Sophia B. Fahs

Orthodox Christian thought was deeply rooted in the eighteenth and nineteenth century U.S. Protestant experience and formed the backdrop for the early religious experiences of Sophia Lyon Fahs. Her long career in the field of religious education was inspired by her mother, Mandana Doolittle Lyon, who was gifted missionary teacher. Sophia's father, David Nelson Lyon, enjoyed teaching as a young man, but was not adept at the necessary disciplining of his students. After their marriage, Mandana and David Lyon accepted an invitation to go to China as missionaries of the Presbyterian Church. There in Hangchow in 1876, the same year Sophia was born, Mandana opened a small school for the education of Chinese children, especially girls who were traditionally unschooled (Nolan 2004a, 32).

After the Lyon family relocated to Wooster, Ohio when Sophia was three and a half years old, the children attended Sunday school regularly and excelled in their classes in school. When Sophia Lyon's father was called back to China, the rest of the family decided to remain in Wooster, Ohio. There, the children could take advantage of the opportunity to attend the College of Wooster at no cost because of their father's missionary status. The Lyons were quite poor, but their energetic and creative spirits as well as their love of learning seemed to override anything they lacked in material possessions.

The religious upbringing of the seven Lyon children was evangelical in nature and the Sabbath was always strictly observed. In an interview with David Parke, Fahs described her childhood home environment: We had family prayers and Bible reading every day. Each of us took our turn until we went right through the Bible. Sunday was a very carefully observed day, spent mostly going to church, reading religious books, playing Bible games and singing. (1965, 249)

These years with her staunchly evangelical family had a great impact on young Sophia. Among the values she gleaned from her childhood that would later be reflected in her own theology were: the centrality of the family in the religious upbringing of the children, the importance of church life, the value of education, the virtues of religious sensibilities, a love for creation and its revelatory nature, and a strong ethical strain. The missionary zeal and theological orthodoxy that led Sophia Lyon's parents to China became exemplary motivational forces for her as well. The strong sense of nationalism and the intensity of her parents' sacrifice did not go unnoticed by young Sophia. She too longed for the missionary life. She was not immune however to the social rumblings outside her protected world.

During Sophia Lyon's years as an undergraduate student at Wooster College in Ohio, she became involved in the YWCA and grew quite serious about her faith and her call to become a missionary (Hunter 1966, 30). In 1896, at a YWCA conference in Wisconsin Sophia Lyon met her like-minded future husband, Charles Harvey Fahs, the son of an itinerant Methodist minister, who shared her dream of becoming a missionary.

It was during these college years that she began teaching Sunday school to kindergarten-aged children. After graduating cum laude from Wooster College, Sophia also taught high school English and Latin classes at Wooster High School. She was serious and dedicated in her work, but like her father, had trouble disciplining her students.

In order to better prepare for missionary work, Sophia Lyon left her teaching position to work part time with the Student Volunteer Movement as a traveling secretary. She was called upon to speak publicly about her faith and to interview young people who were trying to discern their calling to the evangelical missions. She broadened her understanding of other Christian denominations during this time and learned much about the cultures into which the missionaries were being sent. No doubt, these times led her to examine her own religious beliefs and vocational desires.

In 1901, Sophia Lyon accepted a part-time position as a YWCA secretary for the women students of the University of Chicago. She enrolled in two scripture classes after being encouraged by her sister Abbie and brother-in-law Henry Burton Sharman. Sharman, who earned a Ph. D. in New Testament from the University of Chicago Divinity School, had a great impact on Sophia Lyon's developing theology, especially on her studies of the historical Jesus (Hunter 1966, 44).

Sophia Lyon studied the new methods of higher criticism in biblical studies with William Rainey Harper in an Old Testament course and with Ernest Burton DeWitt in a New Testament course. These courses would have lasting impact on her understanding of the bible and its place in the religious education of children (Nolan 2004b, 253).

On June 14th, 1902, Sophia Lyon married Charles "Harvey" Fahs. The young couple moved to Morningside Heights, New York, where "Harvey" was employed as an editor of Methodist missionary materials while he and Sophia awaited assignment to the missionary field. In 1902, Sophia Lyon Fahs directed her energies toward earning a master's degree in elementary education at Teachers College of Columbia University. There she studied under Frank McMurry who introduced her to the ideas of John Dewey and the newly formed Religious Education Association. Under McMurry's influence, Fahs determined that the religious education of children would become the focus of her work. She became involved in the experimental Sunday School at Teachers College where she found fertile soil for experimenting with her burgeoning ideas on the religious education of children.

