• Home - America's Quilt of Faith
  • American Families of Faith Project
  • National Museum of American Religion
  • Pilot Virtue of Faith Survey
    • 2nd Mount Olive Baptist Church - Brownsville, VA
    • St. James Episcopal Church - Leesburg, VA
    • Northern Virginia Baha'i - Sterling, VA
  • Religion City, USA
  • FaithToSelfGovern BLOG
  • Religious Data - Interactive
  • Faith to Self Govern - documentary TV series proposal
  • American Pilgrimage Project

The latest social science is wrong. Religion is good for families and kids. 

12/16/2015

0 Comments

 
By W. Bradford Wilcox December 15, 2015

Washington Post
​

W. Bradford Wilcox is director of the University of Virginia's National Marriage Project, an American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar, an associate scholar at Georgetown University's Religious Freedom Project and co-author, with Nicholas H. Wolfinger, of "Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love, and Marriage among African Americans and Latinos."

It’s a message we hear more and more: Religion is bad.

And certainly recent headlines — from terrorist attacks perpetrated by radical Islamists in Paris and San Bernardino to the strange brew of warped Christian fundamentalism that appeared to motivate alleged shooter Robert Dear at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs — feeds the idea that religion is a force for ill in the world. But in “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason,” Sam Harris not only asserts that the “greatest problem confronting civilization” is religious extremism, he further waxes that it’s also “the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.”

Taken together with the assessment of social scientists — the high priests of our contemporary culture — the message, increasingly, is clear. Just last month, a new University of Chicago study conducted by psychologist Jean Decety posited that religious children are less altruistic than children from more secular families. He went so far as to contend that his results reveal “how religion negatively influences children’s altruism. They challenge the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior, and call into question whether religion is vital for moral development — suggesting the secularization of moral discourse does not reduce human kindness. In fact, it does just the opposite.”

It’s a sweeping indictment of the role of religion in society based on a study of sticker-sharing and cartoon-watching among children aged 5-12 around the globe. Using a non-random and non-representative sample, Decety found, among other things, that children from religious homes were less likely to share stickers with an unseen child than children from secular homes. In response to Decety’s findings, a Daily Beast headline proclaimed “Religious Kids are Jerks” and the Guardian reported “Religious Children Are Meaner than Their Secular Counterparts.”

As I see it, the impulses behind this thinking are several and, to some degree, understandable. Religion is frequently seen by secular observers as an obstacle to social progress on issues like abortion and gay rights, or as an adjunct of conservative politics in general. Meanwhile, a growing number of young adults in America identify as religious “nones,” often with little appreciation or understanding of religion. But is religion really as negative a force in our daily lives as its detractors and skeptics suggest? No.

On average, religion is a clear force for good when it comes to family unity and the welfare of children — the most important aspects of our day-to-day lives. Research, some of it my own, indicates that on average Americans who regularly attend services at a church, synagogue, temple or mosque are less likely to cheat on their partners; less likely to abuse them; more likely to enjoy happier marriages; and less likely to have been divorced.

Data taken from National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Surveyindicate, for instance, that Americans who attend religious services often are markedly more likely to report they are “very happy” in their marriages compared to those who rarely or never attend. Frequent attendees are about 10 percentage points more likely to report they are “very happy” in their marriages, even after controlling for their education, gender, race, ethnicity and region. So, faith seems to be a net positive for marriage in America.

And when it comes to kids, the research tells us that religious parents spend more time with their children. Indeed, the Deseret News/Brigham Young University American Family Survey tells us that parents who attend religious services weekly are more likely to eat dinner with their children, do chores together and attend outings with their children, even after controlling for parental age, gender, race, marital status, education and income.

Religious parents are also more likely to report praising and hugging their school-aged children. Contra Decety, University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter finds that religious teens are more likely to eschew lying, cheating and stealing and to identify with the Golden Rule. Children from religious families are “rated by both parents and teachers as having better self-control, social skills and approaches to learning than kids with non-religious parents,” according to a nationally representative study of more than 16,000 children across the United States.

In contrast to Decety’s assertions, faith is a net positive when it comes to “prosocial behavior” among American children.
French sociologist Emile Durkheim explained that what makes religion vital, in part, is that it provides rituals, beliefs and a sense of group identity that deepens people’s connections to the moral order. In his words, the faithful “believe in the existence of a moral power to which they are subject and from which they receive what is best in themselves.”
The rituals associated with religion lend meaning to life, including its most difficult moments and seasons — from the loss of a job to the loss of loved one. Moreover, as I’ve noted elsewhere, more formal “rites as a baptism and a bris, congregations erect a sacred canopy of meaning over the great chapters of family life: birth, childrearing and marriage.” Religious rituals encourage us to take our family roles more seriously and to help us deal with the stresses that can otherwise poison family relationships. The norms — from fidelity to forgiveness — taught in America’s houses of worship tend to reinforce the faithful’s commitments to their spouses, family members and children and give them a road map for dealing with the disappointments, anger and conflicts that crop up in all family relationships. And as one of the most powerful sources of social capital outside of the state and workplace today, religious social networks provide support and succor to millions of Americans.

