Faith in Family Life

The chapter that I studied this week in Successful Marriages and Families was called "Faith in Family Life. It starts out by saying that "successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith and prayer."

One thing that stood out to me the most during this reading was that prayer and faith are principles of action. If you want to see change, then you must take initiative yourself and make a change in order to receive a change.

The reading talks about three dimensions of strengthening family life. The first dimension is "Religious Community and Family." This dimension focuses on support, involvement, and relationships that are grounded in a congregation or less formal religious group. It explains that there is a higher life expectancy for individuals that attend a religious service more than once a week.Family structure is associated with the level of benefits families receive from the religious community when they are religiously involved. Unwed, divorced, and separated mothers tend to receive less social support from their faith communities than do widows.

The second dimension is "Religious Practices and Family." It says, "praying together as a family and reading the scriptures together is probably the best thing we do to pull us toward Heavenly Father and each other. It feels right. It feels good." They conclude that for Latter-Day Saint families relgious practice and family unity can be synergistically integrated in family prayer, family home evening, and family scripture study."

The third and final dimension is "Religious Beliefs and Family." Religious beliefs include personal, internal beliefs, framings, meanings, and perspectives, which can influence family life. The reading states, "over the past two decades, religious belief has received more rigorous, balanced, and comprehensive treatment in connection with family relationships than ever before." In conclusion, social science evidence suggests that shared faith appears to be a principle upon which successful marriages and families are established and maintained, even "during the storm."