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Listening to children's understandings of a ritual First Communion
is generally understood as a rite of passage in which seven- and
eight-year-old Catholic children transform from baptized
participants in the Church to members of the body of Christ, the
universal Catholic Church. This official Church account, however,
ignores what the rite actually may mean to its participants. In
When I Was a Child, Susan Ridgely Bales demonstrates that the
accepted understanding of a religious ritual can shift dramatically
when one considers the often neglected perspective of child
participants. Bales followed Faith Formation classes and
interviewed communicants, parents, and priests in an African
American parish and in a parish containing both white and Latino
congregations. By letting the children speak for themselves through
their words, drawings, and actions, When I Was a Child stresses the
importance of rehearsal, the centrality of sensory experiences, and
the impact of expectations in the communicants' interpretations of
the Eucharist. In the first sustained ethnographic study of how
children interpret and help shape their own faith, Bales finds that
children's perspectives give new contours to the traditional
understanding of a common religious ritual. Ultimately, she argues,
scholars of religion should consider age as distinct a factor as
race, class, and gender in their analyses.
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