22 The Postmodern Life Cycle
but always critically and constructively), the last chapter will try out an alternative approach. Here, theological perspectives will be used as challenges for the contemporary situation, thus making explicit what is true implicitly for all of my considerations. I am not advocating an adaptive theology that sees its main task to be current, fashionable, or attractive to those living in postmodernity. Rather, even in making the contemporary situation the starting point, I am inviting readers to be involved in a critical evaluation of this situation including its religious and theological implications and also including the critical potential that is inherent to the Christian tradition.
This brings us to a last point that must be mentioned in this introductory chapter. The study of the postmodern life cycle and of its religious implications is necessarily an interdisciplinary endeavor. It must bring into dialogue different academic disciplines: psychology, philosophy, sociology, and theology, to only mention the most important ones. This kind of dialogue is another characteristic of practical theology as I understand it. And it is also a task that is especially important today because so many students of the human life cycle show no interest in religion. One example of this neglect is the otherwise brilliant study In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Lifeby Robert Kegan, which does not include religion among the demands studied." When I called this introductory chapter Religious Demands of Postmodern Life, I actually had in mind the need to start a critical and constructive dialogue with such authors and to complete their accounts of modern and postmodern life. My whole book can be read as an attempt to open this dialogue.
CHAPTER 2
Born into a Plural World
Growing Up between Multicultural Richness and Religious Homelessness
Numerous accounts of childhood and of childhood religion have been published over the last decades.1 The changing shape of childhood is of special concern for parents and educators as well as for all those who are worried about the future of Western culture and societies. Philosophers of education have pointed out the special value of childhood for education and learning of all kinds. Psychologists have offered their insights on how childhood becomes, for better or worse, the destiny for many or most people in adulthood. Theologians and pastoral counselors have had to learn how to listen for the hidden impact of childhood experiences on the religious life of adults. Currently, media researchers are cautioning the public that what used to be known as "childhood" is actually under siege by the still growing influence of an increasing number of media that are making their way into the child's home. It is no surprise that Neil Postman's book on The Disappearance of Childhood has become an international bestseller.'' Parents, educators, and theologians alike are highly concerned about the future of childhood.
There are many reasons to be interested in what being a child means today and how the contemporary experience of childhood influences the religious life of children. The present chapter, however, is not just another consideration of such general observations or worries. Rather, it follows the specific interest in the postmodern life
23
24 The Postmodern Life Cycle
Born into a Plural World 25
cycle that is the key question of this book. Moreover, this chapter is concerned with viewing the postmodern life cycle from the perspective of practical theology. Before further addressing childhood as the main topic in this chapter, it may be helpful to outiine this special interest in some more detail.
In the first chapter of this book, we have seen that the human life cycle is under reconstruction and that the religious dimensions of the life cycle are strongly influenced by the changing shape of contemporary life. The questions of the postmodern life cycle and of its meaning for church and theology must be approached through the lens of contemporary experiences of those who are moving through this life cycle or, to be more open, through whatever has become of the life cycle in a postmodern world. And since the present study, as pointed out above, is not to approach postmodernity by taking the philosophical or theological debate as its starting point but with a strong focus on the changes within the life cycle itself, we must now proceed to an exploration of the various stages of the life cycle. In doing this, we follow a chronological order, beginning with childhood and ending with old age. At the same time, the traditional shape of this order cannot be presupposed naively anymore. It is no longer to be taken for granted that chronological age is the one main characteristic that allows for a basic orientation. Lifestyles or social and cultural backgrounds as well as individual circumstances may tell us more about a person than his or her age.
The main reason for working our way through the life cycle from childhood to old age has to do with the comparisons in which the present explorations are interested. By taking the modern life cycle (which now, from the perspective of postmodernity, is the traditional life cycle) as our starting point, we can compare its "classic" descriptions with contemporary observations. As pointed out above, I will specifically make use of the work of Erik H. Erikson as a backdrop for this kind of comparison, thus using him as the major representative of the traditional or classic view of the modern life cycle. In other words, the breakdown of this book along the chronological order of the modern life cycle is not a tacit affirmation of traditional views of the life cycle. Rather, it is expected to allow for maximum contrast by examining, for each major stage of life, if and how things have actually changed from modernity to postmodernity.
Following the procedure of approaching postmodernity from an inductive point of view, I will start out by contrasting the traditional modern understanding of childhood with the challenges of today's experience of childhood. One of these challenges—the experience of
religious diversity or plurality—will be given special attention because it is often connected to postmodernity and because it entails far-reaching consequences for childhood religion and for religious education. The discussion of this experience will be focused on the tension between multicultural openness on the one hand and religious belonging on the other.
The Modern View: Childhood as the Basis for Religious Belonging
At first glance, it may be surprising to call understanding childhood as the basis for religious belonging a modern view. Is there anything modern about this understanding of childhood as the time when people first acquire a religious faith and when they have to learn the stories and teachings of a certain religion? It almost seems to be a natural given that children have to be introduced to a faith and that this introduction should go along with the expectation that they will stay with this faith, be it as children or be it as adolescents and adults.
In order to become somewhat clearer about the specifically modern understanding of religion in childhood, we have to have a closer look at what understandings may be found before modernity and how these understandings changed with modernity. Some considerations of premodern times prove to be helpful.
The importance of religious education in childhood has, in fact, been emphasized throughout history. Even in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, educators often referred to the "waxen" or "wax-like" character of the child, which was considered to be especially open and suitable for Christian nurture and for catechetical instruction. The basic idea was to begin early so that the unique time of childhood with its openness for religious education would not be missed. It is much easier, says Martin Luther for example, to work with those "little young trees" than with the "dry wood," as he metaphorically identified the character of adults.' Luther's view is not only expressive of his theological perception of the increasing effects of sin over the course of life, it is also expressive of the medieval awareness of the flexibility of children's character that makes early education a promising enterprise.
