146 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 29.

Biblical Studies and Childhood Studies: A Fertile,

Interdisciplinary Space for Feminists
Kathleen Gallagher Elkins

Don’t you know about people this first and most crucial fact: every single
one is, and is painfully every moment aware of it, still a child. To get be-
yond the age of about eight is not permitted to this primate. . . . It’s some-
thing people don’t discuss, because it’s something most people are aware
of only as a general crisis of sense of inadequacy, or helpless dependence,
or pointless loneliness, or a sense of not having a strong enough ego to
meet and master inner storms that come from an unexpected angle. . . .
At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the
whole world of the person’s childhood is being carefully held like a glass
of water bulging above the brim. And in fact, that child is the only real
thing in them. It’s their humanity, their real individuality, the one that
can’t understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die,
in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That’s the carrier
of all the living qualities. It’s the centre of all the possible magic and
revelation.
—Ted Hughes

In a letter to his adult son, poet Ted Hughes asserts that every adult is, in
some important respects, still a child; in the same way, an academic field, like
feminist studies in religion, remains shaped by its own childhood even as it has
grown and come of age. From its infancy, feminist biblical studies has been an
interdisciplinary field—even though certain narratives about the development
of feminist studies in religion suggest that interdisciplinarity came later, these
are fields that by necessity and by definition have been interdisciplinary (even if
there have also been learning curves and missteps along the way). Intentional,
committed, and sustained interdisciplinary conversation is a strategy to resist

 Ted Hughes, “To Nicholas Hughes,” in Letters of Ted Hughes, ed. Christopher Reid (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 512–15.
 Roundtable: The Future of Feminist Biblical Studies 147

being harshly “disciplined” (a problem named by our panel’s organizers) as fem-

inist biblical scholars and to more robustly participate in struggles for justice.
By continuing an intentional commitment to interdisciplinarity, feminist
biblical studies can move into its future in a way that renews and sustains femi-
nist connections and collaborations. The specific example I suggest here is in-
terdisciplinary conversation with the emerging field of childhood and children’s
studies. Multiple other examples could be added, of course, but as fields of
study, childhood and feminist studies are both interdisciplinary and attempt to
creatively bridge the divide between academic inquiry and advocacy or justice
work. I briefly introduce the field of childhood studies, especially as it intersects
with biblical studies, and then discuss where I see the most helpful questions,
practices, and issues for feminist biblical scholars to engage. These kinds of con-
versations and coalitions—with scholar-activists in childhood studies who are
also engaged in justice work—can reframe and rejuvenate key feminist conver-
sations about issues like family, agency, interdependence, obligations to others
and self, rights, and growth.
Childhood studies emerged as an area of academic inquiry in the early
1980s; there were precursors to this emergence, of course, as childhood had
always been an important feature of psychological theories and educational
fields. But the field itself began to develop more robustly in the wake of a few
key developments: the publication of Philippe Ariès’s foundational book in 1960
on the history of childhood in the West, the institutionalization of feminist stud-
ies in the academy, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child in 1989. These factors, among others, enabled childhood and children’s
studies to coalesce and mature into a distinct field, complete with academic
journals, conferences, and departments in universities. For their part, biblical
scholars have been slow to address issues of childhood and children related to
the biblical text, even though, as Marcia J. Bunge notes,
The Bible is teeming with direct references to children, childhood,
and adult-child relationships. Biblical passages refer to the conception,
birth, and naming of children. They give accounts of childhoods, sibling
relationships, and children’s birth order. . . . Biblical texts also often refer
indirectly or metaphorically to children and childhood. . . . Although
the biblical texts are flooded with both direct and indirect references to
children and childhood, biblical scholars have generally neglected these
themes. . . . Until recently, most of the literature that has addressed rela-

 Jens Qvortrup, William A. Corsaro, and Michael-Sebastian Honig, “Why Social Studies of
Childhood? An Introduction to the Handbook,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies,
ed. Jens Qvortrup, William A. Corsaro, and Michael-Sebastian Honig (New York: Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2009), 1–4.
 Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Bal-
dick (New York: Knopf, 1960); and Qvortrup, Corsaro, and Honig, “Why Social Studies of Child-
hood?” 2−4 .
148 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 29.2

tionships between biblical texts and children has been written primarily
by scholars in the areas of religious education or children’s ministry.

