Dissecting big Christian divorce myth

March 17, 2011 By

Raise your hand — or click “comment” — if you have read a news report claiming that Christians in this supposedly God-fearing nation get divorced at the same rate as everybody else? Raise you other hand if you have heard this statement made in a pulpit. Yes, raising both hands makes it hard to type.

Religion News Service has a news feature out this week that dissects that statement and reaches an interesting conclusion. When it comes to acting out the doctrines of their faith, tot all Christians (or other believers, it is safe to assume) are created equal.

Here’s the bottom line in this story by veteran reporter Adelle Banks: “Christians who attend church regularly are more likely to remain wed.” And the foggy fact that frequently gets quoted?

“It’s a useful myth,” said Bradley Wright, a University of Connecticut sociologist who recently wrote “Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites … and Other Lies You’ve Been Told.” …

The various findings on religion and divorce hinge on what kind of Christians are being discussed.

Wright combed through the General Social Survey, a vast demographic study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, and found that Christians, like adherents of other religions, have a divorce rate of about 42 percent. The rate among religiously unaffiliated Americans is 50 percent.

When Wright examined the statistics on evangelicals, he found worship attendance has a big influence on the numbers. Six in 10 evangelicals who never attend had been divorced or separated, compared to just 38 percent of weekly attendees.

Read on, if you care about accurate coverage of these kinds of issues in mainstream religion coverage.

What this reminds me of, frankly, is the whole “pew gap” issue that has been coming up in U.S. elections in recent decades. You know, those exit poll numbers and surveys that show that the best way to predict how most Americans will vote is not whether they are Catholics, Jews, evangelicals or whatever. The key is HOW OFTEN they attend worship services and other religious activities.

Here is what that looks like in this report by Banks (who is, I should note, a friend of mine and a long-time lecturer here at the Washington Journalism Center):

Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, agrees there’s been some confusion.

“You do hear, both in Christian and non-Christian circles, that Christians are no different from anyone else when it comes to divorce and that is not true if you are focusing on Christians who are regular church attendees,” he said.

Wilcox’s analysis of the National Survey of Families and Households has found that Americans who attend religious services several times a month were about 35 percent less likely to divorce than those with no religious affiliation. Nominal conservative Protestants, on the other hand, were 20 percent more likely to divorce than the religiously unaffiliated.

This reminds me of one other issue that surfaces on this here weblog year after year — the question of whether there is such a thing as a “Catholic voter.” You may recall that, according to savvy priests I have interviewed through the years, there are actually at least four kinds of Catholics who vote and they most certainly do not vote alike.

That grid (with political language intact) looks like this:

* Ex-Catholics. Solid for the Democrats. Cultural conservatives have no chance.

* Cultural Catholics who may go to church a few times a year. This may be one of those all-important “undecided voters” camps, depending on what’s happening with the economy, foreign policy, etc. Lean to Democrats.

* Sunday-morning American Catholics. This voter is a regular in the pew and may even play some leadership role in the parish. This is the Catholic voter that is really up for grabs, the true swing voter that the candidates are after.

* The “sweats the details” Roman Catholic who goes to confession. Is active in the full sacramental life of the parish and almost always backs the Vatican, when it comes to matters of faith and practice. This is a very small slice of the American Catholic pie.

Now, ignore the political language in that. Would there be a difference in divorce rates in these four camps? How about in similar camps among, oh, Southern Baptists?

Now, in the past I have asked if it is possible to create a similar typology for Jews in America. After reading this Banks report, I wonder if — with church attendance as the key — you could do one for liberal Christians, for conservatives, for “emerging” believers, etc., etc. In other word, this fine little story makes a crucial point and it could inspire many, many more questions and, thus, news stories. Carry on.

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Journalism, Marriage & family, People
About TMatt

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

  • Kyle

    Terry, just a point of clarification on the first part of your (useful) Catholic breakdown. There are different flavors of “ex-Catholic.” There are ex-Catholics who now do not practice any faith and may in polls and so on identify themselves as Catholic. That is the group you seem to be describing. There are also ex-Catholics who have gone to other churches who tend to have more agreement with (us) “sweats the details” Catholics on at least some cultural matters. Probably they don’t turn up in polling on Catholics because they identify as something other than Catholic. But nevertheless it’s worthwhile pointing out.

