It is an oft quoted statistic - both in general media and within church circles - that "Christians divorce at roughly the same rate as the world!" It also happens to be one of the most inaccurate statistics according to Glenn Stanton, a family systems counsellor and author in article he wrote for bpnews.net.
Stanton says that based on the latest data compiled by leading sociologists of family and religion, the actual divorce rate among Christians who are seriously involved in their faith is significantly lower than the general population.
Professor Bradley Wright, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, confirms that from his analysis of people who identify as Christians but rarely attend church, that 60 percent of these have been divorced. This matches the statistics of general society and is where the often quoted statistic derives from.
However, Professor Wright also find that of those who attend church regularly and who seriously practice a traditional religious faith, then only 38 percent have been divorced.
W. Bradford Wilcox, a leading sociologist at the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project, has found from his own studies that "active conservative Protestants" who regularly attend church are 35 percent less likely to divorce compared to those who have no affiliation.
Professor Scott Stanley from the University of Denver, in his work with a renowned team of leading sociologists on the Oklahoma Marriage Study, has found that couples with a vibrant and active religious faith had more and higher levels of the qualities couples need to avoid divorce:
"Whether young or old, male or female, low-income or not, those who said that they were more religious reported higher average levels of commitment to their partners, higher levels of marital satisfaction, less thinking and talking about divorce and lower levels of negative interaction. These patterns held true when controlling for such important variables as income, education, and age at first marriage.
"Those who say they are more religious are less likely, not more, to have already experienced divorce. Likewise, those who report more frequent attendance at religious services were significantly less likely to have been divorced."