So I am listening to Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero in my car, and simultaneously reading Jesus, Interrupted by Bart Ehrman right now. Turns out that Americans are ignorant of other religions and even their own religion. And there is no hope of them learning anything in public school, because teachers are afraid to talk about religion and untrained to do so.
I have decided to start a home school World Religion Study with my kids on Sundays. This week, while driving them around in the car (captive audience), we have been discussing definitions of religion, scripture, and holiness. So today we started our formal study. I used the “scatter” method and put out a couple of library books and all of our copies of the Bible, including the kids’ versions, on the coffee table, and had them read something of their choosing for 30 minutes.
I also made a vocabulary list and copied some religious symbols for them to study. Then we went over the list of definitions. These included the words religion, deity, sacred, narrrative, rite, scripture and symbol. That’s really it for today, because it’s a HUGE topic and I am planning for long-term goals.
What I want to eventually do is teach them an overview of the 7 major world religions and some of the major Bible stories this year. From there, I don’t know- maybe one the religions will capture their interest and we’ll go more deeply into that. I want them to know lots of things, but we’ll start with basic Bible literacy. They should at least be able to recognize that the movie Evan Almighty is a retelling of Noah’s story.
Book List:
- One World, Many Religions, by Mary Pope Osborne
- Buddhism, by Patricia D. Netzley
- Bible Stories to Read from Rod and Staff Publishers
- Bible Stories for Children by Judy Healy
Four copies of the Bible:
- Good News Bible- Today’s English Version (I received this upon making my First Communion in 3rd Grade)
- New International Version (my husband’s- he was raised Southern Baptist)
- Authorized or King James Version (given to me by my dad- was given to him by his employer when his mother died)
- The New Open Bible- New KJV (given to me by my MIL)
I do intend to expose them to other sacred texts, from other religions, but common sense seems to dictate that we start with Christianity. This should be interesting.
Hi! I just discovered that people can leave me messages on my blogspot. Yours was long ago but hello! We are on the road full time now and it is GREAT!!!! You’ve just got to go. I We don’t miss anything from our old life but our family who we keep in touch with more than before through our face book that we have only added family as friends so it’s easy to manage. Good luck!