"Enlightened"

I have come to the "Age of Enlightenment" in my fly-by overview of World History with my Middle Schoolers. As this is not a Christian school, I have had to be careful about explaining to them the changes of power and the conflict that arose as reason took the drivers seat for Europe's society. Specifically, that the decline of the power of the church that begun with the Reformation was completed (to a certain extent) with the "triumph" of the Age of Reason. That when science and reason became the property of men not devoted to the church, the church somehow lost its footing, and stopped bringing the heat to the world of intelligensia.

In short, I had to step gingerly around telling them that the world shifted drastically, and that Christianity (all spirituality really, but specifically Christianity) lost ground when the discussion of life moved from the church into the secular world. I think they understood the emphasis I was trying to give the matter, but I am not sure they understood until the very end.

At the end of the class, I saw they weren't quite getting it, and so I drew two words on the white board: God & Man. I said, "The leaders of the enlightenment essentially concluded that since there was nothing about God that we could "study" emperically with Reason or Science, we needn't worry about Him (here I crossed out the word "God) and focus entirely on "Man" (which I promptly circled)". All the kids gasped. Most of my class are Christian kids, although I do have a Muslim as well. All of them thought I had crossed a line, but I calmly explained that thiswas what the Enlightenment decided, and that they needed to understand the shift in society's focus.

One of them spoke up and said that since Man was created in God's image, studying man was studying God. I smiled and took a deep breathe (at this point I had about 30 seconds before I was releasing them from class...) and asked him what he meant. He was silent, so I suggested that God couldn't look like us--after all, we all look fairly different from one another. He said that God had five fingers...I asked him where they were. He said "In Heaven." I felt a little cruel at this point, but thought it was important that he understand the problem...so I asked him where heaven was. He had no answer. I nodded and said, "That's the problem guys...there was nothing the church could point to that "science" or "reason" could objectively study, and that's why people thought the church no longer had the answers."

I hope I did the right thing. They weren't happy with me because I was defending a position they really disagree with. Hopefully I'm not being the wrong kind of challenging teacher--removing their foundations and giving them nothing to fill the hole. I have to tred lightly these last few weeks of school...I won't see them again, I don't want to leave them having ruined their opinion of everything they knew before without any answers (or idea of where to get answers) for the new questions they are (hopefully) asking.