Family warmth helps pass on religion

One concern many families of faith share is how to pass on their faith to their children. At least one sociologist has made this a major project in his scholarly career. It turns out that one of the most important factors in children adopting religion is the warmth of the father—or if not the father, then the grandfather.

Vern Bengtson started the Longitudinal Study of Generations, a multidisciplinary investigation of families, aging and social change and has followed families since 1970. He is coauthor of Families and Faith: How Religion Is Passed Down Across Generations and How Families Still Matter: A Longitudinal Study of Youth in Two Generations.

Associate editor Amy Frykholm interviews Bengtson in the Dec. 25, 2013, issue of Christian Century.

Bengtson states up front that “the highest generational transmission [of religion from generation to generation] occurs in families with a high degree of warmth—particularly if the father is perceived as warm and close.”

In other words, being role models, taking the kids to church, being involved in church and having devotional activities at home are all good, but what really counts is what Bengtson calls “intergenerational solidarity or family cohesion.”

Frykholm asks what we want to know: Why is fatherly warmth so important? Bengtson says he doesn’t know. Generally mothers have more contact with the children, and fathers are more absent. He does, however, offer a hunch, that there is something about religion, at least in American society, that is male-influenced. Thus, he says, “if a father picks up on religion, the kids are going to pick up on it, too. And if the father is indifferent to religion, the kids may be indifferent to religion. This is especially true in father-son relationships.”

Turns out it’s not just fathers that are important in transmitting religion but grandfathers as well. Bengtson tells the story of a family in which the parents split up, and the mother was dysfunctional. “The daughter,” Bengtson says, “who is now in her 40s, talked about how on Sundays Grandpa would take them to church, and they would all sit together. He always had a red carnation in his lapel, and it was the same Sunday after Sunday. She said, ‘I felt so secure.’ ”

So what does religion transmission even mean? How do you know if it’s taken place? Frykholm asks.

Bengtson points out that they didn’t just ask about church attendance and membership. The study included questions about religious intensity, he says, such as, “How religious would you say you are?” They also looked at similarity between the answers of the children and those of the parents.

Which groups do it best? Frykholm asks.

“Mormons, Jews and evangelical Christians have the highest rate of transmission,” Bengtson says. He notes that Catholics, Mainline Protestants and Eastern Orthodox assume the family but put more emphasis on ritual.

He also makes clear that he’s measuring religious intensity, not denominational affiliation. So it’s not about Mennonite parents producing Mennonite children but parents with a religious intensity passing that on to their children.

One interesting discovery Bengtson made, he says, “is that the degree of religious influence across generations has not changed much since the ’60s and ’70s, despite the forces in culture that indicate they should have changed: increasing secularization with decreasing church attendance.” In other words, “Parents and grandparents influence their children in much the same way as they did in the 1970s.”

This may feel sobering to those of us who are fathers, seeing how it seems to fall on our shoulders. But it also gives us some insight into what we should be emphasizing in our families: warmth and cohesion.

Her

Spike Jones’ sci-fi-romantic-comedy-drama (there’s a mouthful) Her is a captivating film set in Los Angeles in the near future. Despite, or maybe because of, its quirky premise of a man falling in love with his operating system, it raises profound philosophical questions about relationships and technology, about reality, love and death.  

The film opens with Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) in front of a computer screen writing personal love letters for people with difficulties expressing their feelings. This is ironic because Theodore (never Ted) is a lonely, introverted man who has trouble identifying and talking about his feelings. He is depressed because he is postponing a divorce from his childhood sweetheart Catherine (Rooney Mara).

He decides to purchase a new operating system (OS) that’s designed to meet his every need. He chooses a female identity for it, and she calls herself Samantha (Scarlett Johansson). Soon he and Samantha are having philosophical discussions about love and life, and she develops psychologically, while lamenting that she is not embodied in the world.

Theodore also talks with his good friend Amy (Amy Adams) and learns that her husband has left her. She says she also has an OS friend and affirms Theodore’s relationship with Samantha.

There are many humorous moments. Digital communication is spoken and involves earpieces. When he goes out, Theodore always carries his flip screen in his pocket with a large paper clip attached so that the aperture is visible and Samantha can see what he sees.

The look of the film is also funny and apt. The men wear high-waisted pants and pastel-colored shirts, while the women’s clothes are fairly plain. This technological future reflects a masculine perspective, with its games and toys, as well as its loneliness, a major theme of the film. Yet it also includes strong female characters and explores human relationships.

