Saturday, May 26, 2007

Connecting the Christian Faith with Children (part 5)

5. Children through Church History

Throughout Church history, reflection on and exploration of the narratives and teachings of Scripture has led people to struggle with questions about the true standing of children before God. The theological debate on the nature of humanity has, at its heart, asked the question “are children by nature innocent, good beings, or are children by nature evil depraved beings?”[1]

Augustine (354-430)

Augustine’s reading of Romans 5.12 (‘All had sinned in Adam’) and his conviction that judgement applied even to infants has, for more than 1500 years, “formed and informed, transformed and deformed Christian attitudes toward children.”[2] Augustine argued that, “just as infants gain physical strength as they mature, so they assume greater accountability for their actions.”[3] But all are infected with ‘original sin’, and unbaptised infants are excluded from salvation.

Aquinas (1225-1274)

Thomas Aquinas followed Augustine with a notion of graded responsibility, claiming that “increasing age, grace and virtue order one’s passions and one’s actions, bringing one closer either to perfection or to damnation.”[4] By contrast, though, Aquinas was convinced of the “manifest actual innocence”[5] of those in the first stage of childhood: Infantia: “Babies or young children, lacking reason, are not intentional moral agents … they cannot be held accountable for anything. They are … incapable of actual sin.”[6] However, Aquinas held that, although such infants are “undeserving of damnation, since they are incapable of actual sin, they are also undeserving of salvation, since they still bear the stain of original sin.”[7] Hence, unbaptised infants are consigned to ‘limbo’, “denied intimate union with God but spared the physical, spiritual, and psychological pain of hell.”[8] (This is a doctrine held by the Roman Catholic Church until 2007.)

According to Aquinas, “a second stage of childhood begins with the dawning of rational thought.”[9] At about the age of seven, a child gains the capacity for “formal learning, moral accountability, sin and virtue.”[10] They can “desire and request baptism … receive the Eucharist, and … even make simple vows.”[11] Aquinas seems quite indulgent of the young, making allowances for them as “their minds, spirits and bodies continue to grow.”[12] But he “treats children past the age of puberty as adults in ecclesiastical and moral matters.”[13]

Luther (1483-1546)

Luther, too, recognised developmental stages, and a gradation of responsibility for sin, in the life of the child. Yet he also held “children up in their very neediness and simplicity as the model of faith.”[14]

In addition, Luther wrote a number of catechisms, which “initiated the young in the faith into the believing community’s vision of life … it gave them a clear point of orientation in the world. It provided for them a conceptual vocabulary …”[15] Luther’s catechisms were effective “in sustaining a distinctive piety.”[16]

Luther’s concern for children can be seen in his assertion that “attending to children’s physical welfare, their vocational prospects, their need to learn of God’s grace … human care and affection – this is an essential part of all Christian discipleship. ‘Indeed, for what purpose do we older folk exist, other than to care for, instruct, and bring up the young?’”[17]

Calvin (1509-1564)

John Calvin was another who viewed children as a “metaphor for the religious life of adult Christians,”[18] and his writings “bear witness to the importance of children in church and society.”[19] Adults in Reformation times “were not indifferent to but rather profoundly interested in – and often deeply affectionate toward – children.”[20] And it is clear that Calvin, too, was “intensely interested in children and child rearing.”[21] He was involved, “often quite personally, in the implementation of public policies that had important implications for children”[22] and, like other Protestant preachers, “did not use the doctrine of original sin to underscore the sinful character of children.”[23] While making it clear that children are not exempt from original sin, Calvin dwells less on their sinfulness, and “is more appreciative of the positive character of children … than some of his forebears … or successors.”[24]

Calvin, like his predecessors and contemporaries, held a developmental model of childhood, dividing it into “three stages, each lasting approximately seven years,”[25] and states that “the younger the child, the less he or she manifests the effects of sin.”[26] He argues, too, that “adult believers ought to imitate children’s natural simplicity but not their lack of understanding.”[27]

With the Psalmist (Psalm 8), Calvin views young children as “mature proclaimers of God’s goodness.”[28] And, arguing against “Anabaptists’ insistence that a personal faith precede the sacrament, he suggests that no one can prove that infants themselves do not believe.”[29]