Religious faith is not a cure-all when it comes to families and children. And, of course, millions of secular Americans enjoy strong and stable families — indeed, a majority of husbands and wives who rarely or never attend church report that their marriages are “very happy.”

To be sure, there are scenarios in which religion can be a source of tension. Evidence suggests that religious children are “less tolerant of social change and diversity in lifestyle,” according to Hunter. Their identification with and adherence to orthodox religious beliefs, in particular, seems to make them less likely to support abortion and gay rights.

And religious disagreement in the family — whether between husbands and wives or between parents and children — can spell trouble, especially when this disagreement is deep and heartfelt. Less conservative, less religious women married to theologically conservative men, for instance, are more likely than average to be physically abused. Nominal evangelicals — especially nominal evangelicals from the South, the region I hail from — are more prone to higher rates of domestic abuse and divorce, even compared to their fellow citizens who have no religious affiliation.

But religion in America is not the corrosive influence that it’s often made out to be nowadays. On the contrary, for many Americans, it’s a source of inspiration that redounds not only to their benefit, but also to their families and communities.
0 Comments

Why Religion Matters - III (from lds.org)

5/31/2014

0 Comments

 
Why Religion Matters: The Twinned Life of Family and Faith

This essay on family and faith is the third in a five-part series about the value of religion

SALT LAKE CITY — “Congregations erect a sacred canopy of meaning over the great chapters of family life: birth, childrearing, and marriage.” — W. Bradford Wilcox[1]

For all its progress and possibilities, our modern world has difficulty seeing beyond itself. Every age has to struggle against its blind spots. In ancient Rome, for example, the span of a person’s influence was reckoned at 100 years. Within that horizon individuals could remember two generations back and care for two generations forward. Then, as the custom went, that influence stopped, and a new century, with new people and new concerns, would reset itself.[2] But lasting societies need a broader vision.



The pull of the present is strong, but so are the tugs to the past and the future. Family and faith — our two great bridges beyond the here and now — stretch far past 100 years, in both directions, and expand the purpose and meaning of our lives.

None of us is born a mere individual. We come to this world with a network of pre-existing ties, bonds and obligations. These family relationships shape our worldviews, instil our values and form our identities. And families of all kinds thrive when they join a community of believers. The benefits go both ways — churches strengthen families, and families strengthen churches. Working together, family and faith reinforce norms of right and wrong, teach us how to love our neighbors and provide a support base where children and parents navigate life’s challenges. In other words, family and faith keep us from being alone. They enlarge our circles of responsibility beyond the self and help us turn strangers into friends. Families then pass this spiritual and social capital across generations.

Marshaling extensive social science research, author Mary Eberstadt shows how closely these forces are intertwined. “Family and faith are the invisible double helix of society,” she writes, “two spirals that when linked to one another can effectively reproduce, but whose strength and momentum depend on one another.”[3]

This partnership can be seen at church on Sunday afternoons. Eberstadt points to broad sociological agreement that participation in the family rituals of “being married and having children is linked to higher levels of churchgoing and other types of religious practice.”[4] Another factor is the effect children have on the religious lives of their parents. Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox puts it simply: “Children drive parents to church.”[5] It’s a common story — kids grow up in a church, leave home for college and drift from the faith, only to return when they get married and have children. What explains this phenomenon? The decisions we make about our deepest beliefs and closest relationships are never simple. But Wilcox adds an important insight: “The arrival of a child can awaken untapped reserves of love, recognition of the transcendent, and concern for the good life.”[6] These things matter because family and religion are among the most basic human institutions. When together, they connect society; when apart, society weakens.

The sacred relationships between kin and church, church and kin, tie us to the past, present and future. Such continuity helps us situate ourselves in this big universe. We find out who we are. The poet Wendell Berry gives expression to these aspirations: “The marriage of two lovers joins them to one another, to forebears, to descendants, to the community, to Heaven and earth. It is the fundamental connection without which nothing holds.”[7]

The fortunes of family and faith will continue to ebb and flow, as they have in various periods throughout history, but experience shows they will do so joining hands. As the one rises or falls, so will the other. The course of history is not predetermined; it is chosen. And those choices have long trajectories — much too long, indeed, to fit in 100 years.

