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The Liberal Religious Educators Association, founded in 1949, is the professional organization for religious educators serving Canadian Unitarian Council and Unitarian Universalist Association congregations. This year, as they have been celebrating its 75th birthday, LREDA’s leaders say the group continues to deepen its antiracism and antioppression commitments; encourage collaboration, connection, and creativity in supporting faith formation across all ages; and advocate for fair compensation and just treatment of religious education professionals in congregations.
Learn how Our Whole Lives got started, what the plans are for its future, and how participants feel about its impact on them.
Religious educators have long been central in the cultural life of UU congregations. They facilitate Our Whole Lives, the acclaimed comprehensive relationship and sexual health education program, and coordinate small-group ministry. They offer credo-writing workshops for teenagers, organize field trips and demonstrations, coordinate with music directors, collaborate with administrators, counsel caregivers, plan with ministers, imagine ways to creatively articulate our values, and so much more.
“I am consistently inspired by the willingness of religious educators to do the hard, good thing,” said Mx. Katharine Childs, LREDA’s president and director of religious explorations at the Unitarian Church of Montreal in Quebec.
LREDA’s mission and vision is served by a national board and executive director, and embodied through fifteen chapters, based on geographic proximity and identity. LREDA provides opportunities for sharing resources, advocating for professional recognition, and continuous education, whether through the annual LREDA Fall Conference or professional development modules, such as the Sparks Program.
And in the last three years, LREDA has developed a new formal support structure for identity, ability, and heritage-based chapters and caucuses, and designated funds from its endowment to support its new IBPOC (Indigenous, Black, People of Color) chapter.
Despite the life-changing work religious educators do in UU congregations, increasing numbers face economic uncertainty, and some congregations have reduced the hours of religious educators in response to their own declining memberships, said Childs. Due to post-COVID pressures some RE directors are facing amid declining enrollment, LREDA has increased its advocacy for members, but it is primarily a volunteer organization with limited capacity, Childs added.
“The average lifespan of a religious educator position used to be five years or more and is now two to three years,” Childs said.
Congregations facing fiscal challenges should be transparent and cooperative, and they should focus on relationships, Childs suggested. Far too often, decisions that materially affect religious educators are made in “un-relational ways,” Childs said. “As a movement, we have an opportunity to practice our faith values” as employers.
Jeanay Johnson, director of religious education and communications at the UU Church of St. Petersburg, Florida, stressed the importance of continuing to invest not just in having religious educators, but in supporting their growth. “Congregations should make sure there is always part of their budget dedicated to funding membership in LREDA, supporting [the] Finding Our Way Home Retreat for Religious Professionals of Color, and other workshops and activities dedicated to an extra outlet to expand in their faith formation in community.”
Tracy Breneman, director of lifespan religious education and faith development at Community UU Congregation at White Plains, New York, added that, as it has always been, “Religious exploration is an investment in our faith.”