“Calvin … held that the church had an obligation for a program of religious education in order to inspire and guide children to lives of piety,”[30] and he called “for a program of weekly catechetical instruction and for teaching young children to sing psalms so that they might help lead congregational singing.”[31] “Parents were required (and … reminded) to bring their children to lessons”[32] at noon on Sundays. Thus John Calvin was committed to the “spiritual nurture of children.”[33]

Menno Simons (1496-1561)

Menno Simons held a theory of ‘complex innocence’: he recognised the “absence of both faithfulness and sinfulness in children,”[34] but also considered their innocence to be tempered by “an inherited Adamic nature predisposed toward sinning.”[35] He “delineates between a nature predisposed toward sin and actual sinning … identifying only the latter as that for which believers have responsibility before God.”[36] And he further argued that “Christ’s grace is not only for those within the Christian fold but for all children.”[37]

Simons’ perspective “utterly obligated parents and the Christian community to nurture children ‘in the fear of God by teaching, admonishing and chastising them,’ serving also as models of an ‘irreproachable life,’ so that when their children come to the ‘years of discretion,’ they may ‘hear, believe and accept the most holy Gospel of Jesus Christ’.”[38] Yet, perhaps uniquely, Simons held a “concern for spiritual maturity that does not always coincide with chronological maturity.”[39]

Simons’ Anabaptist identity, and the Anabaptist rejection of infant baptism and practice of believer’s baptism, suggests much about his understanding of children. However, Simons’ believed strongly that “all children are covered by God’s grace, whether or not they have made commitment of faith, and that parents and the Christian community together are responsible for nurturing children toward voluntary commitments of faith and discipleship.”[40]

A.H.Franke (1663-1727)

The “German pietism of the early eighteenth century emphasized not only the renewal of the individual believer but also the need to live out this renewal in love of the neighbour.”[41] So it was that Franke, a Lutheran Pastor, became concerned about the large number of children “in tremendous need because of poverty, neglect, and poor educational opportunities.”[42]

Franke began to offer “religious instruction in his church, preaching about child rearing,”[43] and went on to plan (in 1695) “a large complex of charitable and educational institutions, including a school for poor children and an orphanage.”[44] This was unheard of at the time. But by the time of Franke’s death, his schools and orphanages had “served over two thousand boys and girls.”[45]

Franke is “an important example of someone who opened his eyes to the needs of children … and who tirelessly devoted his resources and energy to serving them.”[46]

John Wesley (1703-91)

“From the beginning of the Wesleyan movement at Oxford in the 1720s, children were one of the primary focuses of concern, primarily children of the poor.”[47] The care and education of children, as well as the establishment of schools, was central to Wesley’s activities, and his “educational program … involved changing the whole person – body, mind and spirit.”[48]

“Wesley took his work with children seriously. He was concerned enough about their intellectual and spiritual welfare that he also warned the Methodist preachers under his supervision either to spend regular time with the children in their societies or else to cease being Methodist preachers and go back to their trade.”[49]

“Occasionally revivals broke out among the children in the Methodist Societies.”[50] Certainly, “young people were often at the core of local revivals,”[51] and Wesley believed that “God begins His work in children.”[52] The transformed lives of the children then “became models for the adults.”[53] Wesley often pointed out that “to enter the kingdom of heaven, we must become as little children.”[54] He realised that “children had limits, that they should not bear the burden of being considered the same as adults. And yet he also knew that some children had a capacity for knowledge and love that exceeded that of some adults.”[55]

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

“Jonathan Edwards viewed children as both sinners and saints: they were indelibly tainted with original sin, and yet also capable of genuine faith … and he took seriously their religious thoughts and questions.”[56] He “clearly believed that children had distinct needs of their own,”[57] and that “their faith had to be carefully nurtured.”[58] And yet he also “thought it was possible for God to choose even the tiniest infants for salvation.”[59]

Edwards “spent much of his life ministering to children ... he watched them play, listened to their questions, and even held religious meetings for them … [gathering] them together to teach them the Gospel.”[60] Edwards also preached “sermons directed explicitly to children,”[61] and children’s sermons eventually became a “popular part of Protestant worship during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”[62]

Edwards also held up children as models for adult Christians, saying that they symbolised “some of the best Christian qualities.”[63] Edwards even “allowed children to be admitted into full communion … By passing the bread and wine to them, he treated them as full spiritual equals.”[64] And he managed to “create a Christian theology that [valued] children’s spiritual needs.[65]

