Religious education
"Religious education is an attempt to build a bridge from your worldly mind to your Spiritual Mind. In whatever context, format, tradition or preparation, this is its overall intent. Therefore, religious education must be focused on Knowledge because Knowledge represents your Spiritual Mind in the world and your vital link to God and to all life everywhere. To think that religion is not concerned with Knowledge is to misinterpret and misunderstand the purpose and nature of religion."[1]
Religion as education
"Religion is education. Religion is experience. Religion is the means of preparation. It is not something you simply believe in or adhere to in order to gain some future salvation. It is not something that you invest in, that you sign up for or that you buy into as if you were buying lottery shares in heaven. It is not a forgiveness or a dispensation. Religion is a means. It is a method. It is a way. It is a way to advance. It is a way to prepare. It is a way to get you up that mountain and to enable you to make the journey. Religion provides the instruction, the curriculum and the companionship that you will need to make it up the mountain and to find that vantage point where you can look out on your life and really see what it is, where you have been and where you are now."[2]
"It is very important that you let your children’s minds develop naturally. It is very important that you not teach your children religious belief or ideology. Do not teach them to recite the Koran or the Bible or any other text you consider to be sacred.
It is more important that they learn to value and trust their own experience and that they gain access to the deeper sense of conscience within themselves. For this is the seed of their spirituality."[3]
The aim of religious education
“God’s New Revelation teaches people what to listen to within themselves and what must inform their opinions and decisions.”[4]
References
- ↑ Greater Community Spirituality, Chapter 20: What is Religious Education and who is it for?
- ↑ Greater Community Spirituality, Chapter 19: What is religion?
- ↑ Marshall Vian Summers. "Do Not Teach Children Religion
- ↑ The Worldwide Community of God's New Message: Dealing with Resistance and Hostility to the New Message