hope-in-families
A new BYU study found that a family’s religious beliefs is a key catalyst for maintaining hope during challenges. This, in turn, can help families build resiliency and unity.2023 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.This story appears here courtesy of TheChurchNews.com. It is not for use by other media.
By Kaitlyn Bancroft, Church News
Christians often speak of faith, hope and charity. But hope is sometimes treated like a middle child, said David Dollahite, a professor in the Brigham Young University School of Family Life.
Just as middle children are sometimes overlooked in their families, “In some ways, hope has been understudied. It has not been given ... its due as one of the three main religious and relational virtues,” Dollahite said.
But a recent study Dollahite helped write highlights how important hope is — and the pivotal role religion plays in creating it.
“‘We have hope’: An exploration of hope in highly religious families” was published in August 2023 in Family Relations: Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Family Science, BYU Communications reported.
The study found that a family’s religious beliefs are a key catalyst for maintaining hope during challenges. This, in turn, can help families build resiliency and unity.
For the study, Dollahite and his fellow researchers interviewed about 200 families representing a range of religious backgrounds, from Christianity to Judaism to Islam. Questions explored family processes and religion in family life.
Dollahite emphasized that researchers carefully kept their questions neutral and non-leading, and none was specifically about hope. It was significant, then, that the families repeatedly brought up hope without prompting, Dollahite said.
He also found it telling that in 39% of their hope-related discussions, interview subjects spoke of hope as a family value rather than an individual one.
“It’s so powerful when ... parents can point their kids to the greatest source of light and hope and power and goodness,” Dollahite said.
4 Ways Religion Ties to Hope
Researchers identified four themes in the ways families expressed how religious beliefs are tied to their hope.
First, faith both provides and sustains their hope. “There was ... this sense [among study subjects] of God being a personal being who knows me, who’s interested in me, who has a plan for me, who can help me,” Dollahite said.
Second, religious practices like prayer and scripture study inspire hope. For instance, some study subjects said they felt blessed with renewed vision after praying about their discouragement or hopelessness.
hope-in-families
A new BYU study found that a family’s religious beliefs are a key catalyst for maintaining hope during challenges. This, in turn, can help families build resiliency and unity.2023 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.Third, hope is a familial trait for many religious people. One study participant said, “We try hard to make our kids know that they’re loved and that there’s hope and there’s always someone there that loves them and cares for them.”
Fourth, hope builds resilience in religious families during challenges. The primary ways participants experienced religious hope was through a hope for the future and a hope to overcome challenges, the study found.
One participant said prayer and hope “are anchors that we have that others may not have. Although it may look bleak right now, there’s always hope because of the hope that [we] have in Christ.”
Hope as a Connective Virtue
Dollahite noted that the apostle Paul speaks about the interconnectedness of faith, hope and charity in 1 Corinthians 13:13.
This is another way in which hope is like the middle child in a family, he said. Just as middle children often bridge relationships between their older and younger siblings, “I think hope is one of those ... connective or integrative virtues.”
He continued that today’s society is experiencing a “significant dearth” of hope, evidenced by epidemics of loneliness, depression and anxiety.
But religious families have resources that can greatly enhance their hopefulness as they face these and other challenges, Dollahite said.
And while he acknowledges that hope itself isn’t the only answer to life’s problems, he believes religiously grounded, spiritually enriched hope “has the potential to help people dealing with a wide range of challenges. ... [God] gives us a sense of deep optimism [and] hope ... that we can go forward, despite what we’re currently experiencing.”
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