The field of biblical studies has begun to take seriously the insights from
scholars of childhood studies in order to ask about the presence of children in
the biblical text, as well as the influence of the Bible in children’s lives. In 2008,
the Society of Biblical Literature added a program unit called “Children in the
Biblical World,” which was a move toward institutionalizing the relationship
between childhood studies and biblical studies.
Two key concepts in recent work on childhood and children’s studies are
the notions of children’s rights and children’s agency. Recent sociological and
psychological work on childhood trauma has also emphasized the resilience of
children, even those that experience unspeakable trauma in their earliest years.
A picture of childhood that emphasizes agency, self-determination, ability, and
resilience strikingly contrasts with many of the glib portrayals of childhood from
New Testament commentaries, which are often bleak and simplistic (commen-
taries on Mark’s blessing of the children scene, for example, describe ancient
children as “social nobodies,” “nonpersons with no ‘rights,’” “the lowest order
in the social scale,” and “least important member[s] of society”). This is not
to suggest that children were necessarily thought of as resilient agents in antiq-
uity—just that other, more positive definitions of “the child” exist that may be
drawn upon for discussions of children in the biblical world. Here, I consider
two specific examples: Alice Miller’s work on “the mutilated soul” of abused
children and studies of child soldiers. I have chosen these examples to illustrate
the tension and overlap between children’s rights and children’s agency/auton-
omy: children’s rights advocates sometimes neglect to mention children’s resil-
ience and agency, while those who describe children’s autonomy may overlook
children’s vulnerability and dependency.
Swiss psychologist Alice Miller is famous for her work on childhood neglect
and abuse. As Donald Capps shows, her work intersects in important ways with
the religious roots of child abuse: she considers, for example, the Akedah in
Genesis 22, the religiocultural mandate to break a child’s will when disciplining

 Marcia J. Bunge, “Introduction,” in The Child in the Bible, ed. Marcia J. Bunge, Terence E.
Fretheim, and Beverly Roberts Gaventa (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), xiv–xv.
 The American Academy of Religion added “Childhood Studies and Religion Consultation”
in 2002.
 John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark, Sacra Pagina 2 (College­
ville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 301.
 M. Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox,
2006), 281.
 R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans, 2002), 374.
 Ibid., 395.
 Roundtable: The Future of Feminist Biblical Studies 149

(for the child’s own good, as one of her titles suggests10), and the harm caused
by the commandment to honor one’s parents.11 Her 2005 book, The Body Never
Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting, considers the (bodily) effects
of this commandment: “Individuals abused in childhood can attempt to obey
the Fourth Commandment only by recourse to a massive repression and de-
tachment of their true emotions.”12 She considers various examples of famous
people, tormented by their parents in childhood, who experienced severe ill-
nesses later in life; she hopes for a time when “the power of the Fourth Com-
mandment will wane in favor of appropriate respect for vital biological needs
of the body, including truth, loyalty to oneself and one’s perceptions, feelings,
and insights.”13
Miller is profoundly optimistic about the possibility that parents will re-
ject the “poisonous pedagogies” that they learned from their own parents in
favor of support and love for their children. But her rejection of traditional
morality and especially the commandment to honor one’s parents is challeng-
ing, even to those who care about children’s rights. Deuteronomy and Exodus
promise long life in the land for those who keep this commandment (Deut
5:16; Exod 20:12); Jesus indicates that honoring one’s parents is one of the
commandments that will result in inheriting eternal life (Mark 10:17−19 and
parallels). If Alice Miller is correct, keeping this commandment can lead to
depression, suicide, premature death, and various forms of severe physical
illness. In his consideration of children in Luke 11:11−13,14 John T. Carroll
insightfully notes,
For all the challenge Jesus’ vision and communal embodiment of the
reign of God pose to the household, he also assumes . . . as the normal
pattern that parents express love for their children by providing them
with what they need. It would be foolish and potentially even harmful,
however, for readers to make such an assumption today. Parents do often
harm, do often seek what hurts rather than nourishes and nurtures their
children. The “evil” in human parents, which Jesus does recognize (e.g.,

