.
Diasporic children's identities negate hegemonic cultural and religious constructs and call for a space that accepts people’s ongoing change, resistance, and assimilation in belonging and flourishing as their God-given right. Pastoral care for diasporic children amplifies how diasporic children’s resistance and resiliency manifest through a hybrid identity that enables them to belong in two spaces – that of their family and that of mainstream culture. Moreover, pastoral care for the diasporic children resists the political and social ideologies that make children's identity formation and flourishing inequitable and calls for hybridity and belonging as the main praxes for theological reflection to participate with diasporic children and affirms the need for hybridity to create a place of belonging for in-between identities in churches, schools, and political and social spaces for equality and equity of all children.
Key Words: Hybridity, Belonging, In-between Religion, In-between Culture, In-Between Political Practices.
This paper identifies and analyzes patterns of ableist attention economies in children’s educational settings within U.S. Protestant ecclesial communities, and offers alternative modes of being and becoming church. Careful examination of popular Christian curricula and materials from parachurch organizations discloses widespread disembodied pedagogical practices, which overwhelmingly lack principles of universal design for learning (UDL) and overlook the needs of neurodivergent child audiences. To address this failure of imagination and in an effort to construct better approaches, the paper takes up interpretations of the Biophilia Hypothesis, related theories of Attention Restoration Therapy (ART), and the science of children’s spirituality. Collectively these fields point to children’s need for nature connectedness and the particular role nature plays in the spiritual formation of children with so-called attention deficits. Because children are also theologically formed by worship, the paper briefly addresses contemporary research on children, disability and worship, championing the need for nature-rich sensory experiences.
With the conviction that the Kingdom of God belongs to young people, according to the biblical witness, this paper will explore the role of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as a critical part of child theology.
The Convention of the Rights of the Child has shaped child-centred practices in Australia which recognise that children’s wellbeing is positively affected when children have a voice in issues concerning them directly. Advancements in notions of child voice have also influenced the nascent field of the theology of childhood. In this paper, I demonstrate how the gospel of Mark confronts those who seek to find biblical bases for theologies affirming the voice of children. The silence of children in this sacred, authoritative text is salient in Australia where religious institutions address historic issues concerning child abuse within their organisations. These same denominations remain responsible today, moreover, for the wellbeing of children who participate in education, ministry, and social services. The paper illustrates how an *engaged* reading approach to interpreting Mark’s gospel offers a way of conceptualizing children’s voice and children’s silence with implications for theologians of childhood and for child-centred practices in Christian contexts.