At every age, the foundation of Religious Exploration is the co-creation of a community that reflects Unitarian Universalist values:

• affirming the inherent worth and dignity of each individual
• valuing the love that all kinds of families share
• searching for truth and meaning from many sources
• encouraging each person’s free and responsible exploration of big ideas
• treating one another with compassion and respect
• making choices that reflect our values
• listening to the still, small voice of our hearts
• harnessing our power to create a world with more love, more joy, and more justice

The great end in religious instruction, is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs; not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered to their decision; not to burden memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought.  ~~William Ellery Channing

Child Dedication

 It takes a Unitarian Universalist Village to raise a Unitarian Universalist Child.

During a Child Dedication, the congregation pledges to partner with and support parents and families in the religious upbringing of the child. Child Dedications take place during Sunday worship services twice a year. Infants and children of members and those on the path to membership at Unitarian Universalist Church of Bloomington-Normal may be dedicated.

Before the day of the Child Dedication, your family will meet with Rev. Rebecca and Terina to discuss the meaning and details of the ritual with you.

If your family would like to participate in the Child Dedication, please contact Terina Carter, Director of Religious Exploration, at 309.828.0235 or [email protected].

Whether we wish it so or not, our children are religious, spiritual beings. From within their own magical selves they know feelings, intuitions, and impulses. From the people, stories, songs, and media of their environs they hear religious words and messages and see religious symbols and images. From the experiences of their daily living they encounter religious events.

They see dry sticks sprout pulsing green leaves. They see the deer killed on the highway. They watch their teacher’s tummy grow round with new life, and bid farewell to their uncle. From the demands of their living and growing in the world they face situations that require from them a religious decision, response, or interpretation.

We cannot choose whether they will be religious, but we can choose how and to what extent we will support, guide, and celebrate this dimension of their nature.

– Rev. Jeanne Harrison Nieuwejaar, retired Unitarian Universalist minister and religious educator, author of The Gift of Faith: Tending the Spiritual Lives of Children