New Research Confirms: Family Is the Key to Passing on the Christian Faith
The most comprehensive examination to date of how parents can successfully share faith with their children, co-authored by Communio and the Institute for Family Studies.
As Featured in
Passing the Torch: How Faith Moves Across Generations draws on four national datasets and definitively shows that family remains the single most important factor in whether children accept and keep the Christian faith into adulthood.
Religious identification, worship attendance, and belief in God have all declined by double-digit margins since the 1990s. Most of that decline is intergenerational — each new generation enters adulthood less faithful than the last. This isn't a temporary fluctuation. It's a cascading pattern that accelerates over time as the most devout generations are replaced by more secular ones.
What The Research Shows
- Parental modeling is the single strongest predictor of adult religiosity.
- Marriage quality matters.
- Congregational involvement for both parents and teens dramatically increases adult faith commitment.
- Fathers play an under-recognized but critical role in faith formation.
- Children who regularly pray with their families, hear faith discussed at home, and participate in youth ministry are far more likely to carry their faith into adulthood.
Co-authored by Jesse Smith, PhD and Jane Lankes Smith, PhD. A joint publication of Communio and the Institute for Family Studies.
Ready to Act on These Findings in Your Church?
The data is clear. The question is what to do next.
Communio’s Pastor’s Guide is a practical resource built specifically for church leaders, showing you exactly how to equip parents in your congregation to disciple their children at home through the single most impactful action they can regularly take: open, faith-filled conversations.
Based on Communio’s nationwide research, in partnership with a Harvard research team, the Pastor’s Guide gives you:
- A clear framework for equipping parents — not just children — as the primary disciples in your church
- Practical tools you can put in a parent’s hands immediately
- A proven model for how faith conversations at home multiply across generations