Insights and Perspectives of the Judaeo-Christian Heritage
and their Implications for a National Commission

Paper given to the Annual Forum of the
Christian Child Care Fellowship,
11 February 2004

by Keith White

Since last being with you it has been my privilege to speak with Christians engaged in work with and for children in need in several parts of the world. In the Philippines I was moved to tears by street children dancing to Christian songs as part of the opening worship of a national conference, and by an art exhibition by some of the same children, including the picture here today painted by an eight year old boy from the streets of Cebu.

The movement of the children in space and colours, in a room and on canvas, connected me deeply with some of the treasures of the Judaeo-Christian faith. One of the nagging questions that comes to mind is how far the annual reports, the policies and the activities of the Christian child care organisations in the United Kingdom are drawing from, connecting with and communicating these treasures.

If I am particularly stirred by the Judaeo-Christian heritage as I speak with you today, it may be that sixteen years working on a new Bible specifically for those at risk, on the margins and outside the Church or Christian worldview, has revealed to me just how rich, unfathomable and glorious are the resources God has entrusted to us, and how earthly and frail are our expressions of them. To change the metaphor, perhaps the best that can be said of us is that there is an occasional candle-like flicker compared to the radiance of the rising dawn sun of the Son of Righteousness described in Malachi.

I propose to examine just three elements of our heritage: the Scriptures; our current practical resources; and the potential of Child Theology. We begin with the Scriptures.

No description of the Judaeo-Christian heritage would be adequate without reference to the sacred texts without which we would not be here today. We cannot hope to summarise them, but let us highlight four of the priceless treasures that would enrich childhood in the UK were they better known, appreciated and lived out.

The Commandments On Sunday I had the joy of leading morning worship at a small nonconformist church in Essex. It was an “all age service”. One of the radical things we did was to gather in families, couples, or small groups of friends in order to read out loud and respond to the Ten Commandments. That’s rare in the UK nowadays.

The best children get is a summary of the Law. Normally at church and school there is no reference year by year to one of the great heritages of our faith; one of the gifts of Yahweh to and through His chosen people; one of the fundamental building blocks of any civil community or society.

Pause for a moment to imagine what it is like for a young person to be with friends and peers in a supermarket without the injunction not to steal being taught from an early age. Picture young people reading magazines, watching television, videos and attending parties without being taught that God forbids adultery, that sexual behaviour is intended to be expressed within covenant relationships. Think of children and young people being bombarded with media marketing and having no inkling that all this is a direct temptation to break the last of the Ten Commandments.

We are allowing children to become fodder for the global marketing process, that is seeking to disconnect them from any notion that they are created in the divine image, and seeking to remake them as worshippers of the current golden calves: in a word given the status above all others of consumers or customers.

We are concerned in our society about “child protection”. In short this is taken to mean that children and young people are safe from the unwanted and inappropriate advances and intrusions of others into their lives. The focus of much attention is the bodies of children (sociologists know the significance of this trend in every area of social life). But what of the protection of children’s minds, emotions, morals and spirits? The Ten Commandments are a God-given, God-blessed package commended by the experience of peoples through history. We dare not re-write them. We cannot continue to marginalise them.

The Commandments are not only about individuals: they are about relationships and patterns of social life. They are based on a fundamental understanding of how God modelled and intends human life and activity. I have taken particular interest in residential and dispersed religious communities to see how they shape the daily, weekly and yearly individual and social lives of their members. Critical to the whole endeavour is the notion of creating space, safe space, if you will.

Is this a key to understanding the whole of God’s intention for the human race from Eden to the New Jerusalem: creating the ideal space in which we can flourish together, young and old, male and female, and from every culture and faith? Just pause to reflect who or what is in control of shaping your social patterns, space and life, and that of the next generation right now.

Do you see it? Corporations out of sight and beyond the control of most governments are ceaselessly and remorselessly transforming social communications (and sociologists like Castells would argue, our own identities) into their own image. Twenty-four hour television, Internet, shopping, convenience food; 30% of households in the UK occupied by just one person and rising.