 [1] W. Bradford Wilcox, “As the Family Goes,” First Things, May 2007.


[2] See Remi Brague, “The Impossibility of Secular Society,” First Things, Oct. 2013.


[3] Mary Eberstadt, How the West Really Lost God, 2013, 22.


[4] Eberstadt, How the West Really Lost God, 93.


[5] Wilcox, “As the Family Goes.”


[6] Wilcox, “As the Family Goes.”


[7] Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, 1992.


0 Comments

3rd Monday

3/18/2013

0 Comments

 
Yesterday was Sunday, and I have been thinking why a person of faith might be a better American this week because of it....

Just by speaking with many pastors, priests, bishops...leaders of various places of faith the past three or four years, I think it is fair to say that yesterday millions of church-goers, at least of the Christian faith, promised their Creator that they would obey his commandments for the next six days.One of these surely is to commit no adultery. Now, if all these who made that promise, kept it, our country would have healthier, happier, and more productive husbands, wives, and children. These would then form the shoulders upon which the weighty burdens of America could confidently be placed. 

This reminds me of what President Truman said to the Army officer who offered to line him up with a prostitute in post-war Berlin (as found in McCullough's Truman, page 435): " 'Listen, son, I married my sweetheart,' Truman said. 'She doesn't run around on me, and I don't run around on her. I want that understood. Don't ever mention that kind of stuff to me again.' "    
0 Comments

Demographics and world politics

1/6/2009

0 Comments

 

The World Won't Be Aging Gracefully. Just the Opposite.
By Neil Howe and Richard Jackson
Sunday, January 4, 2009; B01
The world is in crisis. A financial crash and a deepening recession are afflicting rich and poor countries alike. The threat of weapons of mass destruction looms ever larger. A bipartisan congressional panel announced last month that the odds of a nuclear or biological terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the year 2014 are better than 50-50. It looks as though we'll be grappling with these economic and geopolitical challenges well into the 2010s.

But if you think that things couldn't get any worse, wait till the 2020s. The economic and geopolitical climate could become even more threatening by then -- and this time the reason will be demographics.

Yes, demographics, that relentless maker and breaker of civilizations. From the fall of the Roman and the Mayan empires to the Black Death to the colonization of the New World and the youth-driven revolutions of the 20th century, demographic trends have played a decisive role in precipitating many of the great invasions, political upheavals, migrations and environmental catastrophes of history. By the 2020s, an ominous new conjuncture of these trends will once again threaten massive disruption. We're talking about global aging, which is likely to have a profound effect on economic growth, living standards and the shape of the world order.

For the world's wealthy nations, the 2020s are set to be a decade of hyperaging and population decline. Many countries will experience fiscal crisis, economic stagnation and ugly political battles over entitlements and immigration. Meanwhile, poor countries will be buffeted by their own demographic storms. Some will be overwhelmed by massive age waves that they can't afford, while others will be whipsawed by new explosions of youth whose aspirations they cannot satisfy. The risk of social and political upheaval and military aggression will grow throughout the developing world -- even as the developed world's capacity to deal with these threats weakens.

The rich countries have been aging for decades, due to falling birthrates and rising life spans. But in the 2020s, this aging will get an extra kick as large postwar baby boom generations move into retirement. According to the United Nations Population Division (whose projections are cited throughout this article), the median ages of Western Europe and Japan, which were 34 and 33 respectively as recently as 1980, will soar to 47 and 52, assuming no miraculous change in fertility. In Italy, Spain and Japan, more than half of all adults will be older than the official retirement age -- and there will be more people in their 70s than in their 20s.

Graying means paying -- more for pensions, more for health care, more for nursing homes for the frail elderly. Yet the old-age benefit systems of most developed countries are already pushing the limits of fiscal and economic affordability. By the 2020s, political warfare over brutal benefit cuts seems unavoidable. On one side will be young adults who face declining after-tax earnings, including many who often have no choice but to live with their parents (and are known, pejoratively, as twixters in the United States, kippers in Britain, mammoni in Italy, nesthocker in Germany and freeters in Japan). On the other side will be retirees, who are often wholly dependent on pay-as-you-go public plans. In 2030, young people will have the future on their side. Elders will have the votes on theirs. Bold new investments in education, the environment or foreign assistance will be highly unlikely.

Aging is, well, old. But depopulation -- the delayed result of falling birthrates -- is new. The working-age population has already begun to decline in several large developed countries, including Germany and Japan. By 2030, it will be declining in nearly all of them, and in a growing number, total population will be in steep decline as well. The arithmetic is simple: When the average couple has only 1.3 children (in Spain) or 1.7 children (in Britain), depopulation is inevitable, unless there's massive immigration.

