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Insights from children's perspectives ininterpreting the wisdom of the biblicalcreation narrativeHoward Worsley aa Diocese of Southwell , East Midlands, UKPublished online: 12 Dec 2006.

To cite this article: Howard Worsley (2006) Insights from children's perspectives in interpreting thewisdom of the biblical creation narrative, British Journal of Religious Education, 28:3, 249-259,DOI: 10.1080/01416200600811378

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British Journal of Religious EducationVol. 28, No. 3, September 2006, pp. 249–259

ISSN 0141-6200 (print)/ISSN 1740-7931 (online)/06/030249–11© 2006 Christian EducationDOI: 10.1080/01416200600811378

Insights from children’s perspectives in interpreting the wisdom of the biblical creation narrativeHoward Worsley*Diocese of Southwell, East Midlands, UKTaylor and Francis LtdCBRE_A_181079.sgm10.1080/01416200600811378British Journal of Religious Education0141-6200 (print)/1740-7931 (online)Original Article2006Taylor & Francis283000000September 2006Dr HowardWorsleydde@southwell.anglican.org

In a western educational context that evidences a decrease in the use of the Bible, this researchuses qualitative data to offer insights into how children encounter the creation narratives ofGenesis I–III. In order to comment on the meaning-making interpretative process that childrenemploy at different key stages of development, the insights of hermeneutic phenomenology and ofdevelopmental psychology are used. At each of the British educational Key Stages 2, 3 and 4,children’s perspectives are given, alongside a hermeneutical commentary.

Keywords: creation narrative; hermeneutic phenomenology; developmental psychology; children aged 7–17

Introduction

It is becoming increasingly acknowledged that despite its literary and cultural value,the Bible is being neglected in most states schools in the UK. Francis (2000) has shownthat the Bible is never read by two-thirds of 13–15-year-olds in British secondaryschools.

Writing with a research background in how adolescents access previous literarygenres, Pike (2000) has turned his attention to considering the Bible as an essentialtext for both understanding wider literature and for educating in morally andspiritually significant encounters (Pike, 2002a, b). However, Pike is careful to pointout that although there is ‘a compelling case for encouraging children to read such aninfluential text to ensure cultural literacy’, there is also evidence that the high statusof the text can lead to ‘a too reverential attitude among readers’ who may become

*Dunham House, 8 Westgate, Southwell, Nottinghamshire NG25 0JL, UK. Email:dde@southwell.anglican.org

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passive, feeling they need to hold the text’s meaning rather than interpret it (Pike,2003a).

The first report of the Biblos Project, funded by the Bible Society, went further byconcluding that the Bible has significant cultural implications, even for the atheist(Copley, 1998). This report stated that the Bible is a multi-religious text (Jewish,Christian and Islamic) and that it should be used in teaching without editing out‘God’, who is the principal character. At the end of the third and final report of theBiblos Project in 2004, the researchers were becoming more direct. They wrote:

Despite the processes of secularisation which have resulted in the decline of institutionalreligion, UK Society has not written off religious beliefs and values. The majority of peopleappear neither enthusiastically theistic nor atheistic. Therefore it was no surprise that themost common attitude among young people towards the Bible was ambivalence. Yet achallenge is presented to the faith communities, RE teachers and publishers by a demon-stration that a more positive attitude toward the Bible is associated with greater knowledgeof biblical characters, stories and theological meanings, and as well as the importance ofthe Bible for other faiths and for modern society. (Copley et al., 2004, p. 8)

Prompted by such recent challenges concerning the biblical narrative, this article isan initial attempt to respond to what children and young people say about a Biblestory heard within their own nurturing Christian faith community. It is an earlyresponse to the call to theologise with children in considering their understanding ofthe Bible (see Copley et al., 2004, p. 15 and Lipman, 1998) and develops a methodthat allows the child’s voice to be heard from within their various contexts.

After an initial discussion of hermeneutic phenomenology, the article will considera range of methods for identifying the child’s actual voice. The procedure forconducting several case studies will then be outlined before the results are detailed.Educational and theological reflections are offered in the concluding discussion.

Theoretical framework

If the child is to be heard, encountering the sacred texts of the Bible, then a means ofinterpretation in context needs to be identified. I will call this ‘hermeneutic phenom-enology’. Whereas natural sciences tend to look for truth and knowledge throughmethod and through adherence to a set of rules pertaining to a particular method(Van Manen, 1990), hermeneutic phenomenology looks for truth and knowledgethrough interpretation of the expressions of human life (Sharkey, 2001). It is atradition that pays attention to how things appear to be in context (phenomena) andis interpretive of them, noting that all phenomena are encountered through theexperience of life and are described as human constructs.

