Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Toddling To The Kingdom
Toddling To The Kingdom
Toddling
to the
Kingdom
Editor
JOHN COLLIER
Contributors
MARCIA BUNGE
JOHN COLLIER
JAMES GILBERT
BILL PREVETTE
CARLOS QUIEROZ
A R I O VA L D O R A MO S
JOHN WALL
KEITH WHITE
HADDON WILLMER
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C O N T E N T S
Contributors Page 4
Foreword 5
Preface 7
Part One
Copyright © 2009 The Child Theology INTRODUCTION 11
Movement Limited
First published 2009 by CHAPTER 1
The Child Theology Movement One Oppressed Child 13
10 Crescent Road, South Woodford,
London E18 1JB, UK CHAPTER 2
Charity registration no. 1106542
Our Response 17
Email [email protected] Chapter 3
Website www.childtheology.org
What is ‘Child Theology’? 23
ISBN 978-0-9560993-0-3
CHAPTER 4
All rights reserved. No part of this
Developing Child Theology 28
publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
Chapter 5
any form or by any means, electronic, What Child Theology Is
mechanical, recording, or otherwise, and Is Not 32
without the prior permission of the
Publisher in writing. Part Two
SITUATIONS CHILDREN FACE 35
Scripture quotations from the Holy Bible,
New International Version® copyright © CHAPTER 6
1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Some Stories 37
society. Used by permission. All rights
reserved. CHAPTER 7
The Children’s Questions 41
Design by
Tony Cantale Graphics CHAPTER 8
Printed in India Cultural Perspectives 45
CHAPTER 9
A Child’s Dream 54
CHAPTER 10
Concepts and Practices that
Label Children 61
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C O N T R I B U TO R S
Carlos Quieroz
Executive Director:
World Vision in Brazil,
Ceará, Brazil
4
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F O R E W O R D
FOREWORD
that. Over the past 8 years, they created a movement that began to
explore theological questions raised by people working with some of the
most vulnerable children across the world.
This book is not ‘just’ for those who work with children. It is for all
Christians who are not afraid to walk with children into some relatively
unexplored areas of God’s kingdom. It charts a journey of some of those
who did just that. There is much here to ponder and reflect on. There is
still much to learn. With discernment and grace we too can toddle to the
kingdom.
Paul Stephenson
Director: Children in Development,
World Vision International
6
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P R E F A C E
Since 2002 the Child Theology Movement has promoted with the help of
others a series of extended conversations or ‘consultations’ to explore
what ‘Child Theology’ might be in various locations and contexts. Such
meetings have been held in: Penang, Malaysia; Cape Town, South Africa;
Houston, USA; Cambridge, England; Prague, Czech Republic; Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia; São Paulo, Brazil; Quito, Ecuador; Kathmandu, Nepal;
Newcastle, Australia.
Although reports were produced of all of these consultations, there is
much in them that deserves a wider audience. This book is the result. I
have selected key contributions to the consultations from various partici-
pants and arranged them in chapters. Some of the chapters are accounts
of experiences and challenges children face today. Others are summaries
of questions generated by group discussion. Still others are papers pre-
sented by individual participants. Together, the chapters offer an intro-
duction to some of the central questions of and approaches to Child
Theology.
I have sometimes edited the contributions from the original presenta-
tions. They were given orally to a particular group, at a specific time and
place. My intention has been to make the presentations more accessible
to those who were not at the meetings, to avoid repetition and to intro-
duce some stylistic continuity in this volume. I believe I have not materi-
ally changed the sense of what was originally given.
The term ‘Child Theology’ may not be familiar to many readers.
Perhaps it is worth pointing out here, at the beginning, that it is not a the-
ology which has children and the issues relating to them as the primary
foci. So, in that respect, it differs from a ‘theology of childhood’ or ‘theol-
ogy for children’ and therefore is of interest to all Christians who speak of
God, not just those who work with or are otherwise interested in children.
The focus of Child Theology is ‘God in Christ’ and the role of ‘the
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PREFACE
child’ is to bring a new perspective on the way God does things. We aim
to have a child ‘with us’ as we do our theological work1. In this, we con-
sciously try to follow Christ’s example in Matthew 18:1-5:
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the
greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child and had
him stand among them. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless
you change and become like little children, you will never enter the
kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this
child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever wel-
comes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.”
PREFACE
though still abhorrent but, as should have been expected from a policy
that trivialised human life, the opposite has happened and we have in the
UK a generation of lonely, alienated and unhappy young people. Our cul-
ture superficially celebrates children, with an unprecedented number of
products aimed at them, while denying them what they really need.
Predatory producers out to ‘accessorise’ our children are sometimes
called corporate paedophiles. Circumstances differ and the type of
oppression varies but the plight of children is global.
