Christian Divorce Statistics

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Christian Divorce Statistics of various groups

The divorce rates of various religious groups in the community are listed below. In this listing, the word 'frequent' implies that the person is attending church atleast once a week.

• Frequent Catholics - 23 percent
• Frequent Mainline Protestants - 32 percent
• All Frequent Christians - 32 percent
• Frequent Evangelicals - 32 percent
• Frequent other religions - 38 percent
• Jews - 39 percent
• Non-frequent Catholics - 41 percent
• All Christians - 41 percent
• Non-frequent Mainline Protestants - 42 percent
• Frequent Black Protestants - 47 percent
• Non-frequent other religions - 48 percent
• All Non-Christians - 48 percent
• No religion (agnostics and atheists) - 51 percent
• Non-frequent Evangelicals - 54 percent
• Non-frequent Black Protestants - 58 percent

From the above analysis, it can be concluded that Christians and specifically those who attend church frequently have a relatively less rate of divorce. Thus, frequent church attendance is recommended for a long marital life.

Effect of Church attendance on Christian Divorce Statistics

One can easily conclude that the above results do not indicate a linear relation. It is nothing short of a miracle, that those Christians who visit church once in a week show a dramatic drop in the divorce rate.

Some conclusions

• When data was collected in different sets, the divorce rate of active Catholics was comparable to the Protestants in some sets while in other sets the active Catholics had a marginally lower divorce rate
• Those who attend predominantly black denominations or are Black Protestants exhibit a higher divorce rate when compared to White Protestants or people of other religions. This implies that there is either a simple race effect or a race by religion effect
• The group of Christians (and particularly those who were active) has a considerably lesser divorce rate than the group of atheists and agnostics. In case of some groups, this rate was half to that of atheists and agnostics
• Irrespective of whether they are Catholic or Protestants, those Christians who attended Church frequently had significantly lesser divorce rates than those who scarcely attended church

Why observers of Christianity have a lower divorce rate?

Matthew 19:9

I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness and marries another woman commits adultery.

Matthew 5:32

But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress and anyone who married the divorced woman commits adultery.

Thus, it is taught to all Christians that divorce is synonymous with adultery. In the Christian faith, adultery is a major problem. Adultery is specifically forbidden by one of the commandments in the Ten Commandments. The penalty for adultery is death. Obviously, Jesus wishes that all Christians should be married for life.

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