Childhood studies, hermeneutics, and theological ethics

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies

Children and childhood studies Since the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was adopted in 1989, awareness, interest and concern for children have grown globally, stimulated by the work of children's rights organisations and other child-focused organisations like the United Nations International Children's Fund (UNICEF). Over the past 30 years, the CRC has introduced and enhanced a broadening understanding of childhood (cf. https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/ frequently-asked-questions). In addition to regarding children as objects to be protected by society, children have also come to be valued as subjects of their own lives with full rights. Children are agents, befitting their age and development. This child-oriented movement has also contributed to a growing focus on studies about children in the academic world, leading to research projects in numerous disciplines that culminated in several child-focussed publications (cf. Grobbelaar 2016a). In these research projects, children have been increasingly involved as co-producers of knowledge. Eventually, Childhood Studies was recognised as a new academic discipline. The complexity of understanding childhood requires a multi-and interdisciplinary research approach (James & James 2012:19), in which theology has begun to participate. Children and theology Until theologians became involved in Childhood Studies, children and childhood apparently did not get much attention in theological research and thinking. As a result, theologians did not contribute much to this field (cf.

2016

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Theological Studies/Teologiese Studies, 2019

apt description of conversion in connection with doing liberation theology with the poor is also applicable to doing theology with children: Conversion means leaving one's own way (see Lk 10:25-37) and entering upon the way of the other, the neighbor, and especially of the poor [children] in whom we encounter the Lord (see Mt 25:31-45). (n.p.) Encountering the Lord is also part of entering upon the way of the children. In a pronouncement similar in sentiment to Matthew 25:31-45, Jesus said (Mt 18:5), '[w]hoever receives one such child in my name receives me'. Doing theology with children, which includes children as equal participants in the process, is no easy task. Adult theologians face many challenges in becoming involved in doing theology with children. The probing question is: What are these challenges? This article identifies and discusses a few of them. It does not provide an exhaustive list, nor does it discuss each challenge in detail, although more attention is given to the important and crucial challenge to scrutinise our conceptions of childhood. It rather wants to stimulate a conversation about why it is difficult to involve children as equal partners in doing theology and in theological research.

The international journal of children's spirituality, 2014

For the Western adult, separated from childhood by the cultural and psychological "coming of age" of modernism, childhood is a once-familiar text become strange, which can only be reapropriated through dialogue, both with real children and with the "child within." In the Western iconography of self, childhood has come to represent an end point, a spiritual goal of unity with self and world, a reappropriation of nature and the unconscious of which the experience of childhood itself is not so much exemplary as prophetic. The reappropriation of childhood is thus a dialectical one, of which the journey into alienation represented by adulthood is a necessary moment. Thus childhood occupies a central place in the Western mythology of self, which is construed as a voyage out of unity into multiplicity, and toward a unity painfully regained on a higher level. The implicit telos of this historical myth is the end of history, for it is repression, division, and self-alienation which generate historical time, and the utopia of a recovered childhood, in recovering the primary narcissism of the childhood experience, passes beyond repression to the "heaven" of instinctual liberation.

Journal of Christian Education, 2008

Unquestionably the centre of teaching and learning is the student. This has been recognised in all societies from the earliest times 2. The key question I want to address is what assumptions and presuppositions do we have about the nature of our students as learners? THE NATURE OF THE LEARNER The prospectuses and programs of schools often state that each student will be helped to fulfil his or her potential. Yet, how are we and they to think of this? At the core is one's self-concept-the ability to think of ourselves as an object. The dimensions of selfconcept have been demonstrated to include self-worth, self-esteem, self-cognition, self

2013

In the all-too-brief outline following there are two halves: a) issues of prolegomena and b) contributions to the construction of a theology of the child. 1 The first section, I believe, is particularly necessary so that we might be circumspect and accountable for our heritage which has sadly lacked an awareness of and sensitivity to the child in christian theology. The second section can be no more than distinct items of contribution and demands a more profound analysis. These contributions cover a range of traditional categories, pastoral theology, theological anthropology, theological ethics, christology and theology and await a more thorough integration. However, it will be clear that the basic premise of this entire paper is that, unless the 'child' is factored inextricably into christological and theological exposition, actual children will remain marginalised and forced to be dependent on fashions of adult concern and attention. Put as succinctly as I can, the primary emphasis needs to be redirected to the assertion that Jesus is the child of God, both in christological and Trinitarian expressions. This theological development is both the consequence of Jesus' emphasis on children in his ministry and self-conceptualisation and also the potential affirmation of the origin of such an emphasis.

