BECOMING LIKE CHILDREN OF GOD WHILE RAISING THEM: SEEKING HARMONY IN A POST-CHRISTIAN SOCIETY
BECOMING LIKE CHILDREN OF GOD WHILE RAISING THEM: SEEKING HARMONY IN A POST-CHRISTIAN SOCIETY

Summary/Abstract: Should Christians seek harmony with their secular environment ? Education presents a test case: Children must learn to function in a post- Christian life-world, while also rooting themselves in the Church. This essay examines the groundwork provided in the Christian home: Mothers are calledto raise children who will remain in the faith. They are also placed under Christ’s enjoinder that all should become like children. Such a double task, so it is argued, imposes on mothers an ‘ecclesial’ self-understanding. The liberal, individualist mainstream in Europe opposes such a communal vision. Itencourages catering to a robustly non-Christ-oriented child in oneself. Idolizing fallen nature, that mainstream subjects religious education to a hermeneutic of suspicion. Such a cultural setting recalls would-be children of God to the need of combining the guilelessness of doves with the shrewdness ofserpents. Christian mothers need to develop strategies for defending their own struggles and for protecting their educational goals and methods. The Church can support such holy work by avoiding to either draft or tempt mothers into employment. She must present her public teaching in ways that provide helpful guidance while not provoking secular worries. In either case, the indispensablepursuit of harmony with those outside the Church must be carefully circumscribed in order not to compromise the integrity of a Christian education.

• Details
• Contents