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All Gods Children:

Theorizing Religious Child Abuse
Children present a special challenge in the study of religion. Aside from inherent
difficulties resulting from their physical and mental stage of development, the study of children
in religion is particularly tricky due to western cultural baggage. Adult ideas as to the nature of
childhood and what its like to be a child have complicated how academics deal with children.
Towards the end of the Victorian age, a radical new view of childhood took over in the West.
Children went from being considered miniature, though less intelligent, adults, to being their
own special being, qualitatively different from adults. Child rearing practices and juvenile law
has changed dramatically over the past couple centuries, and the implications of this change have
yet to be fully dealt with in cultural studies, particularly in religion.
This is not to say that there hasnt been plenty of good scholarship on children in religion.
Studies abound that show the positive effects of religious upbringings on children: it can provide
a moral compass, provide opportunities for positive social situations and activities and help them
through times of illness and loss. However, little scholarship has focused on the effect of
oppressive and abusive structures within religion on children, and the use of religious
justification for violation of childrens bodies and human rights.
For the purpose of this paper I will be defining religion as an imaginative framework for dealing
with the world, a framework that functions as a double edged sword in the lives of children. I
intend to explore some of the theoretical and methodological problems involved in studying

children and religion in general, as well as in relation to issues of abuse and oppression of
children through religious means. With the hope of illuminating these often neglected issues, I
will pose an obviously controversial question: can certain religious beliefs be inherently abusive
and oppressive force in the lives of children? To clarify, could it be that it is not simply a matter
of fringe, fundamentalists misconstruing their religions teachings to justify mistreatment of
children, but something intrinsic to religious structures and social realities that is inherently
damaging to children?
I pose this question not with the intention of painting all religion as poisonous or evil, or
even speaking of religion as an ontological sense. Nor do I wish to demonize or absolve any one
particular strain of American religion, but instead speak of a particular, but extremely common,
form of American Christian cultural consciousness. I wish to uncover some of the realities that
are often glossed over in the study of religious social systems and children with the hope of
adding depth to our understanding of how religion functions in their lives. My assumption here is
that religious abuse of children needs to be subjected to the same analysis as secular child abuse.
I will be concentrating specifically on American Christian culture, due to its influence on how
we study religion in the West. Finally, I would like to propose that some of the insights gained
from this line of questioning might help us to better understand the problems faced by religious
studies academics who deal with children. By examining the power dynamic involved in
childrens relationship to abusive religious parents and authority figures, perhaps we can avoid
replicating exploitive power relationships in academic representations of children.
The Child as an Object of Study
As Prout and James point out in their volume, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, The

immaturity of children is a biological fact of life, but the ways in which this immaturity is
understood and made meaningful is a fact of culture.1 The past century or so has seen some
dramatic changes in how children are constructed socially, culturally and religiously. A silent
minority, children are rarely spoken of as individuals, and only as signifiers. Childhood as a
social category is often divorced from actual children, who are seen purely as receptacles of adult
influence, and not constituted as individuals in their own right2. As Robert Orsi puts it in relation
to Catholicism, Vulnerable, physically and emotionally, the foci of tremendous cultural
attention and work, emptied (in the fantasies of others) of their own agency and capacity,
children... become the repositories of need and desire, including religious need and desire.3
In many ways, our modern emphasis on the sentimental value of children descends from the mid
19th centurys Cult of True Womanhood. By elevating the importance of children, women were
given a moral imperative to become professional homemakers and mothers.4 Elevating the value
of children meant that childhood had to be constructed in specific ways, however. At the turn of
the last century, child rearing philosophies swung back and forth, running the full gambit from
portraying children as naturally devious and marred by original sin whose wills had to be broken,
to total blank slates needing rational instruction on all matters, to being pure, innocent and
inherently good, needing careful rearing that protected them from the cynical world for as long
as possible.5 Modern popular understanding of childhood shows the influence of all three of these
models. Unifying these theories is the emphasis on the ability and duty of parents to control the
childs actions, experiences and environment, even their thoughts and emotions to a certain
degree.
Given how our society has constructed children, how should an academic approach the subject?

