Karl, Kids, and the Kingdom of God, Part III
“The Children Will Rise Up, Our Voices Will Be Heard”
About the author: Rev. Catherine Tobey is a PhD student in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen. Drawing on Karl Barth’s theology, her research centers on children as the dynamic, interpretive key to understanding and witnessing to the Kingdom of God. She is a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a resident at Tall Timber Ranch, a camp and retreat center in Leavenworth, WA.
This post is the third in a three-part series engaging Barth’s understanding of children in light of the Kingdom of God. Our primary question: How might Barth’s understanding of kids help us better recognize and enact God’s kingdom in the here and now? In the first post, we explored the idea that we are all children of God. In the second post, we discussed how scholars grapple with the idea of being like children. In this post, we will engage this final theme within Church Dogmatics: We should listen to children’s witness.
At the beginning of July, the 226th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) gathered in Salt Lake City. This is not exactly breaking news, but there were certainly intense moments (we Presbyterians do like to take ourselves seriously). One of the week's highlights was when all four overtures supported by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network passed. It was too good to be true! Indeed, one of these was reconsidered and voted down later that day.
It was also disappointing to watch how a seminarian-led resolution was handled. Students sought to encourage Presbyterian seminaries to follow the General Assembly’s investment strategies and be transparent about their investments—which really is not a big ask.1 After they shared their views on ethical investing, particularly in light of those companies that are enabling Israel’s Apartheid on Palestinian land and people, the students’ opinions were dismissed, and their advisory votes were ignored.
If Barth were there, I do not think he would have been surprised by this turn of events.2 However, I like to imagine him saying it is not the end of the story. Indeed, Barth wrote clearly about a future where the hearts of parents would be changed, as they “realise the superior wisdom of their children and thus accept their testimony, abandoning their opposition and approving their decisions.”3 If this feels like a totally random connection, bear with me for a minute.
For this post, my goal was to talk about the witness of children. While the PC(USA)’s Young Adult Advisory Delegates (who are between 18 and 23 years of age) and Theological Student Advisory Delegates (who are students at PC(USA)-related theological institutions) are not necessarily kids, they were likely the youngest participants at the General Assembly.4 If the advisory votes of these young people had actually counted, the results coming out of this year’s denominational gathering would have been different. More importantly, the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s witness in the wider world would have been different. But their votes (a form of their witness) did not count, and so here we are.
In moments like this, I turn to the hope of songs like Nandi Bushell and Roman Morello’s rally cry, The Children Will Rise Up! But truth be told, I really do also look to Barth…searching for insight that might make stagnant Presbyterians reconsider their policies and practices. In Barth’s estimation, young people have a special relationship with the world.5 This is rooted in their ontological reality, as, by their very existence, they remind us we are all children of God. This witness ripples out as those of us who are no longer actual children witness to God’s reconciliation by coming together in right relationship with God and one another.6
However, I do not get the sense that Barth—or Jesus—sees young people as merely passive signposts of God’s Kingdom. According to the Gospels, they are the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, the ones to whom the Kingdom of God belongs! I argue this implies a dynamic witness, which indicates that the witness of young people is more authoritative than we might think.
Though we might be inclined to affirm the ontological witness of children, it would pose a significant shift to affirm their epistemological witness. Consider how many folks refuse to take young people’s witness seriously due to a supposed lack of sincerity, competence, and experience, whether in a legal court or congregation.7 Though these are easy to refute, they speak to Miranda Fricker’s thesis in Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. While Fricker focuses on how a person’s credibility is systematically doubted on the basis of gender and race, Michael D. Burroughs and Deborah Tollefsen argue epistemic injustice also occurs with reference to a person’s age.8
This is important not just because the witness of young people offers transformation to our congregations and communities; it also matters because the experience of one’s witness not being taken seriously is painful. On the one hand, André Mulder suggests this lies in the inherent vulnerability of being a witness.9 Burroughs and Tollefsen, however, emphasize the potential lasting damage that can occur when ignoring a witness. Indeed, they consider it especially cruel to distrust and devalue young people’s witness because it can “[hinder] the development of epistemic virtues and intellectual self-confidence that are central to one’s identity as a reliable testier.”10 Herein, when young people are “systematically denied a voice,” there is “an epistemic harm that cuts one to her very core” so much so that one “can lose confidence in themselves and their own beliefs such that they cease to be credible testifiers.”11
Put another way, because of the ongoing development of young people, when their witness is not celebrated, it hinders their ability to be witnesses for the rest of their lives. This brings us back to Barth, who emphasizes the vulnerability of young people; he writes:
The children (παιδία, or βρέφη, infants, according to Lk. 18:15) who were brought to Jesus (Mk. 10:13f. par.) were not figurative children but real children of flesh and blood. They wanted Him to make it manifest that He was for them too, that He represented them too before His Father. They wanted Him to show that as He came to all adults, good or bad, healthy or sick, satisfied or needy, so He came to these non-adults, too.12
For Barth, this is an incredible witness to the greatness of God’s grace! Indeed, he states, “The text is a very intimate but for that reason all the more powerful witness to the universal scope of the work and word of Jesus Christ.”13 When we listen to young people, we support their development as lifelong witnesses and better understand the gospel.