So in a sense, it is certainly true that religious education in childhood has always been considered natural and important, and there is nothing exclusively modern about this idea. It is interesting to note, however, that, about two hundred years ago, modern philosophers of education such asjohann Heinrich Pestalozzi or
26 The Postmodern Life Cycle
theologians and religious educators such as Friedrich Schleiermacher took this view of religion in childhood one important step farther, thus giving it a new and specifically modern turn. These early modern interpreters introduced the understanding that there is a special psychological basis for religious education in childhood that has to do with the early experiences of children. They assumed that the relationship to God builds, and in fact must build, on an earlier experience of human relationships that produce the psychological basis lor faith in God.1 According to this view, the relationship to God must always be grounded in the early relationship to mother and father in childhood. Consequently, it is here, at the very beginning of the life cycle, that the idea of God as well as hope in God must take hold. "God is the God of my mother," says Pestalozzi in a famous quotation: "He is the God of my heart, he is the God of her heart. I know no other God, the God of my brain is a fancy."' Or, to use Schleiermacher's words, the child's "love for the mother" is the "first seed" of religion.1' Both Pestalozzi and Schleiermacher thus give a new religious meaning to childhood. For them, childhood is much more than a time that is especially open for educational influences. Rather, childhood actually includes and furnishes the experiental and psychological basis that is necessary to start the process of religious development and education. Childhood has become the foundation of religion, the indispensable basis for all religion in later life.
Calling this psychological interpretation of the beginnings of religious development and education a modern view can be justified by pointing out the dual focus on human experience and on the human person rather than on revelation and on objective teachings. This focus is typically modern. Yet, it should not be overlooked that religious educators such as Pestalozzi and Schleiermacher were by no means naive advocates of modernity. Quite the opposite: At the time, they wanted to defend religious education and the child against the modern reductionism of a rationalist and utilitarian education. Their reference to the psychological origins of faith and religion in childhood was meant to exactly do this: Give an anthropological meaning to the religious dimension within the experiences of children and also within education. They wanted to defend this dimension against those who only aimed at increasing the rational abilities of children. This intention gives their philosophies of education a critical thrust beyond the narrow rationalism of modernity. Yet at least from today's retrospective point of view, this defense against modernism still included a strong modernist tendency itself. Their view of childhood religion was itself in danger of a reductionist interpretation,
Born into a Plural World 27
for example, by reducing religion to feelings or to childhood relationships with the mother.
Not surprisingly, this understanding of the psychological presuppositions of religion in childhood is not the only one that modernity has produced. As I just mentioned in describing the backdrop against which Pestalozzi and Schleiermacher set forth their ideas, modernity's general emphasis on rationality also included a strong critique and scornful rejection of all childhood religion as childish and as a lasting detriment to human reason. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, advised against any attempt at religious education during childhood." He was convinced that religion had no legitimate place in the life cycle before adolescence, among other reasons because he thought children lacked the mental capacities even for understanding the meaning of the Christian faith, let alone for personally adopting it. This is why Rousseau suggested deferring religious education until the age of fourteen.
While a one-sided emphasis on rationality and a corresponding skepticism about the religion of children remained influential in modern education throughout most of modernity, the competing intention of identifying the psychological basis of faith in childhood has also received considerable attention. In twentieth-century psychology, the idea of the psychological presuppositions for faith in God were taken up by modern psychologists and especially by psychoanalysts. Sigmund Freud himself, the founder of the psychoanalytic movement, belonged more on the side of the modern critics of religion." His focus was on the neuroticizing influence of religion in childhood, especially during the years when the superego or conscience develops. So while Freud was not convinced of the healthy influence of religion in general and while he did not foresee a constitutive role for childhood religion in a positive sense, he was still convinced that the religious experiences during childhood are decisive for later life.
It was one of the most influential psychologists and psychoanalysts of the twentieth century who, through his work on the human life cycle, gave the idea of the positive role of childhood religion new meaning and importance. This psychologist was, of course, Erik Erikson, who described the corresponding psychological processes in terms of basic trust, of childhood identification, and of the family as the first basis of group identity/' According to his account of psychosocial development during childhood, the trustworthy relationship between mother and infant is the origin of religious longing and hope. It is in the mother's face that the infant comes to
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know herself, and that face becomes the precursor of God's face. Erikson describes this process in almost poetic ways. In his Young Man Luther we find the following passage:
...only religion restores the earliest sense of appeal to a Provider, a Providence. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, no prayer indicates this more clearly than "The Lord make His Face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord shift up His countenance upon you and give you peace"; and no prayerful attitude better than the uplifted face, hopeful of being recognized.10
As the child gradually grows older, it is the firm identification with the parents that carries this psychosocial process of religious development further. This identification connects the religious experience of early childhood with the religious education by mother, father, and the extended family. The religious dimension, included implicitly by the experience of "basic trust" (or "mistrust"), now becomes explicit, and it is still mediated through the relationships within the family.
The experience of being firmly rooted as a child in the faith of one's parents has been praised, for example, by the French author Jacques Lusseyran in the 1960s. In his autobiographical writings, he speaks of the "feeling of warmth" and of the intimate "protection" that was for him the "beginning of faith," never giving way to "metaphysical doubt."" And even a contemporary author such as New York journalist and mother Martha Fay speaks no less vividly of the experience "that one's self, wrapped in the tender batting of one's perfect family, inhabits the true center of the universe, all its ways the right ways, all its customs eternal."1'1 Such reports are one of the main reasons why many people want their children to grow up exactly like mis—firmly rooted in the faith of their parents and with a clear sense of belonging to a particular Christian congregation and religious community. So in the modern view, the early stages of the life cycle are considered as the seedbed of personal faith and also as the firm basis of religious group identity in the sense of belonging to one's parents and, through them, to the one true religion.
