Topics in Christianity: The Child in Christian Thought



Topics in Christianity: The Child in Christian Thought

Religion 349-0

Spring, 2005

Fisk 114, T/Th 12:30-1:50 p.m. c-traina@northwestern.edu

Cristina Traina Office hours: Mondays, 3-5 p.m.

Crowe Hall 4-155 and by appointment

847-491-2938

This course will explore Christian ideas of childhood in Christian thought. We will discuss the connections among the theology of childhood, the treatment and social standing of children, and children’s religious instruction. We’ll investigate the image of childhood as an ideal or antitype for Christian discipleship. Finally, we will look carefully at ways in which basic Christian doctrines like the doctrine of original sin cause theological and practical problems for both our concept of childhood generally and sacramental life in particular. Throughout, we’ll ask about ways in which theologians’ own experience or non-experience of children affects their views and what theological and practical difficulties arise when children’s religious subjectivity is ignored or misrepresented.

Texts:

Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought

St. John Chrysostom, On Marriage and Family Life

Course packet, available from Quartet Copies on Clark Street

Recommended: Bible (Hebrew Bible and New Testament); Stephen Mintz, Huck’s Raft

Assignments:

Participation in discussion: 25%

Journals: 30%

Class presentation: 15%

Final paper (due at noon June 3): 30%

Participation: Consistent attendance and thoughtful, consistent oral contribution to analysis and questioning of the texts and contexts. With the exception of the first few sessions, class time will be about evenly divided between lecture and discussion. Please come prepared to discuss the readings. When the assignment is especially long or difficult, I will alert you to the portion to be stressed in the next class discussion.

Class presentations: Presentations are designed to expand our understanding of the contexts of our readings and to give us a better sense of their significance to their original audiences. Each presentation should last at least 20 minutes and should treat one–or at most two--of the following topics:

• Political, economic, and legal context for childhood in the place and period of the author

• Works by the same author (but not read for class or heavily analyzed in Bunge) that shed light on the readings

• Work(s) of a different author of roughly the same period, with focus on ideas of childhood

• Treatment of children in art, especially religious art, in the period

• Educational philosophy of the period (e.g. Locke or Rousseau, 20th century educational psychology, or accounts of popular educational methods)

• Christian educational materials for children or for parents from the author’s period (applies mostly to 19th century and later)

Presentations may make use of Bunge but should draw heavily on other sources (Bunge’s bibliography and notes are fine places to begin). Presenters should provide a bibliography of their sources to the class and the professor. They should prepare discussion questions and lead class discussion for at least 20 minutes.

Journals: For each day's readings (beginning with April 7 and ending with May 26), please write a brief, reflective response (1 1/2-2 pp., double-spaced, typed or printed with normal font and margins). Journal entries should not be formal essays; they are opportunities for you to brainstorm about the topic at hand, ask questions, incorporate your own experience, etc. Although it is generally best to write the reflections after each reading assignment, you may combine two or more days' readings in a longer essay if you like.

Journals will be collected at only four times during the quarter (see schedule). They will not be given formal letter grades, but in order to receive full credit you must give a thoughtful response to claims and arguments made in the reading assigned.

You are encouraged to write journal reflections on up to two substantial religious books, videos, or events on children or parenting (please clear these with me first). They may be Christian, or they may come from another religious tradition, to provide some contrast to Christian sources. You may use these as substitutes for missed journal entries or as extra credit. Extra-credit journal entries receive the same credit as regular journal entries: up to 2 (percentage) points.

Final paper: The final paper (10-12 pages) is due June 3. It may take one of two forms:

1) Historical theology: Deep, textual and contextual investigation of a theological question about childhood in one thinker, either from the syllabus or not. For example, do Calvin’s different answers to the questions of infant communion and infant baptism reveal an inconsistency in his theology of childhood or of sacraments? In what way do they respond to specific pressures, social and theological, of his time?

2) Inductive theology: Analysis of a text or problem to reveal its assumptions. For example, what historical theologies and psychologies of childhood lie behind contemporary ecclesiastical controversies over communing infants? What theologies and ideologies of childhood are at work in a contemporary religious education series (or Bible or movie or flash card set or....) for children, or in a mid-nineteenth century Christian child-rearing manual?

You must use scholarly reference notes (footnotes, endnotes, or in-text references) and provide a bibliography of works cited. You must have met with the professor to discuss possible topics by April 22. More information on the paper will be handed out in class.

Note: Many of you will want to use materials that will require interlibrary loan requests or use of the rare book room, either here or at a seminary. Make sure to get started early!

Late Policy: Journal extensions must be requested at least a day in advance of the due date; final paper extensions must be requested by 5 p.m. on May 31. Assignments for which no extensions have been granted will be penalized one-third of a letter grade for every day they are late, beginning after class on journal due dates or after noon on the June 3, the final paper due date.