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

Schliermacher demonstrated a “persistent interest in the subject of children” in much of his writing. “He saw children as naturally innocent, not encumbered with the supposed inheritance of original sin.”[66] But he did claim that the “evil influences of society … spoiled the natural goodness of children.”[67]

Schliermacher noted that, “in the Incarnation, childhood itself is affirmed as worthy by God.”[68] And a theme throughout his 1818 sermons on the Christian Household was “the wonderful blessing that children represent to the community of faith.”[69] He said that “adults need to recover a childlike ability to be present in the moment if they are to experience the full blessing of Christian faith,”[70] and that the church “neglects children at its own very significant peril.”[71]

Schleiermacher considered the education of children to be one of a pastor’s most important duties, and held such high expectations of the catechising pastor that he claimed that “when children who have been raised in church lose their faith in adulthood, it is often because they have received poor catechetical instruction.”[72] He “never believed the religious instruction of children was a task beneath him. He … [loved] the company of children, and he sought passionately to make the Christian faith accessible and attractive to them.”[73]

Horace Bushnell (1802-1876)

For Congregationalist Horace Bushnell, “a child could not be expected to have an adult faith.”[74] But Bushnell “emphasised the developmental nature of spiritual understanding,”[75] and stated that “Christ was ‘ a Saviour for infants, and children, and youth, as truly as for the adult age’.”[76] Bushnell advocated a special (non-voting) form of church membership for children, in which they were “not subject to church discipline but allowed full access to the Lord’s Supper.”[77] And he admitted that, “had he the chance to begin his career over, he would have preached first to children and only secondly to adults.”[78] He declared, “We call it coming down when we undertake the preaching to children; whereas it is coming up … to speak to the bright day-light creatures of trust and sweet affinities and easy conviction.”[79]

Karl Barth (1886-1968)

Barth spoke of children as “bearers of a promise of God’s grace.”[80] He considered them to be “needy beginners”[81] but ready to learn, “characteristically at play,”[82] and tuly free despite their limitations.[83] Thus, “young people are to be an example to the older in this ever fresh hearing of the divine command.”[84]

Karl Rahner (1904-1984)

Rahner argued that all “human persons – including children – are fundamentally oriented toward God,”[85] and spoke of the “unsurpassable value of childhood.”[86] He challenged the “Christian tendency to subordinate childhood to adult life,”[87] by showing how the child “is intended to be, right from the start, a partner of God.”[88] And he argued that “being a child has value in its own right.”[89]

Rahner reminds us that “for adults to attain the openness of children (which is what the kingdom of heaven requires), conversion is necessary.”[90] And he defines such openness as an “infinite openness to the infinite.”[91] Rahner’s theology reminds us “not only that our obligation is to nurture the children who are given to us and all that belongs to them as children, but that each one of us, again and again, must become that child we were in the beginning.”[92]

Rahner was bold to “address the pastoral needs of the young,”[93] although he did question whether “a catechism is the appropriate medium for the religious initiation of a child.”[94] It was one of Rahner’s contemporaries who observed that, often in Christian education, “instead of going in directly by the open doors of the child’s imagination and sense perception, we waste our time by knocking on the still bolted doors of his understanding and his judgement.”[95]

Feminist Theology

In contemporary times, some feminist theologians have pointed out how, in Western culture since the eighteenth century, “the movement of men out of the home and into the workplace had a powerful impact on … family life.”[96] Fathers began to have “less immediate involvement with domestic life and … children … In matters of education and spiritual formation, children had fewer male role models readily available.”[97]

But in the same period there has been little or no “developed teaching on children by the church itself.”[98] “Doctrines of human nature, salvation, and God remained amazingly adult-centred, forgetting that all people begin their lives as children and that many people spend a large proportion of their adult lives responsible for children in some way. [Such] theological neglect coincided with a broader societal neglect.”[99]

These feminists point to “the historical dilemma which assigns only to women the concern for ministries with women, children and youth.”[100] And they are particularly concerned for the “plight of children outside stable, two-parent families [where] children disappear into a market-driven society where the ultimate measures of value are utility and self-interest.”[101] In this society, the responsibilities of adults for children “assume paramount importance.”[102]