As Ann Hulbert demonstrated in her book Raising America, experts have come to be relied on
heavily in shaping the practices and beliefs of parents, lawmakers and educators concerning
children. Scholars who attempt to take up the task of defining childhood have to be aware of
the potential influence their ideas can have on the lived experiences of children. As John R.
Gillis points out, Indeed, we have to become aware of the way our cultural constructions, once
reified, blind rather than enlighten us to the true nature of our relations with children.6
Furthermore, our own experience as children unavoidably colors how we view the subject.
Children are, in this way, a true proximate other. Simply stated, Chris Jenks writes, The
child is familiar to us and yet strange, he or she is essentially of ourselves and yet appears to
display a systematically different order of being.7 However, this fact has often been taken to
mean that we, as adults, have the right and the ability to speak for and therefore have power over
a large minority of our population.
Power, in particular, is my underlying concern here. Adult academics have an extreme amount of
power when it comes to the study of children. Rarely are children allowed to speak for
themselves, especially to refute what is being said about them. While children tend to have more
of a voice in modern scholarship then they once had, basic assumptions about the incompetence
of children and their construction as mere reflections of the adults in their lives, still prevent
most scholars and readers from taking their voices seriously.
Whats at Stake for Religious Institutions and Parents
As we have seen, childhood has been conceived of in many ways by Western culture, but
primarily in ways that serve the interests of parents, religious authorities, and the larger society,
instead of the actual interests of the child. [This is most clearly seen through various models of

childhood discipline.] One main purpose of discipline is to train children to accept authority
without need for justification, as represented by the oft heard phrase, because I said so. This
training primes them for belonging to a religious institution, which necessitates that an individual
give up a certain amount of autonomy and energy to a social system that may never repay the
individual in any direct way. Religions are characterized by an appeal to superhuman power and
authority, requiring no tangible proof of their truth claims. Obedience training, then, prepares a
child to serve the needs of religious institutions as they grow.
Conceptions of childhood have also been used as a stage for the playing out of theological
dramas. From the moment of conception, children paradoxically exist in the Christian framework
as both the result of sinful action (sex) and a miraculous gift from God. But whether the child is
idealized as pure or innocent, or as seen as naturally evil or savage, the child becomes a signifier
for Christian understandings of the archetypal fall from grace and original sin. Popularized by
the writings of Rousseau, the innocent child represents the first moments of creation, and his
blissful ignorance to the world slowly becomes corrupted by knowledge of suffering and sin as
he grows. This conception of children encourages parents to shelter and protect their offspring
from the real world and delay its corrupting influence for as long as possible.8
While this view can obviously become problematic, particularly once a child reaches
adolescence, more troubling is the model of children as inherently rebellious. With original sin in
their veins right from the get go, the child is seen as naturally selfish and destructive, in need of
strict discipline in order to break its wayward will. In accordance with this view, It is ... the
responsibility of parents to break, or at least, so successfully challenge or frustrate childrens
natural will that they will then be able to respond to parental guidance and live in conformity

with the superior will of God. Weak or permissive parents who fail to carry out this
responsibility are abdicating their God-given obligations and are cheating their children of the
deep personal satisfactions that come from knowing God loves them and is proud to be their
heavenly father.9 Just as adult sin is purified though obedience to God, a child is saved from
their own sinful nature by the demands for unquestioned obedience from their parents. In either
scenario, however, the underlying issue is The fear that without [religious] instruction children
will be bereft and alienated on the deepest levels; in the story that adults tell about this exchange,
children need religion for their own benefit.10
Religious Abuse
Up to this point, I have discussed religion as it relates to the restrictive and self-serving nature of
religious conceptions of childhood, but from this vantage point, it is not a far leap into the realm
of abuse. I define religious abuse as that treatment of children which is emotionally or physically
damaging to a child, perpetrated through or justified by a religious understanding of reality. I am
less interested here in how religious ideas are used as justification of physical torment of children
as I am the possibility that certain religious ideas could be inherently traumatic to them.11 In my
research, however, I have found that these two different modes of abuse cannot be understood
separately from one another, and can often be traced to similar understandings of Christian
dogma.
Greg Morgenson introduces his book, A Most Accused Religion, by explaining:
Whether a divine reality exists or not, the psychological fact remains that we tend
to experience traumatic events as if they were in some sense divine. Just as God
has been described as transcendent and unknowable, a trauma is an event which
transcends our capacity to experience or reckon with it. Compared to the finite
nature of the traumatized soul, the traumatic event seems infinite, all-powerful
and wholly other.12

