Karen‐Marie Yust
Biographic Data
| ID | 9201883 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karen‐Marie Yust |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karen‐Marie |
| FAMILY NAME | Yust |
| SIGNATURE | YUST K M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Union Presbyterian Seminary |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0509-5291 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 40 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Reimagining children’s spirituality
During graduate school, I birthed three children and miscarried another. The experience of simultaneously parenting, studying theology, and pastoring churches challenged and reshaped my thinking about children’s spirituality. I began to question the religious anthropology inherited from my faith tradition, as well as traditional child development theories that didn’t cohere with my own observations. I conducted a review of Protestant children’s m…
Reflections on Children, Digital Culture, and AI
Many religious educators express fears about the effects of digital culture and AI on children’s spiritual well-being. This essay acknowledges the prevalence of digital culture in young people’s lives and briefly explores some positive aspects as well as problematic challenges of digital engagement and artificial intelligence for children’s spirituality. It suggests that an attitude of curiosity and critical reflection about living in networked s…
Holy Listening with Children
Innovations in Children’s Spiritual Nurture
Conventional wisdom and antiquated stage development theories have had a negative effect on children’s spirituality. This paper looks at an innovative spiritual practice (embodied prayer) that instead promotes children’s agency and embodied engagement in multi-layered meaning making. It traces both the ways in which children respond to higher levels of trust in their ability to reflect on spiritual ideas and experiences, as well as challenges and…
Whose Children are They? Talking about Responsibility for Children’s Religious Education
The REA Annual Meeting 2023 theme is organized around the question, "Whose children are they?" as a way to explore diverse and intersecting ways that we take and/or assign responsibilities for children’s religious education. In this essay, the Program Chair reflects on personal and scholarly experiences and questions that have framed and continue to shape her responses to the question. She suggests that the guild can take multiple approaches (des…
Song of Songs 2
Responding to change
Striving through study to light a way through the darkness
The spiritual challenges of the ‘cradle to prison pipeline’
Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, writes that ‘1 in 3 Black and 1 in 6 Latino boys born in 2001 [in the US] are at risk of imprisonment during their lifetime’ (Childr
Aims and scope revisions and other changes
Drama, intimacy, and vulnerability
The ever-increasing engagement of children and youth in social media and gaming activities online has created new challenges for scholars and practitioners of children’s spirituality. Bringing psychosocial and media studies research on the phenomena of adolescent ‘drama’ and morality, cyberbullying, and the vulnerable adolescent’s desire for intimacy and community into conversation with ideas about and practices for children’s spiritual nurture i…
Cultivating Christians
North American Christian families face many challenges as they try to live faithfully in an intercultural, multi-religious, secularising world, particularly with regard to the formation of religious identity in children. Answering the question of how children become Christian is more complicated today than it was for previous generations because adults cannot assume that the Christian vestiges of a civil religion will be sufficient to help childr…
“Brexit Spirituality” – the complex (and not so complex) withdrawal of spirituality from the curriculum
Digital play as a spiritually formative activity
The ubiquitous presence of technology in children's lives and the likelihood that technology will remain a significant part of young people's culture means that scholars and practitioners need to ask how digital play may exert a positive spiritual influence on children and youth. This essay therefore explores four spiritually nurturing aspects of digital participation: (1) connections between the polyphonic nature of digital identity and the idea…
Spirituality in the face of adversity
The challenges of fostering an international and interdisciplinary conversation
The faith lives of women and girls
Digital power
Digital culture is a prominent factor in the formation of children’s identity and relational experiences, with high percentages of children in many countries participating in gaming and social networking activities. Yet little scholarly work has addressed the ways in which various patterns of engagement in digital culture call into question current assumptions about childhood identity formation and relationality and the repercussions of formation…
The deconstruction and social (re)construction of spirituality
There has been a considerable discussion among members of the Association for Children’s Spirituality in recent times concerning a definition, or description, of spirituality. While the quest for s
Our children need peace
What does dead mean? A book for young children to help explain death and dying
"What does dead mean? A book for young children to help explain death and dying." International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 19(1), pp. 59–60
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men – can you put spirituality back together again once it has been deconstructed
It seems that there is a new and quite captivating trend presently sweeping the culinary world – that of ‘deconstructed’ dishes. Not only do they abound on television reality programmes, where the
Wombing
Happily ever-after
Are we leaving our children spiritually bereft
No prominent works on this page.
Toddler Spiritual Formation and the Faith Community
This article explores how physiological and cognitive changes, intra-psychic and interpersonal changes, moral development and social location affect the spiritual lives of children who are 12-36 months old. It considers how the development of autonomy in toddlers relates to the theological concept of free will, discusses language acquisition and its importance for religious expression, and shows how both cognitive capabilities and social location…
More Than a Glimpse of Worship
More Than a Glimpse of Worship
Creating an idyllic world for children’s spiritual formation
Christian camps claim to create spaces where children and youth are more likely to encounter God and experience spiritual living, and yet contemporary camp ministries in the United States struggle to distinguish their environments from the cultural contexts in which their campers usually reside. This article reflects on the practices of 23 diverse camps in Indiana, USA, and the pervasive cultural captivity that hinders their facilitation of child…
Childhood and spiritual wisdom
The International Journal of Children’s Spirituality enters adolescence – without leaving childhood behind
When Prayer Fails
Defining childhood at the beginning of the twenty‐first century
Defining childhood at the beginning of the twenty-first century: children as agents
Silence, agency and spiritual development
Silence, agency and spiritual development
Cyber spirituality
Cyber spirituality: Facebook, Twitter, and the adolescent quest for connection
Cyber spirituality II
Cyber spirituality II: virtual reality and spiritual exploration
So, what have we learned
Are we leaving our children spiritually bereft
Spirituality and physicality
Campaigning with children’s lives
Children as targets of violence
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men – can you put spirituality back together again once it has been deconstructed
It seems that there is a new and quite captivating trend presently sweeping the culinary world – that of ‘deconstructed’ dishes. Not only do they abound on television reality programmes, where the
Wombing
Happily ever-after
The faith lives of women and girls
Digital power
Digital culture is a prominent factor in the formation of children’s identity and relational experiences, with high percentages of children in many countries participating in gaming and social networking activities. Yet little scholarly work has addressed the ways in which various patterns of engagement in digital culture call into question current assumptions about childhood identity formation and relationality and the repercussions of formation…
The deconstruction and social (re)construction of spirituality
There has been a considerable discussion among members of the Association for Children’s Spirituality in recent times concerning a definition, or description, of spirituality. While the quest for s
Our children need peace
What does dead mean? A book for young children to help explain death and dying
"What does dead mean? A book for young children to help explain death and dying." International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 19(1), pp. 59–60
Digital play as a spiritually formative activity
The ubiquitous presence of technology in children's lives and the likelihood that technology will remain a significant part of young people's culture means that scholars and practitioners need to ask how digital play may exert a positive spiritual influence on children and youth. This essay therefore explores four spiritually nurturing aspects of digital participation: (1) connections between the polyphonic nature of digital identity and the idea…
Psychology (25 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Spirituality (17 works) · Medicine (13 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Developmental psychology (6 works)