This view is still very attractive, at least to many parents and religious educators. Yet the praise of religious grounding in childhood has not always been unanimous. Ever since modem educators such as Rousseau or critical psychoanalysts such as Freud entered the picture, there has been the concern that early religious education will, in fact, overpower the child. Again and again, religious education
iii childhood has been challenged and criticized because, in this critical perspective, it is actually forcing a moral and religious scheme on the children. The child is seen as vulnerable and as defenseless against religious indoctrination that, according to the critics, can only harm the child. The religious convictions inculcated through early religious education are seen as adult-centered, as incomprehensible for children, and as disturbing or frightening to them. Especially, the references to sin and eternal judgment, to divine punishment, and to being lost for good are prime examples of what, in this view, should never even be mentioned to children.
The popular literature on experiences with religious education in childhood published during the last thirty or forty years is full of examples for this critique of the blend of paternal authority and piety, and, more recently, the issue of the religious background of child abuse has been added to this.1* In his book The Quest for Identity, published in the late 1950s, psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis reports the following scene: Seven-year-old Larry is given the duty of saying the blessing before meals:
Sometimes...the end of the blessing would be followed by stinging reprimand. "Sit yourself up straight at that table, sir!" After a moment of bewilderment and fright Larry would realize that he had been slouching in his chair, and would stiffen straightly and wait in silence. "Now you say that blessing again, sir!" He would thus be forced to repeat, and then would falteringly begin to eat, wondering if his father were still watching but afraid to look and find out."
In this scene, religious education is closely associated with obedience, with being forced to follow a stern father's commands, and with being deeply frightened. It is easy to imagine how blessings or prayer in general will have become frightful experiences for this young boy, and also how his image of God will have turned out to be anything but friendly or forgiving.
Although of different cultural backgrounds, numerous similar reports are also available from other countries. For example, in Germany, Tilmann Moser coined the much quoted phrase of "God poisoning"—of God having been used as a poison in his parents' ways of nurturing him.1' Parental love was thus always conditioned by the child's willingness to obey God and to fulfill the diffuse mixture of parental and divine expectations: Your parents love you if you love God; God loves you if you love your parents; God loves you when you do well; God won't love you if you do not succeed, and so forth.
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Bom into a Plural World 31
A similarly detrimental experience is reported by Monika Schaefer, who, as a little girl, always had to pray with her mother."1 If she asked God to forgive her for her wrongdoings, she could be sure that her mother would ask her what exactly she had done wrong. And in case little Monika did not ask for God's forgiveness, the mother would helpfully remind her of what she might have forgotten in her prayers. For her, there was no way out of this oppressive ritual that kept repeating itself every night in the name of God's love.
As we will see in the next section, such experiences still play an important role in the present—not because this style of raising children would still be widely practiced but because today's parents are eager to avoid everything that could, even remotely, resemble the type of religious upbringing that most of them remember with terrible feelings from their own childhood days. In other words, the negative experiences with an oppressive religious education are a powerful motive for parents to make sure that the patterns of their childhood days will not repeat themselves for their own children.
Another critical view of the modern understanding of the life cycle is focused on the role of the mother as the so-called primary caregiver of the child. The mother in early childhood, so the critical argument runs, is described with idealized images that are distorted and that make it difficult for any mother to be her true self.17 According to the idealized image, the mother is the always-loving provider of food, comfort, and safety. And when the mother does not live up to this ideal (which, in reality, will be the case more often than not), the danger of early religious trauma is imminent. A "not good enough" mother becomes responsible for the child's future alienation from faith. Feelings of guilt are the consequence for the mother.
While the idealized view of the mother may not be found with academic psychologists like Erikson, it has nevertheless permeated the popular literature and shaped the consciousness of many people. So the modern understanding of childhood religion is actually not without internal tension. On the one hand, it praises the firm sense of belonging to the faith of one's parents while, on the other hand, it criticizes all religious education in childhood because it can overpower the child. In addition, the parents, especially the mother, are overburdened with unrealistic expectations of acting as an early model for what later may become the explicit image of God.
Most likely, such tensions or ambivalences refer back directly and indirectly to modernity's general ambivalence toward religion. While religion is appreciated as an indispensable basis for moral education, it is also seen as prerational and as unenlightened—as
something only for children and maybe for the elderly but not in any case, as will be pointed out in chapter 5 of this book, for the autonomous adult, which modern culture has painted as its grand ideal. Yet while the modern view of childhood can be criticized as ambivalent, it still has permeated much of our thinking about childhood and religion. It still is the basis for many people's expectations when they worry about the changes connected to postmodernity, which we will now consider.
Growing Up in a Plural Postmodern Context
The traditional view of childhood religion as a solid basis for an entire lifetime obviously does not hold true any more. The feeling of being led onto the one right path to truth during childhood by one's parents has become a rare exception for today's children. Instead, the experience of religious plurality has entered the picture, and this experience seems to begin very early. And in addition to this, even in childhood religion is treated as a private affair that is left to the individual. Many parents feel that their child should be given a free choice of what religious convictions he or she wants to adopt and what religious practisces are to his or her liking."1 And in many cases, conversations within the family seem to stay away from religious topics. Religion obviously is viewed as an intimate matter that cannot be openly addressed, not even within the family.
As educational institutions like nursery schools and kindergartens have become more and more widespread and are attended by the majority of children, the exposure of young children to members of other cultures and of different religious communities has automatically also become a common experience. Such educational institutions often bring together children from all kinds of different backgrounds. And even if the curriculum of these institutions does not openly address religion, children will most likely learn about religious differences from the conversations with their peers.
