Introduction
Theological attention to humanity is not complete without theological attention to children. ‘Childhood’ is defined and experienced differently across time and space, but it is an experience that all Christians who live to adulthood have shared. Footnote 3 However, sustained theological attention to the child has been rare in Western Christianity, and ‘childhood has had to borrow its senses of meaning and humanity from [adults, who are] thought to embody them in some fuller, more advanced, or more important way’. Footnote 4 Only recently have theologians and scholars taken up this necessary work with more focus and curiosity. Footnote 5
Few scholars have addressed historical Anglican theologies of childhood. This paper offers one piece towards that larger work by turning to the Lambeth Conferences and looking for what their resolutions say or suggest about children and young people, specifically in the instances where ‘children’ and ‘youth’ are named.
Since the 1990s, more scholars in many disciplines have written about children. The interdisciplinary field of childhood studies has grown to include work in history, law, literature, philosophy, sociology and anthropology. Footnote 6 There have been many Christian books on and for ministry with children since Luther’s Small Catechism, but this wave in the last thirty years has included theologians who write about children with more concrete and sustained attention, drawing on the new scholarship regarding children in other disciplines.
Some write theologies of childhood, which offer questions and answers about the nature of children in relation to God, and about what children and adults owe each other. Both of these topics also involve the question of what the church should be or do in relation to children.
In a related but distinct field, other people write child theology, which offers ideas about God and humanity from the experience of childhood. In the same way that womanist theology starts within the experience of Black women and then turns to offer conceptions of God and critiques of theologies and the Church, Footnote 7 so too child theology starts within the experience of the child and then turns to speak more broadly about God. These theologies start from experience but expand to include all of creation. Child theology asks ‘how honoring children might reframe and readjust our thinking about other major themes in theology’. Footnote 8 For child theology, ‘the focus is not the child or children, but God’.Footnote 9 The best summary of this field can be found in the 2021 collection, Child Theology: Diverse Methods and Global Perspectives, edited by Marcia Bunge.
But I’m interested here in the former approach: theologies of childhood. These theologies ‘articulate informed and robust understandings of children and adult obligations to them’ and ‘build on wisdom from the Bible, Christian tradition, human experience, and insights from the sciences and the humanities’.Footnote 10 These can be theologies that are stated directly (‘Children are X, we owe them Y’) or are implicit in what adults are saying about children, or implicit in what adults are doing with or to children (‘We need to share the love of God with children or they won’t know it’, ‘We need to keep children from going down dangerous paths’, ‘Children are like little angels’, ‘Children need punishment to understand their sins’, ‘Children in church should be seen and not heard’).
We find pieces of theologies of childhood in a few places: in practical and pastoral theology, where complete theologies of childhood have recently been written; in liturgical theology; in work describing the practice of ministry with children; and in recoveries of historical theologies of childhood.
Practical Theologies of Childhood
Many of the recent theologies of childhood are written within practical and pastoral theology. Practical theology ‘describes a theology intending to be both true and useful’ and ‘must be recognizable both in terms of the adequacy of its description of a particular context or situation of human experience, and in terms of its description of God and God’s activity’. Footnote 11 There are three recent books which attempt a complete practical theology of childhood, by Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Joyce Mercer, and Pamela Couture; and a work of pastoral theology for the family with children by Herbert Anderson and Susan B.W. Johnson.
Miller-McLemore’s Let the Children Come: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective is written for ‘the thoughtful lay reader’, Footnote 12 and is ‘about how adults think about children (a descriptive task) and about how adults should think about children (a prescriptive task)’. Footnote 13 She proceeds from the perspective of feminist maternal theology; her three sources are ‘Christianity, feminism, and psychology’. Footnote 14 She begins with a brief overview of historical changes in how adults see children, Footnote 15 then surveys what psychology offers to our view of childhood, in particular how psychology corrects Christianity and how Christianity may correct psychology. Footnote 16 She arrives by this at ‘three fundamental Christian imperatives’:
First, children must be loved for their own sake … Christians see [this love] as a gift, a grace ultimately promised and bestowed by God. Second, children must be received as harbingers of God’s kingdom … Finally, to cause a child to stumble and fall is a fate worse than death.Footnote 17
She briefly considers different approaches to understanding children as sinful and fallible from psychology and broadly from the Christian tradition; she uses Scripture and a brief criticism of ‘market logic’ to consider children as a costly gift; picking up Christian feminist theology she notes how children have and have not been a concern in feminism and feminist theology, and what these disciplines offer in our view of loving children. Footnote 18 Finally she considers what both feminism and Christianity can offer about ‘children as agents’ and ‘children as ends in themselves’. Footnote 19
Mercer’s Welcoming Children: A Practical Theology of Childhood is also situated in feminist practical theology and is an even more thorough exploration. She arrives at five basic theological claims of a feminist practical theology of childhood:
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1. Parenting is a deeply religious practice of gift stewardship, involving care and nurture of children as divine gifts.
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2. Welcoming children means welcoming those who care for them.
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3. Children are already fully human, whole-yet-broken people.
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4. Children are part of the purposes of God, given to the world and the church so that God may be welcomed.
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5. The suffering of children must be acknowledged and addressed, as Christ’s church seeks its transformation so that children may flourish. Footnote 20
Mercer arrives at these claims by way of detailed case studies interpreted with both a sociological and theological lens, in-depth biblical interpretation focusing on Mark’s Gospel and the work of theologians Karl Barth and Karl Rahner. She also draws on work from the fields of social work, education and ethnography. Each of these claims is elaborated and supported by her study, and she extends them into a vision of ‘liberatory Christian ecclesial practices’, Footnote 21 which the whole book elaborates in her chosen context: North American churches at the start of the twenty-first century in mainline congregations. In her closing chapter she demonstrates how her five claims are or are not lived out in worship and discipleship with children in congregations.
