Children and Personal Spiritual Experience

Abstract

Fowler's model of faith development downplayed the importance of personal spiritual experience; instead, he stressed the need for the development of intellectual and moral reasoning in children. In such a model, spiritual development is in danger of being conflated with religious instruction and is more likely to meet the needs of religious institutions than those of children. This author's research into children's spirituality and the practice of meditation stresses the vital significance of faith as an experience of encounter, and points to the importance of enabling children to experience their innate spirituality and creating opportunities where they can be encouraged to give voice to it. This chapter elucidates how meditation as a whole-school practice can awaken and nurture children's spirituality, giving rise to deeply meaningful spiritual experience. It also stresses the vital importance of enabling children to give voice to their spiritual experience and offers some practical methods for doing so.