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“RAISE UP A CHILD"Edith V.P. Hudley, Wendy Haight, and Peggy Miller INTERLUDE 1: Religion and Spirituality
These opening chapters also demonstrate that, from the beginning, Edith Hudley has lived and breathed a set of ethical guidelines rooted in Christianity. Experienced first within the family, Christian values also unified the community, motivating acts of caring and generosity. At times these values even bridged the racial divide. Equally prominent in Mrs. Hudley’s account of her early years is the example of religious faith as a source of joy and of strength and consolation. When her mother, Mamie, was too weak to attend church service, she still delighted in hearing her favorite hymns. When Edith was puzzled and distressed about the quiet stillness of her dead baby sister, Mamie explained, “Well, the baby won’t be sayin anything. The baby’s goin back to Jesus. . . .” Young children were allowed to participate in these and other spiritual events in meaningful ways, and their own spiritual experiences were taken seriously. Edith’s belief that the dead remain available to the living was introduced and reinforced by her parents and other adults, but it was she, not they, who actually witnessed the spirits of the dead. What can one make of these mystical experiences? The developmental literature contains nothing like this. Accounts of African-American experience are another matter, however. Early African-American autobiographers recall direct communications with God and angels and describe visions of heaven and hell experienced during conversion, (for example, Foote, 1886/1988; Sobel, 1989), and Toni Morrison’s (1987) novel Beloved is suffused with the spirits of the dead. Contrasting Literatures This curious disjuncture between the literatures most relevant to understanding Mrs. Hudley’s life is not confined to religious and spiritual matters, as later interludes will demonstrate, but it is perhaps most dramatic here. The literature on African-American experience takes for granted that religion and spirituality have played an important role in the lives of many black Americans.1 Although the terms spirituality and religion are sometimes used interchangeably, Randolph Potts (1996, 1998), and others see the two as related but distinguishable. Potts defines spirituality as “the direct, personal experience of the sacred; the awareness of a higher power, a causal force beyond the material or rational, that operates in all aspects of existence” (1998, p. 496). Spirituality has to do with the search for life’s ultimate significance. Religion on the other hand, is a system of symbols, beliefs, rituals, and texts shared by a community of believers. Although religion provides a collective framework for expressing spirituality, individuals’ search for meaning may lead them to embrace spiritual precepts and practices that are not specifically religious. Many African Americans say that their spirituality is an important source of comfort and strength, and there are several studies in which African Americans attest to the value of spirituality in coping with illness (Moore, 1991; Krause & Tran, 1989; Potts, 1996; Watson, 1984). However, much more has been written about the role of religion in the lives of African Americans. The black Christian church has been described as the oldest and the most influential African-American institution (Smitherman, 1977; Moss, 1988). In many African-American communities the church is the only institution that is owned, controlled, and patronized by African Americans (McAdoo & Crawford, 1991). Throughout its history, the church has nourished religious faith, promoted ethical conduct, and contributed to the social and material well-being of its members (Franklin, 1980; McAdoo & Crawford, 1991; Moore, 1991; Moss, 1992; Williams, Griffith, Young, Collins, & Dodson, 1999). Many African Americans consider the church to be second in importance only to the family (Moore, 1991). Edith Hudley’s spirituality found expression in conventional religious practices, such as prayer, hymn singing, and church going, but also in less widespread practices such as visitations from the dead and faith healing. When she gave a presentation in Haight’s developmental psychology class, Mrs. Hudley described several miraculous healings that she had experienced. In one case, recalled from childhood, her “burst lung” was healed when she recited scripture while a neighbor dropped keys down her back. These testimonies to faith healing continue a tradition that dates from the nineteenth century. For example, the African-American missionary Virginia W. Broughton (1907/1988) devoted an entire chapter of her autobiography to divine healing, describing numerous examples of miraculous recovery from accident and illness attributed to prayer. In recounting her life as a midwife, Onnie Lee Logan (1989) recalled appealing to and receiving help from God when confronted with medical emergencies beyond her experience. In sum, when Mrs. Hudley’s spiritual and religious life is approached from the perspective of African-American studies, she emerges as a familiar kind of person, one who is anchored in the church and unsurprised by the mysterious workings of the divine in ordinary life. But within the mainstream study of human development, many of the most deeply meaningful experiences of her early years are what Jacqueline Goodnow (1990) has called “homeless phenomena.” There is literally no place for them within existing theories of development or even within conventional ways of carving out the domains of human development.2 A survey of textbooks bears this out. The terms religion and spirituality do not appear in the indexes or tables of contents of any of the leading textbooks in child development (for example, Bornstein & Lamb, 1988; Cole & Cole, 2001; Hetherington, Parke & Locke, 2003). This holds true even for textbooks that are written from a sociocultural perspective (Cole & Cole, 2001) or that contain major sections devoted to moral development (Bornstein & Lamb, 1988). The same applies to the authoritative and comprehensive Handbook of Child Psychology (Damon, 1998), the preeminent reference volume in the field. Even collections and reviews pertaining to African-American children per se—including the special issue on minority children published by Child Development, the flagship journal of the Society for Research in Child Development—do not address religious or spiritual development. Thus, students of human development who go on to become parents, social workers, teachers, doctors, therapists, and scholars receive at best minimal exposure to children’s religious and spiritual development. Similarly, the applied fields of social work and education contain little information about the role of spirituality and religion in human development. Only in the last few years have the leading textbooks for the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) required course in human development in the social environment contained references to “religion” or “spirituality” in the index or the table of contents. Social work has had an abiding concern with ethnic and cultural diversity, but this concern has only recently extended into the realms of religion and spirituality (Bullis, 1996; Sheridan, Bullis, Adcock, Berlin, & Miller, 1992; Canda, 1997), and rarely into children’s experiences. Yet, understanding children’s religious and spiritual experiences can open up opportunities for effective social work intervention. For example, church members can provide social support and mentoring to adolescents during times of stress, and understanding a family’s religious beliefs can lead to the development of interventions for children that are consistent with other socialization messages (Haight, 2002). Edith Hudley’s life thus poses a significant challenge to those of us who study child development or work in professions that promote the welfare of children. Why have we been so slow to study children’s religious and spiritual experiences? Are we afraid that attention to these dimensions of life will undermine our claim to rationality, our legitimacy as social scientists, or our professionalism as social workers and clinicians? Finding Room for Children’s There are some exceptions to this picture. In Stages of Faith, James Fowler (1981) starts from the premise that nascent capacities for faith are present at birth and draws upon classic developmental theories to imagine how faith unfolds across the lifespan. Robert Coles (1990), in The Spiritual Life of Children, explores how children from around the world “sift and sort spiritual matters.” Cindy Clark (1995) in Flights of Fancy, Leaps of Faith, provides a powerful argument that children’s beliefs in childhood myths, such as Santa Claus and Easter Bunny, form the developmental foundation for religious faith. These remarkable works exist at the margins: they are rarely cited in the literatures on child development, educational psychology, or social work. There are some hints that this situation may be changing, however. For example, a new collection of papers, Imagining the Impossible (Rosengren, Johnson, & Harris, 2000), attempts to bring a fuller appreciation of children’s religious experience into developmental psychology. In addition, there is a growing awareness that religion and spirituality may illuminate the mysterious quality of “resilience” (Garmezy, 1985; Maston, Best, & Garmezy, 1990). People who are resilient are able to find meaning in their lives even in the face of extraordinary hardship—just as Edith did when her mother died. Robert Coles provides a memorable example, quoting the words of an eight-year-old girl who helped to desegregate a North Carolina school in 1962:
These examples suggest that spiritual beliefs can be sustaining to children at a surprisingly early age. The African-American church provides a variety of other benefits to children as well. For example, Kimberly Williams (1994) found that middle-class African-American children in Chicago were motivated by their Sunday School experiences to practice a variety of literacy and school-related activities at home. C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya (1990) emphasize the importance of the church as a place where young people can meet older adults who serve as role models—a point that is illustrated in the following chapters of Mrs. Hudley’s life story. In still other studies, parents described the personal comfort and guidance that their families experienced from participating in church-related activities (Hurd, Moore, & Rogers, 1995; Arnold, 1995). An Alternative Worldview According to many scholars of African-American Christianity, the church embodies an alternative system of belief, one that is not a simple imitation or derivation of European versions of Christianity (for example, Becker, 1997). This characteristic may be especially important in nurturing children’s strengths and competencies, because it offers a critical vantage point from which to view the realities of a racist society and a set of resources for maintaining a positive identity. It is the church, more than any other institution, that has kept this steadying vantage point alive. Scholars of African-American history and culture have argued that this alternative system of belief not only has allowed African Americans to resist oppression and maintain their humanity but also has been a great source of creativity (Long, 1997). Hudley’s father’s truth telling about racial oppression and his repeated exhortations not to take hate into one’s heart exemplify this perspective, a perspective that bell hooks (2001) calls “love-oriented.” Each of the key features of this alternative belief system are discernible in Hudley’s early years and echo throughout her life. For example, African-American theology has been described as a pragmatic intertwining of the sacred and the material (Smitherman, 1997). Drawing upon African traditions and shaped by the experiences of slavery and oppression in the Americas, the church evolved a set of practices that