RS-1 MADE SIMPLE

I have been in the book publishing industry as an author and/or publisher for about 35 years now, and one of the most interesting and brilliant developments for me was the rise of the “For Dummies” series in the 1990s. It offered topics as diverse as the DOS operating system, classical music, and personal finance. On the face of it, it sounds demeaning, but it tapped into a truth about the American reading public, that a lot of people wanted to know more about certain subjects, but they did not want to read the more extensive books about them in technical language. Kind of similar to Cliff’s Notes, but more humor and attitude. In a funny way, more of a children’s book for adults.

Of all the gifts to history from the Ecumenical Institute, and there are many, I consider the Religious Studies 1 course to be the “Gift of Gifts.” It certainly was for me.

IRON BOY has am embedded 35-page “RS-1 for Dummies” book inside a book (six chapters in all following the chronological weekend curriculum), which I hope will introduce new audiences to the concepts of RS-1 in 35 minutes with simple language instead of committing the traditional Friday dinner to Sunday lunch 43-hour commitment of the original RS-1 course, in sometimes obscure language. I’m not sure how this easy 35-minute, self-directed learning offering compares to RS-1’s cool group-learning derivations such as Profound Journey Dialogue (PJD) and Leadership Options.

Together with my early experiences waiting tables on RS-1 courses as a white-coat-clad kid on Chicago’s West Side in the basement of the Admin Building, a chapter about the Academy I took at 15 in the Program Center in Fifth City, and a weekend pedagogy (learned to teach RS-1) session in one of my Religious Houses—the “Big Idea” messages of RS-1 loom large in IRON BOY. The boy, pre-teen, and teenager has a healthy amount of skepticism about the magic of RS-1, especially with all the moaning and groaning he witnesses from older participants, but the teachings of this seminal course pervade the subsequent pages of the book.

You might ask whether an 11-year-old, or even a 16-year-old, could be conscious enough to understand and teach the rather sophisticated concepts of RS-1. I understand if you do. My own father did not believe humans could absorb much about religion until they reached consciousness, which he thought started at around puberty. He even wrote a little book about it. Nevertheless, I believe this 35-page treatment inside IRON BOY is the most concise description and easily digestible version of RS-1 ever written, because it reads like a screenplay, almost all in dialogue, and is story-driven. People remember stories better than prose.  It’s how I remember that fateful RS-1 course when I was in 5^th grade in the basement of the chapel in our Order campus in Fifth City in 1967, but the names and faces have changed to focus on the integrity of the learnings.

Given that each member of the Order Ecumenical Community listserv has their own take on what RS-1 means to you and how it has influenced your life and the lives around you, I would be interested in your take on whether my version resonates with yours. If you don’t read IRON BOY, you can get a drier non-narrative version of this RS-1 primer on my Marshall Books Blog post from a few years back: THIS I BELIEVE: Not My Grandfather’s Christianity (May 2018) https://marshallbooks.wordpress.com/2018/06/27/this-i-believe-not-my-grandfathers-christianity/

Many thanks in advance for the continuing dialogue.

David Marshall, Moraga, California