Understanding Children's Spirituality

Theology, Research, and Practice

Lawson

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781621893684
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

How important is childhood in the spiritual formation of a person? How do children experience God in the context of their lives as they grow? What does God do in the lives of children to draw them to himself and help them grow into a vital relationship with him? How can adults who care about children better support their spiritual growth and direct it toward relationship with God through Jesus Christ? These are critical questions that church leaders face as they consider how best to nurture the faith of the children God brings into our lives. In this book, over two dozen Christian scholars and ministry leaders explore important issues about the spiritual life of children and ways parents, church leaders, and others who care about children can promote their spiritual formation.

Section 1

Theological, Historical, and Social Science Research Perspectives

1

Biblical and Theological Perspectives and Best Practices for Faith Formation1

Marcia J. Bunge

Introduction

The Children’s Spirituality: Christian Perspectives conference gathers together a unique group of people. We come from different parts of the country and the world as well as from various disciplines. We are also engaged in diverse professions: psychology, sociology, social work, ministries for children and families, health care, pediatrics, education, theology, child advocacy, and international work for children at risk. Although we come from different countries, fields, backgrounds, and professions, we all share a deep interest and passion for children. All of us care about children and have learned a lot from them.

My Background

My own academic background is in the area of historical theology, and I am a Professor at Christ College—the Honors College of Valparaiso University. Over the past eight years, I have become deeply interested in a host of issues regarding children and religious understandings of who children are and what we owe them. This interest has grown for several reasons, of which I will mention three. First, we have two children, one adopted and one biological, and having children has raised many questions for me about priorities in life, values, and faith formation.

Second, as a professor at a church-related college (Valparaiso University is an independent Lutheran university), my colleagues and I are concerned not only about intellectual formation but also about moral and spiritual formation. I teach undergraduates who are eighteen to twenty-two years old, and while approximately 95 percent of my students are confessing Christians, I am surprised at how little most of them know about their faith tradition. Like the American teenagers represented in the study called Soul Searching, many of them do not know how to connect what they believe with their daily lives (Smith and Lundquist, 2005). Teaching undergraduates has raised questions for me about what goes on in those eighteen years before they come to college and what is going on in the United States and around the world in terms of faith formation for young people in the church.

Third, I am also an historical theologian, and I have noticed in the fields of theology and ethics there is little serious theological reflection directly on children or parenting. Many theologians and ethicists have treated the subject of children as “beneath” the serious theologian and as a subject only for religious educators or youth pastors. Few contemporary theologians and ethicists have devoted their attention to child-related issues, even though many Christians have children and think about children, and even though many children are suffering around the world.

These kinds of questions and concerns from my experiences as a mother, professor, and historical theologian sparked my passion in exploring religious understandings of children and childhood, and I have now edited three books on the subject: 1) The Child in Christian Thought (2001a), a collection of essays about various historical theologians, including Augustine, Luther, Aquinas, and their conceptions of children; 2) The Child in the Bible (2008), a collection of essays by biblical scholars; and 3) Children and Childhood in World Religions: Primary Sources and Texts (2009), with primary texts on children from six world religions.

Treatment of Children: A Mixed Record in Church and Society

As a mother, professor, and theologian deeply interested in child-related issues, I have been both impressed and disturbed by our conceptions and treatment of children today and in the past. Although I see many wonderful programs, resources, and initiatives for children, I also see a mixed record in the church, in my own country, and in countries around the world regarding our attitudes toward children. Both in Church and society, children are too often treated as the very “least of these.”

Here are a few examples from the United States of how children are neglected or suffer injustices. Every person over sixty-five can have medical insurance; yet approximately nine million children are without health care or medical insurance. Most affluent children have access to a good education; yet, as Jonathan Kozol and others have revealed, many poor children attend inadequate or even dangerous schools (Kozol, 1992). Furthermore, many children, regardless of their economic situation, suffer neglect or abuse and struggle with drug addictions, suicide, and depression.

Around the world, we also see examples of children treated as the “least of these.” Many children die from hunger or preventable diseases each and every day. Poor children are being used as cheap laborers or soldiers. More than a million children per year are forced into prostitution. In a global economy, rich and poor children alike are bombarded with brand names and market pressures.

In the church, we find a similar mixed record in our attitudes toward and treatment of children. Perhaps most alarming have been the child abuse scandals, not just in the Catholic Church but in other churches as well, where the reputations of pastors or bishops have had priority over child safety. But children are neglected or treated unjustly in far more subtle ways in many congregations and homes. Many churches do not adequately support programs for children and youth. Child and family ministries are underfunded, and leaders are difficult to recruit and maintain. Furthermore, there is little coordinated effort between the church and the home regarding faith formation.

Two Key Insights from My Research
and Experience

As I have thought about these challenges in Church and society, and as I have worked on various research projects and books on religious views of children, I have discovered two foundational insights that I would like to share with you today. These two insights are mined from the Christian tradition and have been helpful for me as I work with children and young people in my home, my church, and my university. Perhaps you will also find these two insights helpful in your own various personal and professional contexts.

First, although Christian understandings of children and adults’ obligations to them have varied (and will continue to vary), they could all be strengthened by incorporating a range of resources from tradition and developing theological conceptions of children that acknowledge: their strengths and gifts as well as their vulnerabilities and needs; their full humanity as well as their need for guidance; and their spiritual wisdom as well as their growing moral capacities. The Bible and the Christian tradition express complex and multi-faceted views of children that incorporate multiple dimensions of their strengths and vulnerabilities, and therefore, also multiple dimensions of our obligations to children.

A second insight is that the more we can keep in mind and hold in tension the many paradoxical strengths and vulnerabilities of children expressed in the Bible and the Christian tradition, the more likely we are to learn from children, to carry out our many obligations to them, and to enrich our understanding of children and of child-adult relationships. In other words, any solid model of parenting, child-adult relationships, religious education, children’s ministries, youth and family ministries, or child advocacy must incorporate a complex theological view of children that attends to the many dimensions of who children are and what we owe them.

These two foundational insights might seem rather simple, but they address a serious problem: today and in the past we have commonly held narrow and simplistic views of children and thereby narrow and simplistic views of child-adult relationships. This problem is widespread. We find narrow views of children in religious communities, contemporary cultures, and international and national debates about children. For example, many Christians today and in the past have viewed children as sinful and defiant. Given this view of children, they emphasize that adults should primarily be teaching, punishing, and disciplining children, yet they say little a...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Theological, Historical, and Social Science Research Perspectives
• Part 2: Contexts of Children’s Spirituality Family, Church, and Community
• Contributors