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Adult Anxieties and Generational Blind Spots: Re-centring Childhood in the Sociology of Religion

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Negotiating Religion and Non-religion in Childhood

Part of the book series: Studies in Childhood and Youth ((SCY))

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Abstract

Chapter 2 sets out the theoretical approach the book develops for the study of childhood and religion. This chapter begins by considering the constructions of childhood in relation to religion and secularity, noting how children serve as both sites of moral anxieties for the future and of wider concerns about religion in public life more broadly. This chapter goes on to explore the scholarly omission of childhood from the study of religion, revealing how the neglect of children from our analysis of the social world and its structures, including religion, misrepresents and distorts our understandings of social reality.

Drawing on the work from childhood studies and the sociology of childhood, the author presents a framework to analyse children’s engagement with both religion and non-religion that attends to their agency and meaning-making. Current debates on collective worship focus on the appropriateness and justification of collective worship in contemporary society but fail to address the everyday lived realities of collective worship in schools and disenfranchises the perspectives and experiences of those who are at the centre of this discussion: children.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All participants and schools have been anonymised and names replaced with pseudonyms.

  2. 2.

    Just as we listen to the lives of adults for the purpose of understanding their experiences as they are, we should do the same with children. An eight-year old’s experiences of religion are just as genuine and legitimate and should not be viewed as being ill-formed, immature and only of use to researchers with regards to measuring religious growth/decline and generational transmission. Otherwise, much can be missed about the nature of social reality and specifically, religion in social life.

  3. 3.

    This is one of the issues with Smith with Denton’s (2005) research on American teenage religiosity which measures and evaluates young people’s experiences against the researcher’s own understandings. This, at times, resulted in the authors deeming some of the young people’s reflections, beliefs and opinions as ill-informed or lacking in understanding and knowledge.

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    Rachael Shillitoe

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Shillitoe, R. (2023). Adult Anxieties and Generational Blind Spots: Re-centring Childhood in the Sociology of Religion. In: Negotiating Religion and Non-religion in Childhood. Studies in Childhood and Youth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39860-5_2

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