Doing theology with children: Some challenges for adult theologians

Abstract

Gutierrez's (1990) 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.

Young people – citizens in times of climate change? A childist approach to human responsibility

“…Childist or child-centred, perspectives are today additionally raised in various research fields demonstrating tendencies that could potentially affect various practices. For example within South African theology, childist-inspired research has addressed different theological issues such as New Testament studies (Grobbelaar 2020), how to listen to and include the voices of young people when doing theology (Grobbelaar 2019;Johannisen, Yates & Van Wyk 2019), how to stop the silencing of matters of sexuality by mutual sexual emancipation (Koch, Yates & Kitching 2019) and studies on necessary epistemological shifts when doing theology with children (De Beer & Yates 2019). From other disciplinary research contexts, matters such as access to citizenship for young people whose lives have been uprooted through migration are addressed (Josefsson 2019), and in the field of education it has been theoretically explored how children's moral agency in times of the Anthropocene can be understood as a form of moral authorship where children form their own narratives to interpret their lives and how this can be facilitated in education (Sporre, Lotz-Sisitka & Osbeck forthcoming).…”