As Jesus did something highly significant with a child in Matthew 18,
as children make up about half the world’s population, as they are the
most oppressed social group and as we all are or have been children, isn’t
it time that we brought this perspective to bear on our understanding of
what is meant by ‘the Kingdom of God’ and how we are to live in God’s
way?
John Collier
Jesus and
Children:
Serome Ching,
age 10 yrs
NOTE
1 It needs to be made clear at the outset that this does not necessarily,
or even usually, mean that we have a child with us in the room ‘in the 9
flesh’. Later chapters will show how we try to do this.
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C H A P T E R 1
One
Oppressed Child
“FOR I KNOW THE PLANS THAT I HAVE
FOR YOU, DECLARES THE LORD, PLANS TO PROSPER
YOU AND NOT TO HARM YOU, PLANS TO GIVE YOU
HOPE AND A FUTURE.”
Jeremiah 29:11
Jesus and
Children:
Ng Joe Yee,
age 6 yrs
CHAPTER NOTE S
2 The story is as told to him by Simona Pop
who graduated in sociology and theology
from the Baptist seminary in Bucharest.
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C H A P T E R 3
What is
‘Child Theology’? HADDON WILLMER
It is Theology
Child Theology is not an overall Christian theory of all activity around
children. Nor is it just a reaction to the child unfriendliness of much of
modern life. It also reacts to the massive secular and Christian child
friendliness which are to be found in the world now – for example, as set
out by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The
Gospel can be ignored or distorted not only in activities that are child-
unfriendly. Child friendliness can take forms that have the same effects.
Secular humanism can be concerned for children without God and the
Gospel. To care for children, it’s not just a matter of adding God into the
programme. There can be Christian activism for children which obscures
the Gospel because it is insufficiently theologically articulate.
Theology is thinking and talking (logos) about, from, towards and with
God (theos). Not all religion involves theology. Even if the talk about Child
Development, for example, uses religious language and categories but
23
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Our Approach
One approach to Child Theology that I have taken with Keith White is to
reflect on some Gospel stories and sayings of Jesus in relation to children.
First, helped by Matthew 18, we aimed to follow Jesus who put a child
in the middle of a theological argument! The disciples thought the Kingdom
of God was such that it was possible and proper to have a competition for
greatness in it. Jesus does not merely attack the proud ambitions of the
disciples by inviting them to become as children but changes the lan-
guage in order to speak more precisely about the transcendent difference
of the Kingdom of God from the kingdoms of our earthly experience. In
God’s kingdom, the language of greatness ceases to be competitive. To
enter the kingdom is enough – and even the great people on earth cannot
take entering the kingdom for granted.
Secondly, we reflected on what it means to receive the child. Jesus tells
us that we cannot enter the Kingdom unless we become as children. Does
this mean we are to attempt the impossible: to go back on our adulthood
– the adulthood it seems God implants in every child by nature? Jesus
does not expect adults in themselves to become children. They become as
children when they receive the child, real children, so that they live with
and for the child, so that they walk at the pace of the child. They become
like a child, without ceasing to be adult, when they let the child they
receive be a child. As they do this, they provide what the child needs as
part of its child-ness: reception. This way of reading the Gospels is con-
troversial, and will be disputed by many child-friendly theologians. Our
approach is not to be wholly conventional and unprovocative!
Thirdly, we found we had to attend to child suffering, to the massive
despising of little ones which is all around us. Jesus said they should not be
despised because their angels always behold the Father’s face. This is
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Child as Sign
Even in spite of Christ, God has done so much to preserve his invisibility –
he preserves the mystery and hiddenness, even while revealing himself.
We can never grasp God but we have to go on babbling as we attempt to
speak about him (Augustine). A lot of life is about waiting in darkness,
waiting in faith. “The people that walked in darkness … .” Like Simeon wait-
ing in the Temple, until Christ is brought in.
The child was put in the midst as a sign of the Kingdom of God but this
is not the same as the presence of the Kingdom. The child is often a sign
of hope but she can also be a sign by pointing to the darkness that is still
waiting for the Kingdom, rather like the canaries taken down the mines to
detect poisonous gases. Faith does not oblige us to be cheaply optimistic
about every situation.
Adina was rescued but what about those that were not? Adina helps
us to remember them but they still suffer. People still say: there’s no God
or if there is, he’s not around when you need him. So, many social work-
ers are quite hostile to the involvement of Faith Based Organisations –
they think faith only complicates the problem. Many Christians also feel
the weight of this question.
Questions to be Answered
For those working with children, and to all who would wish to follow this
analysis, many issues arise. Here are some that were suggested by partic-
ipants at a Child Theology consultation:
27