Barna Divorce Statistics

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George Barna was born in Princeton, New Jersey as a Catholic, but later converted to evangelical Christianity. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology from Boston College and 2 Master's Degrees from Rutgers University. He has also completed a doctorate from Dallas Baptist University. The Barna Group founded by him is a market research firm. According to a finding released by the Barna Group, only one out of a number of five adults, which again comprises 22% of the total population has never been married in their lifetime. Among the group of people who have been wedded, at least one out of the number of three have gone through the havoc of a divorce or a break up from their spouse, which has been revealed -in the Barna divorce statistics.

Barna Divorce Statistics of various denominations

Those evangelical Christian groups that are not related to any specific denomination are referred to by Barna as non-denominational. The members of this group are generally fundamentalist in their theological beliefs.

Group Percentage of people who have been divorced
Lutherans and Catholics 21 percent each
Mormons 24 percent
Mainline Protestants 25 percent
Baptists 29 percent
Non-denominational 34 percent

According to the findings of the Barna Report,

  • Conservative Protestant Christians have a high rate of divorce, unlike expectations that the rate of divorce among this group would be slightly lesser than the other groups of people.
  • Even though it is difficult to believe, the agnostics and the atheists have the least rate of divorce among all the groups of people.
  • Mainline Christians generally have a lesser divorce rate.

As revealed by these findings, Barna challenged the concept that churches offer a life-changing support and a truly practical outlook on marriages.

Religion Percentage of people who have been divorced
Atheists and Agnostics 21 percent
Other Christians 24 percent
Born-again Christians 27 percent
Jews 30 percent

Barna Divorce Statistics according to the differences in age

Name of Age Group Range Percent of people who have been divorced
Baby Boomers 33 to 52 years 34 percent
Builders 53 to 72 years 37 percent
Seniors 72 years and above 18 percent

Other Divorce Statistics

Some other findings of the Barna Group regarding the divorce statistics as per the region in the United States are as follows:

Region Percentage divorced
North East 19 percent
West 26 percent
South and Midwest 27 percent each

During August 1997, the Barna Group made a survey of 601 senior Protestant pastors. The conclusion was that 95 percent of them were married. Just 13 percent of them had ever experienced a divorce procedure in their lives. It was also found that out of the senior pastors only 3 percent of them were divorced and not remarried.

The Barna Group also studied the people in the United States as per their race and arrived at the following conclusion

Race Percentage of people divorced
Asian 8 percent
Hispanics 20 percent
African-Americans 22 percent
Whites 27 percent

George Barna is of the opinion that the presence of a plethora of divorces has altered the young people. He revealed one of the most remarkable results of the survey. When asked teenagers to disclose their top intentions for the future, they confronted that they desired to get married and maintain the same partner for the whole life. This is something quite different from what we expect the youth of our generation to be, in their beliefs and thought processes. And this gives us something to ponder upon, when we say that the youth of the modern times do not believe in the institution of marriage or living with one partner. Rather it has been revealed by the Barna divorce statistics that quite opposed to the image that they project before the world, the young generation of the modern times believe in being with one partner under the same roof for the whole of their lives.

It has been recorded that the Barna Research Group selected 3,854 individuals who belonged to 48 continental states. It was found that 25 percent of these individuals had gone through the divorce procedure at least once in their lifetime.

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