Is there a biblical vision of fatherhood?
by Ian Paul, Psephizo:
There is a crisis of fatherhood in modern Britain, with widespread absence of fathers in the lives of many children. But there is also a revolution in fatherhood, with those in some sectors of society choosing to be more active in fathering than before. What does Christian faith have to offer to this scenario, and what in practice can Christians and local churches do in response?
This is the focus of the recent Grove booklet P 150 God, Dads and the Church: encouraging a biblical vision of fatherhood, by Peter Munce. It begins with an anecdotal reflection on the current pressures on fathers, before looking at some of the realities of fatherhood today, both negative and positive:
In twenty-first century Britain the reality is that we live in an increasingly fatherless society. This is evidenced by the increasing number of children growing up in lone-parent families and in the growing trend of absent fathers. According to estimates by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) there were just over three million lone-parent families in the United Kingdom in 2015. Of these three million lone-parent families, over 2.5 million are lone-mother families. According to the same ONS data, almost four million children in Britain live without their father at home. Significantly, research by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), has highlighted the extent of fatherlessness in Britain. In their report ‘Fractured Families’ they estimate that around one million children have no meaningful contact with their fathers. Supporting this assertion, the think tank, the Fatherhood Institute, estimates that ‘somewhere between one and two million children in the UK at any one time, are not in meaningful contact with their father.’ As the CSJ points out, ‘The proportion of families with dependent children headed by lone parents has increased from 8 per cent in 1971 to 22 per cent in 2014. The CSJ have further suggested, through their research, that in Britain:
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