Much contemporary feminist theology “promotes the welfare of children”[103] and supports the “child’s claim as a worthy creation of God.”[104] They “invoke an eschatological image in which all are welcome to the table of God,”[105] and argue that “Christians are obliged to create a world in which ‘every child who wants might learn to dance’.”[106] We need to “be at the forefront of advocating … the protection of all children”[107] and calling for “justice for the ‘least of these’.”[108]

They point to the “utter vulnerability of children before the adults that create and shape their world,”[109] and believe that, while “children may harbour evil thoughts, … the depth and extent of their corrupt behaviour is in direct proportion to the actions of the adults in their midst.”[110] Sin is defined in “strikingly adult ways, as … leanings and control that most children have not yet acquired.”[111] And they claim that “sin is more something to which children fall victim than something they engage in as culprits.”[112]

[1] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.280
[2] Stortz, ‘Where or when was your servant innocent? Augustine on childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.79
[3] Stortz, ‘Where or when was your servant innocent? Augustine on childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.83
[4] Traina, ‘A Person in the Making: Thomas Aquinas on Children and Childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.111
[5] Traina, ‘A Person in the Making: Thomas Aquinas on Children and Childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.113
[6] Traina, ‘A Person in the Making: Thomas Aquinas on Children and Childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), pp.113-114
[7] Traina, ‘A Person in the Making: Thomas Aquinas on Children and Childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.114
[8] Traina, ‘A Person in the Making: Thomas Aquinas on Children and Childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), pp.114-115
[9] Traina, ‘A Person in the Making: Thomas Aquinas on Children and Childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.117
[10] Traina, ‘A Person in the Making: Thomas Aquinas on Children and Childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.117
[11] Traina, ‘A Person in the Making: Thomas Aquinas on Children and Childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.117
[12] Traina, ‘A Person in the Making: Thomas Aquinas on Children and Childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.119
[13] Traina, ‘A Person in the Making: Thomas Aquinas on Children and Childhood’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.119
[14] Strohl, ‘The Child in Luther;s Theology’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.144
[15] Strohl, ‘The Child in Luther;s Theology’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.149
[16] Strohl, ‘The Child in Luther;s Theology’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.149
[17] Strohl, ‘The Child in Luther;s Theology’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.159
[18] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.161
[19] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.161
[20] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), pp.162-3
[21] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.162
[22] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.163
[23] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.163
[24] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.169
[25] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.164
[26] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.165
[27] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.165
[28] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.166
[29] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.183
[30] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.186
[31] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.186
[32] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.187
[33] Pitkin, ‘“The Heritage of the Lord”: Children in the Theology of John Calvin’ , in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.193
[34] Miller, ‘Complex Innocence, Obligatory Nurturance, and Parental Vigilance: “The Child” in the Work of Menno Simons’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.194
[35] Miller, ‘Complex Innocence, Obligatory Nurturance, and Parental Vigilance: “The Child” in the Work of Menno Simons’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.194
[36] Miller, ‘Complex Innocence, Obligatory Nurturance, and Parental Vigilance: “The Child” in the Work of Menno Simons’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.201
[37] Miller, ‘Complex Innocence, Obligatory Nurturance, and Parental Vigilance: “The Child” in the Work of Menno Simons’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.203
[38] Miller, ‘Complex Innocence, Obligatory Nurturance, and Parental Vigilance: “The Child” in the Work of Menno Simons’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), pp. 194-195
[39] Miller, ‘Complex Innocence, Obligatory Nurturance, and Parental Vigilance: “The Child” in the Work of Menno Simons’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.204
[40] Miller, ‘Complex Innocence, Obligatory Nurturance, and Parental Vigilance: “The Child” in the Work of Menno Simons’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.195
[41] Bunge, ‘Education and the Child in Eighteenth-Century German Pietism: Perspectives from the Work of A. H. Franke’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.247
[42] Bunge, ‘Education and the Child in Eighteenth-Century German Pietism: Perspectives from the Work of A. H. Franke’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.252
[43] Bunge, ‘Education and the Child in Eighteenth-Century German Pietism: Perspectives from the Work of A. H. Franke’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.253
[44] Bunge, ‘Education and the Child in Eighteenth-Century German Pietism: Perspectives from the Work of A. H. Franke’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.247
[45] Bunge, ‘Education and the Child in Eighteenth-Century German Pietism: Perspectives from the Work of A. H. Franke’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.254
[46] Bunge, ‘Education and the Child in Eighteenth-Century German Pietism: Perspectives from the Work of A. H. Franke’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.278
[47] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.297
[48] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.292
[49] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.298
[50] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.295
[51] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.295
[52] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.296
[53] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.296
[54] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.296
[55] Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.298
[56] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.301
[57] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.302
[58] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.303
[59] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.311
[60] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.313
[61] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.313
[62] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.313
[63] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.312
[64] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.318
[65] Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.328
[66] DeVries, ‘“Be Converted and Become as Little Children”: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.334
[67] DeVries, ‘“Be Converted and Become as Little Children”: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.334
[68] DeVries, ‘“Be Converted and Become as Little Children”: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.338
[69] DeVries, ‘“Be Converted and Become as Little Children”: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.340
[70] DeVries, ‘“Be Converted and Become as Little Children”: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.348
[71] DeVries, ‘“Be Converted and Become as Little Children”: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.348
[72] DeVries, ‘“Be Converted and Become as Little Children”: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.346
[73] DeVries, ‘“Be Converted and Become as Little Children”: Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Religious Significance of Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.348
[74] Bendroth, ‘Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.355
[75] Bendroth, ‘Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.355
[76] Bendroth, ‘Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.355
[77] Bendroth, ‘Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.356
[78] Bendroth, ‘Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.359
[79] Bendroth, ‘Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.359
[80] Werpehowski, ‘Reading Karl Barth on Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.389
[81] Werpehowski, ‘Reading Karl Barth on Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.392
[82] Werpehowski, ‘Reading Karl Barth on Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.392
[83] Werpehowski, ‘Reading Karl Barth on Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.393
[84] Werpehowski, ‘Reading Karl Barth on Children’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.393
[85] Hinsdale, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.421
[86] Hinsdale, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.421
[87] Hinsdale, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.422
[88] Hinsdale, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.423
[89] Hinsdale, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.443
[90] Hinsdale, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.426
[91] See the title of Hinsdale’s paper, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), pp.406-445
[92] Hinsdale, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.445
[93] Hinsdale, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.439
[94] Hinsdale, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.438
[95] Hinsdale, ‘“Infinite Openness to the Infinite”: Karl Rahner’s Contribution to Modern Catholic Thought on the Child’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.434
[96] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.447
[97] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.447
[98] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.448 (italics in original)
[99] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), pp.472-473
[100] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.452
[101] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.456
[102] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.457
[103] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.459
[104] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.459
[105] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.459
[106] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.459
[107] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), pp.459-460
[108] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.460
[109] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.462
[110] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.462
[111] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.463
[112] Miller-McLemore, ‘“Let the Children Come” Revisited: Contemporary Feminist Theologians on Children, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.464

