Cultivating Christians: North American family cultures and religious identity formation

Abstract

North American Christian families face many challenges as they try to live faithfully in an intercultural, multi-religious, secularising world, particularly with regard to the formation of religious identity in children. Answering the question of how children become Christian is more complicated today than it was for previous generations because adults cannot assume that the Christian vestiges of a civil religion will be sufficient to help children embrace a robust sense of themselves as God’s beloved and called people in a divinely created world. Thus, this essay explores what social science research and theological reflection might offer religious leaders as frameworks and tools for encouraging family cultures that cultivate young Christians, focusing particularly on strategies for sharing religious language, communicating beliefs and values, modelling spiritual practices, encountering symbolic images, and participating in congregational life.

Keywords:

• Christian
• religious identity
• acculturation
• beliefs and values
• spiritual practices

Notes

1. Many children and families already reside within two or more cultures, either by virtue of prior immigration from another country or because the household has been created through intercultural marriage. In such instances, participation in Christian community becomes a third culture to be negotiated alongside the other cultures with which the family identifies.