All the philosophical discussion in the film can make it sound cerebral, and it’s certainly intelligent, but this is a very emotional film. We soon accept that a man can have this kind of relationship with an OS, despite how foreign that sounds. What helps us accept this is the amazing performance of Johansson. She portrays powerful emotion through her voice alone. And Phoenix’s performance is equally great.

Her is sweet, funny, smart and moving, a wonderful film about technology and relationship, which should be attractive to men and women.

It’s rated R and includes explicit sexual language.

Is the Internet unsafe for women?

Many hail the Internet as the ultimate democratic tool. Everyone has a voice and has access to information and to others they wouldn’t have otherwise.

But many women are finding the Internet an unsafe place and have experienced terrible abuse and threats for stating their opinions.

In the January/February issue of Pacific Standard, Amanda Hess exposes this reality in her article “Women Aren’t Welcome Here.” 

She begins the article by telling about receiving messages from a Twitter account set up, it seemed, for the purpose of making death threats to her.

I cannot recount the entire text here, but the writer says, “I am 36 years old, I did 12 years for ‘manslaughter,’ I killed a woman, like you. … Happy to say we live in the same ­­state. Im (sic) looking you up, and when I find you, im going to rape you and remove your head.”

Hess is a journalist who writes about sex (among other things). She dialed 911. The police officer who showed up two hours later didn’t know what Twitter is. But Twitter, for Hess, is where she spends much of her time.

She offers other examples of abusive language and threats but notes that she’s not exceptional. She gives examples of other women writers who have been threatened.

And it’s not just professional writers, she says. “According to a 2005 report by the Pew Research Center,” she writes, “women and men have been logging on in equal numbers since 2000, but the vilest communications are still disproportionately lobbed at women.”

That survey also reported that 5 percent of women who used the Internet said “something happened online” that led them into “physical danger.”

Another study showed that simply appearing as a woman online can inspire abuse. “In 2006,” Hess writes, “researchers from the University of Maryland set up a bunch of fake online accounts and dispatched them into chat rooms. Accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received 3.7.”

While there are laws against cyberstalking, the Internet is global, and law enforcement jurisdiction is local. And the abuse has become so prevalent that women are often told to ignore it.

But this carries a cost, Hess writes. “Threats of rape, death and stalking can overpower our emotional bandwidth, take up our time and cost us money through legal fees, online protection services and missed wages.”

Police often tell women who’ve received threats to go offline, but that has costs as well “as the Internet becomes increasingly central to the human experience,” Hess writes.

Another study found that Internet harassment is routinely dismissed as “harmless locker-room talk,” perpetrators as “juvenile pranksters” and victims as “overly sensitive complainers.”

The justice system, Hess says, tends to treat Internet threats as less real and don’t follow up.

She notes that while American police forces are overwhelmingly male, “the technology companies that have created the architecture of the online world are, famously, even more so.”

Hess, understandably, is interested in finding solutions to this problem. It affects her every day.

But all of us need to be aware of this alarming situation and look for ways to make every part of our world, including the Internet, safe for everyone, particularly women. 

My top 10 films of 2013

2013 brought us many excellent films. Some of these, particularly foreign films, have not become available to me yet and could not be included.

1. 12 Years a Slave. This powerful film tells the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who was abducted and sold into slavery in 1841. Its unflinching depiction of slavery is difficult but necessary to watch. It shows the horror and evil of this long-standing American practice.

2. Gravity. Viewers experience this extraordinary film as they watch. It follows two surviving astronauts from a damaged Space Shuttle as they try to make it back to Earth. The film combines wrenching suspense while exploring themes of meaning. Every aspect—writing, acting, cinematography—make this an outstanding film.

3. Her. This captivating film, set in the near future, is about a lonely writer who develops an unlikely relationship with his newly purchased operating system that’s designed to meet his every need. It raises profound philosophical questions about relationships and technology, about reality, love and death. The unique premise of a man falling in love with his operating system works wonderfully.

4. American Hustle. This fast-paced film is the story of a con man, Irving Rosenfeld, who with his seductive British partner, Sydney Prosser, is forced to work for a wild FBI agent, Richie DiMaso, who pushes them into a world of New Jersey powerbrokers and mafia. Based on a scandal from the 1970s, this film’s script is intelligent, funny and surprising, and the cast is superb.

