The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Discussions with Teenage Sons

Practices Christian Living
#1

Greetings, all -

I have five boys (two bio-sons and three step-sons) aged 9 to 13. They are coming to an age where we are starting serious conversations with them about Christianity’s relation to Western Civilization, Democracy, Morality, Science, etc. We all discuss these topics at a reasonably advanced level - I think these Forums would be appropriate for conversations in an undergraduate setting.

BUT - wondering if any of you could recommend any books introducing these ideas at a teenage/high school level. It’s not addressed in High School curriculum, obviously, and it’s not addressed in Sunday School curriculum either. So as a parent it seems it falls to me to give them the background on how belief is reconciled with the rest of life, and how defensible belief is foundational to many of the secular tenets of our civilization.

Any and all recommendations gratefully accepted.

Dean

#2

Hello, Dean

I don’t know where you live or if you would be interested if you’re not in the USA, but I have a HS American literature program that I never got around to using. I’ve not even looked at it very closely, but I suspect it’s pretty fundamentalist. On the other hand, it’s also very self-directed and I know you could take it any way you’d like to. The program is called American Literature, Sr High Level, by James P. Stobaugh. The books are only a starting point. They require that you obtain and read lots of unsupplied books, short stories, plays, etc. I think it would help you accomplish what you’d like to accomplish, but it would take quite a lot of effort. I had just bought way more materials than we could use in my daughter’s high school years and as it was difficult for us to obtain the books (local library not so great, and we’d have to buy all the books we couldn’t find on-line, which at the time was most of them), so we never got to it.

If you research it on-line and decide it would be helpful for you, I’d be happy to mail you the books for the postage cost. Otherwise they’ll just sit here and look pretty until some other home schooler expresses an interest in them. :laughing: If you’d prefer a more broad-based program, they do have another one that focuses on either European or World literature, I believe.

Have a look around and see whether you’re interested and let me know.

Blessings, Cindy

#3

James Sire’s The Universe Next Door might be a good place to start, though it isn’t exactly what you are looking for. The Tapestry of Grace uses it in their high school curriculum. Sire talks about what a worldview is and what questions to ask of each belief system. He then goes on to examine some of the main worldviews. TOG then uses Sire’s questions as they look at the worldviews presented in various works of literature.

If something more specific to your request comes to mind, I will post again. My son is working through The Bible Literacy Project, which is supposed to teach kids the ways in which the Bible influences western culture (laws, art literature, etc.) It is a secular work, so it does not teach Christianity per se.

Kelli

#4

I do own a number of books discussing the contributions of Christianity to Western Civ (and even world) history; but I’ll need to take some time to compile a list.

(Mainly this comment is intended to keep me in the thread notification loop until then. :wink: )

#5

Thanks to you all for your thoughts. It seems like this is a critical time - I know I went to college without ever having really understood the interplay between Christian beliefs and Western Culture, and I wasn’t prepared for the level of derision that belief triggered in my classmates.

I’m currently reading “The Victory of Reason”, and it’s a great defense of the Christian tradition as a positive cultural force, but a little beyond the ken of my 12 year old.