Children and Childhood in World Religions: Primary Sources and Texts

Preface and Acknowledgements

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This volume evolved out of a series of research programs sponsored by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion in the School of Law of Emory University. More specifically, it was part of the project called The Child in Law, Religion, and Society. This project began in 2003 and was the second phase of two research projects supported by generous grants from the Pew Charitable Trust. The first phase was called Sex, Marriage, and Family in the Religions of the Book and began in 2001. These two projects have produced over two dozen published books involving scores of authors. Both efforts were interdisciplinary, international , and interfaith in scope. They involved scholars from law, religion, the humanities, and the social sciences from several different countries representing many of the major religions of the world. We wish to express our appreciation to the Pew Charitable Trusts for its support of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion and this specific book. We also want to express our gratitude for the vision and inspiration of John Witte, Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Ethics and director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion and the Law and Religion Program at Emory. He encouraged us to take on this endeavor and provided the financial and logistical resources to make it possible. Children and Childhood in World Religions is a companion volume to Children and Childhood in American Religions, also published by Rutgers University Press. We want to thank Christian Green of Emory School of Law, who did the original research required to determine whether these two volumes were possible and needed by the various disciplines concerned with children as well as pertinent to debates about children in the wider society. And we wish to give strong appreciation to Adi Hovav, our patient and insightful Rutgers editor, for her encouragement and guidance throughout. The editorial work supporting this book was done at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, where Browning is an emeritus professor. We want to thank Kevin Jung, Sarah Schuurman, and Antonia Daymond—all of whom were at one time graduate students of the Divinity School—for their various managerial and editorial talents that went into organizing, nurturing, and assembling this volume. All of them functioned as managing editors of this vii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii book. We also want to thank Richard Rosengarten, dean of the Divinity School, for supporting the project and providing office space and computers for the managing editors. Valparaiso University, where Bunge is a professor, also contributed to the project in a variety of ways. President Alan Harre and Mel Piehl, Dean of Christ College, have enthusiastically supported Bunge’s research on children and childhood for this project and for The Child in Religion and Ethics Project (funded by the Lilly Endowment). We would also like to thank Vicki Brody, administrative assistant at Christ College, and Daniel Jarratt and Libbi Bartelt, Christ College honors students. They heartily embraced the aims of the project and offered Bunge outstanding editorial and research assistance in her work for the Christianity chapter and the volume as a whole. Behind the efforts taking place at our own institutions and the various institutions of all of the chapter editors for this volume was the support of Emory’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion. More than financial help came from the Center. Witte and other administrators at the Center, including April Bogle, Eliza Ellison, Anita Mann, and Amy Wheeler, all shared their wisdom and experience with us, supporting this project in countless ways both large and small. Don S. Browning Marcia J. Bunge Children and Childhood in World Religions ...