So from early on children are—or, at least, they may be—aware that everything they learn from their parents can also be seen in very different ways. Some children go to church and some do not, some families pray and others do not, some children learn about Jesus and others do not, some learn about Muhammad, still others about Shiva and Vishnu, while some do not even know the word God. It is indeed hard to imagine that there can still be a firm grounding in a single faith tradition of the family in the sense in which this could have been expected at other times. Rather, from early on, there is the experience of religious diversity, of different options and opinions.
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Born into a Plural World 33
Yet do parents even wish for such a firm grounding, as used to be expected? So far, my description of the contemporary situation was implicitly based on the perspective of parents and families that are actively engaged in nurturing their children religiously or that at least would like to see their children being raised in a particular faith. In many cases, however, this is not the case anymore today, at least not in the traditional sense. Among today's parents, many are not affiliated with any religious community, and among those who are, there also seem to be a fair number of people who are very hesitant to introduce their children to any particular religious tradition.11' Often, there is a fear of indoctrinating the child or of overpowering the child-the fear that, as pointed out above, must be understood in light of not only modern philosophies of education, which tend to emphasize the autonomy of the child, but also of the parents' generation's experiences with religious education in their own childhood.-" Many of today's parents associate religious education and nurture with authoritarian behavior, with inculcating fixed beliefs, and with planting fears of punishment into the children's hearts. Obviously, today's parents want to avoid repeating the kind of religious education that they themselves once received. The generation that has struggled to free itself from what was widely experienced as paternal or societal authoritarianism is more than eager to avoid whatever might resemble religious authority. In his book Life after God, Douglas Coupland, one of the much-discussed authors of the 1990s and on Generation X, speaks of the "first generation raised without religion":
I began to wonder what exactly I had believed in up until now...This is not an easy thing to do. Precisely articulating one's beliefs is difficult. My own task had been made more difficult because I had been raised without religion by parents who had broken with their own past.. .-who had raised their children clean of any ideology."1
This quotation also shows that we have to become aware of the specific historical location of religious education today. It is the often rebellious adolescents and young adults of the 1960s who have now reached their forties, fifties, or even early sixties. To some extent, it is even the generation of their sons and daughters who make up today's parents of young children. Unless these sons and daughters of the first antiauthoritarian parent generation nevertheless experienced an authoritarian education, which, given the revolt against all demands of obedience in the 1960s and early 1970s, is not very likely, their
parents must have been successful in handing on their strong dislike for anything that might look like indoctrination.
Beyond those who want to nurture their children religiously and also beyond those who do not, there is a third group of parents that also seems to be rapidly growing.--' More and more, we are not only dealing with denominational diversity within families—we are also dealing with religious differences in the sense that, for example, one parent is Muslim, the other Christian, or one parent is Jewish, the other Christian, and so forth. It has been claimed, for example, in a controversial statement by the well-known Harvard theologian Harvey Cox, that, at least with Judaism and Christianity, some kind of dual religious education should be possible.^' As a matter of fact, however, we know very little about the educational style that is operative in such families. In any case, religious education in a bireligious family does not always seem easy. Martha Fay reports the case of a divorced couple in Colorado:
The husband...was...Jewish, the wife a Catholic who had converted to Judaism at the time of their marriage. After several years and the birth of two daughters, the parents were divorced. The wife was awarded custody of the girls, who by that time had begun attending Hebrew school, and presumably thought of themselves as Jewish. Soon after the divorce, however, the mother reconsidered her earlier conversion, returned to Catholicism, and eventually married a Catholic. While continuing to take her daughters to Hebrew school on Saturday, she also began taking them to mass on Sunday, claiming the girls were entitled to be exposed to both faiths. The father didn't see it that way and sued for the exclusive right to determine his children's religious training. As his lawyer put it in a newspaper interview, "EitherJesus is the Messiah or he is not.":M
This report may sound extreme, and it certainly offers no sufficient basis forjudging the situation of bireligious or multireligious families. Yet, the report makes one wonder how different religious convictions that often are deeply rooted in one's personality or biography can actually go together with intimately sharing one's life with another person and a whole family. And even if academic theologians have developed an entire body of literature on a more dialogical attitude toward other religions,27' this attitude is rarely related to matters of everyday life or to religious nurture and education within a family.
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Born into a Plural World 35
One of my doctoral students, Regine Froese, is doing research on religious education in Christian-Muslim families.2'1 Her approach is empirical, including interview conversations with children as well as with adults. As she points out on the basis of her preliminary results, a highly internalized and privatized religion may well be the consequence of growing up with a dual religious family background. According to her observations, parents often fear that clearly addressing potentially divisive religious issues like how to celebrate Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah, or Ramadan might lead to family conflicts that parents feel cannot be resolved. So if the alternative is as clear as the lawyer quoted above has it-eitherjesus is the Messiah or he is not-the families, for the sake of peace, may prefer to avoid the issue altogether rather than getting themselves into a conflict over matters that are beyond them anyway. Obviously, to stay together as a married couple and to openly disagree on fundamental issues of faith is experienced as contradictory. It seems safer to base life together on religiously neutral grounds and make all religious decisions a private question for the individual members of the family, be they the adults or the children.
The experience of growing up in a context of cultural and religious diversity is certainly challenging enough-with religious plurality as part of everyday life even in childhood and possibly even in one's own family, and with a parent generation (and sometimes also a grandparent generation) that is reluctant to commit their children to a particular faith. Yet the postmodern situation clearly holds more challenges than we have mentioned so far. Probably one of the deepest challenges to the traditional image of childhood as a safe beginning of the life cycle is the increasing number of so-called incomplete or postfamilial families.27 High divorce rates-over 50 percent in the United States—and second or third marriages are only the most visible signs of how rare the experience of growing up in a stable and continuous family context has become. The so-called primary caregivers of a child, which were so important for the traditional modern view of religious nurture in the family, may thus be changed once, or even several times during the first decade of life.
