When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity

This book is a required reading for Doctor of Ministry students enrolled in the Children and Poverty track at Saint Paul School of Theology. While local congregations are involved in children's ministry, theological education seems to trail behind in equipping clergy for intentional theological attention to issues affecting children. This book was assigned to give students practical insights into this complex and neglected area.

Most Doctor of Ministry students enrolled from Africa come from areas where the issue of child soldiers, child labor and sexual abuse remains a painful experience. In this period of HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa and Latin America, female infants and children are targets of male figures that have contracted HIV/AIDS and think that having sex with an infant will provide a cure. This sexual abuse is spreading in both rural and urban areas and the Church needs to address this painful ordeal faced by children and mothers.

A central question in the book revolves around the nature of children and early Christianity's response to children. Drawing on a wide variety of Roman sources, the author discusses issues of life expectancy, infanticide, exposure, health, abortion, education, sanitation, pederasty and slave children. The last two chapters of the book delve into children and worship, leading readers into the thorny theological issues of infant baptism and children's admission to communion. While this was considered normal by early Christians, it remains a subject of intense debate in the 21st century Church. Saint Augustine of Hippo was an intentional interpreter of his own childhood behavior and reasoned from it to an inborn tendency to sinfulness. The author draws from the views of Augustine to assist Christians with an in-depth exegetical around the theological issue of infant baptism and participation in communion.

The book is an important contribution to seminarians and theological educators interested in children's ministry for the purposes of church revitalization and spiritual growth.