Child sacrifice: The life or death of a civilisation

Abstract

Peer review declarationThe publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African 'National Scholarly Book Publishers Forum Best Practice for Peer Review of Scholarly Books'. The manuscript was subjected to a rigorous two-step peer review process prior to publication, with the identities of the reviewers not revealed to the author(s). The reviewers were independent of the publisher and/or authors in question. The reviewers commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended that the manuscript should be published. Where the reviewers recommended revision and/or improvements to the manuscript, the authors responded adequately to such recommendations. Research JustificationThis research addresses the gap in both missiology and family and youth ministry. Missiology does not focus on children and the youth specifically, although they are the largest age group in the population of the developing world. However, family and youth ministry has a more pastoral than missional approach, not always taking cognisance of the context, such as globalisation. Thus, the purpose of this book is to address the sometimes unintended and unnoticed influence of globalisation on the mission of the church, with a specific focus on children, youth and family. For this purpose, the International Association for Mission Studies' study group for children, youth and families, from different parts of the world, decided to describe the influence of powers, inequalities and vulnerabilities on children, youth and families in a globalised world from their specific contexts. Although the most prominent research methodology was critical literature studies, auto-ethnographic and empirical methods were also used. There was no decision on a specific method of research for this book. It can be viewed as an inter-and intra-disciplinary publication, because it deals with social sciences, anthropology, psychology, missiology, systematic theology and practical theology.