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In my research on why some younger people are returning to faith, I’ve learned that this decision is often tied to a major life milestone — starting a family and having children. A new, or renewed, interest in faith is often sparked by the desire to provide children with a moral foundation, prompting parents to reevaluate their own guiding values and principles.
For example, Ashley Fitzgerald, a mother and environmental sociologist in Chicago, told me she began thinking about what constitutes a moral framework after she started having children. “How does society instill morals in people without any kind of moral framework?” she found herself asking. I wrote about some parts of Fitzgerald’s story earlier this year.
She had grown up going to the Lutheran church with her mother, her father was Catholic and she attended a Catholic high school. But she drifted away from religion during college, influenced by new atheism ideas prevalent on her campus at the time. It was only in her thirties, when she became a mother, that she began to recognize the religious heritage handed down by her parents as a gift — a foundation and a kind of language she already had if she were to ever explore spiritual life on her own terms.
She wanted to offer the same head start to her kids.
“I think it’s a little bit unfair in some ways that my parents and my husband’s parents took the time to get us acquainted with our ancestral religions, and I’m not giving that same gift to my kids,” Fitzgerald said. A few years ago, Fitzgerald and her husband began attending a Catholic parish, the same one he had grown up in, with their three children.
Starting a religious journey as an adult at 18, 25 or 40 is much harder than gaining that experience as a child in a familiar and safe setting with the support of the family, she told me. “Just getting that experience as a child, you feel more comfortable with it. (My kids) can become religious or not as they get older, but they have that basis that I got. As opposed to trying to learn it all from scratch.”
She also observed that her peers who didn’t grow up with a specific religious tradition often ended up “cycling” through different moral frameworks and lifestyles such as yoga or psychedelic experiences, a process that can be, as she described, “painful.”
As my own children get older and ask deeper questions about God and faith, I often think back to my conversation with Fitzgerald and the importance of giving my children a kind of “spiritual language” and foundation that they can use and build on as they develop their own faith.
Fresh off the press
This week, Deseret.com published a three-part series looking at sexual violence in Utah:
- It’s time to stop relying on FBI data alone to compare sexual violence rates between U.S. states.
- National sexual violence data suggests Utah is one of the safest states for girls, women.
- Seeking a more comprehensive understanding of sexual violence in Utah
Also, here’s an in-depth look at the current state of Scouting in Utah.
Milestone of the week: 100 days of Pope Leo XIV
This weekend marked 100 days since the beginning of Pope Leo’s papacy, a milestone that prompted some analysis of his leadership of the Catholic church. Pope Leo has established a measured and unifying papacy, in contrast to the bold, unpredictable style of his predecessor, Pope Francis.
Instead of pursuing sweeping reforms, he has focused on unity, peace and continuity with Francis’s environmental and institutional reforms. Some of the highlights include an environmentally themed Mass, a Vatican solar farm initiative to help turn the Vatican into the world’s first carbon-neutral state, and enhanced financial transparency.
Earlier this month, over a million young Catholics made a pilgrimage for the Jubilee week to hear from the Pope. Speaking to the crowd, he invoked a message of peace, calling for solidarity with the young people in Ukraine and Gaza and emphasized fraternity and friendship as important elements of peace.
One of the ways Pope Leo has avoided polemics is by focusing on the threats of AI, an issue that people across the political aisle agree will eventually affect everyone.
What I’m reading
Euthanasia has become so deeply woven into Canadian life that for many it is viewed not as medical intervention but as a carefully crafted life event. In an in-depth feature, Elaina Plott Calabro explores the evolving legal landscape around assisted death in Canada, how it is practiced inside hospitals, and the profound moral questions it raises. Increasingly, Canadians who choose assisted death choreograph their final moments with the same intentionality as any major milestone. People have developed rituals around their end-of-life procedure like final dinners before their scheduled procedure, storytelling circles or the singing of family hymns at the bedside. In Quebec, over 7% of all deaths happen by euthanasia, which is the highest in the world. — Canada is Killing Itself, The Atlantic.
A group of secular organizations asked the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to halt the guidelines it issued earlier to allow federal workers to express their faith and display religious objects in the workplace, according to RNS. The group wrote in a letter that the memo “is rife with policies that support coercion and proselytizing,” RNS cited the memo, and “could encourage criticism of employees’ religious beliefs and permit supervisors to pressure subordinates to convert.” The groups, including the American Humanist Association and Ex-Muslims of North America, were especially critical that employees were allowed to “persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature,” according to the memo. — Secular organizations ask federal agency to cancel new religious expression guidelines, RNS
America’s birth rate has dropped below replacement levels, and experts say one overlooked factor is the decline of religion, since faith communities provide social support, stronger family networks and cultural encouragement for raising children. Without those structures, secular societies struggle to sustain fertility unless governments step in with robust family policies like paid leave, childcare and gender equality measures. — How America Losing Religion Is Hurting the Birth Rate, Newsweek
Odds and ends
Religiously motivated hate crimes dropped by about 5% from 2023 to 2024, though they remain among the most reported bias categories, according to new data released from FBI.
Among religious groups, the crimes targeted Jewish (1,938 incidents), Muslim (228), and Sikh (142) communities. Anti-Jewish hate crimes declined slightly by 3% compared to 2023, but even with that decrease, the 2024 figure still represents the second-highest total ever recorded. There were a total of over 11,679 hate crimes reported in 2024, a 10% decrease from the previous year.