Gadamer (1960) was instrumental in offering insights into how phenomena areinterpreted. Gadamer’s contribution to philosophy was to bring clarity to thediscipline, particularly in the field of hermeneutics. Throughout his magnum opus,Truth and Method (1960), he argued that experience, culture and prior understandingrender the scientific idea of objectivity an impossible construct. In order to interpretany text, the person needs to be aware of their own lens of meaning that they carry to

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Children’s perspectives on the creation narrative 251

the text. It follows that, if we are to consider how a child might perceive the ancienttext of the Bible, by focusing on a story of interest such as the creation narrative, wemust first consider the child’s world in order to access their sphere of meaning.

A summary of related research has been offered by The Children and WorldviewsProject, the first phase of which is detailed in the seminal book The Education of theWhole Child (Erricker et al., 1997). In this, the research team detail a methodologythat enables adults to listen to children’s voices. The first phase of this project(1993–1996) went on to analyse the resultant data and concluded that narrative wasa key motif in the way children perceive reality. The project continued into asubsequent phase (1996–1999) in which the research team worked collaborativelywith teachers in a longitudinal study with small groups of children. This presentresearch article is related to the Bible Story Project’s current research project.

Hyde (2005) offers a reduction of Gadamer’s insights by noting six key ways intohow they might offer a means for studying the spirituality of children. He notes thatthese are: method (no one method but a conversation with the text); conversation (thatmeans whereby life is given to an encounter that finds a new way of being and a newoutcome); play (the engagement of the conversationalist in a middle space); and finallyunderstanding seen as a productive activity, a fusion of horizons or as prejudice. In hisexploratory paper that offers Gadamer’s writings as a way of opening up hermeneuticphenomenology, Hyde (2005) then goes on to apply them to a single 10-year-old’sspirituality, specifically using Van Manen’s (1990) notion of life-world existentials asguides to reflection on the child’s text in a way that is true to Gadamer’s method. VanManen’s four life-world existentials are lived body (corporeality), lived time (temporal-ity), lived space (spatiality) and lived human relation (relationality). This article usesHyde’s combination of hermeneutical keys (borrowed from Gadamer and VanManen) as being a way of examining the perspectives of children at Key Stages 2, 3and 4 as they interact with the biblical narrative of creation.

Method

The present study was a targeted investigation initiated by the Bible Story Project(BSP) in which various churches were approached with a request for children andyoung people to be involved in a conducted interview in which they would discusstheir understanding of Bible stories. A number of children were identified by aconversation between the principal researcher of the BSP and the church leader froma sample of local churches, in which possible children from different backgrounds andat different key stages were considered.1 This process ended up by selecting childrenwho all came from the nurturing background of active church families. A boy and agirl were then selected from each of Key Stages 2, 3 and 4, parental permission waselicited and the interviews were set up. The chosen children were then formallywritten to, along with their parents.

It was clarified that the BSP would require one interview of an hour and that priorto the interview, each respondent would be asked to sketch a picture of God, apicture of the church and a picture of their family. These would form the basis for a

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preliminary discussion that would identify the child’s worldview and form a back-cloth to the ensuing conversation. The interview itself was informal, starting with adiscussion about the pictures that had been drawn and then continuing with aconversation about the story of the creation narrative in the Bible.

The creation narrative is generally regarded to be a composite of two ancient narra-tives, one being the older Jahwist (or narrative) source that is detailed in Genesis 2 v4ff and the other being the later priestly editing that is detailed in Genesis 1–Genesis2 v 4. In the interview, no actual original telling of the story was offered by textualreading or by the interviewer’s reconstruction and the children were allowed to offertheir own version of the creation narrative from their own understanding.

Throughout the interview in which the pictures were discussed (offering the child’spersonal view of God, the church and their family) and the creation narrative wasconsidered, the interviewer used his knowledge of Fowler’s cognitive developmentaltheory is a means for reflecting on the data. Fowler’s work on a faith development(1981) offers a sequential understanding of the structures of faith across the life cycle.The initial three stages are considered to be inevitable in terms of biological develop-ment for the healthy child. Although a formalised interview process for this theory canbe offered as a separate test, this was not considered to be necessary given thedevelopmental norms upon which the theory is based.