While Morgenson backs away from making any causal links between lived religion and trauma
in his book, I feel it is possible to make at least a few tentative connections.
The most notable feature of traumatic experiences is that they result in disassociation, a
psychological split that prevents adequate coping with the effects of the event. The mind is
overwhelmed, and therefore distances itself from the experience. Donald Capps finds the same
disassociation among his patients whom he describes as religiously abused, characterized by
an inability to cognitively relate to or critically evaluate religious ideas. He goes on to elaborate,
Such disassociation could be caused by other experiences, including physical
punishment inflicted for specifically religious reasons. However, I would suggest
that it might also have a more direct cause, that is, that religious ideas in
childhood are intrinsically traumatic, and therefore, among adults, religious ideas
continue to be accompanied by such dissociative features as repression,
compartmentalization, withdrawal of affect, and lack of confidence in ones own
perceptions and judgments.13
Following Morgensons lead, I would say that religious ideas may be experienced traumatically
because of the explicit characterization of God as an all-powerful, punishing, parental figure who
demands obedience and sacrifice. Children are encouraged to identify themselves as Gods
children, and at the same time often told to see violent parental discipline as a model for Gods
justice. While Christianity is not a monolithic reality and many interpretations exist, the
widespread theological belief that God requires his Son to be a sacrifice for the disobedience of
human kind, and regularly violently punishes his children for their sins throughout the Old
Testament and Revelations, leads me to believe that there could be something intrinsic to the
Christian conception of God that is experienced traumatically by children.14 Not only is God
often conceived of as being a violently authoritarian parent, but being beyond human

understanding. The human need for comprehension of suffering gives possibly threatening
religious ideas a distinctly traumatic quality. As Morgenson puts it, The soul-destroying
consequence of worshiping a God who is identical with our inability to understand Him is that
we then tend to propitiate, as if [traumatic experiences] too were completely transcending, events
that the soul might otherwise have been able to comprehend and absorb.15
This is the first purpose of power- to remove its own mechanisms from the realm of accessible
understanding for those upon whom it is perpetrated. For parents who abusively demand
unquestioning obedience, or at least wish to obscure the true reasons why they chose to
physically or emotionally lash out at their children, and a simple for your own good wont
suffice, religious justification provides the perfect means to preserve power, as well as
contributing significantly to the traumatic quality of the childs experience. This is expressly
because of the assumed ineffability and mysteriousness of God, and the impossibility of
verifying religious claims. Bruce Lincoln reminds us that religious discourse is precisely that
because of the unverifiable, transcendent nature of its claims to authority and truth, not simply
the content of those claims.16 While one might argue that theological ideas on their own do not
have agency and do not necessitate traumatic interpretation, I believe that the use of Christian
rhetoric to frame abusive or hurtful experiences, that arent necessarily traumatic, could actually
lead to them being so.
Though I have attempted to avoid straight up value judgments thus far, I would argue that is the
specifically traumatic quality of child abuse that renders pure punishment or physical and
emotional pain a pervasively negative and long lastingly damaging experience for a child. This is
not to say that secular abuse of children cannot be traumatic and damaging in the long term, but

