According to the Pew Research Group, over 14 million parents in the United States are spiritual-but-not-religious (SBNR). These parents often lack a number of resources available to their religious peers, such as structures of spiritual community, rituals of transmitting values, and ceremonies of life transition for their children. The Spiritual Formation for Parents and Caregivers project creates much-needed spiritual infrastructure to support the growing population of under-resourced SBNR parents.
More specifically, our project will equip religiously unaffiliated parents of children aged 4-12 to transmit spirituality – understood as tools for meaning-making, qualities of relationship and community, and ritual practices for engaging the sacred – through reflective small-group conversations. Using a new generation of digital community tools, this project will support parental spiritual formation, connect parents in mutually enriching relationships, and provide parents with resources for transmitting their spirituality.
500+ parents and caregivers will be matched into peer-facilitated small groups to journey together through eight weeks of spiritually formative content and activities. From spiritual practices to text reflections to family activity planning, parents will complete their Nearness programs feeling more capable and committed to sharing spirituality with their children.
At the same time, we will conduct rigorous academic research on this programmatic intervention to fill a gap in the literature about the efficacy of peer-led and digital programs for faith transmission among SBNR families.
