‘We need Our Whole Lives’: OWL celebrates 25 years of sacred spaces for sexuality education with stories of its impact

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Our Whole Lives, the comprehensive, lifespan sexuality education program developed by the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Several events and occasions will celebrate the decades of education and support that OWL has offered, including one at July’s General Synod and a proposed Synod resolution which affirms the faithful advocacy and ongoing need for OWL’s work.

Central to Our Whole Lives, though, are the stories of people whose lives have been positively impacted by engaging in this curriculum as participants, parents, facilitators, and leaders. From Our Whole Live’s original founders to recent participants, many have reflected on the sacred space it has created for them to bring their entire selves, deepen their self-understanding, and dismantle internal stigma and shame.

UCC Minister for Sexuality Education and Justice, the Rev. Amy Johnson, describes that “there’s simply nothing else like OWL out there in faith-based materials.” And Our Whole Lives has become increasingly important in times of heightened legislative attacks on sexual and reproductive freedom and anti-sex education bills.

“OWL offers a way to build community around caring for ourselves, our bodies, and our relationships in a very faith-filled way,” Johnson said. “Now more than ever as people of faith, we need to think about how we are church together and how we provide community care. Our Whole Lives provides ways to do that, particularly around providing medically accurate information and engaging critical thinking skills around issues like reproductive justice and gender.”

Learning healthy relationships

Perhaps Our Whole Lives’ widest impact has been on students in its classes, which are offered in groupings of Grades K–1, 4–6, 7–9, 10–12, young adult, adult, and older adult. Curricula are offered by trained facilitators in faith communities as well as schools and other community spaces, with both secular and faith-based curriculum options.

Alyson Stewart, now in her 20s, was particularly impacted by learning about safe and healthy relationships when she participated in OWL for Grades 7-9 at Wayside United Church of Christ in Washington. While Stewart said that her school taught about sex, protection, and sexual abuse, “rarely is there communication and guidance on what an unhealthy and bad relationship looked like and warning signs to watch out for.”

This became valuable to her during college, when she found herself in an unhealthy relationship and was impacted by coming across a letter she had written to her future self as part of an OWL activity, where she had written, “I hope you are in a good, loving relationship and know your worth.” This gave her the confidence to make a positive change.

Developing language for families

A key piece of Our Whole Lives’ format is building relationships with parents, who, Johnson notes, are prioritized as the primary sexuality educators of their children.

“I know there’s no instruction manual that comes with parenting – I wish there were,” reflected the Rev. Kim Kendrick, the co-pastor of Community Congregational UCC in California, an Our Whole Lives facilitator, and a trainer for new facilitators. “Some of us are bumbling and fumbling through, so it’s great to have a resource to say, ‘Ah, that’s how OWL handles this. That’s how other folks handle this. Maybe this can help me craft and curate something for my own.’”

As a parent of three, Kendrick has experienced Our Whole Lives opening doors for healthy family communication around sexuality and spirituality. 

“One thing I love about OWL is having a language. It even helped me as a parent on how to give my children the language to talk about how they feel physically, emotionally, spiritually, and ways to help them create their own narrative,” she said.

Our Whole Lives classes center parental participation and permission by offering them orientation to the materials and ongoing resources. Additionally, an Our Whole Lives video series, Under Your Wing, makes extra parent education videos available.

Jenn Ringgold, a member of the UCC Our Whole Lives Advisory Committee and a Member in Discernment, built a multi-age OWL program at UCC Midland in Michigan. During the classes for youth, Ringgold facilitated parent conversations, education, and support groups.

As a parent as well, Ringgold said Our Whole Lives has been life-changing for her family.

“Like any hard conversation – which sexuality education can be for parents and families – the more you practice, the easier it gets. Because we have had ten years of practice of having conversations with our children about their bodies, choices, healthy relationships, and consent, that muscle has built,” she said. “I feel very fortunate that my own children have developed a comfort level to be able to speak to me about those topics that a lot of their peers find hard to have parental discussions about. That has been a beautiful evolution for our own family relationship – to be able to dig in and have a lifetime of conversations related to their sexual health, self-worth, and what it means to be inclusive and completely loved for who you are.”

