Here’s what happens when Dad doesn’t attend church
From Churchmouse Campanologist
On May 5th 2009 I posted ‘Consistent churchgoing habits important for children’. In it, I referred to a study which I was trying to locate to show how a father’s absence from family worship makes church less important for his children when they become adults.
Finally, by chance, I found a summary of the study by the Revd Robbie Low, vicar of St Peter’s, Bushey, Hertfordshire (England). You can read Fr Low’s summary, ‘The Truth about Men’, in full here. He draws serious conclusions about declining church attendance in today’s society.
He introduces his essay by saying:
Not many will have whiled away the long winter evenings by reading ‘The demographic characteristics of the linguistic and religious groups in Switzerland’ by Werner Haug and Phillipe Warner of the Federal Statistical Office, Neuchatel in Volume 2 Population Studies No 31, ‘The demographic characteristics of national minorities in certain European states’edited by Werner Haug and others, published by the Council of Europe Directorate General III, Social Cohesion, Strasbourg, January 2000. Phew!
These demographic studies concern Switzerland. Here is a brief rundown for you (emphases mine):
Its religious make-up is 46 per cent Catholic, 40 per cent Protestant with five per cent non-Christian faith and nine per cent of no religion at all. Their population of 6.9 million is divided into thirty Cantons and 3,000 plus communes and they are remorselessly prosperous and resolutely neutral at the heart of Europe. That does not mean that they have escaped the common social lot of other Europeans in the last half-century…
Switzerland always asks a person’s religion, language and nationality on its decennial census…
In 1994 the Swiss carried out an extra survey which the researchers for our masters in Europe were happy to record. The question was to determine whether a person’s religion carried through to the next generation and, if so, what, if any, were the critical factors. The result is dynamite. There is one critical factor. It is overwhelming, and it is this. It is the religious practice of the father of the family that, above all, determines the future attendance at or absence from the Church of the children.
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