Divorce Rate by Religion

fschmidt said:

Does anyone know where I can find sensible statistics on divorce rate by religion? I googled this and found stats on percentage divorced of the population. This number is completely meaningless. It puts Atheists lowest, obviously because Atheists are least likely to marry in the first place. The meaningful number is divorces/marriages (number of divorces divided by number of marriages). If anyone knows where I can find this stat by religion, I would greatly appreciate it.

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Whoa whoa, obviously atheists are least likely to get married in the first place? That's a sweeping generalization, with no backing, quite offensive. If we're speaking generally, then i'd venture to say there are probably a lot of luke-warm or even, on some level, fake christians getting married. Anybody can claim to be religious and slap that sticker on their marriage, there's no way to really know.

I can imagine such a poll would be inacurate.

I couldn't find this but found it of the world.

http://nitawriter.wordpress.com/2007/04/04/divorce-rates-of-the-world/

Yes-

Divorce Begins With Deception
http://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/divorce_and_infidelity/guarding-your-heart-in-marriage/divorce-begins-with-deception.aspx

Putting Jesus First
http://www.focusonthefamily.com/marriage/divorce_and_infidelity/guarding-your-heart-in-marriage/putting-jesus-first.aspx

I'm not eastern orthodox but me and my friends really do put christ first in our marriage and all 4 of my friends and myself have marriages that are at least 23 years. All 4 are first marriages too including mine.

Also, many christians don't even know what their bible says. Its obvious they haven't read this-

2Ti 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

2Ti 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

fschmidt said:

Does anyone know where I can find sensible statistics on divorce rate by religion? I googled this and found stats on percentage divorced of the population. This number is completely meaningless. It puts Atheists lowest, obviously because Atheists are least likely to marry in the first place. The meaningful number is divorces/marriages (number of divorces divided by number of marriages). If anyone knows where I can find this stat by religion, I would greatly appreciate it.

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Well for a comparison of atheist/agnostics to Christians based on Barna data see here at the bottom. Relevant part is quoted below.

Barna calculated divorces as a percentage of the entire group, not as a percentage of marriages within that group. Since according to ARIS 2001 more than half of all atheists and agnostics don't get married, this is an apple-orange comparison. If one correctly excludes the never-married from the calculation, then atheists are 58.7 percent more likely to get divorced than Pentecostals and Baptists, the two born-again Christian groups with the highest rate of divorce, and more than twice as likely to get divorced than Christians in general.

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fschmidt said:

Interesting. Any comments on the fact that the countries with the lowest divorce rates aren't Christian and that the only Christian nations with a divorce rate lower than 10% are Eastern Orthodox?

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Well the attitude of Indians spoken of in the link is actually the attitude the New Testament encourages. American culture says a good marriage involves primarily grandiose romantic experience and one getting personal happiness from it. So it really only shows that some American Christians have a problem rejecting the worldliness of what American culture encourages for marriage.

fschmidt said:

Interesting. Any comments on the fact that the countries with the lowest divorce rates aren't Christian and that the only Christian nations with a divorce rate lower than 10% are Eastern Orthodox?

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Might have more to do with how divorce is viewed culturally. In Indian culture, the basis of which is Hinduism, we frown on divorce pretty heavily. That said, we don't have priests and pandits railing about the evils of divorce on a regular basis. In Hindu culture the importance of the family is rather heavily stressed, and I've noticed a general understanding that divorce destroys families, and thus shouldn't be done. It's seen as one's dharma to get married, have kids, raise a family, etc. Divorce would be the very antithesis of this.

I have to say that in light of the divorce rate, I find it almost humorous what lengths Christian churches go to preach against divorce. I've been to a few churches before, and it seems that every other sermon is about why getting divorced is wrong and evil. I've never heard any Hindu priest so much as mention divorce, and yet it is rare among Hindu communities even here in America. Makes me wonder if Christians are using the wrong strategy to prevent divorce. It might be a better idea to change your culture than to use all this preaching.

sanjaya1984 said:

Might have more to do with how divorce is viewed culturally. In Indian culture, the basis of which is Hinduism, we frown on divorce pretty heavily. That said, we don't have priests and pandits railing about the evils of divorce on a regular basis. In Hindu culture the importance of the family is rather heavily stressed, and I've noticed a general understanding that divorce destroys families, and thus shouldn't be done. It's seen as one's dharma to get married, have kids, raise a family, etc. Divorce would be the very antithesis of this.

