My Father’s Example
on Appreciating Paternal Influence in the Right Direction
I’m not really sure what my dad believed. He was a Christian, though one I think more of commitment than conviction. A Protestant, he couldn’t have conceived of being a Catholic or even an Episcopalian or Lutheran, no more than I as a New Englander could conceive of being a Yankees fan. For the last twenty-some years of his life, he was an elder in a congregationalist-style church, heavily involved, but then he was the pastor’s best friend.
My parents started going to church when I was eight or so, I think for the usual middle-class reasons. They wanted help raising their children, and they saw going to church as the respectable thing to do, something people like them did. At least my mother did. She had grown up in a family half-secular (grandfather was an active Mason) and half irregularly practicing Methodists (grandmother was a Methodist). My father’s family had not gone to church at all.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
David Mills has been editor of Touchstone and executive editor of First Things.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Family from the online archives
32.1—January/February 2019
on Down Syndrome & the Lives That Matter by David F. Watson
more from the online archives
19.8—October 2006
on the Good Father’s Quiet Desperation by Russell D. Moore
31.1—January/February 2018
on Ragnarök, an Extreme Weather Event & the Paths to Conversion by Timothy J. Burbery
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