Another significant book is Pamela G. Couture’s Seeing Children, Seeing God: A Practical Theology of Children and Poverty. Couture is ‘a practical theologian who is particularly concerned with the practices of care and counseling in the church’. Footnote 22 She uses the disciplines of pastoral care, pastoral theology, practical theology and biblical study to expand on four claims, the second and fourth of which are that ‘[c]hildren’s poverty must be overcome by [adults] building relationships with vulnerable children. This work of care is a means of finding God’, and that ‘[t]hrough this work of care – by practicing the means of grace and the work of mercy and piety – the church can genuinely transform itself and influence society and culture.’ Footnote 23 This particular book is also informed by her work with the United Methodist Bishops’ Initiative on Children and Poverty, the Candler Congregational Studies Project, and the Family, Culture, and Religion Project. The result is ‘a practical theology of children and poverty based on a social ecology for pastoral care’. Footnote 24
In Regarding Children: A New Respect for Childhood and Families, Herbert Anderson and Susan B.W. Johnson approach the care of children in and through the pastoral care of families. The book is one in a series on ‘Family Living in Pastoral Perspective’ and is centered in pastoral theology; its aim is to identify ‘what children need, what families must provide for the sake of children, how families struggle with their childrearing tasks, and what society and the church must do to support families in their care of children’. Footnote 25 They do this first by setting out their own slender theology of childhood, critiquing earlier conceptions and drawing on Christian tradition and psychology. The majority of the book is situated in pastoral theology and offers conceptions of the Christian family as it relates to children and their care. The book closes with a theology for families, a vision of what the state and ‘society’ owe children, and finally an exploration of how ‘the church fulfills its purpose when it becomes “a sanctuary for childhood,”’ including changes in its prophetic witness, its conception of initiation, and its worship.Footnote 26
Theologies of Childhood within Liturgical Theology
A rich source of partial theologies of childhood is work on liturgical theology and practice. We find rich fragments especially in work focused on baptism, the Eucharist and confirmation. One such collection was edited by Ruth Meyers for the Standing Liturgical Commission of the Episcopal Church in the United States, and is called Children at the Table: A Collection of Essays on Children and the Eucharist. Footnote 27 This includes the so-called Boston Document: ‘Children and Communion: An International Anglican Consultation Held in Boston U.S.A. 29–31 July 1985’, Footnote 28 which states:
Before questions are raised with regard to educational or psychological models, we wish to affirm on theological grounds that children of all ages are included among those for whom Christ died, that children of all ages are recipients of his love, that children of all ages are equally persons in the people of God, and that children of all ages have an active ministry in Christ among his people and in the world. We see no dogmatic or other credible basis for regarding some who are baptized as eligible to receive communion while others are not. Footnote 29
The other two essays with the most substantial theological consideration of children are ‘Infant Communion: Reflections on the Case from Tradition’ by Ruth A. Meyers and ‘The Communion of Infants and Little Children’ by Leonel L. Mitchell. They arrive at different understandings of children. Meyers argues that the ‘capacity for faith’ is ‘present at birth, [and] develops and is given expression as the person interacts with her world’. Footnote 30 Quoting the catechism, she says that baptized infants ‘share citizenship in the Covenant, membership in Christ, and redemption by God’. Footnote 31 Infants should receive the sacrament of the Eucharist because it ‘offer[s] the means by which infants … can be nurtured in their faith’.Footnote 32
In contrast to Meyers and all the other authors in this literature review, Mitchell comes to a different conclusion about children. He says that since baptism and Eucharist theologically ‘comprise a single whole’, Footnote 33 children who are baptized are ‘grafted into the body of Christ’ Footnote 34 and therefore should not be denied communion, even though like ‘idiots’ or ‘the mentally handicapped’ they are unable to ‘comprehend’ and certainly not to give a statement of their faith. Footnote 35 He goes on to say that ‘the participation of children in the eucharist is a sign primarily not to the children but to the gathered community’ and ‘the primary reason for communicating infants is not for the benefit of the infants but for that of the church’. Footnote 36
Related discussions and arguments with theological claims about childhood include Young Children and the Eucharist by Urban T. Holmes Footnote 37 and And Do Not Hinder Them: An Ecumenical Plea for the Admission of Children to the Eucharist, edited by Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz for the World Council of Churches. Footnote 38
Theologies of Childhood from Ministry with Children
There are also those who have not attempted specifically a theology of childhood, but whose practice and writing on the practice of ministry with children offers a particular theological view of the child. Footnote 39 Children’s participation in liturgy is here, too, a fruitful place to look.
Maria Montessori’s little 1933 book, The Mass Explained to Children, Footnote 40 is a striking distillation within the Roman Catholic tradition of her understanding of children and their relationship to God in the Eucharist. She corrects those who ‘imagine that the child is incapable of good without their exhortation or example’; Footnote 41 in fact, ‘spiritual impulses are alive in them which may be atrophied in the grown man’. Footnote 42 And while ‘[w]e are bound to help children by teaching them what they need to know about religion … we should not forget that the child can help us, too, by showing us the way to the Kingdom of Heaven’. Footnote 43 She presents this instruction to be offered outside of the Mass, since the child today, like ‘the Faithful’ in the early church, goes to mass not for ‘instruction’ but ‘to be united to Jesus Christ in the most intimate offering of the soul’. Footnote 44
Around the same time, in her book I bambini viventi nella Chiesa, Footnote 45 Montessori wrote that the liturgy ‘may well be called “the pedagogical method” of the Church [for all ages]’, and ‘to find life-giving spiritual nourishment the child has only to open the windows of his soul to the light of the liturgy and all it embodies of divine grace’. This, she clarifies, requires that adults ‘make the liturgy accessible to children’, not by changing the liturgy, but by ‘the teaching of the liturgy as the illustration of Christian doctrine’, beginning with children as young as three. Footnote 46 Montessori’s detailed descriptions of practice with children show children as capable of grasping the dignity and solemnity of the religious life, and of comprehending and participating in recollection and life with God.
Sofia Cavalletti continued and extended Montessori’s work in the method called the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd; her understanding of children can be seen in the practice of this method and in her writing The Religious Potential of the Child, for example. Footnote 47 She understood the child to be ‘a “metaphysical” being’, a person who, ‘more than any other, has need of love because the child himself is rich in love’. She quotes Montessori’s early collaborator Adele Costa Gnocchi: ‘God and the child get along well together’. Footnote 48 Observing that ‘[t]he world of the child’s religion is different from that of the adult’, Footnote 49 Cavalletti’s goal is not for the adult to expect the child to have an adult view of God, but rather for the adult to ‘remind himself that he is the “unworthy servant” of the Gospel’, and to ‘create specific conditions so that this relationship [between God and the child] may be established, but to withdraw as soon as the contact occurs’. Footnote 50 The responsibility of the adults of the Church is ‘to initiate the child into the Christian mystery’, for this itself ‘is to initiate the child into the mystery of life’. She continues, ‘To bar the child from the religious experience, to preclude the possibility of his receiving the Christian message, is to betray the child’s most profound exigencies, to block his access to the full knowledge of the reality in which he finds himself immersed.’ Footnote 51 Montessori and Cavaletti were both devout Roman Catholics, as their teaching shows; Catechesis has become a global practice in at least four other Christian traditions.
