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Growing up Charismatic: Morality and Spirituality among Children in a Religious Community
Author(s) -
Csordas Thomas J.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
ethos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.783
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1548-1352
pISSN - 0091-2131
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1352.2009.01067.x
Subject(s) - morality , spirituality , charisma , sociology , meaning (existential) , moral development , openness to experience , context (archaeology) , social psychology , psychology , gender studies , epistemology , law , philosophy , political science , medicine , paleontology , alternative medicine , pathology , psychotherapist , biology
Abstract The intersection of two questions about human experience is the starting point for this article. The first question has to do with the problem of how charisma can be successfully transferred to the second generation of a prophetic community. The second question has to do with how children come to be, and to act as, moral and spiritual beings. These questions converge in a particular way in the ethnographic setting of The Word of God Community: it is founded on a charismatic spirituality closely intertwined with a moral imperative, such that its viability depends on reproduction of that morality and spirituality among children of the founding generation. Data come from interviews with 38 children across three age groups (5–7, 10–12, and 15–17 years), conducted over a four‐week period subsequent to a community schism, which left members in a state of reflection, self‐examination, and openness. We focus on children's responses to a series of culturally specific vignettes designed to present various dilemmas of moral reasoning. In this highly charged context moral and spiritual life are based on an active engagement characterized by dynamic and contested processes, and it is through these processes that individuals make meaning out of and reconstruct the moral code of their culture. [childhood and adolescence, religion, Catholic Charismatic Renewal, Pentecostalism, morality, spirituality, intentional communities]