Children and Childhood in World Religions
Children and Childhood in World Religions
Primary Sources and Texts
Each of six chapters, edited by world-class scholars, focuses on one religious tradition and includes an introduction and a selection of primary texts ranging from legal to liturgical and from the ancient to the contemporary. Through both the scholarly introductions and the primary sources, this comprehensive volume addresses a range of topics, from the sanctity of birth to a child's relationship to evil, showing that issues regarding children are central to understanding world religions and raising significant questions about our own conceptions of children today.
All of the world's religious traditions speak about childhood and children, yet surprisingly, childhood has not always been a central focus for scholarly reflection on religion. This volume seeks to redress this oversight by presenting primary sources from six of the world's major religious traditions. This is an interesting work on an important topic that has not received sufficient attention. Recommended.
Children and Childhood in World Religions provides us with key primary sources from the great religious texts together with helpful scholarly introductions. The book offers an important supplement to the study of world religions on the topic of children and childhood—a dimension of human religious formation too often overlooked.
DON S. BROWNING was a professor emeritus at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Christian Ethics and Moral Psychologies and coeditor of American Religions and the Family: How Faith Traditions Cope with Modernization and Democracy. With Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Browning also edited Children and Childhood in American Religions.
MARCIA J. BUNGE is professor of theology and humanities at Valparaiso University and director of the Child in Religion and Ethics Project. She is the editor of The Child inChristian Thought and coeditor of The Child in the Bible.
Introduction, by Marcia J. Bunge and Don S. Browning
Judaism, by Elisheva Baumgarten
Christianity, by Marcia J. Bunge and John Wall
Islam, by Avner Giladi
Hinduism, by Laurie L. Patton
Buddhism, by Alan Cole
Confucianism, by Yiqun Zhou
Notes on Contributors
Index