Theologies of Childhood from the Christian Past
And finally, still others are doing the background work and bringing to light what Christian individuals or movements have offered theologically about children – both the riches and paucity of the Christian tradition. The collection edited by Marcia Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought, Footnote 52 is the most notable and thorough text; it includes essays on John Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Menno Simons, Schleiermacher and Horace Bushnell, as well as seventeenth-century missionaries to New France and eighteenth-century German Pietists. The essays in this collection address many aspects of childhood, including ‘the distinctive qualities of infants, stages of childhood development, … differences between adults and children, approaches to discipline, responsibilities of children to their parents’ and ‘levels of accountability for wrongdoing’. Footnote 53 Each essay also addresses some basic theological questions about ‘our views of children and our obligations to children’, including most essentially ‘the nature of children’ and ‘the responsibilities and obligations of parents, the state, and the church to nurture children’. Footnote 54
Another varied collection with a different approach is The Church and Childhood: Papers Read at the 1993 Summer Meeting and the 1994 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, Footnote 55 edited by Diana Wood. Although these essays do not each directly address the theological questions in Bunge’s collection, they offer rare and detailed glimpses into the ‘history of Christian, and ecclesiastical, ideas and images of childhood’, which is ‘shot through with ambiguity’. Footnote 56 These 31 essays show specific ways in which ‘[o]n to the bodies of children were mapped the hopes, fears, and fantasies of adults’.Footnote 57
Marcia Bunge has noted that the ‘current literature still lacks a full account of past theological perspectives on children and our obligations to them’ and that a fuller account can both correct current misconceptions of Christian understandings of children and also ‘prompt more serious theological reflection on children’. Footnote 58 Bit by bit the Church is hearing more of a full account, for example in Natalie Carnes’ article ‘We in Our Turmoil: Theological Anthropology through Maria Montessori and the Lives of Children’, Footnote 59 or in ‘Children and Moral Agency’ by Cristina L.H. Traina, Footnote 60 which picks up and builds on questions from Miller-McLemore’s book using Noma Arpaly and Lisa Tessman.
In what follows, I will offer another glimpse into past theological views of children, this time from the Lambeth Conferences.
The Lambeth Conference
Lambeth is an especially interesting place to look for fragments of theologies of childhood because it has had a global reach; it has met for 156 years with so many different members; and it has produced these necessarily restrained yet pointed resolutions. Footnote 61
The first Lambeth Conference met in 1867, at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a gathering of Anglican and Episcopal bishops from around the world, and was an expression of ‘mission’ as they understood it, Footnote 62 as well as a response to controversy. Footnote 63 While it was not intended to be the first of anything, it became the first of fifteen Footnote 64 gatherings of bishops from what is now the Anglican Communion. The Lambeth Conferences themselves have helped ‘create and facilitate the modern Anglican Communion’.Footnote 65 And while Lambeth was never intended as a magisterium or doctrinal legislatorFootnote 66 and still does not hold that role,Footnote 67 it has had an apparent ‘vocation to articulate the boundaries of Anglicanism’, Footnote 68 and ‘there is an enduring sense that Conference resolutions are more than an ephemeral expression of the corporate episcopal mind’. Footnote 69
So any Anglican priest or parishioner, looking for clues about what our tradition has expressed on a particular topic, might reasonably search through Lambeth’s history. The resolutions of the Conferences touch on liturgy, education, family planning, human rights, ecumenical relations and work, political action and responsibility, and many other subjects; they are both direct and indirect pastoral and theological offerings for all Anglicans.
Only eight resolutions are categorized by the Anglican Communion in their online archive as dealing with children and youth, from the years 1968, 1988 and 1998.Footnote 70 However, children show up in the conversations at Lambeth as early as 1897, running around the corners of at least 41 resolutions between 1897 and 1998.Footnote 71 I have chosen to look at those resolutions which specifically name ‘children’, a ‘child’, or ‘youth’.Footnote 72
Rather than attempting to falsely harmonize such a range of voices and times, I will give a chronological overview of the resolutions that mention children or youth; I will then offer a brief critique using the resources in the literature review above. The chronological overview will show a particular trend: that the Lambeth Conferences begin by speaking of children in terms of their place in the Christian life and Christian Church, often as an immutable group – and the Conferences end most recently by using phrases that imagine the actual life of children, speaking of them as full agents in the life of God in the world.Footnote 73 The critique will show how Lambeth’s resolutions map onto three basic statements of a theology of childhood.
Chronological Presentation of Resolutions
Lambeth 1897
The Conferences of 1867 and 1888 make no mention of children or youth. The first mention – of ‘the child’ who might be baptized as an infant – comes in a single resolution in 1897 (48). Footnote 74 Concern is expressed in terms of the clergyman’s decision to baptize the child and the responsibility of the clergyman in that urgent circumstance, rather than describing the potential experienced outcomes for the child. In this resolution, the adults in the Church have an obligation, but a situation renders it ambiguous. The expressed concern is less for the potential outcomes for the child and more about the adult’s decision-making. Footnote 75
Lambeth 1908
Lambeth 1908 mentions children in 6 out of 78 resolutions. Baptism is discussed once more (62),Footnote 76 but the emphasis here is on education and Christian discipleship, both in secular schools (11, 13), Christian schools (15) and family life (19, 67).
The first of these resolutions explains that it is a Christian duty ‘to make it clear to the world that purely secular systems of education are educationally as well as morally unsound’, not attending to ‘the whole nature of the child’ and therefore ‘leave many children deficient in a most important factor for that formation of character’ (11). The Conference follows this up with encouragement to look for places where ‘the state’ allows ‘for training our children in the faith of their parents’ (13) and to establish Church-maintained secondary schools ‘for children of the English-speaking race in all parts of the Anglican Communion’ (15). These two emphasize the church’s obligation to children in the form not just of ‘formation of character’ but in presumably a Christian view of other academic subjects. This second resolution also brings race into the theological picture. The Church’s global obligation does not extend to all children in the (new) Anglican Communion, or even all children in the Church in the Anglican Communion, but primarily ‘children of the English-speaking race’. Race narrows the theological obligation to children. Footnote 77
The need for ‘religious instruction’ includes the home, as the Conference ‘lay[s] special stress on the duty of parents in all conditions of social life’ to attend to such instruction in the home (19). This is also one of the reasons why Anglicans are ‘warn[ed] … against contracting marriages with Roman Catholics under the conditions imposed by modern Roman canon law’, since they must ‘promise to have their children brought up in a religious system which they cannot themselves accept’ (67). Footnote 78 The child’s need for instruction activates parents across class and personality to attend to them. The potential life of a Roman Catholic child with an Anglican parent is not described, but the conscience of the parent is explicitly at stake.
