Horace Bushnell: Guided by his Wesleyan Heritage

Abstract

Until the dawn of the twentieth century, the spiritual nurture of children was not a high priority for the Christian church. In fact, for most of Christian history, reflection on the nature of children and their spiritual formation was often considered “beneath” the work of theologians and Christian ethicists, and thus relegated “as a fitting area of inquiry” only for those directly involved with children.! One nineteenth-century American Christian writer, Horace Bushnell (1802-1876), stands in contrast to theo lo^’s neglect of children’s spirituality. He was a prominent New England Congregational pastor. Today, he is recognized as “the quintessential American theologian of childhood”^ who made a unique contribution to the Christian church’s understanding of the spiritual nurture of children. What is less recognized is that he was strongly influenced by nineteenth-century American Wesleyan thought.