promoted the day-by-day survival of its members (Brown, 1991; Lincoln & Mamiya, 1990; Moore, 1991; Williams et al., 1999). In addition to the spiritually nurturing practices of prayer, hymn singing, and Bible study, the church provided social support and concrete aid in times of crisis. When Hudley’s family lost everything in the fire, a neighbor came forward to sew clothes for her. When Hudley’s mother was dying, members of the church came to her house to sing hymns for her mother. The African-American church also provided a safe context in which people could develop valued competencies, such as reading and writing (for example, Stack, 1974; Young, 1969). Although religious institutions may serve similar functions across the United States, for many black Americans the church has been the only institution in town that offers them a refuge. A second feature of African-American religious beliefs is an emphasis on community. Many scholars have commented upon the centrality of community to African-American culture. The religious underpinnings of this orientation have been articulated by Janice Hale-Benson (1987) in her discussion of spirituals. “The spirituals lamented the loss of community and felt that this constituted the major burden [of slavery]. They felt that the suffering was not too much to bear if you had brothers and sisters to go down in the valley and pray with you” (p.15). Throughout African-American history, the community of faith has nourished children’s development. Ella Mitchell (1986) describes relationships that extended from the nuclear family throughout the entire slave community, allowing children to survive under inhumane conditions. In Edith Hudley’s early life, the whole community took responsibility for disciplining errant children and for mothering those whose mothers had died. Finally, the belief in the inherent dignity and worth of each individual is regarded by many as a cornerstone of African-American theology (see Mitchell, 1986; Hale-Benson, 1987). According to historian Leroy Fitts, (1985), the black Baptist church in America emerged, in part, in response to the theologically inconsistent policies of white Baptists. Christian slave owners, attempting to control and pacify blacks, imposed their religion, a religion that ironically affirms the values of charity and equality. The slaves heard the Gospels while sitting in the back or the balcony of the church. Disavowing this context of subordination, “Black Baptist preachers . . . discovered in the Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man, a . . . concept of human freedom and dignity” (p. 44). The belief that God recognizes African Americans as equal to European Americans and that He recognizes each of them personally as His child has given many the inner resolve to persist in the face of harsh realities (Hale-Benson, 1987). Ella Mitchell (1986) notes that this “lesson was learned so well that despite the ravages of dehumanization, very few slaves ever gave up and fully accepted the servile image thrust upon them” (p. 101). The Socialization of Religious Beliefs Mrs. Hudley’s account of her early life allows us to begin to imagine how a young child might come to imbibe the tenets of African-American Christian belief that were available in her family, church, and community. However, we know very little about how such beliefs are passed on to children in the twenty-first century. Wendy Haight’s (2002) ethnographic study of the Baptist church that Mrs. Hudley attends in Salt Lake City is an exception. In this rare glimpse into the workings of an African-American Sunday School, adults and children elaborated a system of religious beliefs through narrative, discussion, conflict, and play. This belief system directly parallels the features of African-American theology just described. For example, Sunday School teachers expressed and put into practice their belief in the utility of spiritual beliefs in everyday life. Freedom, justice, and forgiveness were not just appealing ideas. They were viewed as a lifeline to healthy spiritual development and essential components in coping with the challenges of everyday life. Teachers wanted such beliefs to be so readily at hand that they could be reached for in times of need. One Sunday School teacher said that children must know how to “put on the armor of God.” This protection can be carried inside of each child to school, work, and the mall. The importance of community was also evident at First Baptist Church. Children were treated as valued members of a cultural community stretching back in time and including members of the church who were highly esteemed for their wisdom and spirituality. Each child could participate in meaningful ways alongside esteemed community members. They could usher worship services, lead devotions, sing in the choir, or provide service to families in need. Children also learned in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School about powerful role models from earlier times, such as Dr. George Washington Carver and Rosa Parks, who faced great challenges and prevailed. A third hallmark of the belief systems elaborated with children at First Baptist Church was the inherent worth of each individual. Each person is valuable, regardless of material success and social status. In the words of a popular hymn, each individual is a “child of the King” with unique, God-given gifts. As such, each child is entitled to love and respect, and with opportunity and effort will go far. However, the journey will be difficult. Just as many were blind to Jesus, many will not see black children’s inner resources and strengths. Just as the Egyptians enslaved and oppressed Moses’ people, some will attempt to oppress black children. The stories told with children also stress that through faith, effort, and community, they too, like the Hebrew people, can prevail. The challenge is to remain a loving and moral person throughout the journey and to maintain a deep optimism in its ultimate rewards.
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