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Source: Walter H. Clark, Psychology of Religion (Macmillan, 1958) The Religion of Childhood |
 Dr. Walter Houston Clark |
I. The emerging of religious consciousness in childhood is closely related to such needs as security, response, recognition, and new experiences. Parents play a role in satisfying these needs, thus the kind of parents a child has will influence his concept of the divine.
II. Children's religious concepts go through three stages:
1. Fairy-tale stage (3-6 years old) - fanciful and emotional
2. Realistic stage (6-12 years old) - concrete imagery
3. Individualistic stage (13-17 years old) - Three general varieties:
a. conventional, conservative, little fantasy
b. original, personal
c. highly original, personal
III. Characteristic mixture of primitive and creative elements:
1. unreflective - accepted on authority
2. egocentric - projection of early authoritarian figures
3. verbalized, rather than understood
4. ritualized and imitative expressions
5. capacity for wonder
Religion in Adolescence and Youth (ages 18-24)
I. This is the age of greatest religious potentiality. A sensitive concern for truth usually has its conscious birth at this time of life; this often shows itself in wholesome skepticism of inadequate concepts of childhood.
II. While adjusting to turmoils of physical and social awakening, confusing emotions can defy all convention and authority, including religion.
III. Full social awareness and self-consciousness is developed, often becomes acute, especially with respect to peer relations; church participation influenced greatly by peers.
IV. True moral responsibility possible, though peer oriented.
V. Conflicting with peer relationships, this period characterized by idealism and hero-worship.
VI. Worship and prayer most often a magical technique to be used in case of need; often for self-analysis and meditation; only a minority for communicating with God.
Criteria for Mature Religion
1. Mature religion is primary, derived from a sense of compelling individual need, not pious, imitative play-acting.
2. It is fresh; like the religion of childhood, it has a fresh sense of curiosity and wonder.
3. It is self-critical; the individual can see weaknesses in his religious position while at the same time remaining loyal to it.
4. Mature religion is free from magic; it is not merely a means of securing favors from a cosmic source.
5. It gives meaning to life in such a way as to enlist and motivate one's total energies so that it is capable of becoming a satisfaction for its own sake.
6. It relates itself to all of one's experiences, thus integrates one's life and demonstrates moral results consistent with one's own aims as well as those of a wholesome society.
7. A mature religion strengthens the individual's sense of community with others in such a way as to be ultimately creative of a more wholesome society. It is socially effective.
8. It demonstrates humility.
9. It is growing; one's faith expands in the search for deeper truths and in the progressively wider, willing identification of the interests of others with one's own.
10. A mature religion is creative; the religious life of the individual contains elements and shows characteristics of its own; it is not a mere repetition of the religion of others.
Suggestion for Reading:
The Significance of Religious Development" by Earl A. Loomis, M.D., in Values and Ideals of American Youth (edited by Eli Ginzberg, published by Columbia University Press, 1961) proposes that "the religion of the child is not simply a watered-down version of adult religion tacked onto the growing child...that while the roots of religious experience, just as those of all deep-seated experiences of man, lie in infancy and childhood, the early religious experience of the child is constantly interacting with both the overt and covert religious life of the adults who are significant for the child ...it is in this very interaction of the religion of the child with the inner reaches of the religion of the adult, including his components of childlikeness, that basic religious communication takes place."