At Mill Grove we have the primary and awesome responsibility of responding to the cries of children and families in need (that, as you know, has deep biblical resonance with the cry of the abandoned Ishmael, and later the Hebrews in slavery). As a result of over a century of experience, with many failures, we have arrived at a pattern of life that is described thus: “We believe that shared living based on God-given rhythms and patterns can provide a therapeutic context in which the deepest personal and social wounds can be healed, and creative growth and expression encouraged.”

These rhythms include day and night, Shabbat (a day of rest), seasons, holidays and celebrations. The globalisation process is systematically tending to deprive us of these foundational patterns. A good childhood will need to re-configure social life and patterns: not as if there was a golden age, but in line with the revealed will of the Creator as seen in creation and the commandments.

The Great Stories and Narratives Those of us fortunate enough to be in the position to tell Bible stories to children and young people know what incomparable treasures they include. There is not time to go through them now (perhaps the “Narrative” Bible will help to re-acquaint some of us with the full range.

Neither is there time to develop a therapeutic theoretical understanding of how stories are vital to the healing process. I must refer you for this to the work of a late friend and colleague, Bruce Reed whose book The Dynamics of Religion (DLT, 1989), breaks completely new ground in applying the work of Bion and Winnicott in this respect. There is also the pioneering work of the psychologist Dr. Gundelina Velazco in her project, The Pavement Project.

I have tried from time to time in my columns in journals to emphasise the essential role of story in child development and learning. What Bruce and Gundelina do is to apply this knowledge to their practice of worship and interaction with children at risk respectively. So archetypal stories and roles such as the loving parent, the good shepherd, the servant king, the wise counsellor, the safe haven, the rainbow, the friendly garden or city, and so on, are seen to be vital contexts or containers in which the child or young person’s traumas, fears, anxieties can be re-connected, relived, explored and transcended or worked through.

For twenty years in leading worship and living alongside and seeking to help such children and young people I have been able to witness at first hand the healing dynamics that are at work. This is one of the reasons why I continue to tell the story of the first encounter between Thomas Barnardo and Jim Jarvis as told by Wesley Bready in his biography: “Have you ever heard of Jesus?”

When Barnardo realised that Jim did not know Jesus, we read: “Barnardo lost not a moment in relating to the urchin the story of Bethlehem’s Babe. He told him of Jesus’ tenderness and compassion, His sympathy and mercy, of His love for children, of His miracles of healing, and how He preached the Gospel to the poor…” It sounds so quaint and dated, but is there a better story or narrative within which to relate?

I confess that I am puzzled by the selection processes that go into the making of modern Christian song or hymn books. There is much that seems content-free, mantra-like and banal. And among the casualties are hymns like “There were ninety and nine” and “I will sing the wondrous story of the Christ who died for me”. What do these hymns have in common? A narrative that can enfold the singer, allowing her to identify with the lost sheep and to experience what it is to be valued, searched for, carried, brought safely home and reintegrated into social life. Such stories are treasures of inestimable worth in our care of children.

I have, of course, been pondering what specific or possibly unique resources and insights Christians bring to the proposed national commission. The point I am trying to make is a very simple one: far from arcane or complicated.

Put crisply, it is that we are living in a world in which the very notion of time is changing before our eyes: it is collapsing with space into an increasingly frenetic present. We can connect instantly with the whole electronic world, where a century before there would have been months of risky travel. We can search whole libraries for a word or book in five seconds or less. Economics has become obsessed with short-term calculations and benefits (see Will Hutton, The State We’re In), and politics seems to be about managing the day’s media challenges, or possibly the next week’s. To get a government to look beyond an election is largely wishful thinking. Our organisations are caught up in all this: a mass of short-term targets, initiatives, outcomes, projects, policy documents and the like. Our social policy officers, if we have them, are expected to be right up to speed with the progress of the very latest green paper or bill.

But where is the perspective that takes a long-term, generational view of life and community? You cannot read the Bible without coming to see that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, His ways are not our ways, and His timescale is not ours. So who is bringing to bear the longer-term agenda and trends? Who is thinking about and planning for the next generation, children’s children? One of the things a national commission on children and young people implies is just such a perspective on things.