10 Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Vio-
lence (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983).
11 Donald Capps, The Child’s Song: The Religious Abuse of Children (Louisville, KY: West-
minster John Knox, 1995).
12 Note that in the Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, and Jewish traditions, the Fifth Command-
ment is “Honor your father and mother” (Exod 20:12; Deut 5:16); in the Roman Catholic and Lu-
theran traditions, this is the Fourth Commandment. See Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies: The
Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting, trans. Andrew Jenkins (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 14.
13 Ibid., 204.
14 “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a
fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give
good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask him!”
150 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 29.2

11:13), sometimes—whether intentionally or unwittingly—delivers

snake or scorpion, not nourishing egg or fish, to a dependent child.15

Miller’s work on child abuse focuses on the inherent vulnerability of children

and advocates for supportive, loving parenting practices. While her arguments
are important (both for children and for adults who have survived child abuse),
does her focus on child abuse assume a too-vulnerable image of children? Re-
search on child soldiers challenges any picture of childhood that assumes too
much vulnerability, at the expense of acknowledging children’s resilience.
The existence of child soldiers challenges fundamental assumptions about
childhood, especially regarding innocence and vulnerability. David M. Rosen
shows that the image of a “child soldier as an abused and exploited victim of
war is a radically new concept,” and presents a more nuanced picture of child
soldiers.16 He deliberately challenges the “humanitarian view” of child soldiers,
which argues that “vulnerable children become soldiers [only] because they
are manipulated by unscrupulous adults.”17 He focuses on three twentieth- and
twenty-first century examples that complicate the humanitarian view: Jewish
child partisans in World War II, Palestinian children and youth since the Bal-
four Declaration of 1917, and child soldiers in the civil war of Sierra Leone
(1991–2002). He shows that more complex assessments of both war and child-
hood are needed in order to properly deal with the “crisis” of child soldiers.18
His emphasis on children who deliberately choose political involvement (includ-
ing violent involvement) stresses the “agency, autonomy, and independence” of
these young people, rather than their “vulnerability and dependence.”19
Miller emphasizes children’s vulnerability, while Rosen shows their agency
and autonomy; scholars in childhood and children’s studies thus hold seemingly
contradictory values in tension, in a way that attempts to promote the well-
being of all children. Children are dependent on their parents and other adults
for care and nurture. Yet children, even those that have endured trauma, are
remarkably resilient.20 Their resilience should nuance any attempts to describe
children as only vulnerable. The glib portrayals of children as innocent nobod-
ies that fill most biblical commentaries thus ring hollow; to take one example,
in Mark 10:15, Jesus famously tells his disciples, “whoever does not receive
the reign of God as a little child will never enter it.” He uses children as stock
characters to make a theological point (for adults) without asking the children
15 John T. Carroll, “‘What Then Will This Child Become?’ Perspectives on Children in the
Gospel of Luke,” in Bunge, Fretheim, and Gaventa, The Child in the Bible, 193.
16 David M. Rosen, Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism (New Bruns-
wick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 6.
17
Ibid., 1.
18 Ibid., 157–58.
19 Ibid., 134.
20 Lenore Terr, Too Scared to Cry: Psychic Trauma in Childhood (New York: Harper &
Row, 1990).
 Roundtable: The Future of Feminist Biblical Studies 151

