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The Relationship between Intentional Father Involvement and Intergenerational Transmission of Christian Faith among Evangelical Presbyterian Families in South Korea

<p> This study examined the relationship between intentional father involvement and intergenerational transmission of Christian faith (ITCF) among Evangelical Presbyterian families in South Korea. Although God has assigned fathers as the leaders of the family who should assume the primary responsibility for their children&rsquo;s spiritual formation, many Korean evangelical fathers have overlooked their responsibility. In the meantime, the number of Korean youth who identified as Christians has been decreasing. While there are many studies that have examined parental or maternal influence on faith transmission, not enough empirical studies focused on the role of fathers on ITCF. Moreover, there was sparse, if any, literature that dealt with the relationship between intentional father involvement and ITCF among Korean families. </p><p> Based on review the of theoretical, empirical, and theological literature, this study selected and examined the relationships among four major variables: fathers&rsquo; religiosity, fathers&rsquo; attitude on their role as a father, intentional father involvement with their children, and family faith activities. In addition to the major variables, some demographic variables were also analyzed to better understand the sample and to compare with the preceding literature. </p><p> The target population was Korean Evangelical Presbyterian fathers in South Korea, residing with their children from kindergarteners to middle schoolers (approximate ages from 4 to 14). In this study, a total of 388 fathers from 33 Evangelical Korean Presbyterian churches participated by answering via personal mobile devices an online survey questionnaire (Survey Monkey<sup> &reg;</sup>) that measured intentional father involvement (Inventory of Father Involvement), fathering attitude (Theistic Sanctification of Parenting Scale), religiosity (Religious Commitment Inventory-10), family faith activities (Faith Activities In The Home Scale), as well as some demographic background data. The collected data were analyzed through the Spearman&rsquo;s Rank Order correlations, Mann-Whitney&rsquo;s <i>U</i> test, and Kruskal-Wallis <i> H</i> test. </p><p> The results of this study showed that Korean Evangelical Presbyterian fathers&rsquo; intentional involvement in childrearing is associated with intergenerational faith transmission as measured by the frequency of family faith activities at home. The significant results of this study can be summarized as follows: (a) Korean Evangelical Presbyterian fathers highly valued their religious faith and their role as a father, and moderately participated in childrearing, yet they did not actively practice family faith activities; (b) Korean Evangelical fathers&rsquo; personal religiosity, attitude on their role as a father, intentional paternal involvement with their children, and family faith activities were significantly correlated; and (c) fathers&rsquo; graduate level of education, their church offices as pastors/evangelists, and their experience of parenting class attendance were correlated with family faith activities. </p><p> Based on the results of this study, several implications were suggested in order to encourage families and church leaders to help fathers more actively participate in the process of faith transmission. Also, some limitations, and future research recommendations based on the limitations were suggested. </p><p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10839358
Date10 August 2018
CreatorsJang, Joo Chang
PublisherBiola University
Source SetsProQuest.com
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typethesis

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