We have to pause, to take stock, and to reflect and ponder deeply on things. We need to see how developments and trends link up, to begin to sense the bigger, overall picture and direction of social life. As I have talked with people about a commission one of the commonest responses has been a sense of relief: why hadn’t we thought of that?! It’s so obvious that that’s what we need. We are all, perhaps largely unwittingly, caught up in a maelstrom of activity and deflected from biblical insights and intimations.

Children’s and youth projects and services are bedevilled by short-termism. Surely we can do better than that? Is not the rainbow promise still valid? Is not the covenant of Jesus sealed with His blood still operative? Are not the mercies of the Lord new every morning without fail? Do we not sing “Great is Thy faithfulness”? So how can we settle for what is passing, throw-away and second best for our children?

Mia Kellmer Pringle was one who was brave enough to speak out in the interests of children arguing that parents should commit themselves to stay and work together for the benefit of their children for at least the period of their childhood. Is that too much to ask? And what of those of us who say we are committed to the welfare of children? Do our personal aspirations and careers take precedence? I was reprimanded for saying this at a professional Christian gathering a year or two ago, but starting with the interests of children I do not see how we can avoid asking such questions.

Visions of how we should live While in the Philippines I spent a Sunday in my room in Manila unable for very practical reasons to link up with Christian communities. In preparation for papers I was giving at conferences later that week I wondered what the full range and scope was of visions, promises and templates that God gave to His chosen people and servants.

So, using a well-tried method, I skim-read the Old Testament noting such passages. I got to Isaiah during the day, and haven’t been able to complete the task yet. But I was completely taken aback, if not overwhelmed, by the wealth of material; the scale and grandeur, the detail of such visions. Obviously, I can’t do any more today than be indicative, as I have been at previous annual events of CCCF. Let me remind you of one or two:

- The Peaceable Kingdom (Isaiah 11: 6-9)
- New Heavens and a New Earth (Isaiah 65: 17-25)
- A New City (Zechariah 8: 3-5)

One of the practices that has been rendered almost invisible by our handling of the biblical narratives, and that must be eradicated if these visions are to become realities, is that of child sacrifice. It is a recurrent theme in the Old Testament. Can it be that we think the practice has ceased? Sadly from what Dennis Wrigley has described and from figures world-wide it could be argued that one of the most common social activities in the contemporary world is the sacrifice of children on the altars of our adult gods.

So, in the name of liberal democracy and freedom, children and young people have televisions, mobile phones and videos in their private space, ideal conditions for the global predators who would consume them as market statistics. A teenager returns from Rome having just spent £12,000 on his father’s credit card that he stole. He comes with his mother to see me, and shows me what he has bought: it is everything to him, and the thought that the action was wrong just doesn’t figure in his worldview.

On the flip side we are seeing millions of people who are worthless, and who don’t count on any balance sheets because they have no money. They are presented with the sickening advertising images that dangle daily before them versions of utopia that they will never experience. Many spend what little they have on the lottery, out of despair: a chronic acknowledgement that they are in the hands of a fate determined by the global elite who neither know them, nor care about them.

Millions of child prostitutes have their identities, their virtue, their futures taken from them as an insatiable industry thrives on arousing the sexual desires of adults, an inevitable and unspoken effect of which is eventually to recreate children as sexual creatures. Child soldiers indoctrinated and motivated by adult communal and religious agendas kill and maim other children. Children worldwide have had nightmares since 9/11 as a result of a clash of adult ideologies. Is it possible that future historians will see child sacrifice in this sense as one of the defining features of what we have dared to term “western civilisation”?

Whether this is so or not, Jesus was completely uncompromising in challenging adults and adult systems that hurt or maimed little ones: the adults needed to change their ways drastically, even to the extent of plucking out their own eyes and cutting off limbs if this would prevent them from harming children (Matthew 18).

There is no short-cut to the implementation of even the rudimentary beginnings of these visions, until we have paused to assess the intended and unintended, conscious and unconscious, direct and indirect effect our adult ways of life have had on the lives of children. Let there be no mistake about it: we are talking here of major surgery to our values and way of life!

