Households of Faith

A Holistic Vision of Family in God's Kingdom
The Christian world tends to have a blueprint for what families should look like, and these models of the family can be hard to live up to. In some circles, picture-perfect families are idealized and even idolatrized. Many Christians have a gnawing sense that this "traditional family" model is problematic or outdated. But is there an alternative way of understanding family that's neither idolatrous nor revisionist?
Theologian Emily McGowin casts a holistic vision for what family can be in light of God's kingdom. Jesus is our first teacher about families in the kingdom of God, and families rightly understand themselves only in relation to God's kingdom and the church.
In Households of Faith, McGowin
- recovers biblical portraits of households of faith that are not limited to just the biological nuclear family, that can be multigenerational households of married and single, with or without children,
- acknowledges the realities of how sin and trauma damages families and communities, and
- calls Christians to practice family as apprentices to love who discern the times and improvise faithfulness together.

Emily Hunter McGowin (PhD, University of Dayton) is associate professor of theology at Wheaton College. She is the author of Quivering Families and Christmas, and coeditor of God and Wonder. Her articles have appeared in Christianity Today and The Week. She is a priest and canon theologian in the Anglican diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others. She and her husband, Ron, also a priest, live in Chicagoland with their three children.