Let the Children Come: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective
Raising children is one of the most highly charged moral and religious events of human life. Although we strive to raise healthy children, negative cultural trends like consumerism, media violence, and erosion of community and extended family conspire to affect our children adversely. We often feel powerless because we lack a specific religious and moral language to talk about these growing concerns.In this important and much-needed book, theologian, author, and teacher Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore writes about the struggle to raise children with integrity and faithfulness as Christians in a complex postmodern society. Let the Children Come shows that the care of children is in itself a religious discipline and a communal practice that places demands on both congregations and society as a whole. The author calls for clearer and more defined ways in which Christians can respond to the call to nurture all children (not just their own) as manifestations of God’s presence in the world. Miller-McLemore raises and investigates questions that up until now have largely been left unasked, such as: What are the dominant cultural perceptions of children–including religious perceptions–with which parents must grapple? How have Christians defined children and parenting, and how should they today?The author retrieves a largely lost Christian understanding of children and adult responsibilities for their care, creating a bridge between historical and contemporary theological understanding. Miller-McLemore’s book is unique in drawing on a rich variety of resources in Christianity, feminism, and psychology to examine our understanding of children and their relationship with God and adults’ moral obligations to their care and nurture.