that the particular quality of mystification and ineffability of religious claims are especially
conducive to the creation of trauma. Furthermore, it can circumvent a childs ability to cope with
possibly traumatic experiences. To support this idea, I turn again to Morgenson, who states, The
more we hold to be accounted for by an explanatory category which we do not understand, the
more we fail to grapple with the inherent mystery of the events themselves.17 The trauma
created by abuse is the lasting negative consequence of child mistreatment, and by framing
mistreatment in religious rhetoric, otherwise incidental experiences may become traumatic.
Religions Role in Preserving Power
As Talal Asad demonstrates with medieval monks, disciplining bodies has long been a tool of
Christian power.18 Discipline and punishment through the traumatic experience of physical pain
and mental torment could be construed as the quintessential experience of Western Christianity
through the ages. Therefore, it is entirely logical that it would be used to train childrens bodies
for a Christian adulthood characterized by submission and obedience to religious authority. It is a
given that Christian institutions depend upon children for their very survival. This fact is
amplified by the American culture of choice and competition among religious groups for
members. As Robert Wuthnow and Donald E. Miller have demonstrated, churches can no longer
take for granted the continual supply of members through the parish system, and must compete
for seekers who feel free to join whatever religious group best suits their needs. Taking this
basic problem a step further, Orsi states, Children represent among other things the future of the
faith standing there in front of oneself; at stake are the very existence, duration, and durability of
a particular religious world... Children signal the vulnerability and contingency of a particular
religious world and of religion itself... This is why discussions of childrens religious lives are

fraught with such fear.19 In this way, religious social structures are no different from any other
social structures: they must be significantly invested in preserving whatever power dynamic will
ensure its survival over generational change.
Conclusion: Implications for the Study of Children in Religion
As Im sure the reader has noticed, there is not a single, actual child anywhere in this essay. In
my defense, the purpose of this essay was to deal with social constructions and the theoretical
implications of theological claims, neither of which have anything to do with actual children, yet
pose real implications in the lives of real children. Because of this fact, I would like to conclude
with a plea for the academic study of children and religion to approach the subject in a way that
takes seriously their lived reality. Children have existed too long as voiceless, ideal types, and
not nearly enough scholarship has been done to investigate the impact of social constructs on the
lives of real children. Additionally, Robert Orsi points us to the fact that children are often
evaluated in terms of what they are not, that is, adults.20 Constructions of childhood can be
academically and politically useful, but need to be arrived at from research and data that evaluate
children on their own terms, as complete human beings, entitled to complete human rights.
I hope that this paper might offer some insight into how such scholarship might be achieved. If
anything, I would like it to function as a cautionary tale that warns of the dangers of studying
children solely on the terms of the religious discourse they are surrounded by. While I do not
believe the religious studies academic has any business judging the truth of theological claims,
we should not shy away from analyzing how these claims influence social and psychological
reality and how they are employed to control, empower or transform the lives of silenced
minorities. In the study of children, as with any minority or other, we must be careful not to

replicate the oppressive structures in their lives through our scholarship. Furthermore, I would
argue that scholars have responsibility to challenge theologically based social constructions that
are harmful to children, and endeavor to demystify religious trauma and abuse, just as we would
in a secular framework. Critical evaluation of religious discourse, not ontological judgments, are
needed if we are to avoid reproducing harmful treatment of children through our representations
of them
1 Alan Prout and Allison James 7
2 Charlotte Hardman Can there be an Antrhopology of Children?
3 Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth 79.
4 Viviana A. Zelizer Pricing the Priceless Child 9
5 Ann Hulbert Raising America
6 John R. Gillis Birth of the Virtual Child 46
7 Quoted in Orsi, 79.
8 Prout Theorizing Childhood 14
9 Capps The childs song summarizing Phillip Greven
10 Orsi, 77. In this passage, Orsi is more broadly addressing the significance of ritual
involvement of children and the parental need to pass on religious beliefs in general.
11 For a thorough discussion of the ways in which Christianity has been used to justify physical
punishment and abuse of children in America, see Philip Greven Spare the Child.
12 Greg Morgenson A Most Accursed Religion 9 Morgenson uses the term soul to refer to the
psyche of an individual, not a philosophical or religious reality.
13 Capps, 53-4.
14 While these stories are mostly in the Old Testament, I would argue such acts as the blinding
of Saul (Paul) and the predicted doom of Revelations as evidence of Gods violent means.
15 Morgenson, 51.
16 Bruce Lincoln Holy Terrors 5.
17 Morgenson, 51.

18 Talal Asad Genealogies of Religion

19 Orsi, 77.
20 Orsi somewhere