Bonding and community

The Rev. Jeff Rabe regularly receives phone calls from people in the nearby community saying they heard he offers Our Whole Lives classes.

“I can’t think of a better way to be recognized than being the OWL church,” Rabe said. He created an Our Whole Lives program as the director of Christian education for children and youth at First Congregational UCC in Wisconsin. Youth from other local churches made up almost half of his most recent OWL for Grades 7-9 class.

This has built community and ecumenical connections, and Rabe also described witnessing the community that develops between youth who participate in Our Whole Lives together.

“What I’m finding is that when I have a group going through OWL, that group is so bonded. It changes the group and makes my job as the youth leader a lot easier. No ice breakers are needed – these kids have already opened up to each other,” Rabe said.

He specifically recalls reading some of the rules from Leviticus during an eighth-grade confirmation class, and when they reached a verse describing how menstruating women were considered “unclean” for seven days, a girl in the class offered a comment on the length of menstruation. Everyone responded with maturity, Rabe said – no snickers or signs of discomfort like one might expect among eighth graders. This group had recently completed their Our Whole Lives for Grades 7-9 class.

This, among many experiences, showed Rabe how the impact of Our Whole Lives can be “so long-lasting and reaching” in helping people to understand and develop respect for their bodies and each other.

‘A beautiful framework’

As one area within the UCC investing in Our Whole Lives’ work, the Southeast Conference has been re-igniting its use by creating a Conference OWL team. The Rev. Kim Wood, Conference minister, said they are working to make facilitators available to as many congregations as possible.

“OWL creates a beautiful framework through which we can talk and learn about sexuality that removes the stigma and celebrates the beauty of sexuality in the context of a safe and non-threatening environment,” Wood said.

A call to resource and repair

For Johnson, getting involved as an Our Whole Lives facilitator during her time as a school social worker and church youth director changed her life, aligning with the call that she felt to offer needed and relevant education for youth and families.

“In my late 40’s, I became this cheerleader for sexuality education in faith communities. I didn’t see it coming, but God is like God,” she recalled.

Now, Johnson has been co-leading the OWL program for about 11 years, together with Melanie Davis at the UUA, and remains fully committed to what she describes as the life-saving work of dismantling shame and stigma in the church around bodies and relationships.

“There’s so much damage that the church has done and perpetuated – the UCC too – so much damage that patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, cis privilege, male privilege, white privilege, and ablism have done,” she said. “Our bodies and relationships intersect with it all, so this work of OWL is always relevant.”

Our Whole Lives aims to create a different narrative. As Kendrick describes, OWL offers avenues toward liberation and knowledge.

“We need to teach OWL because liberation and knowledge matters. To have that knowledge of what our bodies do and can do in relation to emotional, mental, and spiritual freedom makes a big difference. To have a specific space where individuals can bring 100% of themselves matters. I don’t have to separate my orientation from my spirituality. I don’t have to separate that I’m a parent, a woman, a queer woman, and an unapologetic Black woman. It matters. OWL is a space that affirms and celebrates all of that, and is accepting of folks to say whatever you have on your plate today is what we’ll work with,” she said.

‘We need Our Whole Lives’

The work of ensuring the most up-to-date Our Whole Lives materials is an ongoing process, and the latest version of Our Whole Lives for Grades 10-12 is newly available with increased focus on gender expansiveness, racial intersections, and disability justice.

As UCC and UUA leadership have recently assessed the importance of Our Whole Lives’ work, they officially re-committed to their ongoing collaboration in its curriculum, training, and financial investment.

And a proposed General Synod resolution aims to affirm the faithful advocacy of sexuality education in the UCC and the ongoing need for Our Whole Lives’ work.

“The UUA and UCC partnership is so unique, and this collaboration is such a powerful testament to how much we can do when we work together,” said Ringgold. “The idea of reaffirming that connection and that collaboration on this 25th anniversary, while also continuing to educate local churches, Associations, and Conferences about OWL through the process of celebrating that collaboration, is the perfect timing.”

She added, “We need Our Whole Lives.”

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