c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Paul C. Fox is a practicing physician and a member of the Bruderhof Communities. He lives in Farmington, Pa. He is also editor at large of Plough magazine, the quarterly publication of the Bruderhof Communities.)

(RNS)-It takes a child to raise a village. This sentence is not a misprint. Nor is it a review of Hillary Clinton’s recent book,”It Takes a Village,”which I have not read.

But the currency Mrs. Clinton has given to an old African proverb has led me to wonder whether there is any truth to it. And if so, I wonder how such ancient tribal wisdom applies to children and parents in the Western world today.

In a village, everyone knows everyone else: strengths and weaknesses, talents and failings, quirks and foibles-and above all, everyone knows and cares about the children.

In a village everyone depends on everyone else. And the survival of the village depends on each person doing his or her part, whatever it may be, and more: to step in and fill the gap if another villager is incapacitated.

If a mother falls ill, an auntie or friend will take over the cooking and cleaning until she recovers. If a child misbehaves when parents are not near, a neighbor intervenes. The future of the village depends on children growing up to be dependable and productive adults. Everyone in the village has an interest in seeing to it that they do so.

I grew up in a setting akin to the proverbial village. My parents and their parents had lived there all their lives. Their closest friends were people with whom they had gone to school. Divorce then was something shocking that happened to other people. Intact, two-parent families were the norm.

The suburb I grew up in remains today, but the village that provided me warmth and comfort is gone. My parents and most of their friends have retired to the Sun Belt. Their children scattered to the four winds. Their grandchildren are raised by single parents, by step-parents or by the grandparents themselves.

In America today, as in much of the industrialized world, there is no village to provide children with the care, support and attention they deserve. Large institutions cannot provide this service. Certainly government cannot.

Big government has done much to destroy the village. The move to consolidate small school districts in the country, and the practice of busing in the cities, made children strangers in their own towns and neighborhoods, and made it more difficult for parents and teachers to work together.

A relentlessly profit-oriented corporate culture has also contributed to the erosion of the village, as malls and Wal-Marts destroy the commercial heart of many towns and ruthless”downsizing”creates a class of white-collar migrant workers.

Churches, sadly, have likewise mostly failed to provide parents and children with the network of support formerly rendered by the village.

What then, is the answer? We cannot attempt a literal return to village life of a century ago, nor even to suburban life of the ’50s. Nor should we want to. For all the support village life gave to children and parents, the downside of that life was often one of narrowed perspectives, distrust of outsiders and new ideas, and cruel abuse of those who did not fit the mold.

But unless we can somehow recapture the positive essence of the village, our society is doomed to see ever more failed marriages, alienated young people, social disintegration and violence.

Without a restoration of caring, committed communities to support parents in the overwhelming task of raising children, the future looks dark indeed.

There can be no return to the village unless the true value of children and of childhood itself is recaptured. And Christians should be in the forefront of this reclamation because of the high value Jesus himself placed on children. It was Jesus who set a little child in the midst of his disciples and said”of such is the kingdom of heaven.” For the Christian, each child is an ambassador from heaven, a representative of Christ himself. What a contrast to the current climate in America, where children have become one among many commodities that adults acquire-or jettison-in pursuit of self-fulfillment.

What else do the burgeoning industries of in-vitro fertilization, sperm-banking, surrogate motherhood and abortion signify, if not the commercialization of child-bearing and of childhood itself? Why else has child abuse increased precisely as the number of”planned pregnancies”has risen?

This distortion of childhood is both a cause and a consequence of the loss of the nurturing village. The remedy lies in restoring a genuinely Christian attitude toward children. If believing parents, grandparents, teachers and other caring adults once again recognize Christ in every child, they will put aside all self-interest, they will make every sacrifice, they will join together to raise them into responsible adulthood.”Let us gather around our children and give to them the security that can come only from association with adults who mean what they say and who share in deeds which are broadcast in words,”the great pacifist theologian Howard Thurman wrote in”Meditations of the Heart.” There is wisdom in that thought. Let us place the child in our midst, as Jesus did. Let us give every child the value Jesus did. In doing this, we will resurrect the caring commitments that bind us together, the connections that are so crucial to the welfare of children-and to us all.

When we do that, we will finally understand that it does take a child to raise a village.

MJP END FOX