Religion And Where It Falls Today 's Society

Pipes and Lee, in Family to Family: Leaving a Lasting Legacy seeks to provide parents with a framework for passing a lasting Christian legacy to their children. Of course, they do so with a decidedly conservative underpinning one would expect from Southern Baptist ministers and they make no excuses for doing so. Pipes and Lee lay out a plan in six chapters where parents can pass on their faith to their children and reverse the trend of them leaving the church upon turning 18. Beginning with Healthy Families in Chapter One and concluding with sharing the message in Chapter Six, Pipes and Lee provide and outline filled with helpful tips and ideas on how families can grow closer

The practice of organized religion has been declining greatly since the mid 20th century, but the pace in which religion is dying is not constant in every western country. Ireland is the only country where most people attend a religious event weekly, on the other hand, less than ten percent of Scandinavians attend religious events. Organized religion is dying where it once was common in everyday life, which is bad news for church leaders who want to fill their seats. From 1945 to 1985 the percent of regular church attendees in Canada dropped in half, from 70% to 35%. Although people have stopped associating themselves with a religion, many of them still believe in a creator. Around 32 percent of America’s population attends church weekly, but 66 percent of Americans have no doubt that there is a God, and another 16 percent believe in a God but have doubts (Altemeyer 79). There is evidence that the recent rise of religious apostasy occurred because of backlash against the “Religious Right”, the christian fundamentalists that are known to be anti-homosexual. Many people are turned off by these beliefs and severed their already weak relationships with the church. Children are also not being taught religious beliefs because of parents who have left the faith. Parents have stopped

The Cognitive Science Journal found that children who were exposed to religion have a harder time distinguishing fact from fiction. In their study, they told 66 five and six year old children stories containing both realistic and supernatural elements. Out of all of the participants the children who regularly attended church had a significantly harder time identifying the supernatural elements as fictional than those who hadn’t attended church regularly. Devout religion seems to continue to impact children into their teenage years. NBC News found that teen birth rates are higher in religious states. Mississippi ranks at the top in both teenage birth rates and conservative religious beliefs. Experts say that this is mainly due to the discouragement of contraception in religious

Nashville-based group LifeWay Research gathered 2,000 Protestant and non-denominational church attendees for a research sponsored by LifeWay Kids for the book “Nothing Less: Engaging Kids in a Lifetime of Faith.” All of the respondents go to church at least once a month and have children ages 18 to 30.

It is up to parents to instill faith in their kids; this way children can turn to their religion in time of need. As Brandt says, "many [parents] are proud to be without religion whose children cannot afford their being without it" (194). However, in today’s modern culture, as Brandt adds, "Morality can survive without religion, it appears; children can be taught the importance of right versus wrong without benefit of religious training" (139). So, Americans are beginning to turn away from the church, and do not rely on the church as much as they did many years ago.

Donahue, M. J. & Benson, P. L. (1995). “Religion and the Well-being of Adolescents” in

Outline and explain two ways in which religion may be seen as less important in today's society.

Luke’s has show that Faith Formation is only as successful as is the parish and parents are involved in it. Unfortunately, many of the youth do not go to Mass on a regular basis but have a good attendance at CCE classes. The chasm of understanding of the faith between those who go to Mass regularly and those that do not is deep and wide. It has revealed the need to find ways to engage and support parents more and to bring Mass to the kids. Faith Formation is lifelong and takes great effort. One cannot assume everyone is doing his or her part in growing in and proclaiming the faith. Thus as a community, people need to remain vigilant in supporting one another and ready to pick up the slack for as a community the people stated they would serve as a catechists to all the baptized. Faith Formation is not simply a set aside time during the week, but a continual moment-by-moment

Raising kids in the twenty first century challenges parents more than ever. Culture calls out to kids, wanting to form them, while many parents want their kids to grow up with a biblical background and faith-based set of values. So how can a parent ride against the tide of culture to raise strong kids with strong faith? Church attendance certainly makes a different, but parents need to be parents, and they need to use the resources that we have available today.

Adolescence is a particularly important developmental period during which to study religious involvement. Research on religiosity in United States primarily focuses on adults over 18. Only a limited number of studies explore religiosity, practices, importance, and their relationship with positive outcomes in youth. During the transition to adolescence, teens grow in abstract thinking, as well as deductive reasoning, which allows them to question ideas regarding religion and spirituality. These studies indicate that religion in known to be an important factor in the lives of youth (Regnerus 2007; Smith and Denton 2005). Almost half of youth report that religion is significant to them and are attending religious services regularly (Smith and

Educators need to understand the impact of religion on the lives of their students. According to Gallup poll data, nearly 95% of teens believe in God and 86% believe that Jesus Christ is either God or the Son of God (Gallup & Lindsay, 1999 as cited in Ream, 2003). These and other similar statistics demonstrate the importance of considering religion when dealing with young people. Ream

During elementary years, Quinton’s mother underwent an operation for what he vaguely recalled was a thyroid disease. He remembered praying at a church with his father for a very long time. The emergence of faith narrative at this point suggested an intuitive-projective stage according to faith development as proposed by Fowler (1995. Quinton’s illustration demonstrated an initial awareness of proximity seeking to God in times of distress through prayer as modelled by his father. According to Fowler (1995), at this stage the child observes and imitates the practice of the adults’ behaviour in an intuitive manner while developing the ability to align value and logic behind their religious practice (Fowler, 1995; Roehlkepartain et al, 2006).

My first religion column was called, “Are All the Children In?” In the column, I recounted the story of my grandparents and how their houseful of children played outside well into the evening when the children were young. But when suppertime approached and darkness began to fall, my grandma never failed to ask my papaw the same question, night after night. “Daddy, are all the children in?” As a stay-at-home mother to her own children and many other neighborhood children as well, she was concerned not only for their physical well-being but for also their spiritual health. Sunday mornings, Sunday nights and Wednesday nights were reserved for church for my daddy and his brothers and sisters and for as many of the children in the neighborhood as wanted to go.

Religion is an important aspect in development and learning for the youth. Billy Graham was said to say that “Our lives speak loudly to those around us especially the children in our home. One of life’s mysteries is why two children growing up in the same home sometimes take radically different paths- one following Christ, the other rebellious and scornful. Yet it happens (Graham). Children will learn far more by watching than just listening (Graham). If our children grow up with no understanding of right and wrong.. no desire to live with integrity… no faith in God… their souls will be impoverished and they will miss life’s highest good (Graham).” These quotes said by Billy Graham give the meaning that children’s lives are better with religion

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development states during a child’s age of 2-7 “speech becomes more social…has an intuitive grasp of logical concepts and concepts formed are crude and irreversible”, which makes a child or children tremendously vulnerable to social perceptions set by the parents who’s perceptions are influenced by their particular religion (Child Development Institute, 1999-2015) Throughout all children’s upbringing social programming is involved. Social programming occurs when parents pass down morals, values and behaviors to they’re children with religion being but not limited to the result of social programming. Taking a child to a certain church consistently will allow that child or children to identify him or herself as a part of that specific religion. With finding their place in religion children develop behaviors, values and morals that their parents have learned in accordance with their gender. Gender inequality is strongly influenced at a young age and is passed down from generations to generations