Evangelical Christians have a lower divorce rate than the general population, according to a recent study from The Barna Group.
A telephone survey of 3,792 adults found that 33 percent of those who had ever been married had experienced at least one divorce, while 26 percent of the evangelical group had been divorced.
Glenn Stanton, director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family, said this is good news.
“What the results show is that faith has a positive impact on marital health and durability,” he said.
The survey could have gone even further, Stanton said, by asking respondents about their faith practices instead of simply their faith affiliation. Other research shows that evangelicals who are active in their churches report even lower divorce rates.
“People who attend church every week, people who pray together regularly, people who seem to take a real seriousness in their faith rather than just a mere identification with a particular faith movement tend to have an even higher success in marital stability and health," he said.
Stanton said the study also dispels the common misperception that divorce rates within the Church mirror those outside the Church.
“That is true only if you look at just church affiliation,” he said. “But if you look at church activity — how people really live out their faith — then that absolutely is not true because people who take their faith very seriously and have action to back that up have a significantly lower divorce rate than the general public.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Visit the Issue Analysis: Marriage and Family page.
\Are you dealing with divorce? Focus on the Family can help.
(NOTE: Referral to Web sites not produced by Focus on the Family is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)