Connecting the Christian Faith with Children (part four)

4. Children in the Later New Testament

Where the Gospels are explicit about the place of children the rest of the New Testament is more implicit, but it seems clear that children were present and participated in worship “and there is no mention of them being excluded at any point.”[1] “There were no Sunday Schools, for Christian nurture took place within the home and the worshipping community.”[2]

“The letters to the Colossians and to the Ephesians are unique … because they contain injunctions addressed to children … the fact that children were spoken to and not merely talked about is very significant.”[3] “The expression ‘in the Lord’ which is used by Paul to describe the relation of the Christian to Christ is used of children, who are to obey their parents ‘ in the Lord’ (Ephesians 6.1) and it is continually ‘in the Lord’ that their upbringing is to take place (Ephesians 6.4). The very fact that children are addressed in the ethical sections of the letters along with fathers, mothers, masters and slaves shows that the children were thought of as an accepted part of the church … sharing fully in the life of the congregation.”[4] In other words, “the first Christians took children seriously.”[5]

All of this challenges us to rethink the place of children in the activities of God’s people today, and to “recapture in our own particular contexts the radicalness of Jesus’ teaching on children. Children are not only subordinate but also sharers with adults in the life of faith; they are not only to be formed but to be imitated; they are not only ignorant but capable of receiving spiritual insight; they are not ‘just’ children but representatives of Christ.”[6]

[1] Lake, Let the Children come to Communion (2006, SPCK), p.31
[2] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.50
[3] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.12
[4] Understanding Christian Nurture (1981, a report of the Consultative Group on Ministry among Children, British Council of Churches), quoted by Sutcliffe (ed.), Tuesday’s Child (2001, Christian Education Publications), p.158
[5] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.13
[6] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.60

