Religion: Children’s Prayers

For 20 years, Pastor William S. Hill of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Wilkinsburg, Pa. has required that each boy and girl he presents for confirmation compose a prayer. The resulting collection of prayers, he writes in last week’s Christian Century, is “a window to the soul of a twelve-year-old child.”

Peering through his window, Pastor Hill is surprised to find how dependent children feel upon their parents, even in unhappy or broken homes. (“I thank you for helping me get over the flu. Please help my mother get a good strong foothold in her work in Detroit. Give me, O Lord, the sense to learn algebra and to be useful in the Scouts. Amen.”) Hill is also astonished at the “strong note of penitence and personal remorse” that runs through the prayers (“I ask thy forgiveness for all the things I have done wrong”). For many children, he says, the rite of confirmation means forgiveness of sins more than admission into the adult fellowship of the church.

Humanitarian concern and the idealistic desire to dedicate oneself to the good of others are recurrent motifs in the prayers. But Pastor Hill reports that a new element has recently made its appearance—anxiety. “During the war and the subsequent conflict in Korea, the youngsters prayed for those in the armed services. But the war dangers seemed far away; the children themselves did not feel threatened. It is different now. The prayers they write today contain pleas for protection in the event of war, nuclear attack or other crisis … By the time they are twelve, they have become active sharers in the anxiety of our age.”