The Rev. Dr. Jerome Berryman, cofounder of the global Christian education movement known as Godly Play, died August 6 at 87. Berryman developed Godly Play with his wife, Thea, who died in 2009.
Godly Play applied insights from Montessori education to children’s formation, but it became more than Montessori for churches. The Godly Play Foundation’s website shows a map and links to its presence in more than 60 nations, including Cambodia, Ethiopia, Germany, Israel, Pakistan, and Russia.
Berryman was born in Ashland, Kansas, and the Godly Play Foundation is based there. He married Dorothea Schoonyoung in 1960, and they had two daughters in the same decade.
Their younger daughter, Colleen, was born with spina bifada. She painted and was a reading teacher at School of the Woods in Houston for many years, until she died in 2020. Thea Berryman was the music teacher at the same school for more than 35 years.
Berryman was a graduate of the University of Kansas, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of Tulsa Law School. He also read theology at Oxford University’s Mansfield College during the summer of 1966 and graduated from the year-long program at the Center for Advanced Montessori Studies in Bergamo, Italy, in 1972.
He had three post-doctoral residencies in theology and medical ethics at the Institute of Religion in the Texas Medical Center in Houston (1973-76). Both General Theological Seminary and Virginia Theological Seminary gave him honorary degrees.
Berryman was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1962 and was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1984.
Berryman often remembered encountering the “God of Power” during his childhood, especially when he engaged with nature and was guided by supportive adults. He felt that the “church God” was more rigid and formal, and he began seeking a bridge between children’s experiences and formal Christian teaching.
The foundation said the Berrymans “embarked on a journey to develop a new approach to spiritual nurture that honors the centrality, capacity, and competency of children,” which led them to develop Godly Play. He founded the Center for the Theology of Childhood in 1997 to continue to inspire research and theological discourse on the spirituality of children. That center is now part of the Godly Play Foundation.
The center keeps a 4,000-volume library and a Godly Play room based at St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church in Denver. Berryman retired in 2007 as executive director of the center and became its senior fellow. In his retirement, he was based in the Diocese of Colorado.
“I had the privilege of meeting with Jerome almost every week since I started this role in 2020,” said Dr. Heather Ingersoll, executive director of the foundation. “It is hard to describe someone who was one of the most brilliant minds in Christian education and Children’s spirituality, yet so practical, personable, and kind. His fierce dedication to ensuring that our religious and academic spaces honor children’s spiritual journeys is inspiring and was a transformational gift to all who encountered and will encounter his work.”
The Rev. Dr. Cheryl Minor, director of the Center for the Theology of Childhood, said she met Berryman in 1992. “It will be my privilege to honor his legacy, continuing the important work of advocating for children in the academy and the church. In Godly Play, we often talk about endings that are also beginnings. May it be so for Jerome and for us as we both grieve and carry on his work in the world.”