You see when we treat young people as less than credible, our prejudice is ruling the day. Research shows that not only are young people no less credible than adults, in fact, “children (by the age of six) are as accurate as adults in recalling events and no more suggestible than adults when those memories are questioned in appropriate ways.”14 Furthermore, Burroughs and Tollefsen note that “research suggests that communication failures and suggestibility in children may actually reflect the interviewing techniques used by adults to elicit their testimony (Saywitz and Snyder 1993; Saywitz and Camparo 1998) rather than a lack of developmental ability in children.”15 It is not that young people are not good witnesses—they are. The real problem lies in adults not listening to them.16
Luckily, according to Burroughs, we have an opportunity “to regard children as participants in our moral communities, as opposed to mere agents-in-waiting.”17 As significant adults in their lives, it is our duty to be reliable, celebrate their witness, and not ignore it. At the very least, we need to recognize the harm we are doing when we treat them as no more than passive signs of new life, without any intention of following the new things God will do through them.
We have two years until the Presbyterian Church (USA) holds another General Assembly. If you ask me, young adults should not have an advisory vote but one that carries due authority. I do not have faith in the institution making this change, for epistemic injustice has deep roots. Still, I cannot help but imagine the Spirit-filled transformation that is ahead when we start listening to the witness of the youngest among us.
Why seminaries are investing in the stock market at all is beyond me, but perhaps this is why they prefer to keep their investments a secret. We can only imagine their response to this vote. If you are interested in making sure your personal investments are above board, know that it is possible to work with groups like Ethical Capital; on the other hand, if you do not think your faith has anything to do with your use of money, I would encourage you to consider this in the context of Matthew 6:24, Matthew 13:18-23, Mark 10:24-25, Luke 12:13-15, and Luke 16:10-11.
The disruption of young people, for Barth, is inevitable but not in a bad way. Barth writes, “These men are prophets, or men who are charged with small but special and prophetic tasks, in the performance of which, while they are children of their parents, they have not to think and speak and act as such, but as children of the kingdom. Without regard to the ties and claims of the child-parent relationship, they will have to do one thing and abstain from another even though their parents do not understand. They will have to tread paths in which they will become strangers to their kinsmen who are not called to these tasks and thus do not understand them. In these circumstances there must arise divisions even between parents and children which as prophets they cannot evade and in which they must not hesitate to stand on the side of Jesus” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4 [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961], 267).
Barth, CD III.4, 267.
It is also worth mentioning that only half of the country’s presbyteries sent a YAAD to GA this year, creating an even wider disparity between young people and older commissioners.
Barth writes, “This slowness in his development obviously stands in close relation to man's mode of existence, which…is open to the world. That his whole organisation should have a long period of youth, capable of rich development, seems to be significantly connected with the special way in which he experiences the world, the plenitude of social connexions and means of communication into which he can enter, and the manifold richness of his environment” (Barth, CD III.2, 89).
Barth puts it this way: ”Beyond the very real and intimate co-existence of God and [humanity], as the final goal of their reconciliation, as the final meaning of the peace re-established between them, the term ‘child of God’ signifies the unprecedented fact of a kinship of being which God has promised and guaranteed to [humanity]. It therefore signifies something which is more than reconciliation and peace, which rather seals the reconciliation and peace of [humanity] with God, which makes it so sure that it cannot be abrogated or lost, an ontological relationship in which the event of reconciliation, the restoration of peace between [humanity] and God, is crowned, and its result is anchored. It does not signify merely that [humanity] is bound to God, but also and primarily that God is bound to [humanity]. For if God calls [humanity] [God’s] child[ren], if therefore [humanity] is [God’s] child[ren], then God acknowledges that [God] is [their] Father, and therefore [God] is [their] Father. God has bound [God’s self] to [humanity] and therefore [God] is bound to [humanity] in the same way that [God] has bound [humanity] to [God’s self] and [humanity] is therefore bound to [God]” (Barth, CD IV.1, 598–99).