Connecting the Christian Faith with Children (part three)

3. Children in the Gospels

The Incarnation of Christ perfectly illustrates all of this. The focus of our modern churches on the culmination of Jesus’ ministry, His death and resurrection, must not be allowed to obscure the “significance that the Bible attaches to His [birth and] childhood”[1]: “The central act of history in Christian terms was God’s unique intervention in coming into the world as a baby … When adult solutions and institutions could do no more, God revealed himself as a newborn infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. The Old Testament motif of God using a child when nothing and no one else was adequate to the task could hardly be more boldly expressed.”[2]

Jesus took up the theme of childhood in His own ministry, and “caring for children was a major part of Jesus’ [work],”[3] something which He “explicitly passed on to His community.”[4]

In the 1st Century world, “strongly influenced by Greek and Roman culture … children had little worth in themselves as individuals except for the continuation of their family line and national identity.”[5] Children “occupied the lowest run on the social ladder, and caring for children was a low-status activity.”[6]

In contrast to this, though, Jesus’ own approach to and relationship with children was very radical. He “did not see children as raw material to be shaped in preparation for life … [He] taught never to regard children on the basis of future worth, but to look at children as full human beings deserving of the care and concern of any adult as accepted members of the community … he reflected Old Testament perspectives but at the same time brought a new focus”[7] which revolved around “their worth both as members of their society and their relationship to God.”[8]

Jesus “held that children have a share in the kingdom of God” (Mark 10.14); “that the kingdom of God was to be received ‘as a child’” (Mark 10.15; Matthew 18.3; Luke 18.17; John 3.3,5); and He “placed special importance on receiving hospitably and with kindness the least important members of society, including the children.”[9]

Jesus redefined “care for children as a mark of greatness.”[10] In His teaching, we find that “what appeared to be an undistinguished activity – care for children, belonging to the domain of women, similarly marginalised people – becomes a prime way for all disciples to demonstrate the greatness that corresponds to the reign of God.”[11]

Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is “a realm of paradox”[12] one aspect of which is that where “children are normally expected to transform into adults … in the kingdom of God adults have to learn to become like children.”[13] And so Jesus “encouraged his followers to recognise, value and learn from the qualities and characteristics present in children.”[14]

In the Gospel tradition, then, children become “a metaphor of discipleship, a way of talking about God and the shared life of faith in the light of Christ.”[15] In the light of which Keith White argues that “the church’s centuries-old concern with issues of boundary, eligibility and membership finds little support in Scripture. Children are an unquestioned part of the Jewish community of faith … In the ministry of Jesus, they are always noticed, welcomed and accepted. What causes concern is anything that comes between them and him. Put another way, the biblical focus on children breaks down some of the compartments the church has built over the years.”[16]

Also, in some contemporary theology, the kingdom is described as both now and not yet. “There could not be a closer parallel with childhood, for there the tension between being and becoming finds its exact counterpart. No wonder Jesus was so insistent on the connection between the two, a connection whose potentially rich implications … theology has not even begun to explore.”[17]

However, precisely because “‘little ones’ are special objects of divine care and protection, … to despise and mistreat them is to put oneself at cross-purposes with the God of the weak and oppressed.”[18] When children were brought to Jesus for a blessing, the disciples tried to keep them away. But Jesus became angry, and suggested that preventing children from coming to him is a sin that “carries the severest punishment.”[19] This passage contains “one of only two references to Jesus’ anger in the New Testament … which fact suggests the seriousness of excluding children.”[20]

Jesus’ last words about children remind us again of Psalm 8. He declares that they are ordained for praise. Their very nature is “to praise God with their entire being … Their inclination, imagination and play will always transcend structures, institutions and boundaries. Were this not so, think how predictable the adult world would have become! Sadly, the image of ageing congregations and formal rites of worship provides an apt illustration of the way that adults turn everything into routine, beyond the possibility of change and renewal.”[21]

