People—Religious Education

When we first started meeting, we did not have a formal Sunday School.  Each week, someone would cart the children to Aiken so they could take part in their program.  By 1965 though, we realized that we needed to establish our own program.  Peggy Kelly was the first church member to coordinate the Religious Education program.  Madurhi Land (formerly Mary Sutherland) remembers meeting in the basement of the Ballet Studio on Johns Road and being terrified of the cold and damp.  The cold conditions were one of the reasons we decided to move.

 

The young children of the early members grew up and joined the Liberal Religious Youth (ages 13-18).  The LRY was the precursor to today’s YRUU (Young Religious UUs) program. The LRY group led several Sunday morning programs, including one in 1963 on “Family Relationships—A Teenage Point of View,” led by LRY president Becky Kelly.  In May 1964, the LRY met with the youth group of Tabernacle Baptist Church (an African American church in downtown Augusta) for a discussion of prejudice, refreshments, and a chapel service.  NOTE: Schools in Augusta were not yet desegregated.

 

 

For the next decade, Ann Diggs (aided by Rosemary Morris) lead the Religious Education program for our children.  When Ann Diggs was in charge of the Sunday School, participants joined together to sing songs such as Kum-ba-yah, Morning Has Broken, and Happiness Is… from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Children in the R.E. program learned about nature, Johnny Appleseed, Sacajaweh, and “The Church Across the Street.” Each week we took up an offering to sponsor a child in Ecuador.

 

When Ann Diggs left in 1976, the church voted to hire a 1/3 time Religious Education Director.  Betty Ann (Lee) Kanne was hired to fill the position.  She finally realized that she couldn’t keep traveling from Aiken, working full-time, and working part-time at the church.

 

Julie Nyquist was hired in 1979. Her official title was Superintendent of Religious Education. She was followed by Corky Nosek.  Corky and her husband Tom are pictured singing at a church picnic on the grounds.

 

 

 

Joyce Nolin ended her year as President of the church and began her first stint as DRE in 1986.  Joyce was a high  school English and drama teacher and brought her background in education to bear on designing the R.E. program.  She served for five years before Louise Shivers joined the staff for one year in 1991.  Louise was a published writer and brought her creativity to the job.  However, Joyce returned in October 1992, when Louise left abruptly to pursue other interests.  During Joyce’s tenure, the RE program flourished with the help of an active RE Committee. At one point, we had an old school bus moved to the property so the Junior High kids would have a place to meet. In 1994-95, the RE program’s curriculum was based on Earth Festivals. The children participated in multi-generational learning and projects designed to teach about our interdependent web as well as a variety of earth-based rituals and ceremonies. They completed their own Native American mandalas, were strung together with yarn, and celebrated the solstices among other things.  The committee published a quarterly newsletter called the R.E. Connection.

 

 

 

When John Baros-Johnson left his interim ministry, not only was the church floundering, but the RE program was too.  Joyce left and Ronda Still was hired as her replacement.  In the intervening two years, before Francesca Pataro and Ruth Garrison worked to revitalize the program, attendance in RE had dropped to an average of eight children each Sunday.  In 1997, under the direction of Jim and Jeanne Rawson, the RE Committee was also reinstituted.  Francesca and Ruth originally shared responsibilities. Ruth became the sole occupant of the position in 2001, when Francesca and other Aikenites formed the Sand River Unitarian Fellowship.

 

Since 1997, the nadir of our church attendance, the RE program has grown to include an average of 45 children each Sunday—not including the 20+ registered as members of the Senior High Youth group.  We are literally bursting at the seams, again.