April 14, 1999

Faith weaves the fabric
of families, study shows
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
___WACO--American families have a "faith dimension" that strongly shapes members' lives, sociologist Diana Garland reported during the 1999 Willson-Addis Lecture at Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary.
___Drawing upon the results of a three-year study of 108 families, Garland listed attributes of faith she observed in personal interviews--attributes that are so infused into the

DIANA GARLAND

makeup of families that the families themselves often could not distinguish faith as an isolated influence.
___Families in the study represented "a diversity of kinds of families--nuclear families with husband, wife and children in the home; empty-nest couples; single-adult families; senior-adult families; single-parent families; and couples with no children," They came from 32 Southern Baptist, National Baptist, United Methodist and Presbyterian congregations in the South, Pacific Northwest, Midwest and Southwest.
___"Family faith" is "the meaning and purpose families express that they experience in their life together," explained Garland, professor of social work at Baylor and director of the Baylor Center for Family and Community Ministry.
___From hundreds of hours of taped interviews, she found eight key themes:
___ Daily faith rituals. "Many of these families experience their faith--the meaning and purpose of their life together--in the daily rituals of care-giving more than in rituals that are overtly 'religious,'" she observed.
___"Daily family rituals are particularly important for carrying the meaning and purpose of family life," she said.
___"For example, I have been particularly struck that those families who could tell the stories of their faith are families who eat together, usually aiming at a daily meal together as often as possible."
___However, few families, except those with preschoolers, "have a regular devotional time together," she added. "Many of these families do pray at meals. But if they don't eat together, they don't pray together."
___ Faith on the go. "Faith is often experienced and talked about 'on the way to somewhere else' rather than as an intended topic of conversation," Garland said. "Families may not have rituals of Bible study and prayer, but faith is a part of their talking about their lives together."
___She told about a stepfamily from the South whose faith had helped them endure difficulties. The mother said, "I can say this for me and I guess for the rest of us too, (faith is) so engrained that we don't really say, 'Oh, we're having a faithful moment right now.'"
___Her 14-year-old son describ-ed a conversation he had in the family car with his mother in which they discussed how "God has a plan for everything that happens."
___"The son is echoing and actually deepening what his mother said," Garland pointed out. "Faith is an often-spoken undercurrent of their lives, not something they often pick up and turn over in their hands and say, 'This is faith.'"
___ Influences of others. Family faith is "a transaction among the faith experiences of the individual family members," she noted.
___"Adults grow in faith as they interact with children and adolescents, and even infants, whose faith stage would be considered at least one or two steps 'down' from their own," she added. "For example, the faith of a child becomes inspiration for the hard-pressed adult who has, perhaps, lost touch with the mystery and awe of (God). Thus, the transaction creates something distinct from beyond what either adult or child alone could know or tell."
___None of the 108 families indicated that they felt "tension between their faith life and their family life," she said. "They all indicated ways in which they felt family living added a dimension to their faith."
___ Major events shape faith. "Births, deaths, serious illnesses and crises are major influences on the faith of families," Gar-land reported.
___"When I asked families to tell about a time when they felt God especially close, they almost always spoke of a death, or less often of a birth, and sometimes another major crisis," she said.
___She quoted a father who told about the spiritual impact of the near-death of his infant son: "If I had not turned my son over to God that night--(praying), 'I mean, he is yours, God; take him!'--I don't think he'd be here."
___ Natural service. "Some families live their faith through service activities, but they do not always think about or describe these activities in faith terms," she said.
___"Families often do not seem to have a faith vocabulary for expressing their shared faith," she explained. "They may act in ways others would perceive to be related to faith, but they may not talk about what they do in those terms."
___She cited a woman whose family volunteers to help impoverished families in their community.
___"I don't think I help so much because of my faith," the woman said. "I think I help because I feel like I've been so lucky and there have been people who have been so unlucky. And I guess it goes back to that I feel like God has blessed me."
___"Clearly, families act sometimes for reasons they aren't entirely able to put into words, or perhaps their reasons are so complex and the meanings so deep that they defy being described," Garland said. "... Faith and values are so much a part of who she is that she acts without having to reason out why."
___ Influence of biblical stories. "Despite their membership in a Christian congregation, some families do not have the language and images ... to construct a faith using biblical language," she noted.
___"The most developed and moving stories of faith came from families who were able to tie their own stories to biblical themes and stories," she said.
___On the other hand, families who could not cite a meaningful biblical story or passage "were also the families who had few or no stories to offer concerning the meaning and purpose of their shared lives beyond securing and enjoying material resources."
___ Feeling out of place. "Some families feel like second-class citizens in the congregation because they don't fit what others perceive to be the ideal family structure," she acknowledged.
___She quoted a divorced mother of a preschooler: "I know my son needs to be at church, but, as for me, I've got to find somewhere that I feel like I'm learning something. They teach a lot about family values and marriage, and they don't realize that there are a lot of people who don't have that, not by their own choice. So, I feel out of place."
___ Strength in brokenness. "Some of the families who told the most powerful stories of faith challenged our understanding of family strength and brokenness," Garland noted.
___To illustrate, she told about a single-parent African-American family with very tight finances in which the mother also cares for the child of a mentally ill cousin, works with her church's youth ministry and keeps her home open to teenagers, "folding them into their family."
___"So, what is the perfect family--the strong family, the broken family?" Garland asked.
___"I have learned how very strong the families in our congregations are," she noted. "Some may be characterized by our culture as broken, but in faith they are whole, and there is redemption in their lives together."

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