WHEN Jesus told him that to see the Kingdom of God one must be “born again”, Nicodemus famously asked: “How can one enter the womb for a second time?” Jesus’s holy conundrum — that to grow into the likeness of God entails becoming as a child again — is given an intriguing and wonderfully challenging spin by Graham Adams. He contends that the Kingdom is better served by metaphors of God as child than as adult or parent. God the Child is, by turns, a workbook in liberation theology, an ecclesiological manifesto, and a liturgical exploration. It leaves the reader in no doubt that the Church is impoverished by its unwillingness truly to embrace pictures of God framed through the lens of childhood.
Christianity, Adams suggests, has found the adulthood of God both necessary and attractive. Certainly, many take comfort and strength in God the “almighty” and “all-knowing” Father. Adams says that such a God is a “giant” who is, by turns, impressive, overwhelming, and — given giants’ capacity to crush the tiny underfoot — someone whom we want on our side. With skill, Adams exposes how this “giant” God buttresses and bolsters imperial and patriarchal versions of the Church.
Where this book genuinely ruffles settled orthodoxies is in Adams’s imaginative and eclectic investigation of what happens when we allow God the “little child” to lead us. He fuses together imagined dialogues between a Child-God and Adams (some of which work better than others) alongside insightful interrogations of feminist, black, and disabled theologies, as well as liturgy and hymnody.
It adds up to a heady and rich approach to reimagining God. Adams offers the weakness and smallness of God the Child as an alternative picture of God’s omnipresence: in being small, God can genuinely be everywhere. He can get into the gaps and be in the places that the powerful ignore. Adams also offers the image of God as a “child’s open palm”; this openness exposes how often our adult hands are closed off from loving relationship and promise.
This is an accessible and stimulating book. Each chapter ends with questions for reflection, revealing Adams’s background as a teacher. If God the Child is of especial interest to those studying university-level theology, it is also an excellent introduction to some of the liveliest developments in recent liberation theologies. I really liked the way in which Adams refuses to idealise childhood, and yet insists that to be aligned with God we must embrace our weakness, smallness, and curiosity. This, he says, is a matter not only of being “childlike”, but also of embracing our “childness”. Given where we have got to as a Church, maybe it is time for us to give it a try.
The Ven. Dr Rachel Mann is the Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, and a Visiting Fellow of Manchester Met University.
God the Child: Small, weak and curious subversions
Graham Adams
SCM Press £19.99
(978-0-334-06500-5)
Church Times Bookshop £15.99