The economics of depopulation are grim. Even at full employment, real gross domestic product may decline, because the number of workers will be falling faster than productivity is rising. With the size of markets fixed or shrinking, businesses and governments may try to lock in their positions through cartels and protectionist policies, ushering in a zero-growth psychology not seen since the 1930s. With each new birth cohort smaller than the last, the typical workplace will be top-heavy with graybeards. Looking for a flexible, creative, entrepreneurial labor force? You'll have come to the wrong address. Meanwhile, with the demand for low-wage labor rising, immigration (assuming no rise over today's rate) will double the percentage of Muslims in France and triple it in Germany. By 2030, Amsterdam, Marseille, Birmingham and Cologne are likely to be majority Muslim.

In Europe, the demographic ebb tide will deepen the crisis of confidence reflected in such best-selling books as "France is Falling," by Nicolas Baverez; "Can Germany Be Saved?" by Hans-Werner Sinn; or "The Last Days of Europe," by Walter Laqueur. The media in Europe are already rife with dolorous stories about the closing of schools and maternity wards, the abandonment of rural towns and the lawlessness of immigrant youths in large cities. A recent cover of Der Spiegel shows a baby hoisting 16 old Germans on a barbell with the caption: "The Last German -- On the Way to an Old People's Republic." In Japan, the government half-seriously projects the date at which there will be only one Japanese citizen left alive.

An important but limited exception to hyperaging is the United States. Yes, America is also graying, but to a lesser extent. We are the only developed nation with replacement-rate fertility (2.1 children per couple). By 2030, our median age, now 36, will rise to only 39. Our working-age population, according to both U.N. and census projections, will continue to grow throughout the 21st century because of our higher fertility rate and substantial immigration -- which we assimilate better than most other developed countries. By 2015, for the first time ever, the majority of developed-world citizens will live in English-speaking countries.

America certainly faces some serious structural challenges, including an engorged health-care sector and a chronically low savings rate that may become handicaps as we age. But unlike Europe and Japan, we will still have the youth and fiscal resources to afford a major geopolitical role. The declinists have it wrong. The challenge facing America by the 2020s is not the inability of a weakening United States to lead the developed world. It is the inability of the other developed nations to be of much assistance -- or indeed, the likelihood that many will be in dire need of assistance themselves.

A major reason the wealthy countries will need strong leadership are the demographic storms about to hit the developing world.

Consider China, which may be the first country to grow old before it grows rich. For the past quarter-century, China has been "peacefully rising," thanks in part to a one-child policy that has allowed both parents to work and contribute to China's boom. But by the 2020s, as the huge Red Guard generation born before the country's fertility decline moves into retirement, they will tax the resources of their children and the state. China's coming age wave -- by 2030 it will be an older country than the United States -- may weaken the two pillars of the current regime's legitimacy: rapidly rising GDP and social stability. Imagine workforce growth slowing to zero while tens of millions of elders sink into indigence without pensions, without health care and without children to support them. China could careen toward social collapse -- or, in reaction, toward an authoritarian clampdown.

Russia, along with the rest of Eastern Europe, is likely to experience the fastest extended population decline since the plague-ridden Middle Ages. Amid a widening health crisis, the Russian fertility rate has plunged and life expectancy has collapsed. Russian men today can expect to live to 59, 16 years less than American men and marginally less than their Red Army grandfathers at the end of World War II. By 2050, Russia is due to fall to 20th place in world population rankings, down from fourth place in 1950. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flatly calls Russia's demographic implosion "the most acute problem facing our country today." If the problem isn't solved, Russia will weaken progressively -- raising the nightmarish specter of a failed state with nukes. Or this cornered bear may lash out in revanchist fury rather than meekly accept its demographic fate.

Of course, some developing regions will remain extremely young in the 2020s. Sub-Saharan Africa -- which is afflicted with the world's highest fertility rates and ravaged by AIDS -- will still be racked by large youth bulges. So will several Muslim-majority countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. In recent years, most of these countries have demonstrated the correlation between extreme youth and violence. If that correlation endures, chronic unrest and state failure could persist through the 2020s -- or even longer if fertility fails to drop.

Many fast-modernizing countries where fertility has fallen very recently and very steeply will experience an ominous resurgence of youth in the 2020s. It's a law of demography that when a population boom is followed by a bust, it causes a ripple effect, with a gradually fading cycle of echo booms and busts. In the 2010s, a bust generation will be coming of age in much of Latin America, South Asia and the Muslim world. But by the 2020s, an echo boom will follow -- dashing economic expectations, swelling the ranks of the unemployed and perhaps fueling political violence, ethnic strife and religious extremism.

