March 26, 1999
Contact:
Lew Harris, (615) 322-NEWS
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We say we love them, but often ignore their concerns, professor maintains
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -While children under age 18 make up about 25 percent of our population, their concerns are rarely represented. And though we often talk about how much we love them, they are frequently overlooked, says a Vanderbilt University Divinity School professor who intends to change the way children are viewed in society, theology and the church.
"It's almost as if we've undersold children's cognitive and emotional ability," said Bonnie Miller-McLemore, associate professor of pastoral theology and counseling. "They're not adults, but we don't see them as competent, insightful, creative people to whom we should turn at times for our own knowledge."
For example, Miller-McLemore seriously doubts that any children were consulted when the schools her sons attend were built. The schools were constructed along busy highways and are inaccessible to children except by being dropped off by car. There are no bike racks. Nor is there anything for students to do before school other than to sit in the cafeteria or gym.
Likewise, Miller-McLemore says children have been a topic largely neglected within academic theology. Churches have also tended to ignore broader issues of children, she adds.
"In theology, there has been sensitivity to people with the least voice such as women, ethnic voices and voices of the disabled or elderly," she said. "It struck me that children have the least voice, especially those children in already marginalized groups. They are an easy group to overlook because they only reach the public through the interpretive voices of adults. It's almost as if we don't really respect their needs, competence and knowledge."
Miller-McLemore hopes to offer solutions to the problem after she spends a year researching and writing a book on children. She plans to shape a bolder theological position on the nature of children and on the nature of parental and communal obligations to nurture and safeguard them.
She also hopes the book will renew Christian thinking about children, enrich ministerial discussion about the subject and expand the church's approaches to caring for children, both in families and in the wider community.
Her work will be supported by a $40,000 grant she will receive as one of only seven scholars from throughout the nation who have been selected as Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology for 1999-2000. She had already planned to take a sabbatical in the fall. The Luce Fellowship will enable Miller-McLemore to continue the sabbatical during the spring semester while she researches and writes the book.
Miller-McLemore will be able to draw from some of her previous research and publications in the new book. In her 1994 book, Also a Mother: Work and Family as a Theological Dilemma, she touched briefly on "the amazing, if sometimes ambiguous, gifts of children." In recent years, the subject of families moved to the foreground of her work and resulted in the 1997 book, From Culture Wars to Common Ground: Religion and the American Family Debate. Children were a major component of that work.
Last year Miller-McLemore participated in a Lilly Foundation-funded project, "The Child in Christian Thought," which brought together several theologians to examine the perspectives of influential figures and movements in the history of Christianity on children. She also participated in two conferences with the other members of the project and was invited to write a chapter for a book of essays that will come out of the Lilly project next year. Her topic was children in contemporary feminist theology.
"I think we're a society that has been more than willing to talk about our love of children, but when push comes to shove very few decisions get made with children in mind," said Miller-McLemore. "Decisions about community planning, the workplace, schools and busing routes are really based on adult efficiency and market productivity." - VU -
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