themselves about their experience of childhood or what it means to welcome

the basileia of God as a child. He does not engage their views or experience
of God. What if one of the little children had interrupted Jesus’s rebuke of
the disciples?21 What would that child say about being a little child or receiv-
ing the basileia? What if interpreters allow the presence of those children to
“reconfigure what is at stake in the biblical text”?22 Attention to children in the
biblical text can also enrich understandings of childhood (ancient and modern)
and provoke fruitful discussion of what it means to create a world that nurtures
children and their caregivers.
Acknowledging that children are both vulnerable and resilient is one step
toward remembering that “children” does not indicate one homogeneous group,
but includes young people in a variety of social locations who are all affected
by their race, class, gender, sexuality, and so on.23 Feminists have helpfully nu-
anced conversations about childhood, especially noting that any fetishization
of childhood tends toward an implicitly conservative agenda, one that may ask
mothers and other female caregivers to put their children’s lives ahead of their
own in all circumstances.
Biblical scholars have recently begun to engage the still nascent conversa-
tions about childhood and children. According to O. M. Bakke, New Testament
studies is perhaps the only traditional theological discipline that has not system-
atically neglected the theme of childhood.24 Jesus’s interactions with children
have indeed been a focus in commentaries and even monographs,25 but contri-
butions from the emerging field of childhood and children’s studies show that
even New Testament scholars have often discussed children and childhood as a
means to other ends: to continue the debate about whether infant baptism was
practiced in the early church,26 for example, or in order to show the purported
“difference” that Christianity made in the lives of children (improving on either

21 For interruption as a reading strategy, see Danna Nolan Fewell, The Children of Israel:
Reading the Bible for the Sake of Our Children (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2003), 32–36.
22 Ibid., 24.
23 For a consideration of “the child” as queer, see Kathryn Bond Stockton, The Queer Child, or
Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
24 O. M. Bakke, When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), 3.
25 Bakke cites some of the earliest examples: Simon Legasse, Jesus et L’Enfant: “Enfant,”
“Petits,” et “Simples” dans la Tradition Synoptique (Paris: Lecoffre, 1969); H. H. Schroeder, Eltern
und Kinder in der Verkundigung Jesus: Eine hermeneutische und exegetische Untersuchung, The-
ologische Forschung 53 (Hamburg: Reich. Evang. Verl., 1972); and Peter Muller, In der Mitte der
Gemeinde: Kinder im Neuen Testament (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1992). More have been
published in recent decades.
26 The famous debate between Joachim Jeremias and Kurt Aland “represents the weightiest
contribution to the question” of infant baptism in the early church (Bakke, When Children Became
People, 224).
152 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 29.2

Judaism or the Greco-Roman world generally—or both).27 In addition, it is dif-

ficult for many modern readers to consider the portrayals of Jesus and children
in the gospels without immediately imagining quaint pictures from children’s
Bibles and Sunday school rooms that depict (blonde, handsome) Jesus, gently
embracing a group of children.
The field of childhood and children’s studies has much to offer the field
of biblical studies and vice versa; biblical scholars have already begun to offer
critical reflections on the Bible and children. Indeed, since “prominent texts in
childhood studies have paid insufficient attention to religious studies . . . and
often do not include treatment of religion,” biblical scholars have the opportu-
nity and obligation to demonstrate the ways that the Bible has shaped cultural
perspectives on childhood and children.28 In addition, childhood studies has the
potential to continue the transformation of the biblical studies field begun by
scholars in feminist studies, African American studies, and postcolonial theory,
among others.
Scholarship on “childism,” whether that neologism is used or not, is a prom-
ising field of inquiry for feminist biblical scholars.29 John Wall defines “childism”
as “the effort to respond to the experiences of children by transforming under-
standing and practices for all,” analogous to other “-isms” that have expanded
and challenged social patterns and structures of knowledge. He continues,
Feminism, for example, has effectively challenged ethicists and others
to reimagine human life in terms such as care, relationality, embodi-
ment, and power. It is not only by and for women but also for the sake
of a changed society overall. Womanism has raised basic questions about
gender in relation to race. Environmentalism has called upon humanity
to reflect anew on its meaning and actions as part of a larger ecosystem. .
. . Childism calls for the same kind of profound ethical restructuring.30

