Anne Richards - Children in the Bible. A fresh approach

It is always refreshing to read a book that brings new things to the table, alongside valuing all that has gone before Anne Richards explores some fresh lines of thinking and understanding of the Scriptures in relation to children. Her five themes of calling, life and salvation, commissioning, healing and blessing take us into fresh ways of ensuring that children are seen as fully human and fully part of the people of God, even from the womb. Children in the Bible is not just for those concerned about children in society and the Church it is for all leaders who want to take being human seriously.

The Rt Revd Paul Butler, Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, and Childrens Advocate for the Church of England

This is a hugely important book. It is all too easy to assume that the Bibles treatment of children is either monochrome or overly sentimental. Here Anne Richards presents us with an altogether richer, deeper and broader picture in which children stand right at the heart of Gods vision for the world.

Dr Paula Gooder, writer and lecturer in biblical studies

An outstanding and undoubtedly fresh approach to what childhood suggests about God and what God suggests about childhood. Arising from thorough and original theological reflection on the surprisingly many ways in which childhood and children appear in the Scriptures, Anne Richards provides so much more than a book merely about children in the Bible. She calls us to discern the profundity of Gods purposes embedded in the universal human experience of being a child, and to consider what a theology of childhood means for relating to children today.

Dr Rebecca Nye, lecturer and researcher in childrens spirituality, and lead UK consultant of Godly Play

For Chris Corrigan,
and for JJ and Pip

First published in Great Britain in 2013

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

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Copyright Anne Richards 2013

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Extracts from the Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crowns Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

The publisher and author acknowledge with thanks permission to reproduce extracts from the following:

Extracts from The Five Books of Moses , The Wisdom Books and The Book of Psalms by Robert Alter are reproduced by kind permission of W. W. Norton & Company.

Every effort has been made to seek permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book. The publisher apologizes for those cases where permission might not have been sought and, if notified, will formally seek permission at the earliest opportunity.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780281066889

eBook ISBN 9780281066896

Typeset and eBook by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

Contents

Dr Anne Richards is National Adviser for mission theology, alternative spiritualities and new religious movements for the Archbishops Council of the Church of England. She is the convener of the Mission Theology Advisory Group, which provides churches with resources for spirituality, theology, reconciliation, evangelism and mission. Previously, she combined an academic life teaching literature in Oxford with working in a hospital, and she has long experience of working with and writing about children and young people. She is also a trustee of Godly Play UK and (with Peter Privett) co-edited Through the Eyes of a Child (Church House Publishing, 2009).

I am grateful to the Archbishops Council of the Church of England for a period of long service leave in 2012, which enabled me to pay concentrated attention to drafting this book. I have also been greatly helped in the production of this book by Tracey Messenger at SPCK and by Audrey Mann.

All the arguments and opinions expressed in this book are my own and I am solely responsible for any mistakes or omissions. However, many people have helped me form the ideas for this book and I want to acknowledge their friendship, guidance and wise advice.

I am thankful for the friendship and help of colleagues at the National Church Institutions and especially to successive National Advisers for childrens work. I have also had many fruitful conversations with diocesan childrens advisers. Thanks are also due to the trustees of Godly Play UK and those of their network who have given me insights into working with children, and to all my friends and colleagues in the Mission Theology Advisory Group.

Not least I want to pay tribute to all the children and young people Ive worked with over the years who have both challenged and inspired me in equal measure. But there are a few children whose stories especially find their way into these pages. So thanks and love are due especially to Jonathan and Philip, Eden, Jude, and Matthew and George.

A child asks God a hard question

In 2011, the journalist Alex Renton wrote an article about how his six-year-old daughter wanted to ask God who invented you? Renton himself did not feel able to help with the question, or indeed, how to go about asking God, so he sent the enquiry to various churches, including the Church of England at Lambeth Palace in London. A little while later, Lulu received a letter from Dr Rowan Williams, who was then Archbishop of Canterbury. It read:

Dear Lulu,

Your dad has sent on your letter and asked if I have any answers. Its a difficult one! But I think God might reply a bit like this

Dear Lulu Nobody invented me but lots of people discovered me and were quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they hadnt expected.

Then they invented ideas about me some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints specially in the life of Jesus to help them get closer to what Im really like.

But there was nothing and nobody around before me to invent me. Rather like somebody who writes a story in a book, I started making up the story of the world and eventually invented human beings like you who could ask me awkward questions!

And then hed send you lots of love and sign off.