Resolution 62 returns us to baptism and the clergy’s decision-making. It encourages priests to baptize Eastern Orthodox children ‘in cases of emergency, provided that there is a clear understanding that baptism should not be again administered to those so baptized’. The baptism of children is clearly important, and again the risks and outcomes as regards the child’s life or soul are not described; the priest is given guidance for their decision.
Lambeth 1920
Two resolutions out of 80 mention children in 1920. Resolution 68 Footnote 79 is in the larger category of ‘Problems of Marriage and Sexual Immorality’ and is ‘an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception’, the use of which ‘threatens the race’ with ‘evils’ and incurs ‘great dangers’. Children are named as one of the two ‘governing considerations of Christian marriage’; the first is ‘the primary purpose for which marriage exists, namely the continuation of the race through the gift and heritage of children’, and the second is ‘the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control’. While one might reasonably imagine that ‘race’ here means the human race, other resolutions in 1920 suggest that the implied first-person plural (‘our race’) is not all of humanity but something more narrow. For example, in 1920 we find resolutions which mention ‘conditions of labour … among the weaker races’ (78), ‘injustice to the indigenous or native races’ (6), ‘colour prejudice among the different races of the world’ (7), sharing the Gospel with ‘every race and individual’ (32), ‘difference of race and language’ and the connected ‘freedom of development of races side by side’ (35), ‘the ferment produced among primitive races’ and a government’s ‘subject races’ (41). This distinction – the human race or one specific race – is important for clarifying what theology of childhood may be suggested here. In this case, since ‘race’ is everywhere else used to describe some subset of humanity, we can guess that the children here are valued in part as the continuation of a particular race. Footnote 80 In this resolution, then, the Church says children are a ‘gift and heritage’ for a larger purpose that does not particularly concern their souls or their life with God. Their mere existence here is an accomplishment or goal for adults within a certain Christian vocation.
Resolution 77 is the first time that children are mentioned in connection to broader social action; it is part of a series of resolutions on ‘Social and Industrial Questions’. The Conference says that ‘[m]embers of the Church are bound to take an active part, by public action and by personal service, in removing those abuses which depress and impoverish human life’ and this may be done ‘with other citizens and organisations’ (including, presumably, outside the Church). It singles out three issues, one of which is ‘the better care of children, including real opportunity for an adequate education’. In this resolution, the Church’s adult members have a responsibility for children both in and outside the church, to advocate for them and work for their ‘better care’, as they are part of that ‘human life’ which the Church is to help protect.
Lambeth 1930
The Lambeth Conference of 1930 takes a different angle and in 4 out of 75 resolutions concerns itself with how a child is situated within the Christian family.
This Conference includes a set of resolutions entitled ‘The Life and Witness of the Christian Community: Marriage and Sex’ (9-20). Footnote 81 Three of these discuss children. Footnote 82 In Resolution 12, ‘the Conference emphasises the need of education’ as regards ‘all questions of marriage and sex’. This includes children, their parents and the clergy. Children need ‘definite information … given in an atmosphere of simplicity and beauty’; they need this ‘before the child’s emotional reaction to sex is awakened’. Children’s parents are ‘directly responsible for this’ teaching and need ‘the best guidance that the Church can supply’. This care of children and youth is so important that it prompts a need for more education of the clergy (in moral theology) and more study by the Communion’s councils, as well as efforts to better understand and share the literature that already exists. So here, children have a before and after in their sexual lives: a before without emotional reactions to sex (perhaps a kind of innocence?) and an awakening that puts them at risk unless they already have the information they need. They need parents and the Church for this information. This education of children is so important that many adults are to be mobilized in its service – not just parents but all the clergy, their seminaries, leaders in councils and ‘the responsible authorities in diocese or parish’. Children’s moral needs mobilize Christian adults.
Second, begetting and bearing Footnote 83 children is the primary purpose and product of marriage (13), as Lambeth had affirmed ten years prior. For although ‘sexual instinct is a holy thing implanted by God in human nature’, ‘the governing considerations in that intercourse’ should be attention to this primary purpose (‘the procreation of children’) as well as ‘deliberate and thoughtful self-control’, which is so important in ‘married life’ (13). As in the prior Conference, the child is, regardless of its life, a goal for a certain Christian vocation; it is a product in the God-given constellation of a family with married parents of opposite genders.
Third, the Conference ‘affirms’ that ‘the glory of married life’ is ‘the duty of parenthood’; it affirms ‘the benefit of a family as a joy in itself, as a vital contribution to the nation’s welfare, and as a means of character-building for both parents and children’; and affirms ‘the privilege of discipline and sacrifice to this end’ (14). This resolution also positions children as an essential part of what a ‘family’ is, and now includes both the experience of both the parent and the child. Both the child and parent may share in the ‘joy’ of a family, as well as its character-building discipline and sacrifice.
Lambeth 1930 also includes a resolution entitled ‘Youth and Vocation’ (75). Footnote 84 It is not a call for youth, but rather for ‘those qualified to represent youth’, to help stir up ‘a new measure of devotion to Christ and his Church’ for ‘the great tasks before the Church today’. Here, young people are a potential (not actual) source of energy and effort in the Church, persons who might choose later to take up the work of the Church.
Lambeth 1948
The Lambeth Conference of 1948 returns us, with 9 resolutions from a total of 118, to all three of these topics from prior years: education, baptism and family.
Of a set of resolutions called ‘The Church and the Modern World – Education’ (27–35), Footnote 85 two mention children. The first affirms the Church’s ‘gratitude to Sunday and day school teachers and youth leaders’ who have continued teaching ‘in the face of increasing difficulties’ (30). It notes ‘the responsibility of individual clergymen and parishes’ in this work. The second turns to the world outside the parish and ‘recognise[s] the great influence of films and broadcasting both for good and for evil’ while sharing the ‘anxiety of many teachers and educational authorities lest the films shown to children should undermine sound educational influences’; they hope for some to be made which are ‘wholesome’ (34). Here, children require the work of many adults to be brought up in the church, both ordained and lay. This work may extend to correcting or filtering the media of the non-Church world; children need ‘sound’ and ‘wholesome’ ‘influences’.
