This is episode 13 of season 3 of What Matters Most, featuring the Venerable Rev. Dr. Robert James, Associate Professor, Anglican Formation and Studies at VST. Apart from his work in Anglican studies, Rob is a biblical scholar and has written and published a book of stories from the Bible designed for storytellers to use with children in children’s homilies or Sunday School or church camps. The first book is on stories from the NT, but there is a second coming on stories from the OT. The illustrator for both is the Reverend Amanda Ruston. The book is called Fifty New Testament Stories for Storytellers. It was terrific to have on the podcast again my good friend Rob James, a Great Friend of the Podcast, a GFOP as they call it on the Men in Blazers podcast.
He is a master storyteller and you might even be able to find some examples of him teaching, singing, and playing his stories on YouTube from his days as a priest in England if you poke around. Here’s a few to get you started! One, Two, Three! I can tell you that his presentation of the story of Jesus teaching how should we pray at the SBL meetings in the Children in the Biblical World session in November 2024 in San Diego had 68 biblical scholars up on their feet doing all of the motions and uttering all of the words as he led us through that story. It was a highlight of the whole conference.
But Rob’s work on telling biblical stories for children allows us to think about what we want children to learn from the Bible, and not just children, but adults. Why are we telling these stories for children? Knowledge of these stories and persons is essential for understanding art, music, culture and their influence on English speaking and other cultures. But there are other more important issues also. Some of it certainly is just to let children know about what the Bible teaches, but is this just an issue of teaching morality? Here’s how you need to behave, or practice your faith, here are good things to do unto others, and here are good things to believe. Certainly, all of these things are worthy. But I wonder if simply letting children know about the people in the Bible and what it teaches goes beyond cultural considerations and even moral considerations and simply allows children to encounter God and the nature of God and to reflect on, think about, and even wrestle with questions of purpose and meaning. This sort of wrestling is not beyond children, they do it naturally and have insights about God that transcend their age and simplicity. Rob’s work lets this happen naturally and gently, allowing the stories to teach the children and to teach us.
Because thinking about Rob’s work in writing a children’s Bible also made me reflect on and work to understand the purpose of the Bible for adults. What do we hope to get from the Bible? What do we expect from it? Whom do we encounter there? Why are we reading the Bible?
What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.
Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @biblejunkies. Or email me at [email protected]. Let me know what you think.
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John W. Martens