Passing Faith Onto the Next Generation

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We are often inundated these days with bad news. And those with families feel the negative influences of Hollywood, the media, the schools, and social media, which seem to join together to keep young people from walking on “the straight and narrow.”

But here’s good news. In June 2026, a new study reported in the Institute for Family Studies (involving 60,000 people) found that parents play the most important role in the lives of their children in terms of passing on the faith. This is very encouraging news.

They note, “Research consistently shows that families are the single most important factor in whether children adopt and maintain faith into adulthood.” [emphasis theirs]

Who knew? The parents are the key: “Research confirms that the strongest predictor of how religious children become is how religious their parents were during their upbringing. Parents are the most important spiritual role models.”

The article extols the positive parents who actively work to pass the faith to their children, “Specifically,

By modeling religion, they show their kids what it should look like.
By making religion a family activity, they let their children practice it themselves and make it feel like a natural part of life.
By talking about faith at home, they help their children understand religion and why it matters.” [emphasis theirs]

I had the privilege to be interviewed (again) on “American Sunrise” (6/22/26) on Real America’s Voice to comment on this particular study. This was a timely topic for the day after Father’s Day. I told them that fathers and mothers can have a tremendous impact on their children by living out their faith. For example, praying, reading the Bible and devotions, and going to church together.

The idea of passing on faith to the next generation is also a challenge when it comes to our godly heritage as a nation.

As America celebrates its 250^th birthday this year, large numbers of our fellow citizens act as if it is “mourning in America,” not “morning in America.”

This is amazing to me. In a nation to which millions of people around the world aspire to migrate, many of our fellow citizens think about America as being evil, not good.

A new poll from Reuters/Ipsos, reports the New York Post, found that there is a huge divide between those on the left and those on the right as to whether they would even display an American flag on July 4^th. Amazing.

The Post writes: “The poll found 64% of Republicans said they would display an American flag or flag bunting outside their home this July 4, compared with just 27% of Democrats.”

Passing on the Christian faith to the next generation is an extremely high priority. I am privileged to be involved with Providence Forum (an outreach of Coral Ridge Ministries), which is dedicated to that proposition.

In fact, in one of our documentaries on America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, we focused on the importance of godly education. The documentary is called “The Beginning of Wisdom,” based on the Bible verse that says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Here are the first 12 minutes of that film.

Modern Americans don’t realize how important education was to early Americans, precisely for passing on faith to the next generation. It was this impulse that caused the Puritans to found Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and the rest.

It was this impulse that caused the Puritans to create the first law for education for the masses in Massachusetts. The nickname of that law, passed in 1642 and again in 1647, was “The Old Deluder Satan.”

What a strange name for a law. It is known as “The Old Deluder Satan Act” because it states: “It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the scriptures, as in former time...” Therefore, schools were to be systematically established throughout the colony.

Dr. Os Guinness, a guest in our special, “The Beginning of Wisdom,” told our viewers: “Why did the Jews have universal education two thousand years almost before the Europeans? By AD 70, the Jews had universal education in every Jewish community. It was originally fathers teaching their children. England was one of the first countries in Europe to have universal education, 1870, eighteen hundred years after, to hand on faith. It’s got to go down, transmitted from father to son, and so on down the generations. So, schooling is at the heart of both freedom and faith.”

We have lost our way primarily because of the education system. The history books have been rewritten, and God has been erased.

But despite the barrage of bad news, parents can wield more influence for good in the lives of their children and the good of the nation.

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Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an outreach of Coral Ridge Ministries. He has written/co-written 36 books, including George Washington’s Sacred Fire (with Providence Forum founder Peter Lillback, Ph.D.) and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (with D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.).

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