Spiritual Care as the Foundation for a Child’s Religious Education

Abstract

This article outlines spiritual care as the foundation for a child’s religious education. The elements of spiritual care are described by identifying how God concepts form in the young, by naming children’s inherent spiritual needs, by offering perspectives from human spirituality research over the last 60 years, particularly as it applies to children, by analyzing the way meaning forms through experience as it finds its way into worldviews each of us holds by early adolescence, and finally, by depicting four types of literacy (cognitive, emotional, imaginative and social) at the basis of spiritual care and as the groundwork for a child’s future development within various religious traditions. The purpose of spiritual care is to focus on the humanity of children and to situate their education within a framework built on their spiritual needs. This article is deeply embedded in assumptions associated with the Christian tradition. However, a fundamental assumption of spirituality research is that every person is spiritual. As a result, the intention to educate the human spirit as a first step to initiating children into a faith tradition is well founded; it also raises the possibility of spiritual care as undergirding secular education, but that question is beyond this article’s purview. The intention is to spark a conversation among religious traditions as one way to meet the deepest spiritual needs of children, which is an urgent dialogue to engage in at present. If French philosopher Jean Baudrillard was correct, the age we are living in is well described as a revolution of confusion. A response to confusion requires [meeting] the spiritual needs of children and creating a broad theoretical and practical approach to how they think and act, as they move into a tradition that they take on board, along with their developed capacity to reflect on that tradition from personal and socially informed perspectives.

Learning to Think [Together]

“…A second set of nerve cells is linked to each other and not to the external world. The second set is responsible for conceptual learning (Bellous and Clark 2022). Perceptual learning creates percepts, conceptual learning forms concepts.…”

“…Let's look at an example of conceptual learning (Bellous and Clark 2022). Suppose Nancy grew up with an absentee father.…”

“…As part of learning to think, we come to recognize what of our embodied thought is knowledge gained through testing the reality we work with scientifically, pragmatically, logically, or by careful, discerning observation, as German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer proposed in his approach to human science inquiry. His investigative principle asks the question: What kind of knowledge is it that understands that something is so because it understands that it has come about so (Bellous and Clark 2022).…”

Reclaiming Icons for a Post-Pandemic Christian Pedagogy

“…This posed a problem for pedagogy, not least for those whose determination over recent years has been to provide a reflective space for children in relation to their personal spiritual development (Bellous, 2021;Robinson, 2020).…”

“…However, pedagogy reverted to or certainly reinforced a linear method of ministry which includes predetermined outcomes for learning. This posed a problem for pedagogy, not least for those whose determination over recent years has been to provide a reflective space for children in relation to their personal spiritual development (Bellous, 2021; Robinson, 2020).…”