Moseley comments that Fowler’s theory takes seriously the narrative structure oflife’s history ‘offering a scaffold for weaving the tapestry of weaving for one’s life’(Mosley et al., 1992, p. 30). Although Fowler’s faith developmental theory has beenused far more with adults than with children, it is of value to consider the progres-sion from a universal starting point in infancy into stage one, which is the intuitive-projective faith of early childhood characterised by imagination and stimulated bystories but not yet controlled biological thinking. Stage two is the period of mythic-literal faith of later childhood in which emerging logical thought processes allow agreater sense of understanding the logical order of the world. Stage three’s synthetic-conventional faith of adolescence and beyond requires an integration of diverse self-images into a coherent identity before the core beliefs have been tested.

Fowler’s theory has been used as an analysis with adolescents (e.g. Mischey, 1992)and young adults (e.g. Parks, 1986). The insights of faith development are not seenas offering a theory for religious education (Dykstra & Parks, 1986) but more of awindow into a developing narrative of structural thinking. In Fowler’s originalresearch, he interviewed 400 people aged 4–88 of which 88% of 0–6-year-olds werein stage one, 72% of 7–12-year-olds were in stage two and 50% of 13–20-year-oldswere in stage three. More recent work influenced by Fowler’s work is that of JeromeBerryman, who has noted that a child’s development relies more on nonverbalcommunication systems than on verbal skills. Berryman’s focus on wonder and play(2004) is an attempt to restore narrative and creativity back to religious education.

In the same way that the BSP used informal methods on which to apply theoreticalinsights from cognitive developmental theory in order to reflect on the children’sunderstanding, it also used intuitive methods in order to interpret the children’sdrawings.

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Results

Key Stage 2 case studies

The male respondent for Key Stage 2, named Kai (aged seven), was clearly identifi-able to be at Fowler’s faith stage two, having a structure of thought that showed amythical literal worldview. This is a period when the child brings order to a previouslyunordered faith viewpoint where reality and fantasy have been linked in the child’sunderstanding of life. He found God very hard to depict and eventually drew a pictureof the globe with stars and the sun, because ‘that is what God made’. This struggle toclarify what was actual and physical from that which was more abstract was typical ofthe ‘young scientist’ of this age group who will endeavour to separate the mythic fromthe literal.

Kai offered a version of the creation narrative that was highly accurate to theaccount in Genesis (chapters one to four). What was of particular interest was hisneed to offer explanations throughout. He said, ‘If he hadn’t ate the fruit, we’d stillbe alive. That was the first sin’. When asked what this meant, he was confused andreturned to assertions as to the correctness of what he was saying. This was under-standable given his frame of reference and nurturing background that encouragedacceptance more than it encouraged wonder. On one occasion, a mischievous grinspread across Kai’s face as he explained that snakes could not actually speak. Whenquestioned further he said that the snake beckoned the woman with his tail and thatwas how he indicated that she should eat the apple. Beyond this excursion into whatseemed to be forbidden territory, Kai would not be drawn.

The female respondent for Key Stage 2, named Alison (aged nine), was also atFowler’s faith stage two but had developed a particularly rich vein of imaginationwhereby she could enter totally into a different space, time and wonder paradigm inwhich to encounter narrative. She had drawn several pictures of God, two of whichcame from her own archives from when she was five years old. One of these was amulticoloured jester, complete with a jingling hat, who was juggling the two balls ofEarth and Saturn. The other historic picture was of a graceful golden eagle with amultitude of eyes—all set on stems at the end of the bird’s wings. Her two sketchesof a picture of God ‘now’ were similarly imaginative, if more knowingly reflected.They were a ball of light (blue, green, gold, and black) that I was instructed to holdup to the light so that I could see it ‘radiate’ some swirling patterns that had beensuperimposed around a four-pointed star. I was told that this was ‘the ball of love’.Her other picture of God was of a swan, ‘a beautiful creature, gliding through theuniverse’. She felt that she could ‘hide under the shadow of his wings’ and had shadedin that shadowy place at the base of the swan’s wings. Commenting on the movementin perception from ages five to nine, she said that her ‘understanding had improved’and although God was still ‘an entertainer and guardian’ he was more a source of lovenow.

Alison’s version of the creation narrative showed more of this interface between themythic and the literal that offered further insights. She was able to detail the six daysof creation accurately and then described the incident of the eating of the fruit.

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Although initially uncertain as to whether the story had a meaning, she concludedthat it did, namely that, ‘If you listen to God, you’ll find it worthwhile’. When shereflected on the story, she liked the strange (if ‘creepy’) plant, by which she wasreferring to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. She presumed that this plant grewin heaven and not on earth. She wondered if God had made a mistake in testing tosee if humans might want to eat the wonderful fruit of this dangerous tree.

