{"id":535,"date":"2019-03-12T15:03:44","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T15:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/?p=535"},"modified":"2019-03-15T13:37:30","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T13:37:30","slug":"andrew-whitehead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/andrew-whitehead\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Whitehead: Faith, Family and Research Intersect"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='fullscreen_slider_1'  class='avia-fullscreen-slider main_color   avia-builder-el-0  el_before_av_hr  avia-builder-el-first   container_wrap sidebar_right' style=' '  ><a href='#next-section' title='' class='scroll-down-link av-control-default' aria-hidden='true' data-av_icon='\ue877' data-av_iconfont='entypo-fontello'><\/a><div   data-size='no scaling'  data-lightbox_size='large'  data-animation='slide'  data-conditional_play=''  data-ids='536'  data-video_counter='0'  data-autoplay='false'  data-bg_slider='true'  data-slide_height='100'  data-handle='av_fullscreen'  data-interval='5'  data-class=' '  data-el_id=''  data-css_id='fullscreen_slider_1'  data-scroll_down='aviaTBscroll_down'  data-control_layout='av-control-default'  data-custom_markup=''  data-perma_caption=''  data-autoplay_stopper=''  data-image_attachment='scroll'  data-min_height='0px'  data-stretch=''  class='avia-slideshow avia-slideshow-1 av-slider-scroll-down-active av-control-default av-default-height-applied avia-slideshow-no scaling av_fullscreen   avia-slide-slider '  itemprop=\"image\" itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" ><ul class='avia-slideshow-inner ' style='padding-bottom: 66.6666666667%;' ><li style='background-position:top center;' data-img-url='https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/Andrew-Whitehead.jpg' class=' av-single-slide slide-1 ' ><div data-rel='slideshow-1' class='avia-slide-wrap '   ><div class='av-section-color-overlay' style='opacity: 0.1; background-color: #000000; '><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><div id='after_full_slider_1'  class='main_color av_default_container_wrap container_wrap sidebar_right' style=' '  ><div class='container' ><div class='template-page content  av-content-small alpha units'><div class='post-entry post-entry-type-page post-entry-535'><div class='entry-content-wrapper clearfix'>\n<div  style='height:50px' class='hr hr-invisible   avia-builder-el-1  el_after_av_fullscreen  el_before_av_one_full  avia-builder-el-first '><span class='hr-inner ' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-2  el_after_av_hr  el_before_av_hr  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  av_inherit_color '  style='font-size:25px; color:#000000; '  itemprop=\"text\" ><p style=\"color: #f66733; font-size: 19px; font-weight: bolder; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: -50px;\">Andrew Whitehead<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 64px; font-weight: bolder; text-align: center; line-height: 1.1em;\">Faith, Family and Research Intersect<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<div  style='height:1px; margin-top:-50px'  class='hr hr-invisible   avia-builder-el-4  el_after_av_one_full  el_before_av_one_full '><span class='hr-inner ' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-5  el_after_av_hr  el_before_av_hr  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><div  style=' margin-top:30px; margin-bottom:30px;'  class='hr hr-custom hr-center hr-icon-no   avia-builder-el-6  avia-builder-el-no-sibling '><span class='hr-inner   inner-border-av-border-thin' style=' width:1100px;' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<div  style='height:1px; margin-top:-50px'  class='hr hr-invisible   avia-builder-el-7  el_after_av_one_full  el_before_av_one_full '><span class='hr-inner ' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-8  el_after_av_hr  el_before_av_hr  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  av_inherit_color '  style='font-size:25px; color:#000000; '  itemprop=\"text\" ><p style=\"font-weight: lighter; text-align: center;\">Clemson sociologist Andrew Whitehead admits that one of the darkest periods in his life led to some of his most recent nationally recognized research<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<div  style='height:1px; margin-top:-50px'  class='hr hr-invisible   avia-builder-el-10  el_after_av_one_full  el_before_av_one_full '><span class='hr-inner ' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-11  el_after_av_hr  el_before_av_one_full  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><div  style=' margin-top:30px; margin-bottom:30px;'  class='hr hr-custom hr-center hr-icon-no   avia-builder-el-12  avia-builder-el-no-sibling '><span class='hr-inner   inner-border-av-border-thin' style=' width:1100px;' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-13  el_after_av_one_full  el_before_av_comments_list  column-top-margin\" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  av_inherit_color '  style='font-size:19px; color:#000000; '  