Unfortunately, there are no psychological accounts or empirical data that would indicate what such so-called postfamilial situations mean for the religious development of the child. The classical models from psychoanalysis, for example, are premised on the child's continuous relationships with mother and father. So it will be a very important task for future research to find out if and how the maternal and paternal roots of the child's image of God are actually affected
by the postmodern changes of the family. Or, to put it in a more general way, if the experience of divorce is becoming more and more widespread, we also need to look into the psychological consequences (or religious education and nurture—a question that has not received the attention it deserves.
It is obvious that much more could be said about contemporary childhood experiences. For example, the influence of the media on religious nurture has also not really been investigated. But enough has been said to make clear beyond any doubt that the traditional modern expectations regarding religion in childhood are no longer warranted. It is a pressing issue to think anew about the tasks of church and theology vis-á-vis such challenges.
Children's Right to Religion: Perspectives between Belonging and Openness
How are we to judge the changes taking place with the postmodern life cycle? How are we to respond to the changing religious situation of childhood? Much of the literature is focused on the issue of diversity.-" Two conflicting views or ideals dominate the picture. On the one hand, there is a very positive attitude toward religious plurality in childhood because it is seen as the presupposition for tolerance and for a new openness toward other religions. On the other hand, there is apprehension and fear that children may no longer be able to acquire a firm sense of belonging to a religious community and to a clearly identified tradition of faith. Ideals of multicultural and multireligious richness stand against the danger of religious homelessness. Which understanding may we trust? And what are the consequences we should pursue?
In my understanding, the standard analysis of the contemporary situation just presented does not go far enough. Religious homelessness is not only a result of multicultural influences. Today it is also, and probably most of all, a consequence of an insufficient or absent religious nurture and education. By themselves, many families led unable (or are unwilling) to take responsibility for this kind of nurture and education. This is why the tension between religious belonging and openness actually is not the first question to be addressed. Before this question, there is an even deeper issue to be taken up-the possibility that many children in postmodernity may not receive any truly religious education at all.
To be sure, all children have religious questions or at least questions that are potentially religious. Yet the fear of indoctrinating children, together with an often materialistic outlook, may silence
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even the biggest questions that children ask. Douglas Coupland, whose book Life after Godl already quoted, again relates a telling conversation with a child:
You asked questions about the animals, some real toughies, and these questions came as a welcome diversion...Just after you saw the eagle you asked me, seemingly out of the blue, " Where do people come from?" I wasn't sure if you meant the birds and bees or if you meant the ark or what have you. Either direction was a tad too much for me to handle just then.. .You repeated your question again and so I gave you a makeshift answer of the sort parents aren't supposed to give. I told you people came "from back east.""'
Against the backdrop of such answers-or, more exactly, of avoiding an answer altogether—I see a clear need to address children's right to religion. As I have tried to show elsewhere, children have a right to religion because they need religious education if they are to grow up in a healthy way.1" And in my understanding, this view may be defended theologically as well as psychologically.
The theological reasons are quite obvious. Beginning with the Bible, the call to share the faith with the children has always been present in the Jewish as well as in the Christian tradition. Deuteronomy 6:20-21 is often seen as the classic expression:
When your children ask you..."What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?" then you shall say to your children, "We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand."
And in Mark 10:14b, we hear Jesus say:
"Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs."
Even if children's rights have not always been respected, from today's point of view it cannot be doubted theologically that children have a right to religion." But the child's right to religion may also be stated on psychological grounds. As we have seen above from the psychoanalytic account, the child's early experiences always include a religious dimension. The process of being recognized by mother or father, as in a mirror that affirms-or denies-the child's personal existence, is of ultimate meaning and may therefore be called religious. If this holds true, we may further conclude that there also is a need for giving the child a language that is capable of expressing such
experiences or of at least addressing them and communicating with others. Otherwise, a whole dimension of human existence will be excluded from communication. And communication here is also the presupposition for healing what has gone wrong during childhood and for supporting children in finding meaning for their lives. Only if early experiences of denial can be addressed, will it be possible to correct them and to give a person the affirmation needed for becoming a healthy self.
It should be noted that, with this understanding, we are also trying to overcome the modern ambivalence between the idealization of childhood religion on the one hand and the critique of religious nurture as indoctrination on the other. In line with a postmodern view of the child, we are viewing the child as an active subject-a person who is processing a wide variety of experiences within his or her natural, interpersonal, and symbolic environment. If we take this view seriously, children need access to an environment that offers religious symbols and narratives as forms of religious communication. It is in this sense that children have a right to religion and to religious nurture.
Who is to safeguard this right to religion? Traditionally, the family could have been expected to do this. Given that children continue to need families, the potential contribution of the family to religious nurture is an additional reason for church and theology to support parents in this respect. At the same time, it becomes increasingly important that church and theology come to realize their special responsibility for children. As mentioned above, there are sound theological reasons for this special responsibility. The insecure status of religious nurture and education makes it a pressing issue to act upon this responsibility by becoming much more intentional about children in the congregation. Sunday school programs, if taken seriously, are a good beginning. But it may well turn out that there is a need for new and additional programs and structures for children if the challenges of the contemporary situation are to be seriously tackled. Most of all, we must learn to see the congregation not only as adults and for adults, but through the eyes of children and with their needs in mind.