  • http://goodintentionsbook.com bob smietana

    Wright came up with this list of divorce rates for religious traditions back in 2006:

    Divorce rate/Religious group

    58% Non-active Black Protestants
    54% Non-active Evangelicals
    51% No religious beliefs (e.g., atheists, agnostics)
    48% Non-active other religions
    48% All non-Christians
    47% Active Black Protestants
    42% All non-Christian religions
    42% Non-active Mainline Protestants
    41% All Christians
    41% Non-active Catholics
    39% Jewish
    38% Active other religions
    34% Active Evangelicals
    32% Active Mainline Protestants
    23% Active Catholics

  • J

    How about the Dorothy Day Catholics like my mother-in-law? Sweats the details, rails against abortion, but votes Dem.

  • Patrick Lynch

    Been reading Wright’s book “Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…” the past few days for review, and it’s illuminating. Interesting analysis from a good sociologist, delivered in a laconic style that won’t put anybody off. Pick it up if you’re interested in a swift debunking of popular notions of the health of American spirituality.

  • Dave

    tmatt, where did you get the wedding cake graphic? Wonderful!

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    Kyle: In poll data, the former Catholics who become something else show up in the cohort with their new spiritual family.

    J: That’s a very important group (and you know I know that, as an Eastern Orthodox pro-life Democrat), but its members are small in number.

    Dave: The wonders of Google Images

  • Dan

    http://people-press.org/report/662/same-sex-marriage

    A Pew research poll demonstrates the same difference between the nominally religious and the actively religious when it comes to same sex marriage. Pew found increased support for gay marriage among every imaginable category of people except one: those who attend religious services frequently. It found that white mainline Protestants and white Catholics have become much more supportive of gay marriage but that virtually all of the change in opinion among both groups has come among those who attend services relatively infrequently.

  • Bill E

    The take-away from this is simple and can be applied to most statistical situations:
    The more participation in any group activity, the more likely that person will behave according to the expected norms of the system they participate in.

    I was raised in the church (Pentecostal, complete with speaking in tongues and record burnings), but left the church due to the apparent hypocrisy and dogmatic oppression. I have personally experienced the methods of church control: peer expectations through guilt based coercion.

    When people are less influenced by the group guilt, they are more likely to make decisions that are right for them. When they are supported with genuine love and caring, and not just holding to the ‘party line’ then I think church can be a valuable part of the support system for marriages in trouble. The adherence to ‘staying together’ as the only answer is, in my opinion, rather short sited and not always in the best interest of the people involved. So ultimately, the church may contribute to an equal part happy and unhappy marriages.

    The church expects you to ‘stay together’ even though it may not be the best course of action for the individual. I have a cousin-in-law in a situation where he has yet to acknowledge to destructive behavior of his verbally abusive wife of 20 years. He was guilted into marrying her when she became pregnant. He has stayed with her because that is what is taught in church, much to the demise of his self worth.

    I was married in the church because I thought it would make my parents happy, it didn’t take too long to realize I made a mistake. So, instead of sticking out for 20 years, suffering half of my life away, I went against the group dogma and got divorced. Of course there was backlash from the parents. “What will people think about us?” asked the parents. “F them. It’s none of their business.” I said. But the guilt hung on like the smell of rotten fish. I suffered depression for a few years until I really realized the opinion of these people didn’t matter and that it was the best decision for me. I washed my hands and my mind of all that nonsense and have been free for many years now.

    Just my two cents.

  • http://www.saintgasoline.com Saint Gasoline

    It is very misleading for you to claim the Barna group polls are “inaccurate”. They are accurate, but simply chose not to break down those polled into subgroups. If you want to know whether self-identified Christians have lower divorce rates than others, then the answer is a clear “No”. If you want to know whether Christians who attend worship services regularly have lower divorce rates, then the answer is “Yes”. That doesn’t show that the data is inaccurate, only that you are looking at a subgroup.

    Let’s break this down further. Realistically speaking, the more religious you are (as measured by church attendance), the more you probably frown on divorce (what church or religion encourages divorce?). Therefore, arguably the data showing that those who attend more worship services have fewer divorces is actually showing that those who disapprove more of divorce have fewer divorces.

    Now here’s where we could get some real data. What would happen if we analyzed the poll data for nonreligious people who strongly disapprove of divorce? I’d wager that this would show that this subgroup of nonreligious people would have lower rates of divorce, probably comparable to Christians who regularly attend church services. Of course, I don’t know if this kind of analysis has been done, but I think it makes sense.