Seen from Van Manen’s life-world existentials, there was a marked difference in thetwo respondents—probably most marked in Kai’s concrete literalness and in Alison’sabstract wonder. Only Alison depicted God as a corporeal being—an image that wasundergoing hugely invested reflection whereas Kai could only connect with God’sresultant creation. Whereas Alison could leap straight into the story and provedinfectious in pulling me into the timeless and spatial dimensions of her wonder-world,Kai was far more reluctant. Both children though, were able to consider possiblemeanings hidden in the narrative and were able to push the boundaries of theirreceived beliefs.

Key Stage 3 case studies

The male respondent for Key Stage 3, named Joe (aged 11), was identifiable as some-one newly entering Fowler’s faith stage three. This stage is brought on by a newcapacity to think and is a period of conforming to an identifiable and tribal worldview.He showed the synthetic-conventional attributes that are the hallmarks of one who isstrongly nurtured (he was the youngest boy in a family of three sons, all of whom wereemerging with a personal Christian faith). His picture of God was of a shepherd boy,holding a crook and chewing a straw. He said, ‘God is relaxed, not stressed … He’sa child at heart. He is learning from us’. This wondrous view was evidenced in hisstory of creation that was patchy as to detail but punctuated with reflective asides. Hesaid, ‘God has huge imagination. He made loads of fish and we’ve only discovered10% of them’. Later he said, ‘God makes good things and bad things … like snakes’.Hard on the heels of this came the contradictory statement, ‘He did not create evil.We created evil by doing sin. Humans are sinful’. His own conclusions as to themechanics of creation were undergoing development and he was more agnostic thanhe wished when he said, ‘The story of Adam and Eve is hard to believe. Probably Godgot the animals evolved but Adam didn’t evolve from an ape … but he might have’.

The female respondent from Key Stage 3 was Kate (also aged 11). She showedmore aspects of Fowler’s faith stage two (mythic-literal) than of Fowler’s faith stagethree (synthetic-conventional), identifiable in her picture of God depicted as thehuman Jesus, complete with beard and the crown of thorns, floating as a cloudamongst other clouds. She said of him, ‘He is neither happy nor sad. But he is a bitsad about pollution’. This projection of her feelings onto God was also evident in heraccount of the story of creation when she emphasised Adam and Eve’s nakedness andresultant embarrassment. She was very aware that the result of eating the apple wasnot only to draw attention to their nakedness but was to be the reason for Eve hurtingwhen she became pregnant. Kate developed the story to talk about Cain and Abel. In

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this accurate but personalised account of creation, it became evident that Kate hadtwo older sisters who were present in her thinking when she said, ‘The meaning of thestory is “Don’t get jealous! I get jealous of my sisters”’ (she was referring to Cain’smurder of Abel). As she paused to reflect, she wondered why it was that a woman atethe first apple and ‘let us women down’. She further reflected on whether God was aman or a woman in making Adam and Eve in His image.

Seen from Van Manen’s life-world existentials, there is a strong sense of bothrespondents articulating corporeally in that phenomenologically human beings arealways bodily in the world (Heidegger, 1980). In both cases, the god-objects andother characters in the narrative were corporeal. Similarly, both showed the phenom-ena of timelessness and spatiality as they reflected on the story and immersedthemselves in it. For them both, the story seemed to live in dreamtime but containeda wider meaning (though how the two were to fuse was as yet unresolved). Both Joeand Kate had been touched by the power of an ancient narrative to merge temporalhorizons of past and present that impacted on their futures even as they reflected.

Finally, Van Manen’s notion of relationality was present even as the children wereconsciously revisiting an old story and taking permission to trawl through it, discard-ing false notions to replace them with new ideas and fresh questions. In this way thecreation story was being reworked to form a more developed idea of God that mighttravel with them into later adolescence and adulthood.

Key Stage 4 case studies

The male respondent for Key Stage 4, named Daniel (aged 17), was identifiable assomeone well embedded in Fowler’s faith stage three, having embraced a faith thatwas personally owned and nurtured within a flourishing Christian youth network. Heshowed the synthetic conventionality of a secure tribal formation but also the willing-ness to reflect on his current beliefs. He recalled reassuring memories of sitting on hisfather’s shoulders as they contemplated the wonder of a created universe walking outone clear and frosty night. It was a ‘perfect image’ in which ‘I was enfolded’ he said.Dan’s picture of God was a silhouette of himself. He said that God was very personal,more so than a father and a son, in fact more similar to his inner self.