In a set called ‘The Church and the Modern World – The Christian Way of Life’, one resolution also speaks of education, saying that ‘education should be more than a training for a livelihood’ or ‘citizenship’ and ‘should be based upon the fact that every child is a child of God created by God for citizenship in heaven as well as on earth’ (46). This seems a more general echo of Lambeth 1908’s concern with ‘the whole nature of the child’ and ‘the formation of character’ (11), but here it specifically names every child, not just Christian children or English-speaking children.
In the set called ‘Baptism and Confirmation’ (100–112), three mention children. All three concern the seriousness of baptism and the adult responsibilities related to it, ‘while deprecating the hasty adoption of any policy which would lead to the widespread exclusion of infants from baptism’ (104). ‘Parents and guardians’ have ‘a major share in the responsibility for the Christian nurture and education of their children’ (104); to be godparent is a ‘responsibility’ and they should attend to ‘the seriousness of the promises they make on behalf of the child’ and ‘continue diligently in prayer for their godchildren throughout their lives’ (107); and clergy are to often remind parents and guardians of these things (104) and to work with their fellow ministers to make sure that baptisands ‘not resident in his parish or on his Membership Roll’ are ‘linked up with the life of that congregation’ (108). Here, as in 1897, the resolution describes adult responsibilities and decisions around the baptism of a child; the experience of the child is not suggested (as in the other 1948 resolutions discussed above and below). But as in 1930 Resolution 12, the need of a child mobilizes ongoing action in many adults in the Church.
A further set of resolutions are called ‘The Church’s Discipline in Marriage’ (92–99) and three of these mention children. One repeats the 1908 warning against marrying Roman Catholics and the risk of having one’s child ‘brought up in a religious system which’ one cannot accept (98). The adult conscience as regards the child is specifically at stake. The other two resolutions focus on divorce – and like Resolutions 13 and 14 from 1930, children are invoked as one of the moral weights which should sway adult behavior and conscience.
Divorce hurts children, who need ‘a true home life’ (which only a hetero married couple can provide), and so the Conference ‘earnestly implores those whose marriage, perhaps through no fault of their own, is unhappy to remain steadfastly faithful to their marriage vows’ (92). And since divorce hurts children, the Conference ‘urges that there is a strong case for the reconsideration by certain states of their divorce laws’ (97).
Unlike previous resolutions, here the experience of children themselves is elaborated in emotional language. Footnote 86 Resolution 92 invokes ‘the tragedy of children deprived of true home life’ and explains that ‘the welfare and happiness of children’ depends upon ‘the faithful observance of this divine law’. Resolution 97 says that divorce has ‘brought untold suffering to children’. As we have seen, this is unique up to this point. Resolution 97 could be understood as advocacy for children by the Church. As in 1920 Resolution 77 and 1948 Resolution 34, this is intended for the good of all children from the view of the Church.
Lambeth 1958
Five resolutions from the Lambeth Conference of 1958 out of a total of 131 mention children and return the focus squarely to the family.
One set of resolutions is called ‘The Family in Contemporary Society – Marriage’ (112–119), Footnote 87 and the three that mention children and youth return us to the question of families and procreation that was addressed in 1930. In one, the Conference ‘records its profound conviction that the idea of the human family is rooted in the Godhead’, with the result that ‘the procreation of children’ (among other things) ‘must be related, consciously and directly, to the creative, redemptive, and sanctifying power of God’ (112). The second ‘welcomes, with thankfulness, the increasing care given by the clergy to preparation for marriage … in instructing youth’ and urges ‘special attention should be given to our Lord’s principle of life-long union as the basis of all true marriage’ (114). A third resolution returns us to the question of ‘responsible parenthood’ and says that ‘the responsibility for deciding upon the number and frequency of children has been laid by God upon the consciences of parents everywhere’. Such planning ‘should be the result of positive choice before God’ and ‘requires a wise stewardship of the resources and abilities of the family as well as a thoughtful consideration of the varying population needs and problems of society and the claims of future generations’ (115).
As in 1930, here children are significant in that they are points in the constellation of the family foregrounded by marriage; the marriage, the family and the creation of children are aspects of Christian (adult) life which should be brought under the purview of God and therefore of the Church’s wisdom. Even as youth they are to be prepared for this type of family life. The third resolution is unique in that it gestures towards the experience of future children and adults as regards the adults’ conscience.
The concern for family continues in the next set called ‘The Family in Contemporary Society – The Christian Family’ (121–124). The one which mentions children brings up ‘the crushing impact of secularism on family life’, proposing as a solution ‘a return to the discipline of family prayer’ and especially that fathers ‘should take their due place’ alongside mothers and children as worshippers (122). Children are significant as part of the appropriately worshipping family, and again need Christianity in response to ‘secularism’.
Finally, one last resolution in 1958 is called ‘The Family in Contemporary Society – Migratory Labour’. It takes a clear stance on a social ill and ‘condemns those systems of migratory labour that break up family life by enforcing the unjustified residential separation of man and wife, or of parents and children’. While evoking the effect such a separation might have on children, this resolution is most centrally a reinforcement of ‘the family as the God-given unit of human life and society’ (127). It is another example of the Church advocating for a change in all of society for the good of all children according to its Christian understanding of what is needed.
Lambeth 1968
The 1968 Lambeth Resolutions mention children in 4 out of 69 resolutions. Footnote 88 Children are again a group for whom the Church and Christians should advocate. For the first time we see resolutions naming the current spiritual and religious lives of youth.
This happens first in Resolution 14, Footnote 89 entitled ‘West Africa’; children are some of the ‘many innocent’ people being killed and are one of the motivations for change and Church aid. Children are grouped with adults in the category of innocent victims and the Church’s role as regard to these children (and adults) is to advocate not only to the Church’s own Christians but also to governments and ‘voluntary organizations’ for the good of these children.
Children are also invoked in Resolution 22, which is a response to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, ‘Humanae vitae’. The Conference ‘reaffirms the findings’ of the 1958 resolutions on family and children already discussed above, and quotes them in the resolution. The lives of children are part of a global and ecumenical conversation.