Taking the child's perspective can also shed new light on the postmodern tension between belonging and openness. Logically, the opposite poles of the tension between religious belonging and openness may be mutually exclusive. If we take the point of view of the child, they are not. If it is a right of children that their big questions are listened to and that adults offer them whatever they believe to be the most honest and most trustworthy answers to such questions, then
38 The Postmodern Life Cycle
Born into a Plural World 39
religious education will always work toward a sense of belonging and of grounding a young person in a certain religious tradition. This is not to deny the influence of religious individualization on adults' beliefs and outlooks mentioned earlier. Yet if we want to be responsible educators, we will have to check our individual and personal answers against the insights of those who, for hundreds and thousands of years, have studied the religious sources and who have thought and argued over their understanding. So in this sense, religious belonging as an aim of Christian education has not lost its importance because of postmodernity.
But this is only one side of the coin. There can be no reasonable grounds for advocating a close-minded approach in the sense of a new denominationalism or confessionalism. Even if there are good reasons for the need for grounding and belonging, we cannot overlook that children are constantly exposed to the experience of religious plurality. The only way to exclude this experience would be to lock up the children on an island, thus reenacting die ancient dream of creating a purely educational province sheltered from society. Once we drop this dream because it may not be put into practice and also because it is not really desirable to isolate our children from the world, we have to ask how the actual and inevitable experience of religious plurality may become most fruitful for children.
With this understanding, we are in position to leave behind the paralyzing alternatives that modernity forces upon us. In postmodernity, there is no choice to be made between religious belonging and openness as it is mistakenly suggested by the literature. And there is also no choice between an idealized childhood religion and religious indoctrination. Rather, we have to accept the child as an active center of experience and as a person who, from early on, is faced with experiences shaped by the environment. The task of Christian education, then, is to be with the child and to support the child in this process of dealing with his or her experiences. In postmodernity, the aim of education can neither be a return to an unquestioned state of natural belonging nor can it be only openness, which actually is quite impossible without a center of belonging. Rather, it is the balance between religious belonging and openness for which we have to strive by stressing, at the same time, a firm sense of being grounded in the Christian faith, as well as the capacity to accept and to affirm the faith of others as different from one's own.
This view of childhood religious education as a dynamic process may also help us to get beyond the ideological image of the modern family. While it remains true and important that children need reliable families as a place where they can grow up, this need must also be
reconciled with the inevitable realities of family life. There is no use in casting the behavior of mothers or fathers in idealistic terms by seeing them as all-loving and ever caring persons. Quite the opposite, such ideal images only indicate the dangerous tendency to deify parents by giving them divine attributes. Rather than supporting this ideological process, theology and Christian education need to base their understanding of religious education on a critical and realistic view of what experiences the child will have during his or her first vears of life.
These considerations are not meant to deny the enormous problems that we have to face with the postmodern family and, more specifically, with the disintegration of the family through divorce and similar developments. Rather, I want to point out that the modern family should not be seen nai'vely and that it should also not be seen as the indispensable presupposition for Christian nurture. Modern childhood was certainly not the realization of an ideal childhood. Consequently, we must come to see that religious education in postmodern childhood does not only mean loss and imbalance.
In sum, then, I perceive three challenges for church and theology today:
• Much more must be done for children in church and congregation. New and additional programs are needed that are geared to religious nurture and education. And this presupposes that church and theology come to realize their special responsibility for children.
• Church and theology should become advocates for children's right to religion. This right is not a legal question in the first place. It is about nurture and education, and it is about how children are viewed in church and society, in the praxis of education as well as in academic discourse. Children need our support so that their religious questions and needs are no longer overlooked and bypassed by a society that is focused on questions of rationality and materialistic needs.
• Theology and the church must work toward a new balance between belonging and openness. This balance is demanding. It requires new intellectual capacities for dealing with issues like conflicting religious truth claims, but it also requires social and relational skills in welcoming others who are different from one's own group. There is no healthy way back to the naive and unquestioned sense of belonging that was possibly found in the past. But openness alone is also not possible, because it would mean giving up one's own identity.
Notes
Introduction
'To mention only a few of their publications: Richard R. Osmer, A Teachable Spirit: Recovering the leaching Office in the Church (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990); Don S. Browning, Generative Man: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (New York: Delta, 1975); idem, A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991); James W. Fowler, Weaving the New Creation: Stages afFailh and the Public Church (San Francisco: HaiperSanFrancisco, 1991);idem, Faithful Change: The Personal and Public Challenges of Postmodern Life (Nashville: Abingdon Press, I99(i).
Three of the chanters of the book have been published in a preliminary form elsewhere. See Friedrich Schweitzer, "Religious Affiliation and Disaffiliation in Late Adolescence and Early Adulthood: The Impact of a Neglected Period of Life," in Joining and Leaving Religion: Research Perspectives, ed. U'slieJ. Francis and YaacovJ. Kate (Leominster: Gracewing, 2000), 87-101; idem, "Church, Individual Religion, Public Responsibility: Images of Faith between Modern and Postmodern Adulthood," Princeton Seminary Bul'letin,l\ (2000): 287-300; idem, "PracticalTheology and Postmodern Life: We Need a New Paradigm:'" International Journal of Practical Theohgy'i (2001): 169-
83.
Chapter 1 The Religious Demands of Postmodern Life
'See Jean-Francois I.yolard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge 'Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984).
-Deutsches Jugendinslitiit, ed., Was für Kinder. Aujivacksen in Deutschland. Kin Handbuch (Munich: Kusel, 1993), 62-72.
'This notion has been introduced in this sense by modern systems theory; see Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Rejlexionsprohleme im Erziehungssystem (Stuttgart: Kielt, 1979), 27711'., especially in regard to modern education.
'See Ulrich Heck, Risk Society: 'Inwards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992). See, lor example, Werner Helsper, "Das 'postmoderne Sclbsl'-ein neuer Subjekt und Jugend-Mythos? Reflexionen anhand religiöser jugendlicher Orientierungen," in Identitälsarbeit heute. Klassische und aktuelle Perspektiven der Identilätsforschung, ed. Heiner Kcnpp and Renale Höfer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 174-206,
"Elisabeth Beck-Gemsheim, Was kommt nach der Familie? Einblicke in neue Lebensformen (Munich: Beck, 1998), 17.
