CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In Rhetoric and Practice
Defining “The Good Family” in Local Congregations
Penny Edgell
Throughout American history, religious institutions and families have been linked to-
gether through relationships of dependency and control. Religious leaders and orga-
nizations in the United States generally promote norms of stable, monogamous, and
faithful marriage; uphold the nuclear family with children as an ideal; and provide a
venue for the religious and moral socialization of children. For individuals, religious
participation is associated not only with traditional family forms and practices, but also
with happiness and satisfaction in marriage and parent-child relationships. Religious
institutions depend on families to pass on the religious tradition and for the resources –
money, time, membership – that enable them to survive (Christiano 2000; Sherkat and
Ellison 1999).
The relationship between religion and family is constituted and defined by the
production of religiously-based familistic ideologies. Religious familisms in the United
States have varied somewhat over time and social location, but all versions have shared
certain fundamental characteristics. They define the family as the precious, central or-
ganizing unit of society and teach members that conforming to normative expectations
about family life is a form of patriotism, good citizenship, or moral worth (cf. Christiano
2000; D’Antonio 1980; McDannell 1986).
Because religion and family are tightly linked and interdependent institutions,
rapid and fundamental changes in one institutional arena may trigger responsive
changes in the other (Friedland and Alford 1991). This chapter explores the effects
of recent changes in work and family on local congregations. I argue that congrega-
tional responses are largely filtered and shaped by rhetorical frameworks anchored in
a traditional nuclear family schema that was widely institutionalized in the religious
expansion of the 1950s. This means that, across religious traditions, many changes
in work and family are “filtered out” or are acknowledged in ways that buffer the
institution’s core tasks and core ideology from change. There is incremental adap-
tation, but little radical transformation (cf. Greenwood and Hinings 1996). The ex-
ception occurs in a few large, innovator congregations that are organized around a
This research was supported by the Lilly Endowment, grant # 1996 1880–000. The author would like to
thank Pawan Dhingra, Elaine Howard, Heather Hofmeister, Evelyn Bush, Sonya Williams, and Ronald
Johnson for research assistance.
164