This picture of secure personal faith was present as Dan detailed his account of thecreation narrative. He was able to offer a full and accurate version of the biblicalaccounts, even in identifying their different sources. His notion offered a continuousreflection that noted Adam’s active part in creation, God’s early absence and then theresidual philosophic questions, ‘Why did God forbid eating the fruit when theforbidden fruit is sweetest? Does this show God’s folly or is God playing the doublebluff? Maybe the story is a discussion on the origin of evil and shows the dualism atthe heart of God’.

The female respondent for Key Stage 3, named Hannah (aged 15), was alsoidentifiable as a synthetic-conventional thinker (Fowler’s faith stage three) but sheshowed a stronger critique of religious faith, probably because of her identificationwith her father’s intellectual faith position. She recalled strong memories of childhood

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faith in which she perceived God to be a strong but gentle father. The god-object wasclearly linked to an earlier relationship with her father that was still very much inevidence. Hannah’s picture of God was of an oak tree, in the branches of which wereboth the solid images of her current life and the fleeting images of a more mysticalworld. She offered a sense of poetic imagination and a rich inner world. When shediscussed the creation narrative, she gave a graphic account of the story emergingfrom the darkness of nothingness in the formation of what was good. She explainedthe story as a parable with a meaning, noting that the various trees were metaphoricaland not literal. She made links to the notion of God as an elemental, having much incommon with Nordic or Greek mythology. At one point she noted that normally shedid not explain the meaning of stories as this was a means of destroying them but shewas happy to do so on this occasion, as it was not one of her own personal stories andwas one upon which she had been asked to comment.

Seen from within the Van Manen’s life-world existentials, these respondentsshowed secure reflection that allowed them to fully engage with the uncomfortablequestions that exist in the creation narrative if one is to engage phenomenologically.Dan said of the story that it was the story of ‘walking beyond light into light’, that itshowed ‘the madness beyond rationality’. Hannah said that the whole point of thestory was to show humans finding importance in themselves (as opposed to in God).

Both evidenced that they experienced entering a space of mystery which they couldimaginatively come to in order to taste the fruit, engage with the ancient wonder andthen emerge with meaning. It was the resultant understandings that they offered thatwere most striking. Gadamer (1989) maintains that understanding between theinterpreter and the author of the text is seen as a ‘fusion of horizons’ (p. 306). Theemerging understanding of both Dan and Hannah was of a personal comprehensionprojected via their secure worldviews onto the ancient text. They were then able toreflect on a meaning for their own lives and so to reinterpret the text. Because theywere both secure in their sense of self and faith, they were also able to note what priorunderstandings they brought to the text and were willing to test these in the ensuingconversation. This allowed fresh insights to be seen.

Discussion

By using a template approach with hermeneutic phenomenology to open up someinsights of children encountering the creation narrative, several new areas of researchbecome visible. It becomes apparent that children are able to access multi-layeredstories at different levels. As Gobbel and Gobbel (1986) noted earlier, children asyoung as six are able to distinguish between different literary genres in the Bible. Thechildren in my sample were able to begin to notice mystical elements from morehistorical elements and some were able to live with the tension of wonder byembracing them both in the creation story. Cox (2001) wrote in her article ‘Using theBible with children’, ‘It is important to allow children to “play” with the text so thattheir own thoughts and questions can surface’ (p. 48). She later concluded, ‘if we givethem (children) the skills to explore the Bible for themselves, then listen respectfully

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to their insights, and encourage them to find their own applications, we shall begin todiscover together…’ (p. 49).

This approach endeavours to uncover the child’s voice, but also offers a means forlistening and engagement before analysis and gives insights without what Pike(2003b) calls ‘interpretative anarchy’. In fact, the process outlined by Hyde (2005)using a hermeneutic phenomenology offers a process not dissimilar to Rosenblatt’stransactional theory (1978) in which he describes reading as a continuum between‘aesthetic’ and ‘efferent’ (extraction) poles. For Rosenblatt, reading the text allowsthe reader to be aesthetically moved as well as for information to be extracted. Thusthe text can operate as a ‘blueprint’ or as a ‘stimulus’.

