Greetings from the Religion and Family Life Section! By the time you read this our conference in Phoenix will be over. The section had several impressive paper and poster presentations as well as an outstanding special session. At our business meeting two awards were presented. The first was the award for the Professional Outstanding Paper. This was presented to Michael Goodman, Brigham Young University. The title of his paper was “Religion and Transformative Processes in Marriage: A Qualitative Study.” His co-authors were David Dollahite, Loren Marks, and Emily Layton. The second was the award for the S/NP Outstanding Paper. This was presented to Yaxin Lu, Louisiana State University.The paper title was “The Role of Chinese Christian Church in Chinese Immigrant Families.” Co-authors were Loren Marks, Loredana Apavaloaie, and Zahrah Alghafli.

Our next annual conference will be in San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio is a beautiful city with a rich history and culture. The Religion and Family Life Section officers strongly encourage you to submit a proposal to our section for the 2013 conference. Our goal is to double the submissions of both professionals and S/NP.

The Religion and Family Life Section continues to collect syllabi for courses that address issues related to religion and family life. We encourage anyone who teaches such a course to send your syllabus to me and I will forward it to the appropriate person. If you know of a course someone else is teaching, please send me contact information for the instructor.

This Report’s Family Focus highlights some of the major issues and areas of research related to families, religion, and spirituality. The members of the Religion and Family Life Section are pleased to have this opportunity to share our interests with the members of NCFR. Religion matters to people in profound ways. From the Chick-fil-A controversy this past summer to the deaths and riots this fall related to the inflammatory anti-Islam film, religion brings out strong emotional responses in people everywhere.  

These reactions make it clear that religion influences people at both the personal and public level, and it follows that religion matters in the lives of our families.

In Annette Mahoney’s (2010) decade review of research on families and religion, she cate-gorized the ways in which religion has been found to influence family life. These include the formation, maintenance, and transformation of family relationships. It has also been found that religion has the potential to impact families in both positive and negative ways. Mahoney concludes her review with the acknowledgement that there remain gaps in the literature, questions about theory and methodology, and issues of relevance for family types. Her findings remain relevant today.

Just over a year ago, members of the Religion and Family Life Section met with NCFR staff to discuss the possibility of starting a journal on family, religion and spirituality. Although there is a great deal of interest in creating a new journal, it was felt by many that there is still work to be done before moving in this direction. We hope this Family Focus issue stimulates interest, raises questions, generates discussion, and leads to more research so that families may benefit from the insight gained as we learn more about the interaction of family, religion, and spirituality.

Reference

Mahoney, A. (2010), Religion in Families, 1999–2009: A Relational Spirituality Framework. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72: 805–827.