Churches could encourage faith development in families by helping families talk more about their shared experiences, says a Baylor University researcher and educator.
“Family is one of the contexts in which individuals develop and live their faith,” said Diana Garland, director of Baylor’s graduate program in social work.
“Perhaps one of the simplest and most important places to begin in ministry with families is to ask them to teach us about faith — and to hear for themselves the strength faith gives them for living,” she added.
Individuals joined together in a family may develop a “family faith” that provides remarkable comfort and meaning in each member’s life, Garland told members of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.
She addressed the group’s annual meeting in Houston, reporting on her Lilly Endowment-funded study of how faith influences family life.
Garland conducted two-hour, face-to-face interviews with 110 families in four regions of the United States.
Families interviewed represented Southern Baptists, National Baptists, United Methodists and Presbyterians.
Family members were asked individually and corporately how faith shaped their lives.
The responses she recorded could be grouped at four points:
-Those who saw faith having little influence on their families.
-Those who saw family as a context for defining faith.
-Those who saw family as the shaping influence on their faith.
-Those who told a family faith narrative shaped by the family group.
The ability of individuals to trust in God appears to be strongly influenced by their ability to trust their families, Garland found. “When family relationships are not trustworthy, then faith in God may also be shaken, for adults as well as for children.”
Faith also provides the impetus for some individuals to take heroic steps in caring for family members, Garland reported.
To illustrate, she told this story: “An African-American middle-aged woman, divorced when her children were young, describes the schedule she carried for years in order to support her children, working at night full time while they were sleeping, coming home to get them off to school in the morning, then working a full-time day job. For seven years, she averaged two to three hours of sleep a night. When she began earning enough to quit one job, she enrolled in college and began carrying nine hours each semester to earn her bachelor’s degree. Now she is raising her 10-year-old niece.
When asked how this was possible, she responded, “The Lord did it. I know I didn’t do it.” This theme was repeated over and over, as many respondents gave their favorite Bible verse: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Families also view faith as a vital means of coping during difficult times, Garland found. In some cases, faith inspires a belief that things will “work out” in time or that “all things work together for good.” In other cases, faith provides the context for believing God will take bad things and bring something good out of them.
At the most faith-filled end of the spectrum, Garland found families that had woven together a common faith narrative. These were the instances in which family members told their story together, sometimes interrupting each other, affirming or modifying the story as it was told.
“Family members sometimes build on and develop one another’s faith definitions, stretching individual definitions into family definitions of faith,” she noted.
Such faith narratives “tell stories for a reason,” Garland said. “The stories illustrate a family principle, define their identity as a family unit or in some other way describe or underscore the meaning of family life.” (ABP)
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