In this installment of “Working in the Vineyard,” Pray Tell presents Villanova University’s recent symposium, “Children, Ecology, and Liturgy,” which was held in partnership with the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Liturgy and funded with a grant from the Lilly Endowment. The event, directed by Rev. Dr. Christy Lang Hearlson and Dr. Tim Brunk, took place on May 20-22, 2024 at Villanova. The following is from an interview with Christy Lang Hearlson.
Tell us about the origins of the project.
For me at least, this project starts with bees and wasps. About seven years ago, my family met a scientist in the field—literally, in a big field—who was collecting specimens of sweat bees to determine their population health. I didn’t know what a sweat bee was, so he showed me, and I was delighted by their tiny iridescent bodies. Realizing I was unaware of a whole buzzing world right before my eyes, I began learning about pollinators, and eventually, my family built a pollinator garden and then helped neighbors build more. My two young children were along for the ride; they learned to recognize different kinds of bees and wasps (yes, wasps are pollinators, and ecologically essential), and they shouted out when a monarch butterfly floated through.
Then two years ago, I was at a swimming pool with my kids. We heard a commotion and looked up to see a group of seven pre-teen boys whipping towels at the air. I saw they were swatting a single insect, a bee or wasp, that was confused by their flying towels. The poor insect kept flying in circles, trying to escape the boys’ wrath. My son, who was five at the time, looked up at me and said, “Don’t they know it’s a pollinator?” Next, a cry of victory went up. One of the boys had brought the insect down. All of them began stomping on the ground, cheering loudly at their kill. My son gazed on in tears.
Nothing could have been clearer to me in that moment: children are formed to respond to the world around them. They can be formed to respond with fear, loathing, and cheerful violence, or they can learn to perceive connectedness, to express wonder and compassion, to act with courage, to lament violence. So much of the planet, so much of the future, depends on this formation.
When the Lilly Endowment called on Villanova to consider applying for a grant about children and worship, my colleague Tim Brunk and I knew we wanted to situate children and worship in a broader context than the church sanctuary; we wanted to attend to children and worship in ecological context. I’m trained in theology, religious education, and children’s spirituality, and I’ve long had an interest in ecology; Tim is trained as a liturgical and sacramental theologian who connects liturgy and justice. As we talked, we realized we wanted to do work that supports the formation of Christians’ ecological spirituality, which is marked by wonder, compassion, a sense of connectedness, as well as courage to act. And we believe one of the central places where such formation can happen—for adults and children—is in Christian worship.
Let me add an important caveat: Tim and I are both clear that worship is about God, not about any one issue or cause. We also believe that through our worship, God forms us. Christians can and ought to be formed through our prayers, songs, preaching, movements, sacred objects and sacraments into people who love and care for our common home, because this is what God calls us to do. If this isn’t happening, if our worship doesn’t facilitate wonder and compassion, then we ought to ask why. So, while we never want to instrumentalize worship, making it about something other than God, we also want to ask whether and how our current worship practices form adults and children as people of wonder, compassion, connectedness, and courage. That’s how this project got started.
Describe your mission and vision. How do you fulfill your mission during a time of such rapid change in our churches and in our world?
You ask about rapid changes in our world. Right now, we’re watching species extinction, rising temperatures, wildfires, water scarcity, soil contamination, the spread of deserts, and human conflicts over natural resources. People around the world are waking up to the fact that we need a great spiritual, moral, and practical shift to be more faithful inhabitants of our common home. Pope Francis and ecological theologians have named this shift an “ecological conversion” (Laudato Si’) and have called for ecologically sensitive reflection on our education and worship, as well as our ordinary practices.
Responding to this context, the purpose of the Children, Liturgy, Ecology, and Renewal (CLEAR) Project is to support liturgical formation of children’s ecological spirituality and to contribute to scholarly knowledge of liturgical formation.
The project includes a two-year program with 13 institutions in the Philadelphia area and the commissioning of new music for congregational use. Our May 2024 symposium, which we co-hosted with Notre Dame’s Center for Liturgy, gathered 10 scholars representing diverse perspectives to present papers on the topic of children, liturgy, and ecology. We asked them to think about children’s needs and gifts in a time of major ecological upheaval. We asked them to think about children’s climate anxiety, children’s vulnerability, and children’s joy and wonder at creation. And we asked them to consider how particular worshipping traditions might already foster children’s gifts and respond to their needs, as well as what might need to change. Their papers will ultimately become a book, part of a series on liturgical formation.
What is the most important contribution this project is making to the life of the church?
This project is bringing children into the conversation around liturgy and ecology, and it’s equipping church leaders to foster children’s faith in ecologically attuned ways.
Liturgical theologians have been writing and talking about ecologically sensitive worship for some time, but when you read their (otherwise excellent) works, you might get the impression that children don’t exist as part of the church. But children matter deeply in this conversation around worship and ecology, for several reasons.
First, children are also important members of the Body of Christ, important citizens of the world. Ignoring them means marginalizing a whole group of people. We’re tempted to call children the “future of the church” or the “future of the world.” But they’re not merely future beings. They’re alive now, which means they matter now.
And children are suffering now. They are first and worst impacted by environmental problems. Tragically, children make up many of the climate refugees we see today—according to UNICEF, in a recent five-year period, there were 43.1 million child displacements due to floods, storms, droughts, and wildfires. More protected children experience climate anxiety. Children are already inheriting the very serious planetary problems we’re leaving them—and they’ll have to deal with the world 20 and 50 years from now.
Children also bring distinctive gifts to the church and the world. In their capacity for wonder at the natural world, their ability to ask impolite questions, their boredom with the inauthentic, and their sense of urgency, they are already leading the way. Indeed, some of the most persistent cries for change come from youth-led movements.
Finally, many teenagers and young adults say they left the church because the church seemed to have nothing to say to the world’s problems, including environmental crises. Many also say their sense of spirituality is linked to wonder at the natural world—and the church didn’t seem to share that wonder. It doesn’t have to be this way. What if children grew up praising the God of all pollinators?
May God prosper your work!