In two further resolutions for the first time we hear about the spiritual and religious lives of ‘young people’ as communicated by the youth themselves: a resolution which ‘values the initiative shown by young people in witnessing to their faith in Christ; and urges that they should be encouraged to do this in their own way and through their own media, and that the Church should have regard to their concern’ (28). Another ‘recognise[s] the need to involve them more directly in decision-making, in both secular and ecclesiastical society’ because of the ‘value of their informed insights’ (29). Unlike the resolutions on ‘vocation’ from 1930 and 1908, which ask for adults to raise up youth to become clerical adults, or to communicate on behalf of young people, these 1968 resolutions note young people’s contributions that already exist, and move for the actual involvement and voices of young people as they are, in manner and media that they choose. These children and youth are Christians who are part of the Church, to whom the Church should listen.
Lambeth 1978
One resolution Footnote 90 out of 37 in 1978 mentions children or youth, this time again in the context of Anglican-Roman Catholic marriage. Children are mentioned when, having received the ‘report of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission’, the Conference endorses the Commission’s recommendation ‘that, as an alternative to an affirmation or promise by the Roman Catholic party in respect of the baptism and upbringing of any children’, a written assurance of the couple’s knowledge of the Roman Catholic partner’s obligations is acceptable instead (34). The resolution also notes a change in Roman Catholic understanding about ‘a decision as to the baptism and upbringing of any children’ and continues to say that ‘equality of conscience … in particular with regard to the baptism and religious upbringing of children’ is important ‘for its own sake’ as well as for relationships between Churches. The expressed importance here is still the parents’ conscience as it relates to the child’s baptism and ‘religious upbringing’, rather than the child’s experience of the Church and God. Here also the future child – the child not yet conceived, but imagined between these two engaged people, perhaps discussed in pre-marital counseling – is drawn into a global ecumenical negotiation.
Lambeth 1988
Five resolutions out of 73 in 1988 mention children or youth: one regarding the baptism of children, two in the context of crises and two about youth in and out of the Church.
Resolution 26 Footnote 91 concerns ‘Church and Polygamy’; the children in view are the children of ‘a polygamist who responds to the Gospel and wishes to join the Anglican Church’. The father ‘may be baptized and confirmed with his believing wives and children’ on certain conditions. Like other resolutions about child baptism, this one concerns the behavior and belief of the child’s parents. However, since it goes into some detail about the hoped-for conditions in this child’s family, we get a glimpse of what the Conference finds acceptable in the child’s life too: this can only be done with ‘the consent of the local Anglican community’; and the father ‘shall not be compelled to put away any of his wives, on account of the social deprivation they would suffer’, which suggests that the children, too, are not to be put away or suffer in this way. Interestingly, there is no comment on how the children shall be raised, or if their baptism hinges on their level of exposure to other religious traditions – that is, what if the father wants to baptize his child by a non-believing unbaptized wife? This lacuna reminds us that the main concern is for the father in the scenario, as indeed the resolution states.
Two resolutions from 1988 continue the trend of attending to children in terms of social and global crises. Resolution 28 is entitled ‘Sexual Abuse’ and ‘expresses’ the Conference’s ‘deep concern about the frequency of domestic violence and the sexual abuse of children’. It encourages ‘Christian leaders to be explicit about the sinfulness of violence and sexual abuse whether of children or adults’ and to ‘provide support’ for both ‘victims and perpetrators’. The ‘value of the human person’ – child or adult – comes from ‘being made in the image of God’. Similarly, Resolution 39, called ‘South Africa’, ‘Reaffirms its belief that the system of apartheid in South Africa is evil’ and singles out for condemnation ‘the detention of children without just cause’, before going on to recommend courses of action for the Church and church leaders, including to calling ‘upon the Churches to press their governments’ to institute sanctions, offer aid, and more.
Each of these resolutions attend to the particular lived experiences of named groups of children in the world who experience ongoing crises to which the Conference has chosen to turn its attention. This includes children in and outside the Church. As in 1968, 1958 and 1920, children are described as being one sort of human whose life has value. The resolutions highlight the experience of these children and describe the Church’s advocacy: to speak and exert moral pressure on the state as well as adult people of the Church.
Resolutions 48 and 67 concern youth in and outside the church. In ‘Mission to Youth’, the dioceses are asked to consider the work already happening with youth, including ‘youth involvement in the life of the diocese and provinces and at every level’, ‘occasions or venues for meeting … for young people who have no contact whatever with the Church or the Christian faith’, the ‘proportion of diocesan and parish budgets’ for youth ministry, and relationships with ‘local schools and state education authorities’ (48). Dioceses should consider how their resources – ‘the skills and gifts of local Christian teachers, youth leaders, young people who have a ministry among their peers’ – are being used. In closing, dioceses are asked ‘what opportunities for encouragement and training in Christian witness are being provided’, which suggests the young people themselves are to be encouraged in mission to their fellow youth by ‘Christian witness’. In this resolution another step is taken towards a more full picture of the lives of young people. It is not just the home, the parish and the world, but ‘every level’ of the Church; instead of just ‘Anglican youth’, it includes young people who have had no contact with the Church; it specifically names the money (not) spent on the ministry of and with youth; and instead of imagining a wholly Christian education system, it includes the other major force in young people’s lives – school and all its authorities. And as in previous years, the energy and time of adults are mobilized by the needs of young people.
Resolution 67 notes and ‘endorses … the establishment of a Youth Network and the holding of the first International Conference of Young Anglicans’ in January of that year and ‘urges each diocese’ to keep up this ‘momentum’. Here is one concrete step related to Resolution 48 above, expressing a commitment to the leadership and participation of youth.
Lambeth 1998
The Lambeth Conference in 1998 continues this trend. Like 1968 and 1988, it is explicitly concerned with the physical and ministerial lives of children and young people in a detailed way. Four resolutions out of 107 mention children and two explicitly focus on them.
The first, ‘Justice for Women and Children’, asks each member Church to attend to ‘the ways in which women and children are affected and victimised by’ the various ‘systems’ and ‘criminal elements’, and to work against these abuses ‘through co-operation with existing groups,’ including secular and governmental groups, in addition through raising awareness (1.3). Footnote 92 As in previous resolutions, this one names a group of children both in and out of the Church itself; the Church’s obligation is not just to affect its Christian members but to advocate for these children, including in governmental and secular spaces.
The resolution on ‘International Debt and Economic Justice’ describes children as we heard of them in the 1958 resolutions: an example of the most vulnerable and the moral weight which propels us to act. It expresses the ‘urgent’ need ‘for debt relief for the poorest nations’ by saying, ‘Children are dying, and societies are unraveling’ (1.15). Here, too, children are a reason that the Church should engage in political and social action.