Even though Fahs became acquainted with Dewey's progressive ideas, her final thesis on missionary biography as a way of introducing biblical themes to children was written from a definite "vantage point of evangelical Christianity." The missionary movement and her evangelical upbringing still heavily shaped her thought. The energy and idealism of the period and a total commitment of energies toward working for the transformation of the world would not subside in her length of days. Though three of her siblings became missionaries, Sophia would not realize that dream. In later years, Fahs would become critical of the claims of Christian supremacy inherent in some missionary tactics of the time.

New currents of thought, including insights from the new science of psychology, modern practices of pedagogy, findings of critical and historical scholarship as applied to the Bible, and the understanding religious education were emerging at the turn of the century. Such intellectual and social ideas were nowhere more prevalent than in New York City. It was there that Fahs would come into contact with the liberal progressive ideas that were finding their voice in the new Religious Education Association under the leadership of William Rainey Harper and George Albert Coe. The religious imagination of Sophia Lyon Fahs was like a sponge absorbing both the new liberal theology and progressive philosophy of education.

Over the course of the next twelve years of her married life, Fahs bore five children (three of whom survived), earned a Master of Arts degree in elementary education at Teachers College, Columbia University (1904), found her vocational calling as a religious educator of children and continued to form her increasingly liberal theology (Parke, 258-260). While Fahs' theology at that time was still firmly rooted in evangelical theology, the work of John Dewey fascinated and motivated the young woman to pursue the study of the religious education of children.

Liberal theology also took hold of her imagination and never let go. This was the theology that was behind the founding of the Religious Education Association and it was the theology that would color Fahs' philosophy of religious education. Reactions against the "uneducational" evangelical techniques for the transmission of faith, the necessity of emotional conversion experiences, and the literal interpretation of scripture were strong elements of both the liberal theology of Fahs and of the religious education movement.

After completing her graduate education at Teachers College, Fahs took some off from her studies to raise her family, but kept up with her profession and its literature. When the opportunity arose for her to study religious education at Union Theological Seminary, she jumped at the chance. Liberal theology marked by modernism was vibrant and alive at the Seminary as was the new religious education. Fahs was more than likely attracted by the experimental Union School of Religion that had superseded the Sunday school at Teachers College where she had previously taught.

At the age of forty-eight, Sophia Lyon Fahs decided to pursue a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary. "I decided I must have a theological education. I wanted to have the same education ministers have, because I want to understand the things that they understood" (Parke, 271). Not only did Fahs study at UTS with such notable professors as George Coe and Harrison Elliott, by 1924 she was asked to join the faculty of the Union School of Religion and shortly thereafter was named Elementary Supervisor.

It was an exciting time for a woman who was ready to devote herself fulltime to the "new philosophy" of the religious education movement. It was also a time of conflict in theological thought that had its origins as early as the end of the nineteenth century. Union Theological Seminary was the "hotbed of the Social Gospel" and modernist thought and Sophia Lyon Fahs was in total sympathy with it (Hunter 1966, 157).

At Union, Fahs studied with many great teachers of theology, church history and religious education. Her B.D. thesis, "Certain Problems Involved in Building a Curriculum in Religious Education," reflected her newly formulated progressive liberal ideas.

Fahs' years at Union Theological Seminary (1923-1926) coincided with the height of progressive modernism and liberal theology. George Albert Coe, formative theorist of progressive, liberal religious education who had originally developed the courses in religious education for theological students, had just a year earlier left the UTS faculty. Union Theological Seminary supported the basic tenets of the Social Gospel Movement during Fahs' years of study. Already a follower of the historical emphasis on the humanity of Jesus, Fahs saw the social and moral imperatives of Jesus' teachings as the basis of her understanding of the gospel message. Like the movement's founder, Walter Rauschenbusch, Fahs thought the Kingdom of God of which Jesus spoke was of this world and to follow Jesus meant to act for its social reconstruction. By the year 1928, this theology was being challenged by new theological developments at Union Theological Seminary.

In the fall of 1926, Henry Sloane Coffin became President of Union Theological seminary and invited a young, liberal social gospel preacher he heard speak in 1923 to join the faculty. The young man's name was Reinhold Niebuhr and by the end of the decade some real changes in Protestant theological thought were becoming evident. World War I, the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression left the country ready for a change. Edith Hunter wrote of this period:

The spirit of optimism that so often accompanied the efforts of the advocates of liberal Social Gospel was sadly inappropriate to the times… . The economic depression and an increasingly ominous threat of social and international discord provided the abyss and Union Theological Seminary was providing the seedbed of an alternative theology. (168)

The alternative theology was Neo-orthodoxy and Reinhold Niebuhr, along with Paul Tillich, became its leading spokesperson in the United States. While maintaining much of his liberal outlook in social action, Niebuhr became a leading critic of liberal theology.