I have to say that in light of the divorce rate, I find it almost humorous what lengths Christian churches go to preach against divorce. I've been to a few churches before, and it seems that every other sermon is about why getting divorced is wrong and evil. I've never heard any Hindu priest so much as mention divorce, and yet it is rare among Hindu communities even here in America. Makes me wonder if Christians are using the wrong strategy to prevent divorce. It might be a better idea to change your culture than to use all this preaching.

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Agree.

Divorce was looked down upon much more 50 years ago as a culture in the U.S. From a christian standard morals have fallen greatly too. Now, in america there are loads of lukewarm christians-what they claim and what they do unfortunately is two different things. Its one sad joke.

Re 3:16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. (what christ thinks about lukewarm christians)

Here's the religious tolerance's page on this: U.S. divorce rates: for various faith groups, age groups and geographical areas

Yah.. Religioustolerance.Org, another propaganda hate group against Christians.

Anyway, Statistics can be found at the Barna group.

God Bless

fschmidt said:

Where exactly? I couldn't find the stats on this site.

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What I posted was using their stats.

Sir Wilshire said:

What I posted was using their stats.

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What you posted was skewing their statistics.

And you need to be a paying member to the full stats.

God Bless

Just skipped through this thread quickly - but it seems to me that there are all kinds of factors affecting divorce rates. Years ago perhaps there was less divorce (though I haven't time now to research this) because I should think a woman might stay in a terrible, perhaps abusive marriage because they had no social security or any means of taking care of their kids, other than their husband. Plus nowadays, it's much easier to get a divorce.

marriage is alot about economics. in india people would starve if they split.
we are spoiled here. spoiled as in meat left in the sun for three days.

Tinker Grey said:

Here's the religious tolerance's page on this: U.S. divorce rates: for various faith groups, age groups and geographical areas

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Yes, but is that page using correctly understood statistics or not?


eudaimonia,

Mark

fschmidt said:

Does anyone know where I can find sensible statistics on divorce rate by religion? I googled this and found stats on percentage divorced of the population. This number is completely meaningless. It puts Atheists lowest, obviously because Atheists are least likely to marry in the first place. The meaningful number is divorces/marriages (number of divorces divided by number of marriages). If anyone knows where I can find this stat by religion, I would greatly appreciate it.

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Are you looking for divorce statistics by religion correcting for other factors (such as Atheist tend to be more intelligent than Theist, thus intelligence, not religion, may be the reason for a difference in divorce rate), or are you just looking for statistics to falsely confirm some bias?

Eudaimonist said:

Yes, but is that page using correctly understood statistics or not?


eudaimonia,

Mark

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Dunno. I would tend to agree that divorces/marriages for Group X[sub]n[/sub] is more interesting.

So far as I can tell in this thread, we have an allegation that Barna (where RTO got this data) reported it wrong. The substantiation for this was a link to someone else making the statement.

Interestingly, Religious Tolerance Org. reports various criticisms of this data, not one of which was that it was the wrong statistic to report. It would seem that there if there is a standard definition of Divorce Rate, Barna used it.

Too, what is interesting is that George Barna is a professed evangelical. If he were inclined to skew the info, one would think he'd skew it in favor of conservative Christianity. I would think that that speaks well for the likelihood of integrity of the report.

OTOH, there is always money to be made as a doomsday prophet.

salida said:

Also, many christians don't even know what their bible says. Its obvious they haven't read this-

2Ti 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

2Ti 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

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And many Christians don't know what those verses actually mean (and I am including you in that since you I'm guessing are quoting 2 Ti 3:16 to "prove" english bible inerrancy.)