The World Religions and Spirituality classes help Unitarian Universalists explore the religions of the world through texts and visits to local places of worship. This curriculum can be used in two ways:
- As the curriculum that provides the tools and resources for facilitators to adopt the course in face-to-face classes.
- As an online course that anyone can take at their own pace.
These curricula were developed by UUCF members who had taught the face-to-face class to adults for several years. They realized the class was in great demand, so developed the curricula to meet the ongoing need within UUCF and other congregations.
Course Overview
Similar to the Unitarian Universalist Neighboring Faiths/Building Bridges class taught in UU Religious Exploration for children, this year-long course explores major world religions with readings from holy scriptures, discussions with guest speakers and visits to their places of worship.
The course goals are to develop a greater appreciation, respect and understanding of the impact of world religions … and through them, explore our own faith.
The course uses the book “God is Not One” by Stephen Prothero to explore each world religion by asking the questions:
- What problem is the religion trying to solve?
- What solution does it offer?
In addition, we explore some of our own questions, such as:
- What is it about each religion that makes it so engaging and compelling as to continue to attract millions of practitioners/believers?
We begin in the fall with the Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, moving to Judeo-Christian-Islam faiths in the winter and spring, and ending with atheism and humanism, paganism and our own UU faith. Modules may be used in any order and facilitators may follow their participants’ interests. For instance, we have not created modules for Confucianism and Daoism, although both of these are covered in “God is Not One.”
Curriculum
The course curriculum can be found on this shared Google Drive folder.