The case studies outlined show different Key Stages and different cognitive levelsengaging in the wonder of the oldest story ever told. The stages are not easilyidentifiable in cognitive or developmental terms and seem to have more in commonwith the process described in James Loder’s book, The Transforming Moment (1981)which offers five stages in the movement towards understanding within a faith frame-work. His stages are: conflict, as a new idea disturbs the individual’s equilibrium;secondly interlude for scanning, as the person pauses to reflect; and then comes thecrucial third stage of imaginative insight, which supplies the key to understanding. Thefourth stage is release and opening, as the previous conflict is resolved. This makesroom for the fifth stage to be interpretation.

In developing a sense of the process of how children interpret, imagination is clearlya crucial factor. This same research project used the identical procedure to explorehow adults interpret the creation narrative. Again the key factor was imagination, inthat adults reflecting on the story were only able to access meaning when they werefree to imagine. In a few instances some adult respondents showed that their faith fram-ing considered the Bible to be ‘beyond reflection’ in that their beliefs proved to be anobstacle to interpretation. Although they were educated and intelligent people, theydemonstrated that they were unable to reflect with the text beyond what they had beentold was allowable. Further questioning showed that this lack of permission to reflectstemmed back to childhood authorities. This finding parallels that of Pike (2003a).

Conclusion

It is noteworthy that for the children in this small sample, it was easier to breakthrough their prior understandings of the Bible story and their received meaningsthan it was for adults with whom the BSP has conducted an identical interview. Evenadults who consciously cherish an open theology and a wide hermeneutic of scripturewere less wondrous than children at Key Stage 2 in unlocking fresh meanings.

Other adult respondents from this research sample were able to engage imaginationand demonstrated an ongoing interest in the creation narrative. They showed that byreinterpreting the story over their life cycle, they were able to maintain an increasinginterest in it. This might be seen as a form of recycling childhood hermeneuticalinsight. It is a progression of an earlier study that evidenced ‘the inner child as aresource to adult Faith development’ (Worsley, 2002a, b).

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To reflect on the method employed by the BSP in using the objective tools ofFowler’s cognitive developmental theory alongside the more subjective insights ofVan Manen’s organisation of Gadamer is to offer a multidisciplinary and moreencompassing means of accessing the actual voice of the child. On the one hand, therecorded voice of children at various stages has been noted from within a small sampleand from within a contained worldview. However, the insights of Fowler haveestablished an educational norm within which to hear the more complex reflection ofGadamer’s insights. By listening to the different voices of children interacting withwhat is arguably one of the first stories ever told, this research is releasing a multilay-ered means of listening.

At one level, it seems that what the child brings to a story is at least as important aswhat the story brings to the child. At another level, it seems that the cognitive struc-ture of a child’s developing mind is only one strand to consider alongside the structureof the child’s nurturing home and personal construing of reality.

Note

1. The key stages were the British Key Stages 2–4 (Key Stage 2 spanning ages 7 to 11, Key Stage3 spanning ages 11 to 14 and Key Stage 4 spanning ages 14 to 16).

Notes on contributor

Howard Worsley is the Director of Education for the Church of England Diocese ofSouthwell in the East Midlands. Previously he was Director of Studies at aBritish Theological College. Over the past ten years he has been conductingresearch inquiries into children’s spirituality.

References

Berryman, J. (2004) Playful Orthodoxy Reconnecting Religion and Creativity by Education. Draftarticle, 12 December, available online at: http://www.godlyplay.org

Copley, C., Copley, T., Freathy, R., Lane, S. & Walshe, K. (2004) On the Side of the Angels: theThird Report of the Biblios Project (Exeter, School of Education, University of Exeter).

Copley, T. (1998) Echo of the Angels: the First Report of the Biblos Project (Exeter, School of Education,University of Exeter).

Cox, R. (2001) Using the Bible with children, Journal of Education and Christian Belief, 5 (1),41–49.

Dykstra, C. & Parks, S. (Eds) (1986) Faith Development and Fowler (Birmingham, AL, ReligiousEducation Press).

Erricker, C., Erricker, J., Ota, C., Sullivan, D. & Fletcher, M. (1997) The Education of the WholeChild (London, Cassell).

Fowler, J. (1981) Stages of Faith (San Francisco, CA, Harper & Row).Francis, L. J. (2000) Who reads the Bible? A study among 13–15 year olds, British Journal of

Religious Education, 22 (3), 165–72.Gadamer, H. (1960) Truth and Method (2nd rev. English edn, J. Weinsheimer & D. Marshall,

Trans.) (London, Sheed & Ward).Gobbel, R. & Gobbel, G. (1986) The Bible: a Child’s Playground (London, SCM).

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