There are many characters in the Bible who just make a brief “cameo”  appearance: they enter a story, do their “thing”, and are never heard of again. So, for instance, we have the boy who brought the loaves and fishes to Jesus at the feeding of the 5000 – we know nothing about him but there wouldn’t have been a miracle if he hadn’t come forward! Almost at the other end of the Bible we have the mysterious Melchizedek who blesses Abram with bread and wine after a victory.

Also in the Old Testament are the Egyptian princess who finds baby Moses floating in his basket and becomes his foster-mother, and the starving widow who shares her last crumbs with Elijah – both of them unnamed. And, moving to the Gospels, what about the shepherds and Magi? We meet them every Christmas, but they never reappear. These people only merit a mere sentence or two in the Bible yet they may be important in its ongoing tale. Today we meet two more who most of us would fail to identify if we were asked: Eunice and Lois, the mother and grandmother of St Paul’s young protégé Timothy.

These two women are only mentioned once by name, in Paul’s second letter to Timothy; however we learn a bit more about them in Acts where we read about Paul’s second visit to Lystra, a city in the Asian part of today’s Turkey. Eunice was a Jewish Christian married to a Greek man who was still a pagan; she may have been converted when Paul first visited the area. Eunice may well have been looked down on by the local Jewish community because she had “married out”; we do know that her son wasn’t circumcised like other Jewish boys as it was a father’s responsibility to arrange this – and he was Greek.

We know nothing about Lois, who was either Eunice’s mother or her mother-in-law. We’re told that she helped rear Timothy and it’s been suggested that this was because Timothy had lost his father while he was still young; however it may mean nothing more than they all lived together in one extended household. One thing we do know is that Paul treated Timothy almost as if he were his own son; was that because the younger man’s father had indeed died or was it simply because Paul, unmarried and with no children of his own, needed someone on whom to bestow his affection? We can only guess.

Eunice and Lois are mentioned because of the spiritual upbringing they gave Timothy, as a Jew of course rather than as a Christian. They were clearly the religious influencers in the boy’s life, which might make us think that his father – if he was indeed alive – wasn’t too concerned with matters of faith. That’s quite a common scenario, even today. So we are told about the two ladies’ “sincere faith” which they’d successfully passed on to Timothy, and how they’d given him the good knowledge of the Scriptures (Old Testament, of course) which was to be so beneficial to his future ministry. And, quite apart from this intentional and explicit passing on of their beliefs, the two ladies’ attitudes and demeanour must have had a huge impact on the growing child; they clearly lived out their faith.

Well, this is a charming story, notable for its emphasis on two women in what was a male-dominated society. That in itself makes it highly appropriate for Mothering Sunday (although I know, before anyone corrects me, that Mothering Sunday originally had a very different meaning to the one it has today). What I want to do now is go on from this story of Timothy’s family and ask how, and how well, those of us who are parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles today transmit our faith down through the generations. I’m sure that’s something we all want to see happening – after all, the majority of Christians are people who’ve received some kind of upbringing in the faith, it’s less common to find people in churches who’ve come from a completely atheistic background although there are some. I also want to set this story against the fact that many of us older Christians have children who haven’t followed our faith, perhaps violently rejected it, in their adult lives. That can be a source of great sadness and deep heart-searching, especially as other religious communities such as Muslims seem to be far more successful in passing on their faith.

An interesting survey was carried out in America a couple of years ago, when 235 parents from both Christian and non-Christian traditions – Protestant, Jewish, Catholic both White and Latino, Mormon, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist – were interviewed at length. These came from a variety of social, racial and family backgrounds and we need to note that they weren’t a cross-section of the general public but quite specifically a group of parents who were religious. The survey results were brought together and studied to see if there were any common themes which determined whether children were likely to hold on to their parents’ faith or abandon it as they grew up.

And there were: as the report says, “The real banner headline is that the most instrumental factor is when parents talk about faith with their children — not just in the car coming and going from Sunday school or when they’re saying bedtime prayers, but when there’s a kind of ongoing narrative just in the course of everyday life”. The key factor was whether religion for the parents started and stopped at the church door or permeated daily life, whether family conversations routinely asked, “What does Christianity have to say about this?”

That was in America; a few years earlier, in 2016, Olwyn Mark (who surely must be Welsh!) of Christchurch University at Canterbury published her own findings on the same issue. And her conclusions were very similar: she found no secret formula or foolproof practice that improves the likelihood of faith being transmitted from parents to their children. What she did note (and this won’t surprise you) is that the foundations for faith are laid in childhood; that the family has a key role in developing and supporting young peoples’ faith, especially during the crucial teenage years; and that modelling is crucial: in other words parents have to “live out” their faith as children will easily notice inconsistencies between what they profess and actually do.

