Key Takeaways

• Movieguide, one of America’s leading family entertainment platforms, published a Father’s Day feature drawing on the Passing the Torch report from Communio and the Institute for Family Studies, alongside decades of supporting research on the decisive role of fathers in faith transmission.

• If a father attends church regularly, between two-thirds and three-quarters of his children will attend church as adults, regardless of whether the mother attends. If a father skips church, even when his wife goes faithfully, only one in 50 of his children will become a regular worshiper.

• Adults with a strong father-child relationship are 58% more likely to attend church weekly, 45% more likely to pray daily, and 73% more likely to believe in God as adults, according to the Passing the Torch report.

• 18.4 million American children, roughly one in four, live without a biological father in the home. The National Fatherhood Initiative links father absence directly to higher rates of depression, anxiety, academic underperformance, and criminality.

• The three most practical and impactful things a father can do for his children’s faith: show up to church consistently, pray out loud with his children, and have regular faith conversations at home.

The Story: Father’s Day and a Body of Research That Keeps Saying the Same Thing

Father’s Day lands every June as a cultural moment worth more than cards and backyard barbecues. For Movieguide, Dr. Ted Baehr’s widely-read family entertainment platform reaching millions of Christian families, it was an occasion to do something more useful: put the research on the table.

Published on June 20, 2026, the Movieguide feature by Lillie Liska drew together the Passing the Torch report from Communio and the Institute for Family Studies alongside decades of supporting data from Promise Keepers, Baptist Press, and the National Fatherhood Initiative to make a case that Scripture has always made, and that social science keeps confirming.

A father’s presence, engagement, and faith practice are not incidental to his children’s lives. They are formative in ways that are now measurable down to percentage points.

The Core Finding: One Statistic That Should Reshape Every Men’s Ministry

The most striking number in the Movieguide piece is not from the Passing the Torch report. It comes from data compiled by Promise Keepers and Baptist Press, and it deserves to be read slowly.

If a father attends church regularly, between two-thirds and three-quarters of his children will attend church as adults, regardless of whether the mother attends. If a father skips church, even when his wife faithfully goes every Sunday, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshiper.

One in fifty.

That asymmetry is not a small finding at the margins of the data. It is one of the most significant predictors of adult religious practice that research has ever documented. And it places the father’s church attendance in a category entirely its own, distinct from the mother’s, distinct from the church’s programming, distinct from the quality of the youth ministry.

The Passing the Torch report adds further precision. Adults who reported a strong relationship with their father growing up showed 58% higher odds of attending church weekly, 45% higher odds of praying daily, and 73% higher odds of believing in God, compared to those who had distant or conflictual relationships with their fathers. It is not just attendance that matters. It is the quality of the father-child relationship in which that faith is modeled and discussed.

J.P. De Gance, Communio’s founder and president, framed the stakes plainly: “The decline of faith in the United States over the last 40 years is one of the largest social challenges we face. Its decline is associated with higher mental illness, more suicide, less happiness, and less mobility.”

The Counterintuitive Angle: The Church’s Fatherhood Problem Is Not a Culture Problem. It Is a Ministry Gap.

Here is the reframe that the Movieguide coverage makes visible, and that every pastor needs to reckon with.

The dominant conversation about fatherhood in the Church tends to run in one direction: lament. The culture has undermined fatherhood. Men have disengaged. The numbers on father absence are sobering, with 18.4 million American children living without a biological father in the home. Research consistently links that absence to higher rates of depression, anxiety, academic underperformance, and criminality.

All of that is true. But the data on what engaged, present fatherhood produces points to an equally urgent question: what is the local church actively doing to cultivate it?

Most churches invest heavily in children’s ministry and women’s ministry. Comparatively few have a robust strategy for engaging fathers directly, building their confidence as spiritual leaders in their homes, or connecting their church attendance to the explicit understanding that their presence on Sunday morning is one of the most consequential decisions they will make for their children’s faith.

