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You are here: Home / Writing / Children in Church

Children in Church

June 6th, 2019 by Sallie Bingham in Writing, Religion 2 Comments

Children in Church

Organized religion, which sometimes seems futile to me, gained a new dimension Sunday when the two pews in front of me were filled with five or six squirming small children.

They made no noise, having been warned beforehand, and perhaps silenced by the the powerful male voices of the priests and the bellowing of the organ.

But they moved. Oh, how they moved—over and under the pews, through their parents’ arms, on and off of laps. One little boy of five or so received the great gold offering plate when it was passed to him and held onto it, clearly delighted that this beautiful bright object was passing into his possession. The usher who was passing the plate had to kindly, but firmly, wrench it away.

They made no noise, having been warned beforehand, and perhaps silenced by the the powerful male voices of the priests and the bellowing of the organ. But they moved. Oh, how they moved...

A slightly older boy was watching the choirmaster conduct his choir and then imitated his wide, graceful gestures with obvious delight.

A tiny girl, who couldn’t have been more than two, stood at the railing during communion and with absolute assurance, dipped her wafer into the wine and ate it. I wonder if she believed that she was eating the sacred flesh and blood. If so, she was ushered at a very early age into one of the church’s abiding mysteries.

Another boy, finally beside himself after fishing in his father’s jacket pocket and finding nothing, slid under the pew and lay on his back on the floor.

I know the struggles these parents endured while cleaning, combing and dressing their children, enduring their delays and complaints, and shepherding them into and out of cars. I gave up that battle too soon.

The persistence of these mothers, particularly, the courage it takes to insist on anything, reminds me of a story a friend told me about her adult daughter, who was visiting her here.

While waiting for a table, they sat at the bar in a crowded, expensive downtown restaurant, one of the many Farm to Table establishments that have sprung up here. A woman sat down next to the daughter and began to engage her in talk about wines. My friend noticed, perhaps with misgivings, that this stranger was covered with tattoos—although here that is no longer an oddity or a sign of criminality.

After distracting the daughter with wine talk, the tattooed woman snatched her purse and ran out of the restaurant.

The daughter jumped off her bar stool and gave chase, followed by another woman, a stranger. They cornered the thief a few blocks away and, ignoring her curses, retrieved credit cards, license and cash. The cell phone was found later through the use of an app.

By the time the police arrived, mother and daughter were back in the restaurant, eating their dinner—for which they were not charged.

Of course the mother told me, “What if the thief had a gun?”

That worry might have held the daughter back.

But it did not.

How is this connected to the children in church?

I’m not sure. But the tiny girl who took her place so confidently at the altar rail may mature into a woman who would chase a thief.

At least, I hope so.

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In Writing, Religion Episcopal Church

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  1. Mike Robert Olsen says

    June 6th, 2019 at 7:50 am

    Good observations and hopefull reassurance as we “train up a child ,in the way they should go” Brilliant ! When I was a married priest I wondered how much children absorbed,especially during the homily.But to my surprise after preaching on a donkey who talked in scripture, a girl with cerebral palsy shouted out “Donkey Talked” in which we bellowed with laughter.And yet it showed me children receive in many ways as we speak into their lives..

    Reply
  2. Carol M. Johnson says

    June 6th, 2019 at 8:49 am

    There have been many occasions when people, with the beginnings of gray hair, will come up to me and begin reminiscing about having my husband as a Sunday School teacher and how much they loved him. They will sometimes mention the special feelings they had hearing me play the pipe organ in the beautifully simple church they grew up in. They brought their children to Sunday School and church, and those children had this experience of regular Sunday morning worship in a church.
    Unfortunately, times have changed for this last generation. Attitudes of needing the church to be something “entertaining and more relevant”, and the bombardment of other activities scheduled on that once sacred Sunday, have taken away their need for formal worship.
    We live in a strange time of slippery moral examples. Thank God there are still some small children climbing around in a pew or floor on Sunday morning.

    Reply

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