Calendar and readings

Note: items listed in brackets are suggested readings that can be found in Bunge.

Mar. 31 Introduction, Hebrew Bible

April 5 New Testament: [Gundry-Volf] NT passages, Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood, introduction and chapter 3 (packet)

Mark 8-10, 13

Matthew 1-2, 10-11, 18-19, 21

Luke 1-2, 7, 9, 18

John 1

Ephesians 5-6

Colossians 3

April 7 St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430): [Stortz] Confessions, books 1 and 2 (packet)

April 12 St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407): [Guroian] Chrysostom, A Comparison between a King and a Monk (packet) and homilies 19 and 12 (On Marriage and Family Life)

April 14 St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274): [Traina] readings in packet

April 19 Abandonment and the Cult of the Child Jesus: Boswell and Klapisch-Zuber (packet)

April 21 Martin Luther (1483-1546): [Strohl] readings in packet

April 7-19 journals due

April 22 DEADLINE FOR MEETING WITH PROFESSOR

April 26 John Calvin (1509-1564): [Pitkin] readings in packet

April 28 Menno Simons (1496-1561): [Graber Miller] readings in packet

May 3 Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and the colonial east: [Brekus, Atkinson] readings in packet

May 5 Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834): [DeVries] readings in packet

April 21-May 3 journals due

May 10 Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) and Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896): [Bendroth] readings in packet

May 12 Published children’s sermons: 1870s-1930s

May 17 Karl Barth (1886-1968): [Werpehowski] readings in packet

May 19 Black Women’s Club movement and contemporary feminism: Riggs, Miller-McLemore (in Bunge)

May 5-17 journals due

May 24 Contemporary theology of children and parenting: Gudorf and Couture (packet)

May 26 Sofia Cavaletti, and Bibles for children (packet)

May 19-26 journals due

June 3, noon FINAL PAPERS DUE

Other helpful books

Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Translated by Robert Baldick. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962.

Atkinson, Clarissa. The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.

Boswell, John. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

Bunge, Marcia J., ed. The Child in Christian Thought. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.

Carr, Anne, and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, ed. Religion, Feminism, and the Family. Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.

deMause, Lloyd, ed. The History of Childhood. New York: The Psychohistory Press, 1974.

Goodich, Michael E. From Birth to Old Age: The Human Life Cycle in Medieval Thought, 1250-1350. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989.

Hawes, Joseph M., and Hiner, N. Ray, eds. Children in Historical and Comparative Perspective: An International Handbook and Research Guide. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.

Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001.

Osiek, Carolyn, and David L. Balch. Families in the New Testament World: Households and House Churches. Louisville, Ky. : Westminster John Knox Press, 1997.

Ruether, Rosemary. Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.

Shahar, Shulamith. Childhood in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge, 1990.

Wood, Diana, ed. The Church and Childhood. Studies in Church History 31. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.

Course packet contents

Topics in Christianity: The Child in Christian Thought

Religion 349-0

Spring 2005

Cristina Traina

Colin Heywood History of Childhood, introduction and chapter 3

New Testament Selections

St. Augustine of Hippo Confessions, books 1 and 2

St John Chrysostom A Comparison between a King and a Monk

St. Thomas Aquinas Selections from the Summa Theologiae

John Boswell Selections from The Kindness of Strangers

Christiane Klapisch-Zuber Selection from Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy

Martin Luther The Small Catechism

The Estate of Marriage

That Parents Should Neither Compel nor Hinder....

John Calvin Selections from Institutes of the Christian Religion

Selections from The Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin

Menno Simons Selections from the Complete Works:

The Foundation of Christian Doctrine, sections on baptism

Reply to Gellius Faber, questions 1, 5, 7, 8, 18, 19

The Nurture of Children

Jonathan Edwards Selections from Original Sin

Selections from Faithful Narrative

Friedrich Schleiermacher Selections from Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation

The Christian Faith, questions 67, 70, 71, 138

Horace Bushnell Selections from Christian Nurture

Harriet Beecher Stowe Selections from Religious Studies: Sketches and Poems

James Vaughan Selections from Sermons to Children, 1878

Edwin Byington Selections from The Children’s Pulpit, 1910

Howard Chidley Selections from The Child’s World in Story-Sermons, 1938

Karl Barth Selections from Church Dogmatics

Christine Gudorf “Parenting, Mutual Love, and Sacrifice”

Pamela Couture “Single Parents and Poverty: A Challenge to Pastoral Theological Method”

Sofia Cavaletti Selections from The Religious Potential of the Young Child

Children’s Bibles Selections from four contemporary versions

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