Of course Dr Mark said a lot more than that! She said, for instance, that the way parents carry out their role is important: authoritativeparenting, where discipline and control are accompanied by warm nurture and responsiveness, is more conducive to religious transmission than either authoritarian or permissive parenting. She also said that the faith commitment of both parents (if there are two) matters if faith is to be passed on: it’s not just the mother’s job! Also (many of you will be pleased to hear this), the role and influence of grandparents must not be under-estimated – which brings us back to Lois in Timothy’s story. Was she the lynchpin who held the family together?

This study is very long, and I don’t want to bore you! But I do want to pass on a couple of other points it makes. One is that some parents say, “I won’t force-feed my children with religion, I’ll let them make their own decision when they’re older”. There’s often a lot of integrity behind that statement: the parents want to respect their children’s autonomy, their right to make their own choices. (This, in fact, falls into line with the way in which society in general now sees religion: not as an obligation but a personal choice). So, for instance, parents may not put pressure on their children to attend church nor teach them Bible stories – that might be thought of as “pressurising” them.

The problem with that approach is two-fold. One is simply this: you can’t go to a restaurant and make a sensible food choice without seeing the menu; these parents aren’t offering their children a life menu which includes religion, so they’re unlikely to choose it later on. The other problem is that homes are never ‘neutral’ from the point of view of values or religion: even if they don’t realise it, every family has some kind of belief system which informs and guides the way they live.

Of course there are many reasons why young people from Christian homes don’t believe: sometimes they feel that their parents have spent some much time at church that they’ve been neglected, sometimes they’ve been hurt by church infighting or politics. I could talk about the way in which our country’s culture has changed, which means that a young person who professes the Christian faith is ‘swimming against the tide’ of their peers and may find it easier to give it up. And I could also mention the way in which churches can discourage young people by ignoring what they say and going on in their own sweet (and often outmoded) way. Indeed just yesterday I took part in the United Reformed Church’s Wales Synod meeting in which we were reminded that children have human rights, and asked how we might be able to hear and consider their voice in every area of our churches’ lives.

We seem to have gone a long way from Eunice, Lois and Timothy – or perhaps we haven’t. I’d like to close with one last quote from Dr Mark’s study and one final story. First, Dr Mark: “Raising children in a complex and rapidly changing world presents many challenges for parents, not least the challenge of articulating and passing on faith with confidence. Parents can feel disempowered and overwhelmed in the task of nurturing faith. This could be on account of the many competing social and cultural forces at work – notably the influence of media, the pressure from peers, or the popular secular script. …. While not ignoring these challenges and pressures, the evidence in this report at least demonstrates that parents’ influence on the spiritual outcomes of their children is foundational to faith development and continues to carry considerable weight into adolescence and adulthood”.

And now the story, which is about a North African lady – a Berber in fact – who lived over 1500 years ago. She was born to Christian parents in what is now Algeria, but was married at 14 to a Roman pagan. He held an official position locally and inherited his own mother’s violent temper and loose morals; this mother  lived with the newly-weds which made life very difficult, especially as the heroine of our story saw her prime duties as obedience to her husband and maintaining her Christian faith. The couple had three children who survived infancy, two sons and a daughter. The girls both eventually became nuns but the son became lazy and uncouth. At great financial sacrifice his mother sent him to Carthage for his education hoping he would change his ways and embrace Christianity. He was 17.

But things didn’t improve. The young man fell into bad company and immersed himself in what he later called “a cauldron of illicit loves”. He took a young Carthaginian woman as his mistress and in fact stayed with her for fifteen years. During this time he became a renowned teacher and found faith, not in orthodox Christianity but in a North African cult. When he returned home his mother wanted to throw him out of the house but sensibly she contacted her local Bishop – himself a convert from the cult – who advised her to pray for him and allow him to find his own way in life. After the shock of his mother’s reaction, the young man began to study Christian theology.

He wasn’t, however, instantly converted – in fact he continued to lead a chequered existence with several mistresses and ran off to Rome. But eventually he settled down, renounced his former life and even took a vow of celibacy. Today Augustine – who wrote down his story in his famous “Confessions” – is regarded as one of the greatest of early theologians. Who knows the effect that this lady’s Christian influence and agonised, yet faithful, praying had on her children and even her husband, who became a Christian shortly before his death? Monica (for that was her name) has long been called the patron saint of wives and mothers. We celebrate her, and all Christian parents, today.