The new theology sought to redefine the truth of Christian salvation history-a story that Fahs and other liberal theologians had come to see as so historically conditioned that it could no longer contain the scope of what they considered God's plan for the salvation of a world community. Neo-orthodox theologians saw the Social Gospel message and liberal theology as impotent in the face of the desperate situation in the world.

Fahs thought neo-orthodox thinking was too close to the evangelicalism of her childhood that she had long since outgrown. While recognizing the validity of some of its critique of liberalism, Fahs was never swayed by neo-orthodox theology. To observers it seemed that she was aloof to the theological storms going on about her. Fahs was well aware of what was going on, and she feared the new theology was a return to the days of authoritative absolutism.

By 1926, Sophia Fahs had earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary. She was offered the position of principal of the prestigious experimental Union School of Religion and a year later became one of the first two women invited to lecture at the institution, the other being Mary Ely Lyman. Fahs' years at The Union School of Religion (1924-1929) and Union Theological seminary (1926-1944) were spent pursuing her increasing liberal insights into religion and religious education. In 1933, a few years after the Union School of Religion closed, she became affiliated with the liberal pulpit of Harry Emerson Fosdick at Riverside Church as a School of Religion faculty member where she continued to work experimentally with her evolving ideas about the religious education of children (Hunter 1966, 162).

In 1930 the official Unitarian newspaper, The Christian Register, reported discontent with their present Sunday school curriculum (Hunter 1966, 180). It was through the efforts of one of Fahs' students that she was introduced in 1931 to the Unitarian committees that were working to develop a new curriculum to follow in the lineage of the denomination's previous series, namely the Beacon Series (1909) and the Beacon Course (1915). As a result of these committees, the Beacon Units (1935) were published.

From 1937 until 1964 Fahs served as Editor of Children's Materials for New Beacon Series in Religious Education. Fahs began this new work when she was sixty one years old and did not fully retire until 1964 at the age of eighty-eight. She received international attention for her work with the Unitarians and was ordained into Unitarian ministry in 1959. In typical fashion, Sophia Fahs used the occasion to speak of the need for further progress in religious education. In 1965, she wrote her last book, Worshipping Together with Questioning Minds.

Sophia Lyon Fahs died in 1978 leaving behind a strong legacy for religious education.

The contributions of Sophia Lyon Fahs to the field of religious education are numerous and far reaching. Fahs' work contributed to such developments in religious education as classroom experimentation with curricula prior to publication, development of teacher's guides, use of evaluation techniques, and recognition of and training for religious educators (Parke, 1965). Certainly, her natural theology and belief in the Bible as one sacred text among many singled her out from other Protestant educators of the day. Her concern over the point at which to begin Bible study with children was shared by many and she stood courageously for delaying it until the ages of eight or nine.

Perhaps the strongest and most pervasive tenet of Sophia Lyon Fahs contributions to religious education was her belief that the natural development of religious sentiments in children ought to be correlated with their emotional and psychological development (Nolan 2003, 459). She wrote, "We have become convinced that as a result of the very nature of life, small children have emotional experiences that are the seeds of religious sentiment and that the natural way of spiritual guidance would begin with these experiences and let the larger understandings grow slowly … (Fahs 1952, 53, 57). For Fahs, nurturing the religious sensibilities of children was the single most important responsibility of the family, church and society-one that would lead to a peaceful, world-wide "brotherhood" and the ultimate salvation of the human race.

The vast contribution of Fahs to the body of literature on nurturing children and preparing them to live in peace and harmony in an increasingly religiously pluralistic world cannot be overestimated in significance. Books written on religious myths and stories from all religious traditions throughout the history of humankind are meant to help children better understand their own beliefs and become conversant with others about theirs. Titles such as The Church Across the Street (1947, 1962), From Long Ago and Many Lands (1950), and Old Tales for a New Day (with Alice Cobb, 1980, 1992) are written to be read to children or for children to read themselves. The underlying premise is that children should grow in knowledge of their own religion in light of other religions from the beginning. To wait until they are older before beginning a comparative study of religion is too late because children are already living and going to school with children of other faiths.

