Yearbook of Contextual Biblical Interpretation - Current Issue

The children’s song “Jesus Loves Me” originated in the nineteenth century. Over the years, “Jesus Loves Me” has become a popular Christian hymn and a well-loved song in Sunday schools, churches, and Christian households around the world. Children are part of families, schools, local and faith communities. Their arrival as infants is welcomed in most cultures and environments across the world. The reality of a fallen and broken world is that many children live and grow into communities which are not safe, welcoming, or capable of nurturing these. This paper reflects on this children’s ministry song’s simple, yet powerful lyrics aimed at conveying the message of Jesus’ love in a way that is easy for children to understand and remember. Through the lens of a somewhat liberal theology and reflecting on the complexity of the marginalized/vulnerable child, I would like to explore what the reality of Jesus’ love in a fallen and broken world looks like when the child is indeed placed at the center of how we are church. Through the lens of the discipline of Child Theology, I further explore what the Bible does say about the child in our midst. Teaching the faith is probably our most difficult task. What children need more than anything else is living faith in Christ. Parents, teachers, and Christian leaders must devote all of their energy and enthusiasm to presenting Christ to their children.

In this article, we provide a conceptual clarification of the terms “child theology” and “children’s theology” on the basis of a literature review. This allows us to position our question “how children’s theology can contribute to theology” well within the academic debate on the subject. We take up the social constructivism that is the underlying paradigm of children’s theology, and we do so in a way that explicitly includes God as an actor. It is our argument that, due to their developmental stage, they are capable of offering perspectives that are complementary to those of expert theologians. The perspectives they offer depend on the context in which they grow up. Two examples of a practice illustrate the argument as to how children can contribute to theology.

Various authors have written on children’s spirituality and how spirituality of children can be nurtured. These reflections are mostly inspired by a clear view on children’s agency and an emancipatory form of child theology. In this chapter we discuss the question how discrimination on the basis of race, class, and gender can be avoided in initiatives to nurture children’s spirituality. What can a feminist postcolonial theology offer in the reflection on religious education and various approaches of nurturing children’s spirituality? We discuss the idea of the “oppression olympics,” where experiences of being oppressed as a child (in the context of adultism), as a girl or boy (sexism), as someone with less privileges in terms of financial support (classism) or as someone from another ethnicity (racism) are considered as competing each other? How can “child theology” include attention for other perspectives, without falling in the trap of strong “identity politics”? These questions are discussed in dialogue with a contextual and anti-essentialist reading of Mark 10:15.

What role does Christian hope play in the contextual biblical interpretation with children? This chapter examines the core teaching materials of the Godly Play method with regards to their treatment of the future. The analysis uncovers a preponderance of backward-looking narratives at the expense of future-oriented perspectives. While Godly Play aims to instill a “playful orthodoxy” and prepare children for church liturgy, the analysis leads to the conclusion that it suffers from an eschatological deficit, a neglect of Christian hope. In the light of these findings, the chapter argues for a shift in Godly-Play’s narrative and interactive methodology and underscores the imperative of integrating the Bieringer school’s Normativity of the Future approach to biblical hermeneutics into the Godly Play religious-education practices. It encourages Godly-Play storytellers to reevaluate and enrich their pedagogical approach to reflect the profound importance of Christian eschatology and hope for children’s theology and spirituality.

This article employs a childist lens to critically examine the portrayal and roles of children in religious education within Philippine Catholic schools, using the narrative of the Binding of Isaac (Gen. 22:1–19) as a focal point. The study critiques how traditional educational practices in schools perpetuate a systemic silencing of children’s voices, leading to epistemic injustice wherein children are relegated to passive roles. By integrating insights from child theology and contextual hermeneutics, the research interprets the Binding of Isaac within the Filipino context, revealing how these practices inhibit children’s potential for active participation and critical thinking. The article challenges pedagogical approaches by advocating for educational strategies that balance protective instincts with empowerment. It emphasizes the need for dialogic and inclusive methods that recognize and amplify children’s voices as active contributors and co-constructors of their religious learning experiences. Ultimately, this study contributes to the discourse on child theology by offering a contextual critique of religious education practices in Philippine Catholic schools, proposing paradigm shifts that foster a more dynamic and participatory environment that honors children’s agency.

Child theology aims at focusing on religious questions and experiences of children. Literature underlines this as a dominant dimension of religious dialogue and the development of a personal identity of children. In primary and secondary schools, the connection between personal identity and dialogue in the classroom, in the context of worldview diversity, means that teachers need to emphasize the religious questions and views of children themselves.

What does the focus on personal identity of children and worldview dialogue mean for the role of teachers to foster the dialogue about the theological perspectives of children? This article builds on an hermeneutical communicative perspective on this role that is significant for teachers who work in the context of religious diversity. The presupposition is that child theology requires specific and professional characteristics of teachers. The author distinguishes five characteristics: Translator, Imaginator, Moderator, Explorer, Source. This perspective invites the reader to reflect on the question what and how professionals in child theology contribute to the development of children’s identity.

“Contextual Biblical Interpretation” (CBI) as a concept has been useful because of its broad and inclusive scope. The article identifies a number of conceptual parameters of CBI. First, CBI includes biblical studies work in which the context of biblical reception is the subject of interpretation. Second, the context of reception is an inhabited or peopled context and these actual local context-based people are the subjects of interpretation. Third, the different forms of CBI each include a commitment to forms of social and theological transformation. Fourth, the various forms of CBI, while accountable to reception context-based readers are each “biblical” in that they may use of the resources of biblical studies, while challenging and changing the discipline. Fifth, CBI contributes to the changing of the discipline of biblical studies through its careful conceptual work, creating communities of theoretical and methodological reflection within forms of action-reflection praxis.