American Families of Faith

"According to a  2018 Gallup Poll, about 40% of Americans self-identify as Evangelical or “born again” Christians . American Evangelical Christians generally report that one primary conviction of their faith is a strong belief in the Bible—the Protestant roots of sola scriptura, scriptura sola (“only scripture and scripture alone”). The other deep faith commitment is the striving for a personal re...

Dr. Loren Marks, co-director of the American Families of Faith project, shares his deep respect and "holy envy" for Muslim families in the United States. Particularly, the combination of Ramadan and zakat inspires a hope for a better world. This podcast features conversations about faith and family life between the co-directors of the American Families of Faith project ( http://AmericanFamiliesofF...

"I(Dave) was raised in a Mainline Protestant Church, Holy Innocents Episcopal Church in Marin County, California. I served as an acolyte (altar boy) for three years (age 9-12) and assisted the Priest by carrying the large wooden and gold cross during the “processional” into the sanctuary at the beginning of the service and the “recessional” out of the church at the end of the service, lighting and...

Dr. David Dollahite, co-director of the American Families of Faith project, shares his feelings of respect, appreciation, and "holy envy" for Evangelical Christian families in the United States. Many of the Evangelical participants interviewed spoke of their views on servant leadership within families and of their focus on the word of God found in the Bible. This podcast features conversations abo...

"We sometimes are asked why we have such appreciation for our Jewish friends and their faith. It is a long story but it starts with the fact that Dave’s godmother is Jewish. When, as an infant, Dave was to be baptized in the Episcopal Church, Dave’s mother, Elizabeth, insisted that his godmother be her best friend Ann Scinski. This was despite the fact that Father Ewald, the priest who baptized Da...

Dr. Loren Marks, co-director of the American Families of Faith project, reflects on his deep respect and "holy envy" for Black Christian families in the United States. Many of these families shared a profoundly deep and living faith in a God that hears and sustains them during poignant challenges. This podcast features conversations about faith and family life between the co-directors of the Ameri...

Dr. David Dollahite, co-director of the American Families of Faith project, shares his thoughts on the familial power of sacred rituals among Jewish families. Through many wonderful experiences of participating in Shabbat observance with Jewish families, he has developed a deep sense of "holy envy."  This podcast features conversations about faith and family life between the co-directors of the Am...

" . . . we know little about the deeper meanings and processes involved regarding why some Black marriages thrive. Next, we offer a few brief insights gleaned from a recent study entitled, “Weathering the Storm: The Shelter of Faith for Black American Christian Families.” By “giving the mic” to the couples themselves, we are able to uncover some of the underlying reasons for why and how religion r...

"We find ourselves feeling respect and holy envy for the extensive and explicit efforts of the Catholic and Orthodox Christian faiths as they strive to replace guilt with hope, bitterness with forgiveness, divisiveness with unity, and animosity with atonement."   David Dollahite reads the article, "Catholic and Orthodox Christian Families: Confession and Forgiveness" which was originally published...

Dr. David Dollahite, co-director of the American Families of Faith project, reflects on his sense of "holy envy" for Catholic and Orthodox Christian families in the United States. A simple, regular, patterned approach to asking and granting forgiveness smooths relationships within many of these families. This podcast features conversations about faith and family life between the co-directors of th...

"Each of the different religious-ethnic communities in the  American Families of Faith research project  features valued additions via differences in perspective and lived experience. This may be especially true with our Asian American Christian families. When one realizes that in 1989, nearly half of the individuals we interviewed were still living in China during the tragic massacre of the June...

"In this [audio article], we discuss the “inner logic” of religion(s). That is, how religious thinking and acting is important to understand on their own terms and not simply as merely psychological or sociological in nature. Unfortunately, across the social sciences, a typical approach to the study of religion and religions is to reduce religion to sociology or to psychology by imposing sociologi...