Another, called ‘Young People’, picks up the attention to children’s own lives in the world and Church, noting ‘that the adult world has created children of war, children abused by neglect and sexual exploitation, and children who are victims of aggressive advertising’ (2.8). Children are ‘signs of the Kingdom among us’; ‘Their presence and ministry in the church is essential for the whole family of God to be complete.’ It affirms the work already done in ministry ‘with children’ (emphasis added) and resolves that bishops should commit themselves ‘to ensure that the church is a safe, healthy, and spiritually enriching community for children and young people’ and also ‘give more attention to the furtherance of ministry to children as a recognition of their importance to God and as a foundation for all future ministry’. It calls for meetings of clergy with youth, and that ‘teams of adults and young people’ who will ‘be trained for holistic ministry to young people outside the church’, and that liturgy should be considered with young people in mind. Here, the Church has an obligation to share ‘God’s love in Christ’ with children and youth in and out of the Church, which mobilizes the adults, requiring them to consider and even change their habits and patterns. This love is not shared only in instruction or in filtering outside influences but by ‘holistic ministry’ and making the Church ‘safe’ and ‘healthy’. Children’s and youth’s current opinions and wisdom are to be actively sought out, even as they are also the foundation of future ministry; they are present members, not just potential.
This view is reinforced in the resolution ‘On Transformation and Renewal’, which mentions in a sub-point that the Church seeks ‘transformation in the lives of children and youth, who form most of our growing churches’ (5.4). Each of these resolutions attends to the lived lives of children, expressing openly their vulnerability in the adult world and their imagined (transformed) spiritual lives separate from a particular adult theological goal.
Conclusion: Theologies of Childhood at Lambeth
In closing, I will pick up three basic statements of a theology of childhood and note how these Lambeth resolutions map onto them.
These statements are not from specifically Anglican theologies of childhood. Of the sources named above in the introduction, only the liturgical theologians speak from a clear place in the Anglican tradition. The practical and pastoral theologies of childhood are not written from any one specific tradition, but from a variety of Christian sources. Footnote 93 Perhaps this is in part because there are so few specific historical resources that offer clear theologies of childhood. Since these three statements below are shared by theologians who each draw broadly on the Christian tradition and the Bible, they seem a reasonable place to start when considering the Anglican theological perspectives on children in the resolutions.
1. ‘Children are already fully human, whole-yet-broken people’
This is one of the essential theological claims and commitments that Joyce Mercer arrives at. Footnote 94 Children are ‘not understudies for a real humanity that can only be found in adulthood’ and ‘as children [they] already bear the image of God’. Footnote 95 Building on her exploration of Rahner and Barth, she concludes, ‘Children are not angels or devils, but as full human beings manifest all the “gray areas” and ambiguities of adult human beings, who are complex and multifaceted’; and furthermore, our Christian resources ‘for understanding human persons as “simul justis et pecator”’ and for using the ‘categories of grace, sin, sanctification, and redemption’ are ‘appropriate’, too, to use with children. Footnote 96
Bonnie Miller-McLemore concludes that ‘[c]hildren need, from women and men of faith, care that respects them as persons, regards them as capable of good and bad … and views them as agents’. Footnote 97 She arrives at an understanding of ‘the imperfect, even potentially volatile, child in an imperfect, volatile world’, in contrast to previous conceptions of the child as innocent or depraved. Footnote 98
Anderson and Johnson, considering the newborn, say that ‘the greatest wonder of all is that every newly born child possesses already the fullness of being human. Children are not simply incomplete adults. From birth, we are as fully human as we will ever become … the child already has the value and depth of full humanity’. Footnote 99 Using sociologist Floyd M. Martinson, they note that viewing children as ‘depraved’ or as ‘incomplete’ are expressions of ‘indifference’ to children. They argue that the former led to a hyperawareness of sinfulness at the expense of the full humanity and dignity of children, while the latter lead to the practice of ‘protect[ing children] from society in order to be prepared to function in society’. Footnote 100
We see mostly hints and suggestions of what the Conference members believed about the nature of a child. In these contained resolutions, we can highlight the glimpses related to children’s ‘whole-yet-broken’ personhood.
First, two resolutions speak directly to it; in 1920, children are named as part of the ‘human life’ which is to be protected from ‘abuses which depress and impoverish’ it. Footnote 101 In 1988, children are included in the affirmation that the ‘value of the human person’ comes from ‘being made in the image of God’.Footnote 102
Second, we see that the child is at risk somehow – as adults are – without the right religious instruction and formation. The need for this instruction is discussed in 7 out of our 41 resolutions. Footnote 103 Formation also happens for both children and adults in the duties of family life. Footnote 104 The child may also be at greater risk when exposed to certain secular influences which can ‘undermine’ this instruction, Footnote 105 or which, like secularism, can have a ‘crushing impact’ on the appropriate spiritual life, Footnote 106 or which are internal and can make receiving instruction less effective. Footnote 107 In secular schools, ‘our’ children ought to have space to be ‘trained … in the faith of their parents. Footnote 108 Part of why marriage to a Roman Catholic is so troubling is that the child is to be ‘brought up in a religious system’ which the Anglican cannot ‘accept’. Footnote 109
Fourth, we see a side of how the child’s full humanity is valued in how the Conferences speak of the child’s life in the Church. Footnote 110 Speaking only of the child’s future contributions or future spiritual life at the least values the adult more than the child, and at most raises questions about how complete or full the child is as a child. Footnote 111 One resolution does this in 1930,Footnote 112 but it is followed by five resolutions in later years that speak of children’s and youths’ ‘initiative … in witnessing to their faith in Christ’, Footnote 113 their valuable ‘informed insights’ in questions of human welfare, Footnote 114 the ‘skills and gifts’ that some youth have in ministry, Footnote 115 and the young people who are members of growing churches. Footnote 116
2. Christian adults are to be mobilized by the needs of children in and outside the Church
This is an essential part of Miller-McLemore’s theology of childhood. She writes, ‘The practice of raising children belongs to all Christians, and not solely to parents or to mothers’. ‘Children are not private property’ but ‘need a more generic kind of social mothering’ beyond biological parents and which ‘depends upon the willingness of nonbiologically related adults to adopt children as a primary responsibility’. Footnote 117 Following our own adoption into the divine family, ‘Christians are called to transcend common biological loyalties and extend the same generosity of spirit toward children not their own’.Footnote 118
This is essential for Mercer, too, who goes deeper on how to understand this responsibility and also extends it beyond only a mother or biological parents. She uses the language of gift stewardship to describe this responsibility of both parents and the whole Christian community, noting that the status of child-as-gift ‘comes not from some idealized sense of awe and wonder, innocence and ease in relation to adults, but from their creation as children of God’, Footnote 119 and that this includes the often heavy and challenging work of caring for ‘our’ children and ‘others’ children.Footnote 120 It also includes addressing the suffering of children and requires the ‘transformation’ of the Church itself. Footnote 121
Anderson and Johnson focus first on the responsibilities of adults within the Christian family, which they understand can take a diverse variety of forms. The family is responsible to the child for ‘safety’, ‘the enduring, irrational involvement of at least one adult in care and joint activity with the child’, ‘developmentally appropriate expectations and behavior’, ‘role models for being an adult and for belonging to a family’ and ‘respect for personal boundaries’. Footnote 122 The Church’s responsibility is to become ‘a sanctuary for childhood’, one that will ‘support the vocation of being a parent throughout its ever-changing roles’ and ‘continue to intervene when children or families experience extraordinary problems and needs’ and ‘advocate for systemic change where families are endangered by social conditions’. Footnote 123
Couture also speaks of adult responsibility, arguing that ‘[c]hildren’s poverty must be overcome by [adults] building relationships with vulnerable children’. Footnote 124 The words ‘shared responsibility’ are ‘words of judgment, consolation, and liberation’;Footnote 125 this is part of the prophetic call to care for the orphan, which is an actual task. Footnote 126
We see this same belief – that Christian adults must act for the needs of children – in almost every year of the Lambeth Conference.