;Harvev Cox, Secular City: Urbanization and Secularization in Theological Perspective, (New York: Macmillan. 1965),
"Harvey Cox, Religion in the Secular City: Toward a Postmodern 'theology (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).
"For a discussion, see Peter L Beiger, ed., 'The Deseculartzatiim of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids: Lerdmans, 1999).
'"For the development of church membership in the United States, see Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future (New Brunswick: Rutgers'University Press, 1987); Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War //(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); for Germany, see Klaus Engelhardt el al., eds., Fremde Heimat Kirche. Die dritte EKD-Frhebung über Kirchenmitgliedschaft (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1997).
"See, for example, Wade Clark Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and tin Remaking of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1!)!)!)); Diana Eck, A New Religious America: How a "Christian Country" Has Now Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001). For an earlier
Notes to pages 14-26 141
and more popular account, see Malise Ruthven, IheDivine Supermarket: Shopping fir Cod m America (New York: W. Morrow, 1989).
'-'Peter L Berger, Ihe Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (Garden City, New York: Anchor, 1979).
"Fora helpful introduction, see Peter L Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (New York: Vintage, 11)74), (off.
'Jose Casanova, I'ublic Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994); Peter Beyer, Religion and Globalization (London: Sage, 1994); see also Berger, Desecularization.
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of'Civilizations and the Remaking oj World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
" Roland Robertson, Globalization: Social 'Theory and Global Culture (London: Sage, 1992); Beyer, Religion and Globalization; Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).
'Tor a good collection, sec Kieran Flanagan and Peter C. Jnpp, eds., Postmodernity, Sociology and Religion (New York: St. Martin's, 199fi).
'"Helpful summaries may be found in David Harvey, The Postmodern Condition (Oxford: Black well, 1989); Wolfgang Welsch, Unsere postmoderne Moderne (Weinheinr VCH, 1988).
'''For a discussion on methodology, see David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in 'Theology (Chicago: Chicago University Press, new ed. 1996); Don S. Browning, ed., Practical Theology (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983); idem, A Fundamental /'radical 'Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991); Friedrich Schweitzer and Johannes A. van der Ven, eds.. Practical Tbeobgy-International Perspectives (Frankfurt arri Main: P. Lang, 1999).
"To mention just one example, see Anthony C. Tiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995). He is interested in questions similar to mine. His approach, however, is fairlv different. As a systematic theologian, he focuses his study on the philosophical and theological tradition without special reference to contemporary life or the life cycle as the background of the "postmodern self."
.See Harvey, Postmodern Condition, and Welsch, Moderne.
■'-For a detailed account, see Lawrence Jacob Fricdmann, Identity's Architect: A Biography of Erik IL Erikson (New York: Scribner, 1999).
"For the best accounts on F.rikson and religion, see J. Eugene Wright, Erikson Identity and Religion (New York: Seabury, I9H2); Hetty Zock, A Psychology of Ultimate Concern: Erik //. Erikson's Contribution to the I'sychology of Religion (Amsterdam and Aüanta Rodopi, 1990).
"Robert Began, In Over Our Heads: Ihe Mental Demands of Modern Life (Cambridge Harvard Univ. Press, 1994). Kegan mentions religion only in passing (pp. 2bnff.).
Chapter 2: Born into a Plural World
'For the following see, for example, the impressive bibliography compiled in the volume by MarciaJ. Bunge, ed., The Child in Christian Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 490-97 on "History of Childhood and Contemporary Issues Regarding Children."
Neil Postman, The Disappearance oj Childhood(New York: Delacorte, 1982).
'For a detailed description and for references to the sources, see Friedrich Schweitzer, Die Religion des Kindes. Zur Problemgeschichle einer religionspädagogischen Grundfrage (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1992); see also the various historical chapters in Bunge, She Child.
'Schweitzer, DU Religion des Kindes, with detailed references.
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt, ein Versuch, den Müttern Anleitung zu geben, ihre Kinder selbst zu unterrichten in Briefen von Heinrich Pestalozzi (1801), Sämtliche Werke, vol. 13 (Berlin/Leipzig: 1927), 353.
140
142 Notes to pages 26-32
'Friedrich Schleiermacher, Erziehungslehre (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1849), 659f. 7Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres Computes, vol. 4, Emile (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 553ff.
"For a critical discussion (and references to Freud's writings), see Ana-Maria Rizzuto, The Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979), 13-53.
"Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society, 2d ed. (New York: Norton, 1963); idem, YoungMan Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History {New York: Norton, 1958); idem, Insight and Responsibility (New York: Norton, 1964); idem, Life History and the Historical Moment (New York: Norton, 1975); idem, Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (New York: Norton, 1969); idem, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1968); idem, Identity and the Life Cycle (New York: International Universities Press, 1959); idem, 'The Life Cycle Completed: A Review (New York: Norton, 1982); and other books; see J, Eugene Wright, Erikson: Identity and Religion (New York: Seabury, 1982); Hetty Zock, A Psychology of Ultimate Concern: Erik H. Erikson's Contribution to the Psychology of Religion (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1990).
'"Erikson, Young Man Luther, 118.
"Quoted according to Karl Ernst Nipkow, Bildung in einer pluralen Well. Vol. 2: Religionspädagogik im Pluralismus (Gütersloh: Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998), 145f.
