Doing theology with children : some challenges for adult theologians

This research is part of the research project, ‘Children, Faith and Society’, directed by Prof Stephan de Beer, director of the Centre for Contextual Ministry and associate professor in the Department of Practical Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria, South Africa. ; Doing theology with children, which includes children as equal participants in the process, is no easy task. Adult theologians face many challenges in becoming involved in doing theology with children. The probing question is: What are these challenges? This article identifies and discusses a few of them. It does not provide an exhaustive list, nor does it discuss each challenge in detail, although more attention is given to the important and crucial challenge to scrutinise our conceptions of childhood. It rather wants to stimulate a conversation about why it is difficult to involve children as equal partners in doing theology and in theological research. ; http://www.hts.org.za ; am2020 ; Practical Theology