Children within the Church are to be cared for ‘in the midst of great challenges’, Footnote 127 with careful and serious thought by their parents, Footnote 128 godparents, Footnote 129 and clergy, Footnote 130 with concern at every level of the Church. Footnote 131 The Conference has fallen short of this vision when it has confined itself to Christian ‘children of the English-speaking race’. Footnote 132
Christians also are to take on the work involved with caring for all children, outside the Church. In the resolutions, this has includes providing education, Footnote 133 defining and shaping the child’s family, Footnote 134 supporting just systems of labor, Footnote 135 preventing harm and building safety, Footnote 136 opposing war and segregation,Footnote 137 and working for economic justice.Footnote 138
In the resolutions, interpretations vary and change over time about what is actually best for children. For example, earlier resolutions are concerned with eliminating the possibility of divorce, but children are no longer invoked in the discussion after 1948. The topics addressed also suggest a shifting perception of what is most urgent, or perhaps what is related to the work of the bishops in the Church. For example, there is a significant difference from discussing ‘unwholesome’ films that may hurt children, Footnote 139 to discussing child prostitution. Footnote 140
Starting in 1908, the Lambeth Conferences have also encouraged Christians to work with the state or try to change the state to get children what they need. Christians can work within the law to get children what they need,Footnote 141 can try to change the law,Footnote 142 or work for reform, Footnote 143 and pressure government. Footnote 144
3. The sacraments and community of the Church belong already to the children in the Church
This is a more narrow aspect of the responsibility of Christian adults to Christian children. This claim follows those we have explored above and of course will take different shapes in different Christian traditions, including in different branches of the Anglican tradition.
Of the works reviewed in the introduction, Mercer’s Welcoming Children explores most thoroughly how church practices do not always act out church beliefs, and how children can be trained in a church entirely different from the one in which their parents worship—even when it is the very same parish. Speaking of the responsibilities of adults described above, she says, ‘Adult support includes active work to apprentice children in the identity of Christian discipleship as an alternative identity’.Footnote 145 And, ‘for children to gain an identity as members in the community of practice, they must have access not only to its edges but also to its core, in the form of access to its centrally defining practices’. For ‘[i]f children only participate in the less central, less identity-defining practices, then children have little chance of learning – and of being formed and transformed in – an identity through their participation in practices’. Footnote 146
Anderson and Johnson add in their vision of the church ‘a sanctuary for childhood’, that it ‘will welcome children as full participants in the life of God’s people’ and ‘the formation of faithful children will have new direction and urgency’. Footnote 147 Furthermore, ‘[w]hen child membership [in the religious community] is only provisional … the catholicity of the believing community is diminished and its witness to a new view of childhood is muffled, because being human is still defined by criteria of adulthood’. Footnote 148
For Anglicans and Episcopalians, the ‘apprenticing’ that Mercer speaks of can include elements like participation in appropriate ways in the sacraments, Footnote 149 as well as access to other central activities and wisdom of the Christian community. Indeed, the Lambeth resolutions that mention children or youth show a real concern that children have access to what they need in the Church.
We see this in the resolutions about baptism. Seven of our 41 resolutions address baptism and four of them emphasize children’s access to it: ‘baptism should not be deferred’ even when the ‘Christian training’ of the child is not easily accomplished’; Footnote 150 baptism should be offered to ‘children of members of any Church of the Orthodox Eastern Communion in cases of emergency’; Footnote 151 the Conference ‘deprecat[es] the hasty adoption of any policy which would lead to the widespread exclusion of infants from baptism’; Footnote 152 and baptism should be extended to the children of a polygamist under certain conditions. Footnote 153
Access also includes education and other support that helps children interpret and fully participate in the sacraments and the community of practice (to use Mercer’s phrase). The resolutions about baptism also emphasize the need for the child to have ‘Christian training’, Footnote 154 to be ‘brought up in the faith and practice of the Church’ and to receive ‘Christian nurture and education’, Footnote 155 to be blessed with the prayers of their godparents, Footnote 156 and to be (with the clergy’s help) ‘linked up with the life’ of the parish in which they live. Footnote 157
Seven additional resolutions discuss religious instruction and formation. Getting children this instruction in the midst of secular education and secularism, Footnote 158 and this teaching continues even in ‘increasing difficulties’. Footnote 159 Youth also need to be taught about marriage before the marriage itself. Footnote 160 Education is also needed for adults (clergy, parents, teachers) so that they can better teach and involve students. Footnote 161
Later resolutions also express concern about children having access to the community in terms of decision-making – that ‘the church should have regard for their concern’, Footnote 162 and that they should be involved in ‘decision-making’. Footnote 163
Theological attention to humanity is not complete without theological attention to children. In these 41 resolutions we see a glimpse of attention paid to children, and what questions and convictions are possible to find even in that glimpse. ‘Childhood’ is an experience that all Christians who live to adulthood have shared; with care we may be able to understand it well as Christians, and perhaps even to welcome children as Christ would have us do.
