« Previous Post | Next Post »
« Previous post in category | Next post in category »

Politics Theology - Liturgical: Theology of the child

[Print] | [PDF] | [Email]

As I suspect, it always comes back to baptism, infant baptism in particular.

Kahn: “Liberalism has never produced an adequate explanation of the family, because we cannot understand children” without the framing assumptions of liberalism – its assumption that the individual is the primary unit of explanation and its division between public and private. Liberalism “cannot settle whether the state should protect the child from the coercive influences of his or her family, or whether the private family should be protected from the state.” In short, “every individual effort turned toward a public project . . . is a puzzle for liberalism.”

Baptizing infants poses a deep challenge to liberal order: It rejects the notion that the individual child is a self-standing individual, and by placing the child within the church, a public institution with a political history, it disrupts easy public/private divide. By contrast, believer’s baptism looks to be an accommodation to liberal order (though, more precisely, it may be at the roots of liberal order).

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 11:00 am

Permission is given to use material on this site, provided the source is cited, blog entries are republished in full, and the author is notified in advance.

« Previous Post | Next Post » « Previous post in category | Next post in category »

Politics Theology - Liturgical: Theology of the child

« Previous Post | Next Post »
« Previous post in category | Next post in category »