Information and Formation: Sowing and Reaping

by William Ozanne, 2008

There used to be a popular entry in autograph books, usually by older and sadder people for the benefit of the young: “Sow a thought, you reap an action, sow an action, you reap a character, sow a character you reap a destiny.” Though it does not feature widely in educational research and policy-making nowadays, it is a system that underlies much of the process that is often called ‘Formation’.

While Teacher Training Colleges, following ‘the diploma disease’ (Foster 1976), forgot the training part, then into Universities, who had long ago forgotten the formation of character as one of the fruits of thought and learning, Religious Orders and Theological Colleges by and large retained something of the link between knowledge, belief and the human person. Of course, for the ordinary lay Christian whose vocation is to be a professional witness to Christ in her or his own sphere of life, Catechumenate or Noviciate do not normally apply. How then do we help to form and strengthen those who wish to live robust, authentic and witnessing Christian lives, but not necessarily assume the professional skills and theological knowledge of Ordained Ministry or Religious Profession under vows?

Of course, when talking of the formation of adult Christians, it should be possible to take for granted some ‘background’ of Christian understanding and experience on which to build. However, the reality is that the initial experience and learning process for any group of adult Christians is very mixed and in any case probably not much developed since the age of perhaps ten or fourteen, possibly including preparation for Confirmation and Holy Communion, or maybe Adult Baptism. Perhaps we can get some hints on how to approach the business of ‘formation’ by looking briefly and first at schooling of children within faith communities. There is of course a notably different process between ‘RE’ in secular state schools, which is often knowledge about Religions, or Religious Festivals, and Religious Education as practised in a Faith School. Tulasiewicz, (1993), writing as an educational theorist surveying a number of countries and Religions, comes up with eight categories of Religious Education. I summarise as follows:

1. Containing a specifically religious quality which takes religious education beyond secular knowledge and ideology – a specific form of knowledge.
2. A study beginning with ‘personal good’ – moral improvement – perhaps close to induction – which could to some extent be taught in other subjects.
3. Understanding of religion which may change learners’ attitudes and behaviour – but it must lead to an understanding of the learner’s own need for it to be truly education.
4. The Learner must at some stage come to terms with the fact of hatred bred by religions.
5. A structured empathy about other views arising from examining the rich varieties of religions –pluralism - leading to multicultural challenge.
6. A survey of religions reduced to statistics would be sociology, advocating living in peace and harmony, but to be education, it must look at why people think in a certain way and how this moulds them and the role and response of such a religion in changing people: ‘how is the Godhead viewed?’
7. As a school subject, its educational value has to be tested - as a distinct discipline in a different way from non-religious fact learning.
8. The nature of the spiritual must be uncovered [Kierkegaard]: ‘experience of the divine, the spiritual and transcendent dimension must be rendered into language which conveys the complexity and uniqueness of thoughts of each individual and in others’, (adapted from Witold Tulasiewicz and Cho-Yee To 1993).

I see little to change in these aspects in relation to the development of the adult Christian experience, except that each element has a place in the programme of formation, but for Christians, each must be based on the fact of Jesus, his life and his teaching. On the basis of these categories, formation becomes an activity which challenges and changes the existing experience and outlook of individuals, a constant conversion of the heart and mind to God and thus enabling a courageous, honest and compassionate relationship with people of other religions.

For a start, we need to understand that teaching and learning in the Christian context is something alive, not information to be attached like pieces of collage. We have to accommodate our existing experience as a response, not simply assimilate new items. But the nature of our experience involves covering intellectual and spiritual development - along with human, academic and professional skills if people are to minister in any way in the Church. Knowledge about our Faith and its rich experience of Scripture reflection and liturgy must engage the intellect.

To do this we engage perhaps first and at each stage, the exercise of the often rusty spiritual faculties of prayer and reflection in each individual. This requires discipline to set aside time and also as Gilbert Shaw used to remark, reflection on wholesome food. He used to say that meditation was like hatching eggs: you had to make sure they weren’t addled. This leads to the importance of revaluing and re-engaging with Sacred Scripture, especially the New Testament, not only as an intellectual exercise, but seeing and testing it as for the first time, before invoking scholars’ exegesis, as St. Peter puts it: ‘ As newborn babes desire the sincere Milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby.’ (1.Peter 2.2). RSV. At the same time, a course which is to deepen self-awareness as well as a better grasp of the world around us needs more than the initial food; ‘For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.’ (Hebrews 4.12) NASB.

