School on Sunday

Teacher: Do you have some idea of what God is like? Is there anything in church life or the Bible that will tell you a little bit of what God is like?

Girl: When I was little, I thought He was something white, floating around.

Teacher: He didn't see.m like a person? Girl: No. A white robe and blue hair--floating around.

This classroom dialogue is reported in a new manual for teachers, part of an ambitious experiment in Sunday-school education that is being launched this week by the Protestant Episcopal Church. Instead of aiming to give children some Biblical and theological background for the faith they will later join, the program undertakes to make functioning Christians of them here and now--from six-year-old Davy Crocketts on up.

Not for the Sensitive. The new courses, known as the Seabury Series,* are available to all parishes at a price of approximately $2 a child, with books, pamphlets and teachers' manuals for grades 1, 4 and 7. About 2,000 parishes have already sent in pre-publication orders. Planning for the series got under way nine years ago when the Episcopal Church decided that the Sunday-school curriculum in too many parishes was little better than a pious device for providing some peace and quiet around the house on Sunday morning. After the problem was turned over to the church's Department of Christian Education, its current director, the Rev. David R. Hunter, launched a program of meticulous pretesting. Hundreds of weekend "Parish-Life Conferences" were held to prepare laymen for the new program, and mobile teams in trucks and station wagons toured the country to review study materials with pastors.

The result is a plan that has the children taped and measured in the latest sociopsychological terms, from "group hostility" to "rejection." It anticipates virtually any question that a child can ask about religion, tries to give the answers with charts, diagrams and sample dialogues. The series calls for a cadre of Sunday-school teachers who are a far cry from the usual warmhearted spinsters and parish wheel horses. The new teachers should be well trained in Christian doctrine and church history, teach full 50-minute periods, be accompanied by a "classroom observer" who is to be "an additional set of eyes and ears ... so that the teacher may know his pupils . . ." Other conditions for effective use of the series: regular family worship on Sunday and a weekly class for parents and godparents.

"I Don't Like God." Although the manual warns that "the Bible, the Prayer Book and the Hymnal will be essential tools in your teaching," the chief aim of the series is to express religion in everyday, sometimes even in comic-book terms. For six-year-olds, there are three gaily illustrated booklets of stories about Tish and Mike, whose adventures make good beginnings for classroom discussions of religious truths. The booklets may well guide as many parents as children, showing Daddy and Mother coping wisely with such family crises as Mike's TV-induced nightmares and Tish's embezzlement of 15-c-. When Mike discovers a sprouting potato in the kitchen, his mother explains to him: " 'A seed grows into a plant like the plant the seed comes from.' 'Yes, but why?' asked Mike. 'That's the way the world is, Mike. It is God's world and God's world is dependable,' said his mother." (On the other hand, when a child says, "I don't like God," the recommended answer is not "Don't say that; that's irreverent," for this would make the child feel rejected. The answer should be: "I know how you feel.")

For older children there are well-written stories about modern-minded youngsters in Acts of the Apostles settings. "Mark, why do you always make the little sign of the cross when you go through a door?" asked Jerry, and Mark replied conspiratorially: "That's one of the secret ways you can tell a Christian in a crowd." There is also a lucid "resource book" for junior-high-school students giving alphabetically arranged definitions of Christian terms, e.g., "The word apostle means one who is sent. Every patrol leader in the Boy Scouts is a kind of apostle . . ."

Christianity & Swimming. Also suggested are games of "role-playing," in which instructive situations are to be acted out. "At a summer resort a new girl walks down to the beach where a crowd is swimming. She doesn't know how to swim and stands watching from the shore. What do the others do about her? This leads to experience in Drawing a new member into the group, and can open up talk of our obligations as Christians to share all that we have--our skills and good times as well as our money."

Even seventh graders, according to the teachers' manual, can be brought to understanding that "they share sin with all mankind." Throughout the course of the year they may be brought back again and again to the realization that fear, deceit, stubbornness and disobedience all stem from self-concern and self-will. "Then they will be ready for the knowledge that this is what we mean by 'original sin.' "

Concludes an introduction to the course: "Approach your boys and girls with prayer, anticipation and confidence. A wonderful adventure lies ahead for you and for them."

* The Rev. Samuel Seabury (1729-96) was the first bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.

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