Relationship of Home and Church

Published October 20, 1983. Last week I attended the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations. We met in St. Paul, Minnesota, which turned out to be a rather symbolic city. This year I think I learned more about religion than I did about family life.

One of the interesting presentations on religion was made by Dr. Edward M. Sullivan from CARA, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, affiliated with the Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. Their recent study was done in conjunction with the Gallup polling organization and is one of the most comprehensive studies ever made on religious values in the United States.

Dr. Sullivan told us that the research project was not just to obtain information for the Catholic church. Rather, it was designed to study religious values and behaviors in the United States and more than 20 other countries.

The preliminary results indicated (1) religion is still a vital component of life in the United States; and (2) the United States is the most religious country of those surveyed, as measured by CARA’s indicators. In just a few categories, Ireland was more religious than the United States. Dr Sullivan indicated these findings are contrary to several media reports during the past few years.

Another interesting paper was presented by Dr. John Youngberg and Edgel Phillips, PhD candidate, from Andrews University in Michigan. The two presenters were Seventh-day Adventists.

Their report titled “Do Family Devotionals make a Difference?” indicated findings on Seventh-day Adventists who regularly participate in daily family worship activities in the home. Such activities would include family prayer, reading the Bible or some other religious literature, or any other religious activity deemed important by the family and/or church. In their study of 8,233 individuals, 28 percent “always” had daily family devotionals, 21 percent “usually” had them, and 51 percent stated they did not participate in family devotional activities of any kind.

Those individual Seventh-day Adventists who came from homes where there were regular family devotionals were more likely to have personal daily Bible study, meet in small study/prayer groups, and were more inclined to be “right with God.” In general, those who participated in family devotional activities were inclined to be optimistic in their outlook on religion, both in home and community.

After Youngberg and Phillips talked about the importance of religion and family worship at home, we discussed whether or not the home is an extension of the church, or the church an extension of the home. Both, of course, have an impact on each other. The two presenters stated they were still in the process of trying to find the origin of family worship and devotionals in religious groups in America, and they had traced these practices as far as the Puritan movement involving many of the early settlers of this country.

Father Donald Conroy, representing the National Institute for the Family in Washington, D.C., mentioned he, too, was interested in the importance of family worship in the home and had done some research with the Catholic Church. He noted that as far back as the third century A.D., husband and wife were vital to the church. In fact, the Christian father and husband at one time was called “episcopate” or bishop of the home, which offers new insight to 1^st Timothy 3:1-5 in the Bible.

Is the home the extension of the church as many have believed? Or is the church or congregation the extension of several religiously committed families?