From the ground up: cultural considerations in research into children’s spirituality and theology

Abstract

Cultural diversity is a hallmark of human life and communities across the globe. Yet research into children’s spirituality and theology does not often intentionally consider culture. In this article, the author addresses this gap by drawing from original qualitative research into how children generate theological meaning in different cultural contexts in order to propose three suggestions for research into children’s spirituality and theology. By beginning with the lives of the children who participated in this study, the author argues that such research must explore not just the content of children’s theologies, but also the processes by which they generate theology, that one needs to consider children’s theologies as phenomena created and held both individually and collectively, and that culture must be attended to at every stage of the research process.

Keywords:

• Children
• theology
• spirituality
• culture

Notes

1. I perceive children’s spirituality and theologies of childhood as overlapping subfields of childhood studies and religion. For the sake of clarity and ease of terminology, I use children’s spirituality and theology to denote the broad and diverse space occupied by research into the inner lives of children as it relates to their spiritual capacities, religious devotion, and theological thought and practice. Such research may be confessional or non-confessional, and includes qualitative and quantitative studies, apologetic works, historical studies, and best practices, among other perspectives. For a fascinating discussion of children’s spirituality and child theology, see Mountain (2011).

2. To protect anonymity, I have assigned a pseudonym to each participating person and congregation.

3. One can argue that all qualitative research is attuned to a specific cultural context. In the category I am proposing here, I am paying particular attention to scholarship that is not only carried out within a particular context, but also names and considers that cultural context in the design, implementation, and/or analysis of such research. See, for example, Dei (2002); Humphrey, Hughes, and Holmes (2008); Hwang (2005); Junker (2006); Kay and Ziebertz (2006); Mason, Singleton, and Webber (2007); Potgieter, van der Walt, and Wolhuter (2009); Savina (2001); Tolbert and Brownlee (2008).

4. One potential avenue of interpretation could involve the fact that the children gave 65% more expressions to the term religion than they did for spirituality, which could be analyzed in light of the lack of usage of the latter term in everyday language in Finland (Ubani and Tirri 2006, 363).

5. See, for example, Bosacki and Ota (2000); Moore, Talwar, and Bosacki (2012); Nazar and Kouzekanani (2003); Search Institute (2008).

6. See, for example, Couture (2000, 2007); Mattis et al. (2006).

7. For information on more complex notions of culture than those offered by modernism, see Tanner (1997).