Images of the Child and Childhood in Religion

Child, childhood, and religion are all vague and imprecise terms. The problems connected with defining religion, and its area of competence and function, are too many and too controversial to be entered upon in this short a commentary. Here I use the term in a wide sense, including all that “ordinary people” in the Western world normally think of when confronted with the term religious tradition ¹ : Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, but also Confucianism and Taoism.