"Martha Fay, Do Children Need Religion? How Parents Today Are Thinking about the Big Questions (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 202.
|:'A general statement is offered by Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (New York: Noonday, 1983). See also Philip]} Greven, Spare the Child: 'The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse (New York: Knopf, 1991); Donald Capps, The Child's Song: The Religious Abuse of Children (Louisville: Westminsterjohn Knox Press, 1995}. For a discussion, see Bunge, The Child, "Introduction," 5. From the German literature, see Dagmar Scherf, ed., Der liebe Gott sieht alles. Erfahrungen mit religiöser Socialisation (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1984); Jutta Richter, Himmel, Hölle, Fegefeuer. Versuch einer Befreiung (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1985); Karl Frielingsdorf, Dämonisclie Gottesbilder. Ihre Entstehung, Entlarvung und Überwindung (Mainz: M. Grünewald, 1992); Helmuljaschke, Dunkle Gottesbilder. Therapeutische Wege der Heilung (Freiburg: Herder, 1992).
"Allen Wheelis, Ihe Quest for Identity (New York: Norton, 1958), 51.
'"'Tilmann Moser, Gotlesvergiflung(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976).
"Monika Schaefer, Weil ich beim Belm lügen mußte. Rekonstruktion einer verlorenen Kindheit (Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1992), 51.
°] have not found a specific study on this view but similar arguments can be found in the general feminist literature on the role of the mother. See the now classic statement by Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
"The family is itself considered a private realm. Consequently, little is known about the religious nurture or education taking place in the family. See Merton Strommcn and Richard Hardel, Passing on the Faith: A Radical New Model for Youth and Family Ministry (Winona: St Mary's Press, 2000); Michael E. Ebertz, "'Heilige Farnilie'-ein Auslaufmodell? Religiöse Kompetenz der Familien in soziologischer Sicht," in Gottesbeziehung in der Familie. Familienkatechetische Orientierungen von der Kindertaufe bis insJugendalter, ed. Albert Biesinger and Herbert Bendel (Ostfildern: Schwaben, 2000), 16-43; as a general background, Don Browning et al., From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997).
'"For empirical data on the religious orientations of today's parents, see the studies by Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of Ihe Baby Boom Generation (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1993); idem, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1999).
'"See note 13.
Notes to pages 32-43 143
-'Douglas Coupland, Lije after Gorf (Dindon: Touchstone, 1995), 178 and 161. In 1995. I.orie A'lise Sousa, "Interfaith Marriage and the Individual and Family life Cycle," Family Iherapy'l'l (1995): 97-104; p. 97 mentions 375,000 interfaith couples in the United States. The majority of them combine a Jewish and a Christian background.
'•'In a interview in Ihe New York Times Magazine in May 1988, Harvey Cox says: "we're in a stage now in the relationship between Jewish and Christians in which a child can grow up being part of both these traditions without violating either one. He'll be raised Jewish and he'll gel the 'Christian Addendum' to the Jewish Story," quoted according to Fay, Do Children Need Religion?, 198.
"Fay, Do Children Need Religion?, 196.
"See, for example, the publications by authors such as John Hicks or Paul Knitter.
"Regiue Froese, '"Für mich sind Muslime und Christen dasselbe...' Junge Erwachsene aus chrisüich-muslimischen Familien," Zeitschriftßr Pädagogik und Theologie 52 (20(H)): 171-86.
''For a good review of the most important trends affecting families, see Don S. Browning et al., Culture Wars to Common Ground, 51-72; see also Solly Dreman, ed., Ihe Family on the Threshold of the 21st Century: Trends and Implications (Mahwah, N.).: I.. Erlbaum, 1997); William C. Nichols and Man- Anne Pace-Nichols, eds., Handbook of Family Development and Intervention (New York: J. Wiley, 2000).
"This is the strength-and the weakness-of much of the literature from Ihe United Kingdom: for example-John Hull, Studies in Religion and Education (London: Palmer Press, 1984); Robert Jackson, Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach (London: Hodder & Sloughton, 1997). For the American discussion, see Norma H. Thompson, ed.. Religious Pluralism and Religious Education (Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Education Press, 1988); Barbara Wilkerson, ed., Multicultural Religious Education (Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Education Press, 1997).
"'Coupland, Life after God, 5f.
"'Friedrich Schweitzer, Das Recht des Kindes auf Religion. Ermutigungen ßr Eltern und Erzieher (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagsbaus, 2000). "See Bunge, The Child.
Chapter 3: In Search of a Faith of One's Own
1 Growing Up Postmodern: Imitating Christ in the Age of Whatever," The 1S98I'rincetou Lectures on Youth, Church, and Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Theological Semiuarv, 1999).
'See Friedrich Schweitzer, Die Suche nach eigenem Glauben. Einführung in die Religionspädagogik des Jugendalters (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1996).
John Westerhoff, Will Our Children Have Faith? (New York: Seabury Press, 1978). 'The essays mentioned in note 1 are a good example.
See Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Vintage, 1962), 29: "People had no idea of what we call adolescence, and the idea was a long time taking shape," referring to the time before the eighteenth century; see also Joseph F. Kelt, Rita of Passage: Adolescence in America 1790 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1977); for the European experience, John R. Cutis, Youth and History: Tradition and Change m Eurofiean Age Relations WO-hesenl (New York: Academic IVess, 1974).
'The classical study comes from Arnold van Gennep, Lei rites dl passage: Etude systemalique des rites (W0!)) (Paris: E. Nourry, 1981); for current views, see Gunther Klosinski, ed.. hiberlätsrilen. Äquivalente und Deßzile in unserer Gesellschaß (Bern: Huber. 1991).
Van Gennep, Les rites, offers vivid accounts of some of these rites.
"Aries, Centuries of Childhood; Kail, Rites; also Michael Mitteraucr, Sozialgeschichte der Jugend {Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986).
'Jean Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres Completes, vol. 4,: Emile(Paris: Gallimard, 1969). Book 4 is devoted to adolescence.