Another major contribution to Christian religious education was Sophia Lyon Fahs' articulation of an imminent danger of the church losing its young members due to conflicting methodologies used in religious education and science (Nolan 2004b, 265). She wrote extensively on the need to harmonize the findings and processes of the sciences with religious teachings. Fahs was more likely to quote scientists in her writing than theologians and in many of her talks and journal articles she expressed a desire to reconcile the methods of science and theology (Nolan 2004a, 99).

The conflict of processes in science and religion leads to both intellectual and emotional difficulties for the child attempting to connect what is being taught at school with what is being taught by the church. Youth, in their advanced level of scientific study, need teachers of religion who are well qualified to assist them in dealing with such conflicts.

Delivering The Rufus Jones Lecture in 1960, Fahs spoke of foreseeing, "young people rejecting religion in increasing numbers" and "the moral foundations of our society crumbling" if religions are not reformed "in light of advancing knowledge, they will become sterile" (Fahs, 1960, p. 15). She believed adults should be honest in their dealings with youth, avoiding pat answers and promoting authentic dialogue between science and religion. Claims of having all the answers and passing on religious ideas no longer held as true could be detrimental to the future of the church. The necessary antidote was a new type of church school, one that nurtured its young and placed their education at the very center of church mission.

Connected to this concern for harmonizing science and religion, Sophia Lyon Fahs also foresaw problems arising from an outmoded biblical cosmology and sought to reconstruct her own theology on the basis of the latest scientific views on the nature of the universe. She devoted an entire chapter in her treatise on philosophy of religious education to the topic. She observed:

To build the beginnings of faith in God on a conception of the universe that our generation no longer regards as true is to prepare the way for a loss of respect for the Bible; and what is worse, to court a cynical atheism when the child is old enough to learn for himself. (Fahs, 1952, p.106)

The topic is later treated by Unitarian minister, Shirley Ranck, who noted three aspects of biblical cosmology that seemed especially troublesome to Fahs. Those were: 1) the idea that creation was completed in the past; 2) the idea that there exists a dualism between the natural and the spiritual worlds that clearly elevated the latter over the former; and 3) the idea that the cosmos is controlled by a God who "uses the forces of nature as a means of moral discipline" (Ranck, 1990, pp. 34-35). Fahs, Ranck aptly noted, saw these three outmoded beliefs as the root of much of what ails the modern world. Fahs believed humankind was called to cooperation with the universe, rather than domination. An outdated cosmology led to a fragmented world-view. Ranck summarized Fahs' thought when she wrote: "Fahs suggested that the divisive authoritarian structures that pervade our society and dominate our thinking are rooted in the biblical cosmology and morality" (Ranck, 1976, p. 605).

Another contribution is Fahs' call to church leaders and religious educators to be courageous and adventurous in the work of reconstructing traditional religious symbols, expressions and myths for modern times. "The way of searching for new and truer insights … is a way that calls for a courageous, creative adventure, involving much sharing of knowledge and experience" (Fahs, 1955, p. 135). "There is fear lest, in improving the structure, the foundations may be blasted. Emotional tensions run high…. Everyone, in a measure, must be a theologian" (Fahs, 1952, p. 96).

That religious organizations were so highly resistant to change was due to the emotional nature of religion itself. Fahs observed:

While we may easily discard our fathers' quill pens, their gay waistcoats and their stage coaches, we cling tenaciously to their religious faith …. We can with more difficulty, change our family patterns, our economic and social organization, and our racial attitudes; but to change our religious beliefs touches us at the deepest levels of life and demands profound adjustments, often extremely painful to make. (Fahs, 1952, p. 5)

The religiously minded adult is responsible to the future generation. Fahs hoped that religious educators would come forth from the new generation and that they would have the courage necessary to directly face the controversies between continuity and change in the church.

An important dimension of Fahs' theology and a timely contribution to today's religious education is in the area of religious pluralism. Fahs believed that from the youngest years and throughout life, the study of the religions of humankind not only enhanced the understanding of one's own religion but also led to a greater sense of connectedness among people of all religions. The world community, she felt, must seek to understand and accept various religious traditions as validation of humankind's common search for the divine in diverse, but life-enhancing ways. Fahs noted:

Our common living room is now the whole earth. Whether we will or no, our neighbors are on the other side of the globe as well as next door. In the light of this spaciousness in our exchanges, we find it unseemly to imagine ourselves superior. The realities of our shortcomings are all too easily observed by other nations and groups. Nor can we arrogate to ourselves an exclusive religious revelation. The Scriptures of other religions are easily accessible to every scholar. Any one group today that tries to dominate the whole world by its ideology or by military might, or by force of any kind, will eventually win only the hatred of those who are put under its power. (1952, p.150)

