Childhood and Spirituality

The spiritual potential of childhood presents important opportunities for nurture, but also it raises real questions about the best ways of doing this.
Parents, teachers, clergy and many others wonder about how to make connections between children’s instinctive spiritual awareness and traditional religious language and practices. Getting the balance right has implications for supporting children’s spirituality now. But this can also inform our understanding of adults’ spiritual needs whose own childhood spirituality was perhaps rather overshadowed, even extinguished, by other priorities, including some forms of religious education.

An underlying theme will be how childhood is not so much something we grow out of, but something more paradoxical. Childhood might in important ways contain elements we need to grow into, qualities and capacities that can help us to develop further into mature spiritual human beings. What obstacles may there be to authentic spiritual journeying for young people in contemporary society? What does a spiritual understanding of the human person imply for how we view childhood, parenting, education and faith in our contemporary culture and context today? Can an approach that is both deeply Godly and playful, ‘Godly Play’, offer a way to address some of these fascinating challenges?

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