Scripture was clear about this long before any researcher confirmed it. Deuteronomy 6:7 commands fathers to impress God’s commands on their children throughout the ordinary rhythms of daily life: sitting, walking, lying down, getting up. Ephesians 6:4 calls fathers to active, intentional instruction in the Lord. These are not peripheral commands. They are central to the biblical vision of what a father is for.

The church that treats men’s discipleship as a secondary ministry is leaving one of its most powerful faith transmission levers largely untouched.

What This Means for Your Church

At Communio, the Movieguide Father’s Day feature is a timely reminder of something we see confirmed in church after church: when a congregation invests strategically in the relational health of its men and fathers, the downstream effects on children’s faith are measurable and significant.

The Passing the Torch report offers three concrete practices that every father can begin immediately. First, show up to church consistently. A father’s regular attendance is one of the strongest predictors of whether his children practice faith as adults. It matters more than having the right words. Second, pray out loud with your children. Households that pray together regularly raise children with a 52% chance of praying daily as adults. Bedtime prayers, grace before meals, a quick word before school — none of it is wasted. Third, have the faith conversation. Children raised in homes where faith is discussed several times a week are more than twice as likely to attend church, pray daily, and identify as Christian as young adults.

These practices are simple. They are accessible to every father, regardless of his theological training or spiritual confidence. And according to the research, they are among the highest-leverage investments any parent can make.

The local church’s role is to make sure fathers know this, believe it, and are equipped to live it. Communio helps churches build the kind of marriage and family culture where men are engaged, fathers are formed, and the next generation grows up with the faith foundation that the data shows is decisive.

Take the Next Step

Communio partners with churches to build marriage and family ministry that strengthens the relational foundations where faith is formed and passed to the next generation.

► Read the full Movieguide article → movieguide.org

► Download the Passing the Torch report → communio.org/passing-the-torch-report

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the research say about a father’s church attendance and his children’s faith? Data compiled by Promise Keepers and Baptist Press finds that when a father attends church regularly, between two-thirds and three-quarters of his children will attend church as adults, regardless of the mother’s attendance. If a father does not attend, even when the mother goes faithfully every week, only one in 50 of his children will become a regular worshiper. A father’s church attendance is one of the single most powerful predictors of adult faith practice.

How does the quality of the father-child relationship affect faith? According to the Passing the Torch report from Communio and the Institute for Family Studies, adults who reported a strong relationship with their father growing up showed 58% higher odds of weekly church attendance, 45% higher odds of daily prayer, and 73% higher odds of believing in God, compared to those with more distant or conflictual paternal relationships. Engagement and warmth matter as much as presence.

What are the most practical things a father can do to pass faith to his children? The Passing the Torch report identifies three high-impact practices: attending church consistently, praying out loud with children through daily rhythms like bedtime and mealtimes, and having regular conversations about faith at home. Children in homes where faith is discussed several times a week are more than twice as likely to attend church and identify as Christian as young adults.

What is the impact of father absence on children? The National Fatherhood Initiative reports that 18.4 million American children, roughly one in four, live without a biological father in the home. Research consistently links father absence to higher rates of depression, anxiety, academic underperformance, and criminality. The spiritual dimension is equally significant: children raised without engaged fathers are substantially less likely to retain faith into adulthood.

How can churches better equip fathers as spiritual leaders? Most churches invest heavily in children’s and women’s ministry but have limited strategies for engaging fathers directly. Communio partners with churches to build marriage and family ministry that equips men as husbands and fathers, builds their confidence in spiritual leadership at home, and connects their church involvement to the explicit understanding that their daily practices are among the most formative influences in their children’s lives.

Credit: This post draws on reporting by Lillie Liska for Movieguide, published June 20, 2026, the study “Passing the Torch: How Faith Moves Across Generations” by the Institute for Family Studies and Communio, and data from Promise Keepers, Baptist Press, and the National Fatherhood Initiative. Read the original Movieguide article here.