Essays and "Think Pieces" from members of the American Humanist Association

My Perspective on Our Humanist Sunday School

(Armineh has an MS in Engineering and an MA in Applied Anthropology. She can be contacted at armineh.noravian@gmail.com. This article was originally published in the Humanist Community Blog , March 2008 (with contributions from Arthur Jackson, president of the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley.)

The TIME article about the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley's “Humanist Family Program,” which they called “Sunday School for Atheists,” in December 2007, drew some attention to parents and children who are nonbelievers. As a parent who has a couple of children in the older children’s program, I felt that the TIME article didn’t really portray our Sunday program. So, I thought to focus on the things that I would cover if I were doing a story about the children’s program in the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley.

The Sunday school in the Humanist Community is not a stand-alone program. In fact, it’s an integral part of the Humanist community that expanded on concerns first expressed by Humanist Community member, Peter Bishop. Looking at the overall community, one sees people who are in their 80s on one hand and children who were born just this year on the other hand. The teacher of the older children, Peter Bishop, had his kids attend the Humanist Sunday school when they were small. They are both grown men now and one of them recently visited Peter’s class with his wife and talked about his days at the Sunday school. There is much history and experience in our community which, among other things, softly permeate the children’s experiences on Sundays.

So, to describe the Sunday schools, one has to look at the community as a whole. The children’s program has two groups: less than ten and older than ten, although this age cut off is not strict. The forum has a wide range of programs for adults which the older children sometimes attend. A couple of times this year, when Peter Bishop was the presenter at the forum, the children in his class attended the forum also. After the forum, we have lunch, where everyone from the forum and the children’s groups come together to eat. Besides the Sunday forums, there are a number of different adult groups that get together regularly during the week for various activities such as watching videos, discussing books, or being part of the heart sharing group. So, a combination of the weekly activities, the forums, and the children’s programs make this truly a community.

My two boys, who are in the older children’s group, get a dose of what it means to live as a Humanist from my husband and me at home. They get Bishop’s perspective of living as a Humanist in his one-hour class on Sunday and get exposed to the various Humanist perspectives during lunch or when they attend the forums. Their interactions with the children and other adults in the Sunday class are also an important part of their learning. When talking to my two boys about various things, such as ethical issues or decisions, I see that they have integrated what they have heard and learned from all these sources, and made it their own. I like that. As a parent, I want them to be exposed to different Humanist perspectives and select what fits them like a glove. Most Humanists would agree that no two Humanists think alike. I can see this in my boys as well. They don’t think like anyone in particular. They think very much on their own and have ideas that encompass various Humanistic values. The two are different from each other and unique in the way they look at the world.

To come back to the point that I was trying to make at the beginning, one can’t really talk about a Sunday school without talking about the community within which it is based. The influence of the other components of the community, some of which I have mentioned here, is crucial in shaping young Humanist minds. Furthermore, the Humanist Community supports a broad spectrum of Humanist perspectives that influence and shape not only the adults, but also the children. It does this, not through indoctrination, but in the traditional Humanistic way of encouraging critical thinking and free inquiry.

But, perhaps, of most importance to Humanist groups is the fact that you can’t actually have a Humanist community without a children’s program. It takes families to provide the foundation upon which a viable community flourishes. That has been clearly demonstrated in the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley and is a matter that should be seriously considered by any group that wants to grow Humanism.  Humanist Sunday schools are an important vehicle for teaching Humanist values, but it takes a Humanist community to nurture the Humanist child.  (Emphasis added)