Abstract

Core Christian ethics concepts are affected by assumptions related to the primary subject or moral agent and the social context in which moral encounters take place. This article asks: Are children full moral agents? If so, what can Christian ethics, which predominantly focuses on adult subjects, learn from a focus on children? A small group of Christian ethicists has asked this very question in conversation with psychologists, child development theorists, educators, theologians, and philosophers. Centering children requires attention to age and ability differences and inclusion of their voices. Children as ethical subjects focus attention on issues of particularity, a decentering of rational individualism, and debunking linear moral developmental assumptions. The research on children’s moral lives points toward ethics as creativity in forms of play or improvisation. Given children’s digitally saturated lives, their creative use of critical digital literacies also helps Christian ethics begin to map a response to the impact of digital technologies.

Highlights

  • The discipline of Christian ethics has imbedded assumptions about the primary subject or moral agent and the social context in which moral encounters take place

  • Are children full moral agents? Can children or infants make moral-decisions? If so, what can Christian ethics, which predominantly focuses on adult subjects, learn from a focus on children? A small group of Christian ethicists has asked this very question in conversation with psychologists, child development theorists, educators, theologians, and philosophers

  • Ethicists join a variety of scholars within religious studies fields, often in the fields of biblical studies or practical theology, who have made the methodological shift to centering children

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Summary

Introduction

The discipline of Christian ethics has imbedded assumptions about the primary subject or moral agent and the social context in which moral encounters take place. Many scholars use first hand child narratives or direct participant research to bring the voices of children into conversation with their research. They ask, how does centering children affect Christian ethics concepts and assumptions?. The research on children’s moral lives points toward ethics as a creative response. A centering of children’s moral lives opens Christian ethics to theological imagination and ethical response as a creative act. It affirms an on-going process of moral growth, rather than an age of reason or goal of moral completion. It may provide the necessary clues needed to live ethically in a rapidly changing digital society

Christian Ethics and Children
Children’s Moral Lives and Creativity
Ethics and Creativity
Children in a Digital Society
Christian Ethics as Creative Moral Response
Full Text
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