These echo booms will be especially large in Pakistan and Iran. In Pakistan, the number of young people in the volatile 15- to 24-year-old age bracket will contract by 3 percent in the 2010s, then leap upward by 20 percent in the 2020s. In Iran, the youth boomerang will be even larger: minus 31 percent in the 2010s and plus 30 percent in the 2020s. These echo booms will be occurring in countries whose social fabric is already strained by rapid development. One teeters on the brink of chaos, while the other aspires to regional hegemony. One already has nuclear weapons, and the other seems likely to obtain them.

All told, population trends point inexorably toward a more dominant U.S. role in a world that will need us more, not less. For the past several years, the U.N. has published a table ranking the world's 12 most populous countries over time. In 1950, six of the top 12 were developed countries. In 2000, only three were. By 2050, only one developed country will remain -- the United States, still in third place. By then, it will be the only country among the top 12 with a historical commitment to democracy, free markets and civil liberties.

Abraham Lincoln once called this country "the world's last best hope." Demography suggests that this will remain true for some time to come.

Neil Howe and Richard Jackson are researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and co-authors of "The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century."

0 Comments

    Author

    Chris Stevenson investigates the indispensability of faith to the American experiment in self-governance. 

    Archives

    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    August 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    April 2010
    February 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    July 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    January 2009
    December 2008

    Categories

    All
    Accountability
    American Civil War
    American Culture
    American Exceptionalism
    American History
    American Presidents
    American Religion
    Art
    Article Vi Of The Constitution
    Atheism
    Baseball
    Belief
    Belonging
    Bible
    Blur Laws
    Calamity
    Canada
    Catholicisim
    Chaplaincy
    Chaplains
    Charter Schools
    Chastity
    Children
    Christianity
    Christmas
    Church
    Church And State
    Church Attendance
    Church Construction
    Churches
    Church Schools
    Civil Rights
    Classroom
    Commandments
    Community
    Compassion
    Confidence
    Costs
    Creator
    Culture
    Denominationalism
    Devil
    Devotional
    Divisiveness
    Divorce
    Education
    Empathy
    Entertainment
    Episcopal Church
    Evangelism
    Evolution
    Extremism
    Faith
    Faith Healing
    Faith-healing
    Family
    Fidelity
    First Amendment
    Foreign Policy
    Forgiveness
    Freedom Of Conscience
    Gideons
    God
    Grandparents
    Haiti
    Harry Truman
    Healing
    Health
    Home
    Homeless
    Honesty
    Hope
    Humanitarianism
    Humanities
    Humility
    Humor
    Hungry
    Individualism
    Inmates
    Inner City
    Interfaith
    Interfaith Marriage
    Jesus Christ
    Jewish Faith
    Kindness
    Kingdom Of God
    Laws
    Leesburg Virginia
    Lent
    Light
    Love
    Lutheran Church
    Marriage
    Martin Luther King
    Mass Media
    Materialism
    Meaning
    Medicine
    Mennonite
    Miracles
    Mission
    Missionary
    Modesty
    Morality
    Moses
    Music
    Nationalism
    National Museum Of American Religion
    National Religious Monuments
    Nature
    Non-violence
    Orthodox Church In America
    Parenting
    Patriotism
    Places Of Faith
    Politics
    Poverty
    Prayer
    Prayer Groups
    Prisoners
    Prison Ministry
    Progress
    Promise
    Prophets
    Proselytizing
    Public Utility
    Punishment
    Purpose
    Racism
    Reconciliation
    Refugees
    Religion
    Religion And Liberty
    Religion And Politics
    Religion And War
    Religion In Europe
    Religious Clothing
    Religious Decline
    Religious Freedom
    Religious Liberty
    Religious Test
    Repentance
    Rewards
    Righteousness
    Sabbath Day
    Sacrifice
    School
    Scriptures
    Secularism
    Self Government
    Self-government
    Selfishness
    Selflessness
    Self-segregating
    Serpent-handling
    Social Capital
    Societal Cohesion
    Spirituality
    Sports
    Stem Cells
    Suffering
    Supreme Court
    Symbols
    Teaching
    Teaching Values
    Technology
    Ten Commandments
    Thanksgiving
    Theodore Roosevelt
    The Pope
    Tolerance
    TV
    Understanding
    Unitarian Universalism
    Unity
    Urban Decay
    U.S. Senate
    Values Education
    Violence
    Virtue
    Wall Of Separation
    War
    Wisconsin
    Witnessing
    World History
    World War II
    Ymca
    Youth

    RSS Feed

✕