Children's Spirituality Summit 2024

Over the last couple of decades, scholars, researchers, and a growing number of people who work with children (including those of us working with them in church contexts) have been discussing the contributions of children that come from empowering their agency. Child participation is the watchword, and we are all reminding each other about the contributions children and youth have the ability to make if they are offered the opportunity to do so. While this change has been taking place slowly in many North American churches, consulting with children on decisions that affect them is seen as an essential human right among those working with chlidren-at-risk globally thanks to the near-universal ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (the US is the only UN-participating country that has not ratified the UNCRC, but that's a discussion for another day).
While this is all very important, in this presentation I'd like to draw our attention to another dimension of children's contributions that can get overlooked when we are focused so heavily on facilitating child participation, as important as it is. Instead, I'd like to propose that this other dimension refers to the non-agentic or minimally-agentic contributions children - at any age - are able to make not just to their families and churches, but also to their societies, simply by being children. I call this dimension "contributionality." Children - all children, regardless of age, disability, or developmental capacity - offer gifts of their presence, choices, and actions to the people around them that can be revelatory in many different ways, and will help us to see them more comprehensively as partners in our shared journeys of faith.
My growing awareness of this role that all children play is important because it more directly informs our practical understanding of human dignity, as well as to our theology of the same.This budding idea of contributionality paves the way for a truly public theology that makes this case and helps all communities see that working for the protection and care of children in their midst should not be primarily grounded in altruism. It should be seen as a necessary and appropriate response to the generosity that has been first given to them, just like the gift that Jesus was to all of humanity.