Not only does such a broadening of perspective open the possibility for world community, it deepens the appreciation of one's own religious tradition and beliefs. In a chapter entitled, "What Shall Children Study?" Fahs wrote:

Modern youth growing up in our modern world needs to find much more understanding of the world's religious history than has been allowed to any previous generation…. Indeed, the values in one's own religious heritage can never be understood or fairly appraised until one is able to compare his own with others. (1952, p. 184)

Another profoundly prophetic insight of Sophia Lyon Fahs concerned the need for a holistic creation theology. Fahs' deep respect and love for the natural world is reflective of her belief in God's immanence and the revelatory capacity of the universe. The study and appreciation of nature were emphasized in religious education curricula written and edited by Fahs. In A New Ministry to Children she poetically wrote of the complex relationship between humanity and the universe:

The Universe has been struggling through a long evolution. We are the fruits of her millions of years of labor. Our flesh is the evolved dust of the stars. Our very life is dependent upon the continuing life and death of other creatures. Without the common green world of grasses and grains we should quickly perish. Our indebtedness is a heritage that links us to all living and nonliving things from the beginning of time. The Living Universe does not ask us to accept things as they are. She challenges us to join in creating better things. She asks us to help her improve. In our pride of human superiority, we have sometimes been disdainful of the values in things of a so-called lower order. We have talked of subduing the forces of nature to serve our ends. The Living Universe calls us to understand, to appreciate, to co-operate-rather than to conquer. An exclusively human ethic is narrow. (Fahs, 1945, p. 7)

To imagine that creation was complete and that the world was for the explicit use of humanity was inconceivable to Fahs. Nature was a pervasive and essential aspect of her curricular materials for children. God's wonders and the mysteries of life and death were to be learned through a child's experiences with the created world.

Fahs gave voice to another cause close to her heart in a sermon she delivered at her own ordination. This concern reverberated through the years in her teaching and writing, most profoundly in her last article for Religious Education, written when she was ninety-five years old. The central subject of concern for Fahs was the need to improve the quality of religious education for the young. The field of religious education, she believed, must seek the brightest and best of young teachers and professionally prepare them, and seminarians as well, to nurture the religious sensibilities of children. Fahs believed "that all theological seminaries and institutions for the development of religious leadership must give more attention to children." She continued:

I believe that during the past as well as today Christian churches have been neglecting the children, even though Sunday Schools have been growing in size and equipment; and few theological seminaries give the education of the ministers to children their whole-hearted interest and respect…. At present it takes a very strong purpose and a willingness to sacrifice prestige for a man or a woman to enter the field of the religious education of the young. Ministers in preparation should be helped to feel more keenly the critical importance of the children. (Fahs, 1971, p. 458)

Fahs understood the task of her vocation as "reconstructing the processes and the content of the religious education of children in light of mankind's growing understandings" (1971, p. 458). She proposed that the study of elementary religious education be a part of all liberal churches' seminary programs. The religious education of children is today a vital aspect of Unitarian Universalist congregations. Fahs' voice has not faded away.

One final contribution of Fahs' work that serves as a model for today lies in the very way she chose to live out her life and career as a woman of confidence in a field occupied predominately by men. It never seemed to concern her that she was often the sole woman in a professional gathering. She conducted herself with certainty and assurance as an expert in the field, regardless of the scarcity of women. Before she married she hoped that she might do some great work for God. While she thoroughly loved the challenges of raising her children ("The children were my teachers.") she openly confessed her career ambitions to her husband. At times the demands of home life kept her from writing as much as she would like. Fahs' youngest daughter Lois Fahs Timmins recalled:

My mother was an early feminist and wrote an article on Women's Suffrage before I was born …. Our household chores were not assigned according to sex, but according to our interests and capabilities. Mother fought all her life for equal rights for women. She complained that at Union Theological Seminary the women instructors were paid less than the men instructors, and was almost fired for her protest. Our family deity was not sex-linked …. Today, I have little enthusiasm for the arguments as to whether God is male or female. (Timmins, n.d., p.1)