The argument against experience is especially interesting because, as Christians, we understand that “Witnessing is not preaching confessions or dogmas from an authoritative position, but sharing lived experience.” While some might argue that young people don’t have sufficient lived experience, this seems arbitrary and prejudicial, especially when the experience they have and share about isn’t taken seriously. Besides, as Mulder explains, witnessing “speaks to the heart and the imagination even more than to reason” (André Mulder, “You Can Talk about Your Cat, but You Can Also Talk about Your God: Witnessing in Hermeneutical-Communicative Worldview Education,” Religious Education 116, no. 2 [2021]: 163).
The authors explain when young people’s witness is not taken seriously, they are “wronged specifically in [their] capacity as a knower,” which results in “a distinctively epistemic type of injustice” (Burroughs and Tollefsen, 359).
Mulder exclaims, “you could be rejected, especially if your testimony has prophetical content that includes moral judgements” (Mulder, “You Can Talk about your Cat,” 164).
Burroughs and Tollefsen, “Learning to Listen,” 363. It would be a gross oversight to not mention that there are many scenarios where the harm of “this child-centered prejudice” is especially cruel. Burroughs and Tollefsen mention this, noting “in some cases (for example, child abuse and neglect) the child may be the only witness outside of the accused and, thus, the outcome will hinge in large part on her credibility and testimony. Discrediting the child testifier for prejudicial reasons can lead to a failure of justice and leave children even more vulnerable to acts of adult violence and abuse” (367).
Burroughs and Tollefsen, “Learning to Listen,” 363. It would be a gross oversight to not mention that there are many scenarios where the harm of “this child-centered prejudice” is especially cruel. These scholars mention this, noting “in some cases (for example, child abuse and neglect) the child may be the only witness outside of the accused and, thus, the outcome will hinge in large part on her credibility and testimony. Discrediting the child testifier for prejudicial reasons can lead to a failure of justice and leave children even more vulnerable to acts of adult violence and abuse” (367).
Barth, CD IV.4, 187.
Barth, CD IV.4, 187.
Burroughs and Tollefsen, “Learning to Listen,” 366.
Burroughs and Tollefsen, “Learning to Listen,” 368.
Burroughs and Tollefsen write, “We should think more about how to be responsible hearers for children, just as Fricker contends we must do in the case of other social groups that have been subjected to systematic discrimination” (“Learning to Listen,” 370).
Michael D. Burroughs, “Navigating the Penumbra: Children and Moral Responsibility,” in The Southern Journal of PhilosophyVolume 58, no. 1 (March 2020): 77.
Responding to the email sent to us today: While I fully appreciate the work toward alleviating suffering for Palestinians, your link to Israel/Palestinian Mission Network shows a mission that is very skewed, full of unjust prejudice and bias against Jews I cannot support. It is against the sovereignty and rights for Israelis to have safety and security for their own people and country. This Network succeeds in spreading a simplistic and false narrative of the issues at stake. For instance, I found no deep understanding of Iranian fueled terrorism that puts Israel and Palestinians in a very difficult predicament where the Biblical lands which are currently open to the world will not have the freedoms and openness under any other Middle Eastern government that sides with Iran.
Palestine needs international aid to support strong learning institutions going forward. It was neglected in the past, and youth were allowed to languish under the corrupt government that frittered away or stole their resources preventing human flourishing. There is strong inculcation of hate present that I have rarely experienced anywhere else in the world. Lack of good governance, education and social institutions are again the primary culprit here to a better Palestinian future, not Israel. We should think about how the nations can support transparency and good leadership in Palestine, not use this time to bully Israel with softly veiled antisemitic views. Please stop pushing the narrative that Israel started all of this. Why don't you ask what would happen if all the hostages are returned by Hamas? Wouldn't this war stop immediately? We can not get to re building Palestine unless the Palestinians work with the international community to put hate and acrimony aside and look to receiving the world's volunteers, ensuring their safety for all in our collaboration. But many endemic internal problems under Iran's jihadic mindset must be disowned and disavowed.