Welcome!

The Childhood Studies and Religion Group is a unit of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The Group’s aim is to investigate the complex and multifaceted relations between religion and childhood, in all their historical, cultural, ethnographic, psychological, ethical, theological, spiritual, gender, class, ethnicity, race, and other dimensions.

Childhood studies is a growing area across many academic disciplines that seeks to understand children's agency, voices, and diversities, and to do so from child-centered perspectives. We seek to extend and to challenge this work by investigating children's lived experiences, and constructions thereof, of the world's many religions.

Specific goals of the Group include:

• providing a forum for focused interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue about the diverse relations of children and religion;
  
  
• heightening academic interest in childhood studies in all fields represented in the AAR;
  
  
• preparing scholars in religious studies to contribute to wider academic discussions about children and childhoods;
  
  
• enriching teaching in all areas of religious studies to include attention to children's agency and diversity; and
  
  
• lending the voice of the academy to current questions of public policy and child advocacy.