Rev. Beth Williams, Director of Religious Education

“Getting to know you, getting to know all about you…” These are lyrics from a favorite musical from my childhood, The King and I, by Rodgers and Hammerstein. They come to mind now, as I think about the work we will set out to do together. I believe that religious education is most powerful when it is relational, when we can find the strength, inspiration and courage to be our best selves and face new challenges through our relationships with the people we know and trust. In order to develop authentic relationships we must get to know each other in meaningful ways. I want to really get to know the children, youth, families, teachers and other adults of the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge. Telling personal stories can be a way of introducing ourselves, letting ourselves be known. In that spirit, I offer this somewhat condensed version of my personal story, of how I came to be your Director of Religious Education.

I come from a working-class family from New Jersey, which is where I was born and raised. I remember that religion was important to me as a child. My parents were nominally Protestant; my younger brother, Doug, and I attended Sunday school wherever my folks could get a carpool going. When the day came that my non-attending Mom and Dad had had enough of chauffeuring us on Sunday mornings and Friday evenings (choir), I walked myself over to the local Baptist church, where I became a member at age 14. Membership required that I first be baptized by full-immersion in the church’s immense baptismal tank. This rite of passage, which took place in a night-time candle-lit ceremony, was both scary and thrilling. I remember many of the details more than 40 years later.

Fast forward through a few summers of Vacation Bible School and Baptist sleep-away camp, and innumerable youth group spaghetti dinners. I was headed towards high school graduation in the “Summer of Love” as a hippie flowerchild “wannabe”. Church, Sunday school, God? All of a sudden these seemed like the dumbest, most irrelevant things I had ever heard of. Decades passed. In this time I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers University (the only one in my nuclear family to attend college, I am proud to say), briefly married, created a business career for myself that seemed to revolve around computer systems and banking, moved to New York, Chicago, and then Boston, and had a pretty superficial life outside of work. In these years, spirituality and religious community were not a part of my life.

My life moved along in predictable ways until I had what I guess you would call a spiritual crisis. I would find myself visiting churches on Sunday morning and weeping through the hymn singing. My tears were a clue that I needed to explore whether there was a church out there somewhere where I would be as moved by the preacher’s words as I was by the music. I still could not feel comfortable with the Christian message that I was hearing.

I worked with a woman who belonged to a Unitarian Universalist church. I had never heard of Unitarian Universalism, but what she told me about it sounded intriguing.

I happened to be living very close to the headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) on Beacon Hill in Boston. One day I stopped by the bookstore and picked up a pamphlet that described the essentials of Unitarian Universalism. Like many people before and after me, I could not believe that there was actually a religion like this, one that valued a doubting mind, that didn’t purport to have all the answers, and for which engaging with issues of social justice was of prime importance. I joined a UU church in Boston, and after attending it for a few years, and realizing that my life, including my job, was no longer consonant with my values, I decided to go to theological school to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. I went to Chicago to attend Meadville Lombard Theological School, fully intending to become a parish minister, like Rev. Steve. I did a ministerial internship at First Unitarian Church in Dallas, had a student ministry in Petoskey, Michigan in my final year of school, and successfully saw the UUA’s ministerial credentialing body, the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, that same year. But I knew that something was not right with my vocational plans, and I could never quite bring myself to get into search for a parish ministry.

In order to provide some income while I sorted through my options, I applied for a job with the Unitarian Society of Chicago as a part-time DRE. They told me they were looking for a warm body and a pulse, both of which, as it happened, I possessed. With my several years experience as a volunteer in UU church schools, and the extremely low expectations of my employers, I was offered and accepted the position, feeling free to experiment and learn as I went. What I never, ever dreamed of was how much I would love this job, and how fulfilling and meaningful working with children, youth, and families would become to me. One thing I particularly enjoyed was seeing how children engaged with essentially religious issues in very tactile, artistic and experiential ways, and what a difference those experiences made to their families.

This position as a DRE would turn into a Ministry of Religious Education, which would lead to a move back to the Boston area to fill a position as an MRE with another congregation. During that time I became active in the professional organization for UU religious educators called the Liberal Religious Educators Association (LREDA), and joined their board right before I left Chicago. On what I thought would be a brief break from working in a congregation, I took a job at the Unitarian Universalist Association. During my 8 years at the UUA I built on the work of LREDA to help create a program of standards and professional accountability for UU religious educators, did the same for UU music leaders based on the work of the UU Musicians Network, and launched a training program for UU interim religious educators.

After my work at the UUA, I decided it was time for me to go back to the congregation and to the work I love (and ideally in a much warmer climate!). And thanks to Rev. Steve and the RE Team, here I am. I couldn’t be more excited. I believe that this congregation yearns for compelling, powerful religious education for its children and youth. I do, too. I look forward to the important steps in achieving this goal, building meaningful relationships together, and hearing your stories.