In the same way that feminists aim to make social structures more just and
livable for women and men, scholars of childism attempt to use the experi-

27 Ibid., 11; and Cornelia B. Horn and John W. Martens, “Let the Little Children Come to Me”:
Childhood and Children in Early Christianity (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 2009), 214, 346–52.
28 Don S. Browning and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, “Introduction: Children and Childhood
in American Religions,” in Children and Childhood in American Religions, ed. Don S. Browning
and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 9.
29 I am using John Wall’s definition of “childism,” not the more recent definition offered
by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, which is in opposition to Wall’s; Young-Bruehl defines “childism” as
analogous to racism, anti-Semitism, and so on, as “prejudice against children.” See her Childism:
Confronting Prejudice against Children (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012). I thank
Julie Faith Parker for pointing me to Young-Bruehl’s work and for engaging conversations about
childism.
30 John Wall, Ethics in Light of Childhood (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
2010), 3.
 Roundtable: The Future of Feminist Biblical Studies 153

ences of children as a starting point for a more just world for people of all ages.
Feminist conversations on childism are especially fruitful, because women’s
flourishing is deeply connected to children’s flourishing, and vice versa; this is
not to suggest that women and children necessarily have to be lumped together,
in fact, “feminists in general have worked hard to undermine the ‘inexorable
tie between mothers and children.’”31 Yet, “children suffer from the same or
related social and cultural distortions of human rights and public policies that
women have encountered for decades.”32 There is a fraught (and, I would argue,
productive) tension between childism and feminism. Thus, feminist work on
childhood studies recognizes that an “avid interest in children and the recent
advent of childhood studies in theology [or religious studies more broadly] must
not come at the cost of women and women’s studies. Their welfare is intricately
interconnected.”33 Holding feminist studies and children’s studies together may
be a kind of strategic essentialism that results in a more livable world for all.
In some ways, then, the connections between the two fields of childhood
studies and feminist studies are clear and easy to draw. Scholars in childhood
studies encounter issues and themes similar to feminist scholars: questions of
agency, autonomy, rights, responsibility, and struggles for justice. But as in any
good relationship, there are productive tensions between feminist studies and
childhood studies that feminist biblical scholars can embrace, as an intentional
practice to energize the field of feminist biblical studies. How can scholars and
activists argue for children’s rights and welfare in a way that does not fetishize
childhood or demonize children’s caregivers (who are often predominantly fe-
male)? How can feminists prioritize women’s lives, voices, work, choices, and
so on in ways that also acknowledge children’s need for care and attention?
And why are men’s voices, lives, and responsibilities so frequently ignored in
conversations about childhood and parenting? These kinds of conversations
and coalitions—with scholar-activists in other disciplines who are also engaged
in justice work—can reframe and rejuvenate key feminist conversations about
issues such as family, agency, interdependence, obligation to others and self,
rights, and growth.

31 Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, “ ‘Let the Children Come’ Revisited: Contemporary Feminist

Theologians on Children,” in The Child in Christian Thought, ed. Marcia J. Bunge (Grand Rapids,
MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), 448. Her quotation comes from Ann Snitow, “Feminism and
Motherhood: An American Reading,” Feminist Review 40 (Spring 1992): 32−51, quotation on 36.
32 Miller-McLemore, “ ‘Let the Children Come’ Revisited,” 460.
33 Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, “Feminism, Children, and Mothering: Three Books and
Three Children Later,” Journal of Childhood and Religion 2, no. 1 (January 2011): 4, http://www
.childhoodandreligion.com/JCR/Volume_2_(2011)_files/Miller%20McLemore%20Jan%202011.pdf.
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