STUDY: Real Threat To Marriage Comes From Unstable Marriages Of Conservative Christians

[kpete]

War on Marriage? Give me a Break.
by Steven D
Wed May 9th, 2012 at 07:53:44 PM EST

Fox News is loudly proclaiming that President Obama has declared War on Traditional Marriage!. really Fox? Then why were divorce rates among Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians the highest in the county since before someone even imagined that Gays and Lesbians should be allowed the same right to marry as other people? Those statistics came, by the way from a Evangelical Christian research institute, the Barna Group, in the year 2000:

Denomination (in order of decreasing divorce rate)

Non-denominational** 34%
Baptists 29%
Mainline Protestants 25%
Mormons 24%
Catholics 21%
Lutherans 21%

Barna's results verified findings of earlier polls: that conservative Protestant Christians, on average, have the highest divorce rate, while mainline Christians have a much lower rate. They found some new information as well: that atheists and agnostics have the lowest divorce rate of all. George Barna commented that the results raise "questions regarding the effectiveness of how churches minister to families." The data challenge "the idea that churches provide truly practical and life-changing support for marriage." [...]

The data showed that the highest divorce rates were found in the Bible Belt.* "Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma round out the Top Five in frequency of divorce...the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average" of 4.2/1000 people.

* Note: Divorce rates were still higher in the Bible Belt as of 2009 according to a US Census report.

The difference in divorce rates is particularly interesting given the fact that the Christians getting divorced in the highest numbers are among the same Christians who are most likely to raise an alarm about the state of marriage in society. They also tend to be the same Christians who want to deny gays the right to marry on the assumption that gay marriage is a "threat" to the institution of marriage. If marriage is in any danger in America, perhaps the threat comes from the unstable marriages of conservative Christians, not the relationships of gays or the marriages of godless atheists.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/5/9/195344/3248

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When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next most common negative images? : “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and “too involved in politics.”)

http://rachelheldevans.com/win-culture-war-lose-generation-amendment-one-north-carolina

(more recent study)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/25/united-states-divorce-rat_n_935938.html
old stuff
http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/16-teensnext-gen/94-a-new-generation-expresses-its-skepticism-and-frustration-with-christianity