5. All Is Lost. This is a gripping account of a sailor whose 39-foot yacht takes on water after a collision with a shipping container at sea. With his navigation equipment and radio disabled, the man sails unknowingly into the path of a violent storm. Despite his resourcefulness, he must face his mortality. Robert Redford gives a remarkable performance and helps viewers imagine their mortality.

6. Before Midnight. This is the third in a trilogy of films about a couple who meet on a train bound for Vienna in Before Sunrise (1995) and reunite in Paris in Before Sunset (2004). Here they are in Greece with their twin daughters. All three films consist mostly of dialogue yet engage us with their characters and the issues they address. Here they touch on the nature of marriage, the differences between men’s and women’s perspectives, parenting and work. Many couples will recognize their own struggles in this brilliant film.

7. Mud. This coming-of-age film is about two Arkansas teenagers who become friends with Mud, a fugitive trying to reunite with the woman he loves. It takes us into the lives of people who make their living off the river and shows the lessons of learning about love. This poignant film avoids clichés about Southern culture and shows a tender but realistic portrait of a father and a son.

8. Nebraska. This film tells of an aging, alcoholic father who travels from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim a $1 million Mega Sweepstakes Marketing prize. On the way, they stop at the father’s hometown, where stories from his past emerge. This black-and-white film uses dry humor and some nonactors to present an authentic view of the characters and an aptly measured resolution.

9. Stories We Tell. In this remarkable documentary, Canadian writer/director Sarah Polley is both filmmaker and detective as she investigates the secrets kept by a family of storytellers. Her mother died when she was 11, and she later learns that she is the child of an extramarital affair. The film explores the elusive nature of truth and memory as she searches for the identity of her biological father.

10. Philomena. This film follows a world-weary political journalist who picks up the story of a woman’s search for her son, who was taken away from her decades earlier after she became pregnant and was forced to live in a convent. This excellent film raises justice issues about Catholic institutions but also explores faith questions in an evenhanded manner.

Video games: danger or opportunity?

Amid the debate over the effects of technology, particularly the Internet, in our lives, perhaps the most negative—and most misunderstood—views relate to video games.

But most of what we think we know about video games is wrong, writes Leigh Alexander in the November/December 2013 issue of Columbia Journalism Review. She reviews Nick Yee’s new book The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us—And How They Don’t (Yale University Press).

She points out how Yee debunks many of the stereotypes most of us have about video games and who plays them. For example, she writes, “only 20 percent of online gamers are teenage boys,” and “50 percent of online gamers have full-time jobs, and 36 percent are married.”

She quotes Yee about the implications of this broad range of ages among players: “The stereotypical association of video games and teenagers is not only false but hinders our ability to understand how online games can be positive social spaces for younger players.”

Yee’s research also discounts preconceptions about addiction or antisocial behavior in the players of online games. For example, 70 percent of online gamers play with someone they know in the real world.

Yee comments on our prejudices: “A family sitting together silently in front of the television is deemed socially acceptable, but if they chat and collaborate in a virtual world, this is stereotyped as being antisocial.”

Alexander notes other books that defend gaming, including Reality Is Broken by Jane McGonigal, which claims that “gamers are actually the world’s best problem-solvers.”

Yee goes further and argues that online game worlds are not living up to their potential. In spite of this potential, Yee says, games are played by humans, who re-enact their superstitions, gender and race biases and generally imitate reality rather than escape from it.

Alexander writes, “Given infinite possibility, we loyally gravitate to the familiar—nearly every game or online world contains chairs, for example, even though virtual bodies never tire of standing.”

Human beings are just more comfortable experiencing humanity with all its limitations. “Even when we believe we are free and empowered, our offline politics and cognitive baggage prevent us from changing,” Yee writes.

Alexander calls Yee’s book “pleasantly neutral.” His book “deftly avoids righteousness and works primarily in the important service of challenging a medium rich with unexplored potential.”

Another advocate for gaming from a Christian point of view is Kevin Schut in his book Of Games and God: A Christian Exploration of Video Games (Brazos Press, 2013, $16.99).

Schut addresses such topics as how to understand a video game; the interplay of games, religion and spirituality; violence and ethics in games; the peril of addiction; how men and women are portrayed in games; the effect of games on the brain and education; games being developed by Christians; and the social side of gaming.

He calls for a healthy criticism of games and concludes: “Video games can be just as much a part of God’s kingdom as anything else, if only we have eyes to see.”

While I do not play video games, I believe in the importance of play and creativity. Like many tools, games can be used for good or ill. We should explore the good.