One Sunday morning when I was 12, I went into my parents’ bathroom and noticed an open bottle of Tylenol on the counter. When questioned, Mom said that she and Dad had a hard time sleeping the night before. That might not sound very unusual, but my parents never had a hard time sleeping. Then later that day while I was listening to music, Mom and Dad came into the room and said they needed to talk with me. Their faces revealed a seriousness I had never seen before, and as I removed the headphones, tears welled up in the corners of Mom’s eyes. My parents were “separating,” a euphemism for divorce in the early 1980s.
Over the next few weeks several friends tried to comfort me by saying things like “Well, you know one in two marriages end in divorce these days, even among good people who go to church.” Somehow being part of such a cohort was supposed to make me feel better. It didn’t, and actually, the statement is not true. Even though hundreds of books and thousands of sermons have repeated this statistic, it is not correct. In fact, it is part of three larger myths that scholars reveal to be dead wrong.
1) Christians divorce as often as non-Christians. According to the General Social Survey, the gold standard of scientific survey data because of its high response rates, 41 percent of Christians who have ever been married have divorced at some point in time. This is compared to 48 percent of non-Christians.* Of course, we’re not going to celebrate the fact that two in five married Christians experience the pain of divorce. At the same time, there is a statistically significant difference between Christians and non-Christians in terms of divorce, and church leaders ought to recognize that.
2) Church attendance makes no difference. Quite the opposite; differences are amplified when we take church attend-ance into consideration. Among weekly churchgoing Christians, the divorce rate drops to 32 percent. Looking at particular traditions, church attendance decreases the likelihood of divorce even more so. Among Catholics who attend weekly, for example, the divorce rate drops to 23 percent.
3) Things are only getting worse. Although the divorce rate has grown a great deal during the last century, the overall divorce rate in this country peaked about 25 years ago. Pundits who suggest that overall divorce rates could jump to as much as 60 percent are not in touch with reality. Instead, a growing number of experts believe the divorce rate could drop as low as 25 percent among certain groups. One likely subpopulation is churchgoing Christians. Several factors may be at work, but chief among them is premarital counseling and marriage preparation courses. These do wonders for helping couples set realistic expectations for married life and for handling challenges as they arise. Among the general population we also see that young people are getting married later in life, and this appears to be lowering overall rates of divorce.
Sociologist Brad Wright of the University of Connecticut and a few of his colleagues have recently completed a series of studies on Christian divorce rates. Their conclusions, which you can check out online at brewright.blogspot.com, suggest that Christian leaders and their critics often repeat misleading myths about divorce even when they know better. Why? Because it mobilizes their constituents. Books that censure Christians, whether written by Christian leaders or their detractors, become instant bestsellers. Nothing grabs a headline like hypocrisy, and fear is a powerful mobilizing force. But that can only last for so long. Eventually, the shrill cries that sound alarms about every other Christian marriage falling apart will become part of the din that simply gets ignored.
Make no mistake—divorce is a cancer that is eroding the social fabric that holds our culture together. Between 1900 and 2000 the divorce rate in this country jumped 450 percent, a social reality that should trouble us all. We must do everything we can to support and encourage the flourishing of marriage. At the same time, we serve no one by repeating unreliable data or inaccurate statements.
There are two moments when people are most likely to leave a church—when dealing with the death of a loved one and in the midst of a divorce. Amazingly, these are the very same moments when people are most likely to join a church. This is what happened in my own family. Through a divorce recovery seminar sponsored by a local church, my mom met a number of people who were facing similar struggles. Gradually, her faith renewed, and in subsequent months, we became actively involved in that congregation. Divorce, although a great tragedy, provides opportunities for ministry in such a way that churches can meet people in their hour of greatest need in new and fresh ways.
D. MICHAEL LINDSAY is an assistant professor of sociology and associate director of the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life at Rice University. He’s the author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (Oxford University Press).