A week or so ago I was with a Director of Education of a London Borough. She was seeking to explain the disparity of resources between the statutory and voluntary sectors in provision for children and young people: her right hand was raised above her shoulder to demonstrate the massive financial and human resources represented by the former. Then she pointed with her left hand below knee height. This was the comparatively small strength of the voluntary sector. And many would think that this represents a fair portrayal of the situation. After all isn’t millions spent on educational, social, and health services for children by central and local government? Yes, millions are spent and there are many schools and nurseries.

But let’s pause to reconsider the matter. Who pays the local authorities and Government? How many said they were Christians in the 2001 census? Over 70% of the British population. How many church fellowships are there in the UK, most with their own buildings and community facilities? Over 50,000. They run over 14,000 pre-school nurseries and mother and toddler groups, and 3,700 after-school clubs. There are national Christian child care organisations of considerable size. There are hundreds of Christian schools. There are 144,000 community-based projects or initiatives run by churches. And there are dozens of Christian organisations like Crusaders and Boys’ Brigade devoted to the nurture and rounded development of young people.
There are hundreds of thousands of Christian parents and grandparents who are seeking to provide the very best for their children. Possibly someone has tried to cost all this. I don’t know, but it is certain that the Director of Education wasn’t thinking in this way. We need a paradigm shift of Copernican proportions to change such town-hall and state-centred thinking.

The state is dependent on families and communities for the well-being of our children. For too long the decision-making has been in the hands of professionals, transnational corporations and governments. They are not capable unaided of providing a vision for the future of the children of our nation, for a number of pretty obvious reasons.

The Green Paper, Every Child Matters, is an object lesson in the difficulty a government has in trying to shape a long-term strategic vision. From a rounded and authoritative base of personal and professional knowledge and experience Christians have much to offer. We know that the Treasury understands this. We know that Paul Boateng is convinced of the value of “Faithworks”.

What we are bringing in short is experience, knowledge, practical wisdom, and a range of perspectives informed and inspired by our Christian faith. Let me remind you of the raison d’être of CCCF. It is spelt out in Issue 21 of the newsletter, and perhaps should be reprinted in every publication. We have a shared vision of contemporary society in which children and young people have a rightful place (that was on the back of your invitation to today’s event!).

There are then seven distinctive contributions of the Christian child care sector:

- our faith basis;
- theological understanding of individual development and relationships and the spiritual element of the whole of life;
- vocation (that’s a word almost as rarely used in child care now as love!);
- roots in and relationships with local communities;
- links with other faith communities, as well as ethnic diversity within our fellowships;
- a willingness to provide services distinctive from or complementary to the formal care system;
- a desire to optimise Christian support in response to the needs of children and families in the UK.

That is a special brew! It’s possible that it could reach parts of the nation that other beers can’t reach!

Why is this huge resource and potential so little recognised? For a number of reasons, not least because of attention to the multi-faith, multi-cultural nature of our society. But it also has to do with a state-centred view of service provision, and a lack of recognition that true and effective preventative care and services begin in the family and community and are enabled by the faith and moral foundations laid by Christian commitment.

But it is also because we have allowed our voice to be silenced. When I was a young professional in child care one of the highlights of the year was the NCH Annual Convocation Lecture. I was thrilled and honoured when I was invited to give one myself, following in the shoes of great heroes. It sought to integrate professional insights and a faith commitment and values. Little did I know that mine was to be the last such lecture! (I have always felt just a little responsible for their demise.) Another platform was closed.

Our child care organisations have become detached or semi-detached from the mainstream denominations and worshipping Christian communities. We need to reconnect them so that the lifeblood can flow more freely between them, and so that we can hold conversations with national and local government informed by shared experiences. Many of us here today are the prophets needed by church and state: we know how things are for children and young people. This knowledge is an invaluable commodity and resource and we must not, dare not keep silent.

And, my friends, we have a long history of trying to help teach and care for children and we have made many mistakes. One of the things we should bring is an appropriate humility to the commission and to our statutory partners.

