When a couple
becomes a family, Does faith follow?
Religion shopping and soul searching often
start after the children are born
By Marcia
Z. Nelson
"Mommy,
what's religion?"
It was an
unexpected question, especially coming from a 5-year-old being
treated in a hospital emergency room. But it was a pivotal moment,
prompting her mom to rethink the family's priorities and start
a search to give them religious grounding.
Dori Davenport
sees that sort of thing all the time. "We are definitely
seeing a lot of people visiting our churches and a lot of families
with children," says Davenport.
As religious
education and growth consultant for the more than 70 Unitarian
Universalist churches in the Midwest, she often sees young families
looking for religion.
Over time,
Davenport says, there has been a shift in the reasons young families
come to Unitarian Universalist churches. Fifteen years ago, people
were escaping their religious upbringing.
"They
knew what they didn't want their children to have," she says.
But today's families are less reactive, more curious about choices
and aware that faith comes in many flavors. "They're very
open to a wide variety of ideas and want exposure to world religions,
to Jewish and Christian teachings," Davenport notes.
It's a common
search for many families. Two people who started out as unattached,
career-oriented individuals become a couple and settle down. For
most, that means creating a stable home life, having kids and
grappling with questions about how to transmit their values to
the next generation. Some will turn to organized religious or
spiritual groups to help them teach their children.
"A lot
of parents have a real desire for their own kids to have some
foundation in faith," says Tom McGrath, the Chicago author
of Raising Faith-Filled Kids: Ordinary Opportunities to Nurture
Spirituality at Home. "This is maybe the first time they
begin to go to church regularly, and all of a sudden they get
a chance to really nurture their own spiritual lives."
Cheryl Malczyk,
children's ministry director at Christ Community Church in St.
Charles, agrees. "One of the things that will awaken a person
spiritually is their children," says Malczyk, who has two
teenage daughters and experienced that awakening herself. "They
take their kids to Sunday school and pretty soon they're coming
in too."
For the kids
Sometimes the children literally lead.
Keisha Towns
went up the church aisle with her two children, Kierra, 6, and
Eric II, 9, to declare her intentions to join Trinity United Church
of Christ, a large church on Chicago's South Side. Kierra enjoyed
sitting in the church's large sanctuary and long expressed an
interest in being baptized. Towns began to take her daughter's
desire seriously and, in August of this year, Towns made the decision
with her children to join Trinity United. With that commitment,
church became a family affair, since dad, Eric, was already a
member.
"I would
say, ‘I don't like big churches, I could never find a parking
spot, all kinds of excuses," says Keisha Towns, a former
accountant and now a stay-at-home mom. "Then I stopped and
said, ‘Here's a place where I can watch my kids grow and
be happy and be a willing participant. I can deal with the little
inconveniences that come up."
Exploring
options
Parents have a lot of choices when cultivating a family faith.
Some return to or rev up the practice of the faith they were raised
in. It's familiar, makes sense and works as a way to inculcate
an enduring sense of faith-based values, beliefs and practices.
Others remember their own religious upbringing with dismay and
vow to avoid repeating it. So they go congregation "shopping"
for a religious home more compatible with their preferences, needs
and values.
Some young
parents who were raised without any particular religious heritage
are open to different faith choices. Still others face the need
to blend differences in spiritual traditions-a challenge most
common for Jewish-Christian couples.
Makom Shalom,
a Chicago Jewish congregation established in 1991, specializes
in interfaith families. Couples are attracted to the congregation
because it allows them to celebrate significant life events-marriage,
birth of a child-in ways that incorporate both Christian and Jewish
traditions. "We get a lot of young parents coming in,"
says congregation administrator Jaqi Green. "They feel they've
lived different upbringings but now have a child and need to figure
out how to offer support from the combined traditions."
Green adds
that still other elements and traditions come into play for the
80 families who attend the downtown Chicago congregation. Some
members have studied and practiced Eastern religious traditions,
such as meditation. "We try to blend from different backgrounds
and traditions and connect to the Torah, because they're inevitably
something to connect," she says. Twice a month the congregation
convenes Family School, a religious education session for all
family members, so that families can go home and talk about common
topics.
Rediscovering
religion
The birth of their two children was an occasion for Makom Shalom
congregation members Rahmiel Drizin and Tamar Levinson of Oak
Park to become more observant of their Jewish faith. "Before
we had the babies I bought all the books on how to raise a spiritual
child," says Drizin. "I found them to be nice, but they
were very general. We had to learn by doing."
Drawing on
the heritage of Jewish mysticism, the family's religious practices
include home-based services incorporating meditation and a meal
with friends. Services at home allow the family to honor a traditional
prohibition against driving on the Sabbath, but it also allows
them to attend to their two daughters' needs and have a toddler
and preschooler participate in services.
"The
joy I have when my daughter says a prayer, or feeding her, seeing
her dance at prayer services, reading our book, playing our games-it's
just wonderful," says Drizin.
When Cynthia
Wade's daughter was born in 1991, it was time for some kind of
values education but Wade and her then-husband faced some choices.
She was raised Roman Catholic, he was Jewish. "Both of us
were open to the fact that we didn't want our daughter to be taught
one way or the other," says Wade. "We wanted her to
have the exposure to a lot of pieces of information."
She joined
the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva in 1994 and got so
involved that she's now the director of religious education at
her 1,000-member church. She sees some people come through the
doors in response to specific encounters their children have had
with peers.
"Their
kid's best friend said they were going to hell because they didn't
believe in Jesus Christ and the parents think, ‘Oh my God,
I guess I better talk about this,'" says Wade.
Jennifer Archer
of Geneva is enjoying talking about faith with her 3½-year-old
daughter, Ally. Her family began attending Christ Community Church
in St. Charles earlier this year. "We're very open about
talking about God," says Archer. "When she's misbehaving
we talk about how God feels about that, or, if Mommy yells, we
talk about how God feels about that too."
Archer and
her husband, Dale, parents of two, had both fallen away from practicing
the Roman Catholicism in which they had been raised. Prior to
joining Christ Community, they had begun talking about faith and
values for their children and themselves. Archer also had a very
specific situation that sent her searching for support: She had
been diagnosed with postpartum depression following the birth
of the couple's son. A Christian counselor proved helpful, and
a friend recommended a parenting Bible study group at Christ Community.
"I was in awe of these women and I said, ‘This is what
I'm missing. I need this,'" Archer says.
The whole
family now attends church, with the parents switching off the
duty of minding 14-month-old Aidan during the service. "For
any parents struggling with whether they should go back to church
for the sake of a child, it couldn't hurt," Archer says.
"Most likely they need it too."
If the education
and practice of faith and values is a family affair, it takes
place every day of the week and not just in the Sunday school
setting. Although parents generally feel a need for some kind
of institutional expertise to teach and practice faith and values,
home is ultimately the more important classroom.
"Unless
it is part of home life, the church can't do it all," says
McGrath, the faith and parenting author. "Kids follow what
their parents do rather than what their parents intend for them."
