“Dear New York friend”: Innocence and the Nation in Gifts Sent to the Manhattan School for Children in Fall 2001

This special issue explains how political theology, as a field, needs children. One reason is that political theologies, in the world, already have children. As an example, this article shows how schools enlisted living children in producing the figure of the child. In an uncoordinated accident in fall 2001, schools across the United States and world sent gifts to the Manhattan School for Children. I argue that, using theological-nationalist ideas in circulation about American innocence and care for fellow Americans, these gifts allowed children to participate in the rapid construction of a nationalist imaginary where America was a vulnerable innocent and in need of protection through military might. They taught children whose suffering mattered. At the same time, the gifts provided a space where children could say that they were experiencing pain, as they confronted the nationalist figure of the child.