It may not be the Easter story most grown-ups remember learning. But then, most grown-ups didn’t go to Sunday school when they were 3. Like so many things in our culture–from violin lessons to computer software–religious school is now being tailored to fit even the youngest children. And as in any good nursery school, the learning takes place largely through stories, songs and crafts. “It’s little doses of God mixed in with big helpings of fun,” says Nancy Pratt, a parent who volunteers at American Martyrs.
Religious leaders from different faiths agree that the goal of early religious education is not to teach specific prayers or texts. Rather, it is to familiarize children with the symbols and rituals of their faith and make them feel at home in their places of worship. “When the kids walk in the door of the synagogue, I love to see them light up because they’re happy to be there,” says Amy Small, the rabbi of Beth Hatikvah, a reconstructionist congregation in Chatham, N.J. Small conducts a monthly Friday-night Tot Shabbat service for the under-5 set. At last month’s service, during Passover, she had the children pretend they were slaves crossing the Red Sea, then led them in celebration with singing and dancing. Rather than address whether the sea actually parted (or it was just low tide, as one 4-year-old argued), Small says she prefers to focus on the experience of crossing the Red Sea: would it make them feel tired, thirsty, scared? And recounting the story of the 10 plagues that God visited on Egypt to persuade the pharaoh to free the Jews, Small focuses on the amphibians. “Kids like frogs,” she says. “It’s important for them to feel like the frogs must have felt yucky.”
Nature and the environment are definitely hot topics. At the weekend school at Al Farooq mosque in Atlanta, discussions focus on being kind to animals. The curriculum for preschoolers at American Martyrs centers on “bugs and hugs,” says religious-school director April Beuder. Four-year-olds watch caterpillars become butterflies, and 5-year-olds grow their own gardens. Guest speakers are popular, too; for a lesson on space, an astronaut parishioner comes in to give a talk.
That doesn’t mean preschool educators avoid the topic of God. They just go about it differently. “In olden days, we used to go in and presume that we needed to introduce God to children,” says Ron Cram, a professor of religious education at Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta. “Curriculum choices are now beginning with the assumption that the child is bringing his or her conception of who God is into the religious setting.” When religious educators do talk to young children about God, they overwhelmingly portray a loving, caring God.
Sister Mary Irene Flanagan remembers when it was different. In the 1960s, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles asked her to develop a Sunday-school program for pre-schoolers. So she took a close look at the materials being used: posters of children flanked on one side by an angel and on the other by a devil and lesson plans on the Ten Commandments in all their sternness. “I was horrified,” Flanagan recalls. “Religion then was used as a source of control, and the message was that ‘God is out to get you’.” She created a new curriculum that relates God’s love to children through sensory experience. “We are not teaching traditional doctrine,” she says. “We’re teaching attitudes and values.”
Not everyone goes for such a touchy-feely approach. At the First Lutheran Church of Manhattan Beach, preschoolers repeat formal prayers and learn Bible stories. “We get the truth out,” says Chris Lubs, a veteran Sunday-school teacher. “We don’t candy-coat it, but we do make it so they can understand.” William Swatos, of the not-for-profit Religious Research Association, says religious schools that focus on abstract concepts like love and mercy don’t “do as good a job at holding the kids” as those that emphasize Bible stories and catechisms. “Bible stories are much easier for kids to grasp than forgiveness,” he says.
But no matter how it’s taught, Sunday school is most effective when reinforced at home. Archie Gottesman and Gary DeBode are raising their daughters Lilli, 5, Sophie, 3, and Ella, 18 months, in a Jewish home in Summit, N.J. They celebrate the Sabbath every Friday night with a family dinner and blessings. Gottesman, 37, says sending her kids to religious school “takes some of the pressure off” her to remember every detail of every holiday. “They both weigh on each other,” she says. “If you learned about the Seder at Sunday school, but didn’t have one at home, it would mean a lot less.” For the kids, religious school means there’s a place besides home where they are received with love.