itemprop=\"text\" ><p class=\"p1\">T<span class=\"s1\">hat \u201cdark period\u201d<\/span> occurred in 2014, after he and his family \u2014 his wife, Kelly, their two sons, ages 10 and 4, and their 7-year-old daughter \u2014 moved to Clemson. Faith is important to the Whiteheads, but in each of the various places they lived, they struggled to find a congregation that could accommodate the special needs of their sons, who have autism and don\u2019t speak. Considering the demands of their family\u2019s educational, health care and therapy needs, they had little energy left to devote to finding and cultivating a spiritual home for themselves and their children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">The search fell off the list of priorities for nearly a year. \u201cWe all suffered when we didn\u2019t have a community to belong to,\u201d Whitehead says. \u201cWe knew from experience that it\u2019s a difficult search. We just weren\u2019t ready yet to take the inevitable \u2018walks of shame\u2019 to retrieve our children from a church nursery because they were having a meltdown.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Through those experiences, Whitehead began to turn his academic eye on what his family was going through. By viewing his family\u2019s struggles as a sociologist would \u2014<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>on a macro scale \u2014 he emerged with findings that revealed an unseen population and tragically underexplored issues in faith communities. The Whitehead family\u2019s experiences were part of a troubling national trend. Whitehead\u2019s years-long examination of national data found that children whose disabilities affect social interaction are the most likely to be deterred from worship.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cI hoped my research could serve as a wake-up call to religious communities,\u201d Whitehead says. \u201cIn many ways, this population is unseen because they never show up, or when they do, they have a negative experience and never return.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">The odds of children with a chronic health condition never attending religious services are 14 percent higher than those without conditions, while physical conditions have almost no effect on attendance, Whitehead discovered.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">The difference becomes more pronounced in disabilities that affect social interaction. One in 4 children with developmental delays, learning disabilities, anxiety or conduct disorder never attend church. That ratio becomes 1 in 3 for children with autism, depression, speech problems or brain injury. Citing prior research, Whitehead notes that 1 in 3 parents of children with disabilities changed their places of worship because they felt the child wasn\u2019t sufficiently included.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Whitehead\u2019s findings related to attrition in church attendance confirmed a hypothesis and helped him put his own experiences into perspective. With publications in national journals and an article in <i>The Washington Post,<\/i> his research has earned national attention, so he hopes it can aid congregations who face growing numbers of children with disabilities to serve.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">The Whiteheads found a church near Clemson, Alive Wesleyan Church, which has been open to their needs. Their sons have a \u201cbuddy\u201d during church whom they\u2019ve grown comfortable with, and Whitehead looks forward to working with the church to fold their sons more completely into worship activities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">It\u2019s a far cry from a previous church in another state they were all but turned away from. Whitehead recalls the church\u2019s children\u2019s ministry director telling him, \u201cThere\u2019s just nothing we can do for you.\u201d Hindsight has mellowed his initial reaction to that statement. He now sees it more as a lack of preparation than a lack of compassion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cIf congregations rarely have children with chronic health conditions who show up to worship, that doesn\u2019t mean they can\u2019t still be prepared,\u201d Whitehead says. \u201cHaving a system in place goes a long way toward preventing a religious community from becoming yet another bureaucracy that families have to navigate. Instead, these communities can become places of rest and refuge.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<div  class='av-buildercomment   '><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[178,144,106,102,104,103,105],"coauthors":[16],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-profiles","tag-2019-faculty-profiles","tag-andrew-whitehead","tag-children","tag-church","tag-disabilities","tag-faith-communities","tag-social-interaction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/Andrew-Whitehead.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9IEky-8D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}