"A sad irony of life in contemporary America is that large numbers of people who devote a great deal of time, effort, and money to get into fictional alternate worlds, while at the same time, most Americans seem unable or unwilling to devote much effort to better understanding the religious worlds of their fellow citizens. Thus, many Americans spend hundreds of hours watching and reading about fic...

"Although religious intolerance and marginalization still exist today, research suggests that perhaps one of the most marginalized groups is those who report no religion. Through interviews with 31 nonreligious couples, we investigated what nonreligious parents want religious people to understand about them and their families.   ". . . we identified three themes related to what our participants wa...

"The balance between parents’ profound desires for children to remain faithful and their simultaneous desire to honor their children’s agency showed up over and over in our own American Families of Faith project. As we’ve probed deeper into parents’ wishes to have their children remain in their religion, we discovered different ways parents navigated this significant wrestle."   Laura McKeighen re...

Dr. Loren Marks, co-director of the American Families of Faith project, reflects on his "holy envy" for Asian Christian families in the United States. Their courage to embrace change in a new land, sincerely follow their beliefs, and serve through pragmatic collectivism are a few of the strengths to be admired among the Asian Christian community. This podcast features conversations about faith and...

"The term holy envy was developed by the late Krister Stendahl, who was Dean of the Harvard Divinity School and then Church of Sweden Bishop of Stockholm. This concept is core to the multi-faith research my colleagues and I do in the American Families of Faith project. "At the end of the semester, students write a paper on holy envy. This assignment asks students to “List and briefly discuss the 5...

Dr. Loren Marks and Dr. David Dollahite, co-directors of the American Families of Faith project, share thoughts about how their study of various families of faith has led them to a sense of deep admiration or “holy envy” for religious practices from other faiths. The "empathy wall" is an obstacle to a deep understanding of someone else that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those tha...

"The diverse families of faith we have interviewed practiced a wide range of religious rituals and activities at home. These practices reportedly deepened their faith in God and strengthened their sense of connection with their family members. Such patterns of home-based worship take on pointed relevance in our current COVID-19 context where houses of worship have been closed.  "Prayer, studying s...

"In my experience, both 9/11 and COVID-19 involve grief over profound losses, anxieties and fears about the future, suspicions of others, and divisions across political lines, as well as increased prayers for self and others, increased desire to understand those who are suffering or are different, and greater efforts to build bridges across various divides." "To encourage hope during these difficu...

Why the American Families of Faith Project: Enriching & Strengthening Families In the social sciences there tends to be a focus on weaknesses and why things go wrong. The American Families of Faith Project brings a much needed balance to the study of marriages and families by focusing on the features and origins of relational strengths and health.    This podcast features conversations about faith...

"A large body of social science research indicates that high levels of healthy religiosity provide many personal and relational benefits that merely nominal levels of religious belief and involvement does not. To settle for the dangerous single story that religion is bad may be at least as unfortunate as the provincial narrative that religion is an unmitigated good. Our carefully measured, double...

"Religious gatherings often bring a sense of peace and safety, but in this case, religious gatherings can spread the very virus everyone hopes they and their loved ones will avoid. Whether you believe that houses of worship should remain open during this trying time, or that they should close, our research has found that meaningful religious practice at home is both possible and beautiful."   Davi...

"For two decades, we have interviewed religious wives and husbands in long-term happy marriages and we asked them how they kept their love alive. We heard relational and religious answers that reflected a variety of wisdom. "Like most Americans of our generations (X and the Boomers), we also grew up hearing the voices of classic rock and roll. Rock also has its own kind of wisdom about keeping lov...

"Catholic thinker Michael Novak locates the myth of romantic love in our unfulfilled passion. He distinguishes romantic love from an embodied, other-oriented Christian love. But it’s worth exploring the possibility that elements of the same basic human desire lie at the core of both: a deep and abiding need for profound and lasting—indeed eternal—emotional and spiritual intimacy, the dream of shar...