There is also a burgeoning Christian-inspired, spiritually aware literature opening our eyes to the spiritual. I have mentioned a number of writers and books before. Indeed I have quoted from them despite the pleas of the Chair to be brief! So let me mention just two. I read last week, Through a Glass Darkly, by Jostein Gaarder, the author of Sophie’s World. It tells the story of the encounter between a dying girl and her guardian angel. Thank you, Kathryn Copsey for commending it to me, and my daughter Sarah for lending me her copy! It opened a whole new set of perspectives and horizons on childhood, Christmas, attachment and loss, therapy and bereavement. A far cry from one of those serious and dull tomes on bereavement counselling!

And then that poem to which I return, sensing that in it there is a primal insight into the very heart of parenting, teaching and child care. It’s by Jane Clement, a teacher in the Bruderhof schools.

Child, though I take your hand
and walk in the snow;
though we follow the track of the mouse together.
Though we try to unlock the mystery
of the printed work, and slowly discover
why two and three makes five
always, in an uncertain world -

Child, though I am meant to teach you much,
what is it, in the end,
except that together we are meant to be children
of the same Father
and I must unlearn
all the adult structure
and the cumbering years
and you must teach me
to look at the earth and the heaven
with your fresh wonder

I long for the day when our libraries will be bursting with books that instinctively link the different elements of good child care, teaching, parenting and youth work in such symbolic and holistic ways.

And this gives me the opportunity to mention specifically the book Celebrating Children that was reviewed in the CCCF newsletters, and one of whose editors, Jo Wright, is with us today. It is a pioneering venture that has some rough edges, but I commend it to you. The space that David Evans mentioned at the outset of the forum that allows our professional and faith worlds to inform and converse with each other has made such a work possible. It is not without significance that several of the contributors have found CCCF important in their own development. Thank you, Jo, for all you have done on our behalf.

This is the final insight or perspective that we note today. Two years ago almost to the day I presented a paper with the rather arresting title, Child Theology is Born. I am happy to tell you that it has now been successfully weaned and is toddling across the world! For any who are interested I can of course provide details. But let me give a flavour of what it is about, and what it is making possible.

Put simply, it seeks to bring a whole new light onto, or perspective from which to review, the fundamental theology of the Church. We have become used to this sort of insight in such developments as feminist theology, black theology, liberation theology, green theology and the like. They start with a group, or a social context or issue, and re-explore the whole Christian teaching, including the Scriptures, theology, church and mission, with this in mind.

We have all benefited from or been challenged by such insights. I have spent five years reading the Scriptures over the shoulder of an Indian woman’s reformer for example, and it has transformed my understanding of the Bible, of church, of theological training and mission. Child theology takes as its starting point the action and teaching of Jesus when he placed a little child among his disciples and taught them uncompromisingly about the nature of the kingdom of heaven, about becoming like a child, about receiving a child, about the dire punishment that was merited by child abuse.

It is a journey of discovery that is continuing worldwide. It has many facets and implications but the one I would like to leave with you today is that of the connection and integration that it is making possible between a variety of different discourses. Here are some examples.

The much-needed link between educational theories of child learning and development and Christian insights and perspectives is now being explored on a global scale. (It has been going on for decades in particular areas and denominations.)

One of the most exciting manifestations is the whole approach to learning called, Godly Play, pioneered by Jerome Berryman. (The UK centre at Cambridge is headed presently by Rebecca Nye, whose book (written with David Hay), The Spirit of the Child, I have quoted at previous annual gatherings of CCCF.) Once you have encountered it you know that we have been missing something vital in our approach to Sunday School, children’s church, and education as a whole.

There is a rich heritage of learning and research underpinning this work, and there will be a conference in Houston Texas this May to reflect together from across the world. The 14,000 Christian nurseries and mother and toddler groups may not know it, but this is what they have been longing for. Churches do not realise it; families likewise. But it is coming. It starts by taking Jesus seriously and putting the little child in the midst. The result thus far is worship, learning and story-telling of the highest order and quality.