[1] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[2] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[3] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.10
[4] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.10
[5] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.37
[6] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.43
[7] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.37
[8] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.38
[9] from Barton, ‘Jesus – Friend of Little Children’, in Astley & Day (eds), The Contours of Christian Education (1992, MacCrimmons), quoted by Sutcliffe (ed.), Tuesday’s Child (2001, Christian Education Publications), pp.194-195
[10] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.43
[11] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.44
[12] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.11
[13] Francis & Astley, Children, Church and Christian Learning (2002, SPCK), p.11
[14] Dallow, Touching the Future: A handbook for church-based children’s leaders (2002, The Bible Reading Fellowship), p.40
[15] Barton, ‘Jesus – Friend of Little Children’, in Astley & Day (eds), The Contours of Christian Education (1992, MacCrimmons), quoted by Sutcliffe (ed.), Tuesday’s Child (2001, Christian Education Publications), p.195
[16] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[17] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[18] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.42
[19] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[20] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.37
[21] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)

Connecting the Christian Faith with Children (part two)

2. Children in the Old Testament

The first challenge to the way we connect our faith with children comes from the Bible. From the Old Testament we find that children are enormously significant both in the biblical narratives and in God¹s purposes.

Children had an accepted place within the people of Israel. “Throughout the Old Testament, children are seen as a gift from God and a sign of the covenant relationship with Him. … Children are a part of the family … They are involved in the ritual that expresses the Jewish identity … [they would] also have been seen as part of the covenant relationship with God that made the Jewish people unique. … Children are part of the family, the faith community, and are the hope of the future. They are not second-class; they are part of the whole.”[1]

As “members of God’s covenant with Israel … it was expected that [children] would assume covenantal responsibilities.”[2] Indeed, from Psalm 8.2 we learn that “it is infants and toddlers who are used by God to silence the foe … Calvin [in his commentary] works out the implications of this with typical vigour: if children are relegated to the background of politics, society or religious community, we run the risk of overlooking and thwarting God’s purposes.”[3]

Children are central to the Bible’s understanding of the kingdom of heaven. Isaiah provides a prime example in which a little child will lead the wild animals in peaceful coexistence.

And, again and again, in the narratives of the Old Testament, children are chosen and used by God as His instruments when the institutions and adults among His people had failed, and “it is notable not just that God used children as well as adults but that he did so at moments of extreme crisis.”[4]

[1] Lake, Let the Children come to Communion (2006, SPCK), pp.16-17
[2] Gundry-Volf, ‘The Least and the Greatest’, in Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought (2001, Eerdmans), p.35
[3] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)
[4] White, Small Matters (www.childtheology.org)

Connecting the Christian Faith with Children (part one)

The 'Connecting the Christian Faith with Children' project is going well, and I have begun to put some 'proper' thoughts on paper. I'll be presenting some this to the Yorkshire Baptist Association's Mission Executive in July, but here it is for your interest ...

In 1998, The English Church Attendance Survey “pointed to 1,000 under 15s leaving the church in England every week.”[1] Recent analysis of children in UK Baptist churches revealed that we have lost contact with about a third of the number we were in touch with in 2000 (about 36,000) in the space of five years. 30,000 children have left our churches in the last two years!

On 11th June 2006, the UK Baptist Churches were encouraged to take part in a national day of prayer and awareness, to get on our knees in search for God's guidance to address this worrying problem. Following that call to prayer, the Yorkshire Baptist Association has commissioned this research project: ‘Connecting the Christian Faith with Children’. For the first six months of a 2 year commissioned ministry, I have been working for three days a month: conducting a survey of the Yorkshire Baptist Churches, meeting key practitioners, doing background reading and trying to establish some biblical and theological principles for our work with children.

From the very beginning of the project, however, I have found myself more and more convinced that the answer is NOT simply to improve the way we currently do things.
As Mountstephen and Martin comment, “We may be providing such a poor experience of church in the form of Sunday School that by the time children reach the age of 10 (the most common leaving age) they are desperate to escape.”[2]

We can’t “fool ourselves into thinking that we can tinker with and amend adult structures and frameworks in order to make them child-friendly!”[3] It is true that “Children have little awareness of travelling time or the stress of preparing for the journey but they do travel with us and have a unique and dynamic understanding of God’s love … People often say that children are the church of the future. This is wrong. Children belong to the church of today, but will be adults in the church of tomorrow. How children experience their membership of the church now will form their participation in the church in the future.”[4]

Therefore, I suggest that in order to effectively connect the Christian faith with our children, we need to re-imagine the whole way we are and do church. My presentation, then, will try to survey the history and practice of what we do with children, identifying a number of challenges and suggesting some strategies for our churches.