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2019

Doing theology with children: An epistemological shift Negating the valid knowledges and experiences of children 1 is an expression of epistemicide. At best, it is a lost opportunity to discover the world through children's eyes, but it is also a failure to listen deep enough to understand children's struggles and aspirations. At worst though, it belies an understanding of children that views them as less human and therefore unable to contribute meaningfully to the construction of knowledge. DeVries (2001) gives the following guidance: Communities of faith have much to learn from children's experience of God and their view of the world. Theology that values the perspectives of children will address quite different questions from the ones that have dominated the Christian tradition. (p. 61) The following four issues are pertinent to this article: (1) The absence of children from most dominant forms of theological education and the necessity to change that; (2) epistemological arrogance that negates children's knowledge and agency and the necessity for an epistemological shift; (3) the ethics conundrum that seeks to protect children and institutions, often by excluding children, while failingethically-to ensure that children's right to participation is honoured and upheld and (4) the beauty and power of emancipatory methodologies that make equal space for children at the table. We focus on the last three aspects in this article, but the absence of children from our theological engagements remains a nagging concern. When children are considered, it is often as a brief subcategory of youth ministry, and then only children and youths who have found their way into the inner workings of ecclesial communities. The large percentages of children who are marginal and vulnerable in South African societies 2 are unheard of, and unheard, in both churches and most theological classrooms. 1.For the purpose of this special collection, the concept of children refers to persons under the age of 18 years in accordance with the Constitution of South Africa, the South African Children's Act (Act 38 of 2005), the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC). However, we acknowledge that defining children on the basis of age is not without limitations. We recognise that 'the transition between childhood and adulthood is often determined by social factors such as child-headed households, teenage pregnancies, sexual abuse and child labour, and cultural practices, such as initiation' (Yates 2010:154). A contextual and balanced view on children is sought by focusing on children within their unique and diverse social contexts while having in mind the biological basis of childhood. When putting too much emphasis on the biological developmental stages of childhood, dominant understandings and norms for childhood can be created which may result in the majority of Africa's children being stereotyped as inferior, deviant or even pathological. 2.Children's position in society intersects with the position of their families. Children whose families have been historically marginalised are in most cases unable to access the services that they need and to which they are entitled. This exclusion of children from access to basic services, especially in rural areas in South Africa, forces children to the margins of society and to experiences of vulnerability on a daily basis (cf. Hall et al. 2018). This article serves as an introduction to a collection of articles that explores emancipatory methodologies for doing theology and research with children. We focus on both the agency and the participation of children as an ethics and children's rights imperative as well as the potential impact and outcomes of theology and research that focus on children. The article emphasises that such research should be preceded by an epistemological shift that recognises the validity of local, experiential and different knowledges while insisting on participatory approaches in generating and constructing knowledge. It emphasises a rights-based approach and provides guidelines for ethical and collaborative research with children, moving beyond the paralysis of an ethics conundrum. The life and work of Janet Prest Talbot, who embodies commitment to children's rights, children's participation, child justice and God's joy over children forms a backdrop of and inspiration for this article.

This paper offers an approach to child study that moves beyond the traditional modern domains of medicine, education and the social sciences, to explore the representation and symbolization of the child in philosophy, social and cultural history, myth and spirituality, art, literature, and psychoanalysis. It considers childhood as a cultural and historical construction, and traces the ways in which characterizations of children function symbolically as carriers of deep assumptions about human nature and its potential variability and changeability, about the construction of human subjectivity, about the ultimate meaning of the human life cycle, and about human forms of knowledge. The child as limit condition—as representing for adults the boundaries of the human—that is “nature,” animality, madness, the “primitive,” the divine—is re-evoked continually in modern and postmodern symbolizations, and then tension between reason and nature or instinct, or Enlightenment and Romance, is never far from their surface. Finally, the extent to which the construction of “child” also implies a construction of “adult” is explored in the context of the history of culture and of child rearing, particularly in the rise of the modern middle-class European adult personality, which defined itself on the basis of its distance from childhood—both the child before it and the child within. An ideal of adult maturity which includes rather than excludes childhood is capable of transforming our notions of optimal child rearing and education.

Church History, 2011

From recent sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, to arguments about faith schools and religious indoctrination, this volume considers the interconnection between the actual lives of children and the position of children as placeholders for the future. Childhood has often been a particular site of struggle for negotiating the location of religion in public and everyday social life, and children's involvement and non-involvement in religion raises strong feelings because they represent the future of religious and secular communities, even of society itself. The Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood addresses wider questions about the distinctiveness of childhood and its religious dimensions in historical and contemporary perspective. Divided into five thematic parts, it provides classic, contemporary, and specially commissioned readings from a range of perspectives, including the sociological, anthropological, historical, and theological. Case studies range from Augustine's description of childhood in Confessions, the psychology of religion and childhood, to religion in children's literature, religious education, and Qur'anic schools. - Religious traditions covered include Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, in the UK and Europe, USA, Latin America and Africa - An introduction situates each thematic part, and each reading is contextualised by the editors - Guidance on further reading and study questions are provided on the book's webpage

2019

What does it mean to grow up as an evangelical Christian today? What meanings does ‘childhood’ have for evangelical adults? How does this shape their engagements with children and with schools? And what does this mean for the everyday realities of children’s lives? Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork carried out in three contrasting evangelical churches in the UK, Anna Strhan reveals how attending to the significance of children within evangelicalism deepens understanding of evangelicals’ hopes, fears and concerns, not only for children, but for wider British society. Developing a new, relational approach to the study of children and religion, the book invites us to consider both the complexities of children’s agency and how the figure of the child shapes the hopes, fears, and imaginations of adults, within and beyond evangelicalism. The Figure of the Child in Contemporary Evangelicalism explores the lived realities of how evangelical Christians engage with children across the spaces of church, school, home, and other informal educational spaces in a dechristianizing cultural context, how children experience these forms of engagement, and the meanings and significance of childhood. Providing insight into different churches’ contemporary cultural and moral orientations, the book reveals how conservative evangelicals experience their understanding of childhood as increasingly countercultural, while charismatic and open evangelicals locate their work with children as a significant means of engaging with wider secular society. Setting out an approach that explores the relations between the figure of the child, children’s experiences, and how adult religious subjectivities are formed in both imagined and practical relationships with children, the book situates childhood as an important area of study within the sociology of religion and examines how we should approach childhood within this field, both theoretically and methodologically.

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