Then there is the glimpse of the possibility of an integration of professional and Christian concepts and perspectives in child development. Jo Wright and I have begun to do some work on this, and you will find the preliminary findings in Celebrating Children. What I have been doing over a period of twenty or so years, while engaged in caring for children and young people, is to summarise and crystallise the essential insights of child care theorists such as Piaget, Erikson, Klein, Winnicott, Rutter and many others with a view to seeing what they had in common.

I was looking, as Kellmer Pringle had in her book, The Needs of Children, at the common elements and threads running through quite distinctive and in certain respects contradictory accounts of child development, cognitive, emotional, physical, social and spiritual. At the same time I trawled the Scriptures looking for the core elements of a biblical understanding of what was required for children and human beings to thrive.

I was little short of thrilled to discover that the two sources of knowledge (or “truth”, if you will) revealed an agreed subtext. There were five basic needs that had to be met, conditions that must be fulfilled, if any child was to realise the potential to love and be loved that is the reflection of the divine image. Likewise they needed to be met in carers, lest the carer fell into the trap of meeting his or her own needs at the expense of the child.

These basic needs are for:

- Security (a secure base),
- Significance (at least one significant other unconditionally committed to the child,
- Boundaries (consistent and reliable physical and moral example),
- Community (relationships beyond immediate nuclear and extended family),
- Creativity (to play, make, shape, dance, laugh and all the rest).

The beauty of this short list is that it encapsulates most of what we know and believe about good-enough parenting or substitute parenting, it is applicable to all types of setting, cultures and environments, it provides a bridge between Christian and professional perspectives, and it is a framework that can be used to assess any initiative aimed at helping children. Jo Wright has shown how this can be integrated with work that builds on children’s resilience and a HESED model of releasing the potential of children. You will find all this, in a raw and pioneering form in Celebrating Children.

There is, as we heard last year at the Forum and represented by some here today, much progress in the area of the spirituality of children and young people. Once again, what is happening indicates how professional, secular perspectives and faith-based understandings can enter into constructive dialogue. The Government is funding projects and programmes designed and run by Christians because it is aware that without addressing the spirituality of children they are sold desperately short.

The campaign for a national commission is launched out of a conviction that we now have the theological potential to contribute to a fundamental and radical review of the society we are creating for children that is fully alert to the substantive issues of the day, professional insights, economic and political realities, and yet connecting these with the faith base on which we have built our lives and organisations.

At last it is conceivable that something like Faith in the City can be produced, a call of both church and nation to action on behalf of the present and yet to be born children of our nation. It will be a review of substance and excellence drawing together the many different strands that go to make a child-friendly or unfriendly social and physical environment.

A few years ago this would not have been possible. We did not have the theological muscle to engage in the task. Now the time is ripe. Those of us who have read Chapter Two of Lost Ikons, by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, know that he has seen deeply into the current dilemmas we are encountering as we try to understand childhood in a changing world.

I have tried, with I fear, much untidiness and many loose ends, and non-sequiturs, to sketch just some of the potential treasure that we as Christians, are heirs to. The simple division of the paper into three parts: the biblical heritage; our current practical resources; and the growing reality and potential of Child Theology as it works at the interfaces of several child-related discourses and debates, may provide a practical resource for further reflection and work.

As I have pondered all this I have glimpsed again the glories of inheritance in Christ, and just how earthen we have been as individuals, parents, churches and organisations, what poor containers of His grace and glory. But I like you am immeasurably heartened when I am reminded that God has chosen the weak and lowly things of this world to be part of His redeeming mission. And I am beginning to have a dream that is not a million miles away from that of Martin Luther King’s. A dream of little black and white children walking hand in hand, boys and girls, parents and friends, old and young, taking pleasure from each other’s company, laughing and playing together, at peace with the natural world, caring for and enjoying God’s world. When children are judged by the content of their character not the designer label on their clothes. When they will grasp real rock as they clamber and climb, swim in fresh water rivers and streams, sail with the wind in their faces, no longer lured into believing that computer simulated copies will even begin to be substitutes.

It is a pale shadow of the biblical visions, but it is a start. And today we have taken the first faltering step towards making such dreams come true, and refusing to let the more soulless forces of our contemporary world squeeze children into their deforming moulds, and the more sinister forces continue to sacrifice them on the altars of their gods.