A noted Dominican scholar was asked what version of the Bible he advocated. He replied - any version - read within the community of the Church. Formation is not done in isolation, though the deepening of the spiritual may require the private silence of the heart. Faith becomes alive when grounded in the heritage of the Christian community, the living Body of Christ in its variety and unity. The personal hermeneutic is enriched and deepened by finding itself in others and so in the riches of Christ. We need to grow in understanding and unity with other Christians of our own denomination and of others. The rich tradition of two millennia of Christian life and expression, the heritage to which we are, often unknowingly heirs, is one key aspect of this and calls for exploration and possession. Tradition by its very nature is only so when handed on and received.

The Trinity Foundation for Christianity and Culture (TFCC) is in the forefront of this understanding, with its emphasis on the re-possession of the living Christian practice, the liturgies and shrines of the Middle East, particularly in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. This is real Aid to the Church in Need, but an aid which deepens and gives new meaning to our own day-to-day Christian practice and in fact leads to a greater appreciation of the Christian family link with Judaism too. Faith needs to be grounded in culture and heritage in order to be authentic and universal. We need to understand the varieties of authentic Christian prayer and worship and so come to see beyond the exotic and often misunderstood external expressions. A good Anglican friend recently went on holiday to Cyprus. When he came back he exclaimed: “There was so much idolatry there!” He referred to the Greek Orthodox Church. I replied: “But you are in communion with those people.”

Once a robust faith begins to gather strength, it is able to look honestly at those things which threaten the peace and the kingdom of God and to discern those which, being ‘not against us, are for us.’ We need increasingly to have a preparedness to encounter people who practise other religions than the Christian one. It is not only a doorstep experience in the UK and increasingly so in the USA, but any newspaper or television programme is bound to contain information about people of other faiths that demands our critical understanding, interpretation and evaluation, unless we are supine to the influence of the Media – the fourth freedom!

It is in a way Christian to see all people who revere the ‘transcendent’ as co-children of the Creator, but it is only Christian if we are able to know enough of the universal Christ to discern what in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism holds the ‘seeded Word’ and builds God’s Kingdom, or what in fact holds it back or destroys it. It is, as Pope Benedict says, echoing the long history of Jewish and Christian understanding: an understanding of the unconditional love ‘caritas’ of God for His creatures, which they must share with one another.

In this the Church followed the understanding of Judaic Scripture, which in the book ‘Genesis’ depicted human beings as sharing in the goodness of God's creation of the whole world, material and spiritual, which was maintained through an immanent divine providence. Using their special freedom they rejected their limitations and turned away from, or even against God. This has been the foundation of the teaching of the Catholic Church. It was formally propounded in the provincial Council of Constantinople (543), the Council of Braga in Portugal (561) Pope Innocent III's profession of Faith (1208), the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the council of Vienna (1442) Fifth Lateran Council (1513) the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX (1864) the First Vatican Council (1869-70) and Pope Pius XII's Encyclical "Humanae Generis" (1950). These made various assertions of the essential goodness of the whole human being, physical and spiritual, in counteraction to various erroneous movements and teachers within the Church (such as Arianism, Gnosticism, Nestorianism and Modernism). This means that the Catholic Church is, and always has been, committed to God's covenant with each individual human being in their creation. The problem in seeing others in the light of a divine purpose in their creation has been to know how to relate to people who did not follow the Christian way. But this is a digression into the realm of Comparative Religion worthy of a separate study.

If we can bring about an opening of the heart and mind to God in our meetings together, we can trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit to form the goodness of God’s creation into the image and fullness of his Christ.

Wiliam (Bill) Ozanne is the Inter-Faith Adviser to the Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham and member of the Catholic national Committee for Other Faiths and of the Executive Committee of the West Midlands Faiths Forum. He is also the founder and co-editor of the International Journal of Educational Development.