Fahs would not have identified herself as a feminist nor was she involved in any specifically feminist causes or organizations. While she was determined to raise a family and to have a professional career, Fahs was also "aware of being part of the 'new Age of Women' and she understood her right to a higher education and a career" (Ranck, 1990, p. 29). Hunter quotes a letter Sophia wrote to her future husband: I am too ambitious to serve the women of some heathen land, to be a nonentity for the direct work of foreign missions that some wives seem to be. I am too ambitious to give my life in direct foreign missionary work, to give twenty years of the strength of my life in service at home as my mother has done. Such lives count a great deal, but I long for the other. (1966, p. 42)

In "A Feminist Look at the Theology of Sophia Lyon Fahs" (1990), Shirley Ranck culled out many feminist themes in Fahs' thought. Specifically, Ranck noted that at an early point, Fahs connected patriarchal scripture with an exclusively masculine image of God. Perhaps Ranck was referring to the following passage from Fahs' The Old Story of Salvation:

The biblical records all came out of a type of culture that was autocratic and patriarchal. The father in the household, the chieftain of the tribe, and the head of the nation-all ruled in their respective circles with an iron hand. Even the father expected absolute obedience from his children, and had to the power of life and death over them. It would have been unthinkable in those times for men in such a culture to think of God in any other way than as lawgiver and judge. It is indeed only very recently that this general conception of relationships in the home and in the nation has been questioned or much changed. Even now the authoritarian pattern in home, society and government is far more prevalent than the more flexible, mutually-respecting pattern of democratic relationships. (Fahs, 1955, p. 135)

Sophia Lyon Fahs is remembered today as one of the leading women pioneers in the field of religious education. Though her focus was on the religious education of children and not on the various social movements of her day, Fahs was not unaware of her impact as a woman on the field (Nolan 2006, 167). At her ordination ceremony, Fahs remarked:

Even though I am glad that the feminist element in this ordination has not been primary, I find an exhilaration tonight in being a woman and in being able therefore to act as a kind of representative of all the other women who are now ministering faithfully week by week in our liberal churches. (Fahs, 1959)

Sophia Lyon Fahs left a remarkable legacy to the field of Christian religious education that includes these and many other contributions. She remains a key figure for Unitarian Universalist religious educators, yet her influences cross denominational boundaries. She sought reform in children's religious education everywhere and knew that such reforms required "no less than the noblest and most courageous efforts of all those concerned with the religious growth of children" (Nolan 2006, 154). At the end of her long career she continued to put forth questions about the nature of religious truths, the adequacy of church school structures in handing on religion and how art as a way of knowing fits into religious education (Hunter 1966, 258-259). Her life and work reflected the depth of meaning that these sorts of questions held for her.

Works Cited

• Fahs, S. B. L. (1945). A new ministry to children. Boston: American Unitarian Association.
• Fahs, S. B. L. (1952). Today's children and yesterday's heritage; a philosophy of creative religious development. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Fahs, S. B. L. (1955). The old story of salvation. Boston: Starr King Press; distributed by the Beacon Press.
• Fahs, S. B. L. (1960). Why teach religion in an age of science? The Religious Education Committee Friends General Conference.
• Fahs, S. B. L. (1971). The future of religious education. Religious Education, 66, 457-459.
• Nolan, Lucinda A. (2003). Together with questioning minds: Sophia Lyon Fahs (1876-1978). Religious Education 98 (4), 454-470.
• (2004a). Sophia Lyon Fahs: A theology and philosophy of transformative Religious education. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Fordham University, NY. Retrieved August 3, 2009, from Dissertations and Theses: Full Text. (Publication No. AAT 3142872).
• (2004b). Seeing what is not there yet: Sophia Fahs, entelechy, and the Religious Education Association. Religious Education 99 (3), 247-271.
• (2006). It takes more than angels: The legacy of Sophia Lyon Fahs to religious education. In G. Durka, et. al. (Eds.), The international handbook of the religious, moral and spiritual dimension in education (p.p.153-169). Netherlands: Springer.
• Hunter, E. F. (1966). Sophia Lyon Fahs: A biography. Boston: Beacon Press.
• Parke, D. (1965). The historical and religious antecedents of the New Beacon Series in religious education. (Doctoral dissertation, Boston University, 1965). Dissertation Abstracts International 26/05, 2897.
• Ranck, S. A. (1976). 100th birthday celebration for Sophia Lyon Fahs. Religious Education, 71, 603-609.
• Ranck, S. A. (1990). A feminist look at the theology of Sophia Fahs. Liberal Religious Education, 27-41.
• Timmins, L. F. The longest Sunday school lesson. The Sophia Lyon Fahs Collection, Meadville/Lombard Theological School, Chicago, IL.