Living with Mess

Through ethnographic focus on ‘Messy Church’ at Riverside Church (open evangelical), Chapter 7 turns to examine shifting ethical currents within conservative, charismatic, and open evangelical cultures. Considering the contemporary significance of ideas of ‘mess’ and ‘messiness’ at Riverside and St George’s churches, the chapter argues that this turn to ‘mess’ at both churches is shaped by both a strategy of differentiation from conservative evangelicalism—which emphasizes a desire for hierarchical order within church, self, and society—and by an ethics of responsiveness to the everyday needs of those in their local area, marked by heightened socio-economic polarization. How groups engage with ideas of ‘order’ and ‘mess’, the chapter argues, is significant for understanding how different groups respond to fragmented experiences of social life, and how they enact modes of difference and belonging in the contemporary moment.

Marking Times and Transitions

We are living through times in which traditional religious rites of passage are in question in Western societies. Chapter 6 focuses on what rites of passage in relation to childhood looked like at each of the three evangelical churches explored in this book and examines how particular moments of transition were being constructed and marked in children’s lives. The chapter explores the different ways in which those at St John’s (conservative evangelical), St George’s (charismatic evangelical), and Riverside (open evangelical) engaged with traditional rites of passage such as infant baptism and how they often demonstrated ritual creativity in their marking of other moments of transition, such as the move from primary to secondary school. It also examines how these rites reveal different understandings of children’s agency.

Building an Academy

Chapter 4 focuses on the relations between Riverside Church (open evangelical) and the local schools it was involved in running, situating this in relation to broader debates about faith schools, neoliberalism, and social class. The chapter examines how members of Riverside Church described the moral and religious significance of their engagement with these schools, drawing on a romanticized narrative of evangelicals’ historic work with the children of the urban poor. The chapter demonstrates how these schools are of central moral significance for the church’s aspiration to affect both the local area and wider British society, and explores how the ways in which those at Riverside talk about the work of these schools at times enact moralizing power relations that are simultaneously held in tension with the church’s inclusivist aspirations and self-understanding.

Learning a Form of Life

Focusing on the space of churches, Chapter 2 explores the practices through which adults seek to form children as subjects able to ‘engage with God’ in Sunday school and Kids Church and the ways in which the children responded to these practices across each of the three churches studied in this book. Focusing on the desired formation of children provides insight into the morally charged ideals of personhood articulated in each church, and draws out the particular emphasis on biblical literacy and ideals of submission to God expressed in conservative evangelicals’ work with children in comparison with the emphasis on ideals of friendship with Jesus that is privileged at St George’s and Riverside. The author argues that despite these differences, the techniques of formation used in each church aim to shape the children as reflexive individuals, able to reflect on their actions in the light of church teachings.

The Agency of Children and the Study of Religion

What does it mean to take children’s agency seriously in the sociology of religion? This chapter reviews dominant approaches to the study of childhood and religion and assesses the underlying assumptions about the meanings of childhood, agency, society, and religion they index. It situates these approaches in relation to two different strands taken to children’s agency in wider childhood studies. It then examines how we can see two different understandings of children’s agency in play in conservative and charismatic evangelicalism through discussing two different national evangelical events focused on childhood. It argues that these events empirically demonstrate the importance of attending to childhood in the study of religion and suggests a way of understanding children’s agency in relation to religion as a fluid, dynamic convergence of different elements, which affords children more or less capacity to act as agents and shape the social and religious worlds they inhabit.

Parenthood

Chapter 3 focuses on contemporary ideals and practices of ‘parenting’ by examining the normative constructions of parenthood articulated at parenting classes run by St John’s (conservative evangelical) and St George’s (charismatic evangelical), in which the parent–child relationship and its relationship with wider social norms was in question. The chapter explores how leaders at St John’s situated their ideals of children’s obedience to the father and understanding of children as inherently sinful as countercultural and outlines the techniques of parenting that were encouraged here. It then describes how, in contrast, ideas about parenting at St George’s drew on psychoanalytic literature and encouraged parents to learn from secular expertise on parenting, and it considers how these differing ways of understanding what it is to be a parent are shaped by processes of individualization, and open onto wider questions about the agency of the child, human agency, and the social and existential order.

Conclusion

The conclusion begins with an ethnographic vignette exploring the development of children’s work at St George’s Church (charismatic evangelical) following the period of fieldwork. The chapter then summarizes the key findings and takeaways of the preceding chapters and the significance of attending to children within the sociology of religion. It argues that what follows from this book is not an argument for developing the sociology of religious childhood per se, but rather recognition of how attending to childhood and to children’s experiences in relation to religion shifts perceptions and deepens understanding of the everyday social realities we inhabit. The chapter concludes by considering what it means to take children’s voices seriously in the sociology of religion.

School Visitors

Against the backdrop of public concerns raised about the role of external evangelical visitors in state-funded schools, Chapter 5 examines the mundane realities of the relationships that children’s workers and volunteers from St George’s Church (charismatic) and Riverside Church (open evangelical) developed with local schools. Focusing on the visits made by children’s workers to deliver assemblies, and the after-school, lunchtime, and holiday clubs they ran, this chapter considers how children’s agency was either limited or enabled across these different spaces. Examining how the adults involved in these engagements with children spoke about the moral significance of their work, it argues that these kinds of engagement offered adults a sense of meaning and hope, allowing them to understand themselves as agents of change at a time when the public sphere often seems unwieldy and beyond individuals’ control.

Introduction

This introduction contextualizes how religion is often perceived to be a ‘problem’ in contemporary British society in relation to childhood and to education, and locates this in relation to longer-term debates about personhood, autonomy, Enlightenment, and religion. The chapter also situates contemporary British evangelicalism and evangelicals’ engagements with children within a wider landscape of religious change in the UK. The second half of the introduction sets out the methodological approach taken in the book. It describes the process of conducting fieldwork with three different evangelical churches (conservative, charismatic, and open evangelical) and in schools linked with them. The author draws on Michael Herzfeld’s analysis (2001) of the relationship between comparison and reflexivity to discuss how these experiences of fieldwork helped to shape her analytic focus in the book and outlines the book’s overall aims and argument.