" it and continue to cross your fingers when you say the creed on a Sunday. It's not the big of an intellectual cross to bear.

I'ma veto all y'all. "There is an ontological reality...and we have been told this." Good Lord. I'm so glad all that is holy has been so nicely packaged for you and given to you like a golden box of Godiva truffles out of a temperature controlled cooler. Aren't you sooo lucky, to have been soooo blessed with certainties that you can grasp onto while the rest of us live and move and have our being, flopping around and weeping in our damnable uncertainties and perpetually in the dark, by God's malice, to suffer here below until we suffer eternally far far below in the Abyss where we are forgotten and left behind because those little truffles of sweet faith never got to us, or when they did, were melted and ruined beyond recognition. Regardless of what you meant, that is what you are saying, Mr. Wingate, to the rest of us who cannot possibly, for whatever reason, perceive this revelation which you and the rest of God's Favorites have been handed so readily.

Wait - so Christianity isn't a revealed religion? Jesus Christ isn't the self-revelation of God? It's all up for grabs, and Christian teaching as received by this Church have no legitimate claims on us? Because that's what your comment says to me, Clint. C Wingate has a talent for putting things in the most abrasive form possible, and "ontological reality" is a little pompous outside a philosophy class, but that doesn't make him wrong.

To be honest with you, Fr. Bill, I can believe very easily that Jesus Christ is the self-revelation of God. However I find that much, if not most, of Christianity is an attempt to deal with and explain what the hell it all meant. The Holy Spirit, breathed out upon us by Jesus, moves us along very well and empowers us to walk into tricky situations and fix it by our witness, when this witness is met by even just a little tiny fragment of faith, just like Jesus himself did. Jesus never promised that we would be able to figure his very essence by voting on Greek philosophy at the command of (competing) Imperators and Patriarchs. I don't personally have the conviction that I must trust the outcomes of those votes, nor those votes that came before, nor those votes that came later, with the exception of the vote to include Gentiles, because that vote in itself was the very work of reconciliation that Jesus died carrying out. His work literally killed him. But wait, his death became a sacrifice of reconciliation, and the bread and wine are still the body and blood that we can eat as a result of this sacrifice, and so we can continue on with his work. This is why I'm such a hard-ass High Churchman, because that's the only thing I can really trust, that the Body and Blood are the axis around which all the rest of the work of reconciliation continues. "Other than that, Mary, how was Passover in Jerusalem?"

Clint, it's just plain old Mr Bill ("oh, noooooo!").

What about the 1979 catechism alongside living the questions, or godly play? sOr what about teaching kids contemplative prayer alongside doctrine? I'm on the side of the argument that says that most kids, especially young ones, should have a structure- that the structure of our religion can be and should be a gift-it is a beginning point, not an end point. The problem, is that much in the existing structure is unhelpful and/or irrelevant. What about supplementing the traditional stories with some of the stuff from Thomas Berry about the scientific creation story as grace? It doesn't have to be either or. I do think, however, that our 79 catechism is among the best currently out there, even as it needs theological expansion, and the best isn't nearly good enough. But there are times in life when it is important to know the Truth that God is Love- and as C. says, that this Truth is rooted in ontology, and not only in our subjective experience, which can falter. In any other area of life, historical, even financial, I think our kids have a right to the truth. If it is the Truth that the universe is not an ontologically meaningless junkyard, but an epiphany of Divine Love, and that this Truth in the words of Captain Hook is "far too much fun" to prefer a lie, then our kids have a right to know it, and we have a responsibility to teach it to them.

I've hesitated to enter this conversation, as I've felt a bit intimidated. But since Josh brought up Godly Play, here I go. Godly Play (and Catechesis of the Good Shepherd) are structured around both doctrine *and* openness to questions. The simplicity of the Godly Play language is deceptive, but if you read Jerome Berryman's "The Ten Best Ways" alongside the 1979 BCP section of the catechism on The Ten Commandments, you'll see what I mean. Teachers who are schooled in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd learn two things: to structure their presentations around points of doctrine and then - importantly - to observe and listen to the child. I don't see these doctrinal points as "all I know and all I need to know," but rather as a starting point for deeper questioning and contemplation.

I've heard of, but am not familiar with, either Godly Play or the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, but agree with Josh and others that an either/or approach is not the answer.