# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S335
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

PARISH EDUCATION 335

respondents listed some of the materials they felt were needed for
this work. ;

The Department of Social Welfare referred the task of pro-
viding materials to the Board for Parish Education, a meeting was
called, and it was agreed that the Board for Parish Education
should be requested to appoint an Advisory Committee on Reli-
gious Education for the Mentally Retarded Child. This committee
was duly appointed and held its first meeting November 5, 1955.

The exhibits presented at this first meeting were illuminating;
indeed they were startling! Not only are Sunday school classes
being held for the mentally retarded, but some patient and careful
programing has been done by some of the people engaged in this
service of love. Some classes are taught on Sunday, others during
the week; some meet on the church premises, others are held in
institutions where the children live.

Classes are being held in Terra Bella, Calif; Portand, Oreg.;
Washington, D. C.; Milwaukee, Wis.; Chicago, IIL.; Baltimore, Md.;
and other places. The need for materials is keenly felt, but in the
absence of materials geared to this type of child, the teachers are
studying the children committed to their care and are collecting
and preparing materials that lend themselves to the instruction
of the retarded child. One District, Northern Illinois, has even
adopted a resolution which reads: “Be it resolved that we urge
congregations wherever necessary and possible to conduct special
classes in religious education in the Sunday school and otherwise
for such handicapped, yet educable, children in their midst.” And
at a meeting of parents of exceptional children in Chicago the
following resolution was adopted: “Be it resolved to ask the Board
for Parish Education to study the matter thoroughly, to promote
and to help and to prepare suitable courses for Sunday school.”

Data in this report are based on the incomplete information
the committee has received from the field. No doubt there are
many more cases of mental retardation in which pastors or teachers
are doing something to ‘help the individual to grow spiritually.

From this short report it is apparent that a very definite need
exists in an area that has been much neglected by the churches,
a need that we can no longer permit to go unheeded and unrelieved.
The very fact that so little has been done in the local congregation
for the retarded child reveals a lack of attention to this problem.
This is indeed not a willful lack of interest on the part of pastors
and teachers, but is due to justifiable unawareness. .Moreover,
pastors and teachers who are aware of the presence of such chil-
dren in their parishes have been inactive because they have felt
themselves helpless to do anything for the children.