    Another interesting idea would be to find poll data on disapproval of divorce as it correlates with church attendance and divorce. I bet you’d find that a very strong disapproval correlates with high church attendance, and that you’d further find that strong disapproval of divorce correlates better with the number of divorces.

    Basically, the point I’m making is that you’re comparing apples to oranges. Many nonreligious people do not see divorce as something terrible (or at least don’t see it as something as horrible as the extremely religious may). When you break down Christians into subgroups, particularly subgroups that are likely to disapprove more of divorce, and then compare them to other groups that are not similarly broken into subgroups, you’re basically loading the deck against the other group.

    Suppose, for instance, that atheists and Christians had similar levels of committed felonies. Suppose then that I decided to look at the subgroup of atheists who identify as secular humanists and regularly attend humanist meetings. (Secular humanists, by the way, are nontheists who abide by secular ethics and see a moral code as important to their disbelief.) I find that they have a lower number of felonies committed, and then argue that secular humanists are more moral than Christians. Do you see the problem there? I didn’t bother trying to look at the subgroup of Christians.

    Thus, I can only say that this post is highly misleading in portraying the original data as inaccurate, and it is further misleading in trying to arbitrarily find a subgroup that fits your preconceived notions of how “Christians” should behave. That could be done with any group.

  • MJBubba

    Saint Gasoline said:

    If you want to know whether self-identified Christians have lower divorce rates than others, then the answer is a clear “No”. If you want to know whether Christians who attend worship services regularly have lower divorce rates, then the answer is “Yes”. That doesn’t show that the data is inaccurate, only that you are looking at a subgroup.

    No, at least, not according to Bradley Wright. I followed the link kindly supplied above by Bob Smietana, and found that Wright’s beef with the Barna data was a methodology that isolated “born-again” Christians, but then lumped all the discarded data on non-born-again Christians in together with the non-Christians. I checked out the Barna Group website and found this sort of language, which entirely supports B.Wright’s criticisms:

    In fact, when evangelicals and non-evangelical born again Christians are combined into an aggregate class of born again adults, their divorce figure is statistically identical to that of non-born again adults: 32% versus 33%, respectively.

    http://www.barna.org/family-kids-articles/42-new-marriage-and-divorce-statistics-released

    Now, I have taken a few of Barna’s surveys, and followed up on the interpretations thereof. He typically includes some doctrinal questions in order to determine or validate status of the respondent as born-again. As an LCMS Lutheran, I have found that sometimes I qualify and sometimes I don’t, depending on the particular wording of the questions. But, I never had realized that the Barna g
    Group considers non-born-again Christians to be the equivalent of non-Christians. This is a newsworthy finding.

  • http://www.saintgasoline.com Saint Gasoline

    I believe you are misreading the article from the link you posted, MJBubba. The quote you posted doesn’t show that the 33% figure includes non-born-again Christians lumped in with non-Christians. This is shown earlier in the article, as the 33% figure is explained as being composed of non-born-again Christians (i.e., they are not lumped in with non-Christians):

    Born again Christians who are not evangelical were indistinguishable from the national average on the matter of divorce: 33% have been married and divorced.

    Where are you getting the idea that the non-born-again Christians are being lumped in with non-Christians in the comparison? I don’t see anything supporting that claim anywhere on either of the links!

    All Wright did was show that church attendance is correlated with more stable marriages. The data, when taking this into consideration, basically show that those who attend church more often have fewer divorces, while those that don’t attend church very often have more divorces even than the nonreligious:

    …Americans who attend religious services several times a month were about 35 percent less likely to divorce than those with no religious affiliation.

    Nominal conservative Protestants, on the other hand, were 20 percent more likely to divorce than the religiously unaffiliated.

    Again, I don’t think there is anything misleading about the Barna data here. If anything, I think people like Wright are arbitrarily going on a wild goose chase in the subgroups to find data that are more pleasing to them. I also think it makes a lot more sense to see their analysis as showing that those who feel more negatively about divorce are less likely to get divorced, which would probably correlate better than church attendance.

  • Johan

    Is this really a reason to celebrate? If we really believe that there’s something transformational about having Jesus in our lives then we should be disappointed our divorce rate is so high, not celebrating just because we scored marginally higher than other Americans. Is our faith about a culture war or competition or about being faithful to Jesus?