Childhood studies, hermeneutics, and theological ethics

Journal of Religion

Volumn 86, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 523-548

  Wall, John ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 53849106443     PISSN: 00224189     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/505893     Document Type: Review

References (104)

1. A version of this essay will appear in John Witte Jr. and M. Christian Green, eds., Practical Theological Ethics and the Family (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), forthcoming
2. See Matt. 18:1-14
3. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), bk. 1
4. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve: Dialogues on the Incarnation (Lewiston. NY: Edwin Mellon, 1990)
5. and The Christian Household: A Sermonic Treatise (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon, 1991)
6. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures in Psycho-Analysis, trans. James Strachey (1933; repr., New York: Norton, 1965). 123
7. Heinz Hartmann, Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation, trans. David Rapaport (1939; repr., New York: International Universities Press, 1958)
8. Melanie Klein, The Psycho-Analysis of Children, rev. ed., trans. Alix Strachey (1932; repr., New York: Delacorte, 1975)
9. Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1950)
10. D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (New York: Basic, 1971)
11. Heinz Kohut, The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders (New York: International Universities Press, 1971)
12. Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child, trans. Marjorie Gabain (1924; repr., New York: Free Press. 1965)
13. Lawrence Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Devlopment, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Row, 1981)
14. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982)
15. Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization (New York: W. Morrow, 1928)
16. Sudir Kakar, The Inner World: A Psycho-Analytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981)
17. Richard Jessor, Anne Colby and Richard Shweder, eds., Ethnography and Human Development: Context and Meaning in Social Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)
18. See, e.g., Salvadore Minuchin and H. Charles Fishman, Techniques of Family Therapy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981)
19. W. D. Hamilton, "The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior, II," Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1994): 17-52
20. Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Sex, Evolution, and Behavior (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1983)
21. Judith Wallerstein, Julia Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study (New York: Hyperion, 2000)
22. E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered (New York: Norton, 2002)
23. Classic texts here include Howard Markman, Scott Stanley, and Susan L. Blumberg, Fighting for Your Marriage: Positive Steps far Preventing Divorce and Preserving a Lasting Love (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994)
24. and John Gottman, What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1994)
25. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, trans. Robert Baldick (1960; repr., New York: Vintage, 1962)
26. Those who contest Ariès's claim of childhood's invention - though not his claim of childhood's variation - include Linda Pollack, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983)
27. Allison James and Alan Prout, eds., Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: New Directions in the Sociology of Childhood (New York: Falmer, 1990)
28. Allison James, "Understanding Childhood from an Interdisciplinary Perspective: Problems and Potentials" in Rethinking Childhood, ed. Peter B. Pufall and Richard P. Unsworth (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 25-36, 36
29. See, e.g., Chris Jenks, Childhood (New York: Routledge, 1996)
30. Allison James, Chris Jenks, and Alan Prout Theorizing Childhood (Cambridge: Polity, 1998)
31. Myra Bluebond-Langnor, The Private Worlds of Dying Children (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978)
32. Paul Willis, Critical Education in the New Information Age (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 1999)
33. Pam Foley, Jeremy Roche, and Stanley Tucker, eds., Children in Society: Contemporary Theory, Policy and Practice (New York: Palgrave/Open University Press, 2001)
34. Flemming Mouritsen and Jens Qyortrup, eds., Childhood and Children's Culture (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2002)
35. Irene Rizzini, From Street Children to All Children: Improving the Opportunities of Low Income Urban Children and Youth in Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
36. Kathleen Marshall and Paul Parvis, Honoring Children: The Human Rights of the Child in Christian Perspective (Edinburgh: Saint Andrews Press, 2004)
37. and Peter B. Pufall and Richard P. Unsworth, Rethinking Childhood. A large international and interdisciplinary conference on this paradigm of childhood studies, including over a thousand papers, took place at the University of Oslo in 2005 and was titled "Childhoods 2005 Oslo: Children and Youth in Emerging and Transforming Societies."
38. Sarah McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994)
39. David Popenoe, Disturbing the Nest (New York: Crown, 1993)
40. Alan Wolfe, Whose Keeper? Social Science and Moral Obligation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)
41. William Goode, World Changes in Divorce Patterns (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994)
42. and Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage (New York: Doubleday, 2000)
43. I have also examined this conversation in "Animals and Innocents: Theological Reflections on the Meaning and Purpose of Child-Rearing," Theology Today 59 (January 2003): 559-82
44. "The Christian Ethics of Children: Emerging Questions and Possibilities." Journal of Lutheran Ethics 4 (January 2004). http://www.elca.org/scriptlib/dcs/jle/article.asp?aid = 203
45. "'Let the Little Children Come': Child Rearing as Challenge to Contemporary Christian Ethics," Horizons 31 (Spring 2004): 64-87
46. and "Fallen Angels: A Contemporary Christian Ethical Ontology of Childhood," International Journal of Practical Theology 8 (Fall 2004): 160-84
47. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981)
48. Jean Bethke Elshtain, "The Family and Civic Life," and Gilbert Meilander, "A Christian View of the Family," in Rebuilding the Nest: A Nerv Commitment to the American Family, ed. David Blankenhorn, Steven Bayme, and Jean Bethke Elshtain (Milwaukee: Family Service America, 1990), 119-32, 133-48
49. Meilander, "Christian View of the Family," 143
50. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948), Supplement, Q. 43, a. 2
51. Kathleen and James McGinnis, Parenting for Peace and Justice: Ten Years Later (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990)
52. Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, The War against Parents: What We Can Do for America's Beleaguered Moms and Dads (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998)
53. Herbert Anderson and Susan Johnson, Regarding Children: A New Respect for Childhood and Families (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994)
54. Pamela Couture, Seeing Children, Seeing God: A Practical Theology of Children and Poverty (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000)
55. and Adrian Thatcher, Marriage after Modernity: Christian Marriage in Postmodern Times (New York: New York University Press, 1999)
56. Thatcher, Marriage after Modernity, 152
57. For a detailed discussion of Schleiermacher on childhood, see Dawn DeVries, "'Be Converted and Become as Little Children': Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Childhood," in The Child in Christian Thought, ed. Marcia Bunge (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 329-49
58. Couture, Seeing Children, Seeing God, 16
59. See Don S. Browning, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Pamela D. Couture, K. Brynolf Lyon, and Robert M. Franklin, From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate, 2nd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000)
60. Don S. Browning, Marriage and Modernization: How Globalization Threatens Marriage and What to Do about It (Grand Rapids, MI: Feldmans, 2003)
61. Lisa Sowle Gahill, Family: A Christian Social Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2000)
62. Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Gender and Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 1990)
63. and Bonnie Miller-McLemore, Let the Children Come: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003)
64. Don S. Browning, A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991)
65. Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation, ed. and trans. John B. Thompson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 87-100, 131-44, and 203-9
66. Browning, A Fundamental Practical Theology, 44-47
67. David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1981)
68. See also Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951)
69. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts, ed. Heinz Kimmerle, trans. James Duke and Jack Forstman (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977), 112
70. For Schleiermacher's writings on childhood, see Christmas Eve and The Christian Household
71. Wilhelm Dilthey, "The Development of Hermeneutics," in Selected Writings, ed. and trans. H. P. Rickman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976)
72. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (1926; repr., New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 30, 31, and 62
73. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (1960; repr., New York: Crossroad, 1992), 265-307
74. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 43-62 and 131-44
75. Jerome W. Berryman, Godly Play: An Imaginative Approach to Religious Education (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991)
76. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (1974; repr., Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1981), 46
77. Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 17
78. Peter B. Pufall and Richard P. Unsworth, "Introduction: The Imperative and the Process for Rethinking Childhood," in their Rethinking Childhood, 1-21, 9
79. Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (1983; repr., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 66 and 76
80. Paul Ricoeur, "Love and Justice" in his Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, ed. Mark I. Wallace, trans. David Pellauer (1990; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 315-29, 329
81. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 15
82. Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Erazim V. Kohák (1950; repr., Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966)
83. Ricoeur, "Love and Justice," 315-29
84. See also my "The Economy of the Gift: PaulRicoeur's Significance for Theological Ethics," Journal of Religious Ethics 29 (Summer 2001): 235-60
85. Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness (New York: Routledge, 2003), 12
86. See the "Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child," adopted by the League of Nations (the precursor to the United Nations) in 1924; and the United Nations' "Declaration of the Rights of the Child" of 1959
87. I have explored this notion of "creative responsibility" in broader terms in Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), chap. 3
88. Statistics on child poverty can be found, among other places, at the United States Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov, P60-210
89. and in the Annie E. Casey Foundation's "Kids Count Data Book," http://www.aecf.org
90. Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, "Re-visioning Rights for Children," in Pufall and Unsworth, Rethinking Childhood, 229-43
91. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCarthy (1981; repr., Boston: Beacon, 1987), 325, 355, and 367-73
92. Daniel Thomas Cook, in The Commodification of Childhood (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), has shown that the marketing industry believes it is doing good for children by responding to children's "agency" in this way
93. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (1907; repr., Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1944), 10, 27, 271, 274, 287-88, and 292
94. Martin Buber, On the Bible: Eighteen Studies by Martin Buber (New York: Schocken, 1968), 72 and 87
95. Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, 15th anniversary rev. ed., trans. Sister Caridad Inda and Joh Eagleson (1971; repr., Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988), 168
96. Philip Hefner The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 239
97. and Elizabeth A. Johnson, Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 38
98. Classical sources for such an interpretation of Gen. 1:27-28 include Mathetes, Epistle of Matheies to Diogenes, in The Apostolic Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), chap. 10
99. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), bk. 2, chap. 19
100. Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1953), bk. 8, chap. 18
101. and Moses Maimonedes, A Guide for the Perplexed, trans. Michael Friedländer (New York: Dutton, 1904), chap. 54
102. Marcia Bunge, ed., The Child in Christian Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001)
103. For a groundbreaking discussion of the role of childhood in the theology of the early church fathers, see also O. M. Bakke, When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005)
104. Ricoeur, "Love and Justice," 324, and "Ethical and Theological Considerations on the Golden Rule," in Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 293-302, 301