[1] Mountstephen & Martin, The Body Beautiful (2004, Grove Books Ltd.), p.14
[2] Mountstephen & Martin, The Body Beautiful (2004, Grove Books Ltd.), p.15
[3] White, Child Theology is Born (www.childtheology.org)
[4] Lake, Let the Children come to Communion (2006, SPCK), p.x

baptism

I've been a bit busy - and it's half-term next week - so I haven't done much blogging and won't do much for a bit. Here's a thrilling piece of news, though: Thomas (8 years old) has decided to be baptised! I was baptised when I was just 9, and Claire and I are both over the moon.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Children's Work: where are the ministers?

Many of our ministers have little or no input into the planning of the children's work in their churches. Most never attend the children's groups, and they certainly never teach the children themselves.

I asked both the minister and the main children's worker to fill in a version of the survey form. But where they did that, it was frightening to see how many of their answers disagreed or even conflicted. Some of the ministers couldn't even tell me how many children's workers there are in their church (or they got the number wrong)!

It is fair, then, to draw the conclusion that many of our minister have, and show, very little interest in what goes on in Sunday School or their other children's groups. (Some have said to me that it is not their 'gifting'. To which I want to respond: 'What's your gifting got to do with it? Surely you have a responsibility ...?')

Many of the great figures of the Chrisian faith made the teaching of children a personal priority. Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Menno Simons, Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Schliermacher, Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, etc. (see the excellent set of essays in 'The Child in Christian Thought' edited by Marcia J. Bunge) all wrote about and all were involved in the Christian nurture of children. Charles Spurgeon once said (something like) he would rather have the letters SST (for Sunday School Teacher) after his name than a Ph.D. They all knew the importance of working with children.

I heard Ishmael speak at Spring Harvest a few weeks ago, and he talked about how most of our children's workers are gifted pastorally, and that our children have a desperate need for gifted Bible teachers.

So where are the ministers? How can we give children's ministry the same value and recognition as the other ministries in our churches? When will we realise that the children are just as (if not more!) important than the adults? They are the church of today without whom there will be no church of tomorrow!

Children's Work: what's the budget?

According to the responses to my survey of Yorkshire Baptist Churches, very few of our churches have a specific or realistic budget for their children's work. And, as we know, the budget of any organisation effectively reflects where its priorities lie!

The only churches with any sort of realistic budget were those who employ a youth or children's worker, and then they have to factor in salaries, etc. Most of the rest said that if the children's workers have a bill that needs to be paid, or materials need to be bought for the Sunday School, then the church will pay the bill.

But telling your workers to come cap-in-hand to ask for money is a very different sort of relationship than giving them an amount of money at the beginning of the year to be spent on the children! I think we need to do some work here!

Sorry it's been a while

Sorry I haven't posted for a while (nearly two weeks). Life here is busy and stressful at the moment.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Children's Work: what's the purpose?

I've been analysing some of the responses to the 'Connecting the Christian Faith with Children' survey, ready for a steering group meeting next week. I'll post here some of the trends and significant issues that have come up.

Bear in mind that any figures relate only to those churches that have responded to my questionnaire!

Only 9% of churches have any specific mission statement / purpose statement for their children's work! And the responses from the minister and children's workers in the same church often contradicted one another with regard to the purpose of the children's work.

When it came to the section of the form giving a list of options (Is the purpose of your children's work to: Teach children the Bible? Develop their faith? Instruct them in the faith and traditions of the church? Help them to see their daily lives in the light of the Gospel? Incorporate them into the worship life of the church? Arm them against the dangers of secular culture? Nurture their sense of spirituality? Nurture their personal and social development? Convert them to Christianity? Or something else?) many forms just had all of the options ticked.

Where both the minister and the children's worker had filled in a copy of the form, they had generally ticked a different set of things!

A significant number of churches didn't select 'arm them against the dangers of secular culture', or 'nurture their spirituality' as purpose statements. I wonder why?

A number also disliked the phrase 'convert them to Christianity' - some saying that this is God's work not ours, and others objecting on the grounds that it is too strong a phrase, preferring 'introduce them to Jesus'. Quite a number also added the item 'having fun' to the list.

It seems that we are totally confused about what the children's work / Sunday School / Junior Church is actually for. Very few of our churches have any clear idea of what is the purpose of their work with children. This all really concerns me.
cellphoneCell Phones