Continuing the selective morality discussion:
Froma Harrop of The Providence Journal wrote an excellent commentary Nov. 26 on the extremely high divorce rate among Bible Belt Christians — 73 percent in Mississippi, she says; 79 percent in Oklahoma. (Those numbers sound a bit high to me; I’d like to know the data source.) Divorce rates are far lower in Connecticut and in Europe.
Harrop notes that Focus on the Family — by far the best-funded organization leading the ex-gay culture war — comforts its divorced followers while threatening gay-tolerant judges and condemning gay couples to hell.
Divorce used to be socially condemned and very difficult to obtain. Now, however, instead of restoring accountability to their own marriages, gay-marriage opponents like Maggie Gallagher change the subject.
There is no money in bashing the people from whom you are trying to extract money. FOTF knows that. So they do not counsel against divorce.
Why do you find these rates for divorce surprising? Evangelicals are concentrated in the US South. Undersirable social indicators are also concentrated there. It is a fairly easy task to correlate things like illiteracy, illegitimacy, social diseases, murder with the extend of christian conservativism. Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama all are intensely christian and intensely backward.
I lived for 5 years in Arkansas, the only state where pentacostals are nearly a majority. One fourth of all adults are illiterate. At any given moment, the local high school had a pregnancy rate of 10%. Social diseases were rampant. As an AIDS activist, I was floored to discover that a primary path for HIV was incest. Whole families were infected.
Evangelicals are concerned with other people’s sex lives. They moralize about them. They have no concern for their own. Apparently their theology is that God is really upset about gay people’s sex and God gladly forgives them for theirs. But not for gays.
LandoverBaptist did a story on: Alabama, the True Christian Paradise. Check it out.
Although I have never lived in the South, I am not surprised to see they have high divorce rates – like a lot of religions, the “Christianity” practiced there provides very little practical knowledge on how to actually live. They preach about life-long love and fidelity, but do not provide kids any instruction on the very real difficulties of marriage – so people get hitched, expect it to be a cakewalk, and jump when it gets hard.
I would guess that marriage ages are younger, and there are a lot of shotgun marriages because kids are having sex, but not using birth control. Certainly my Southern Baptist cousin in Ohio (near Dayton, which is just Northern Kentucky) ended up married via this path, although he and his wife have worked hard to keep their marriage strong.
I noticed something similar in my Catholic high school, which not only refused to teach about contraception, they actually made your parents consent to you even learning the human reproductive system in biology class. Most of the sexually active kids in my high school did not use protection and a lot got pregnant, but ended up having abortions because they were too young for kids.
Here’s the results from a Barna survey done two years ago:
Column 1: % Have Cohabited
Column 2: % Have never been married
Column 3: % Have been married
Column 4: % of those who have married that ever have been divorced
Column 5: Sample Size
all adults 33 27 73 34 7043
born again Christians 25 19 81 33 2901
non-born again adults 39 32 68 34 4142
Catholics 36 27 73 29 1570
Protestants 30 22 78 32 3812
Age: under 35 44 58 42 20 2426
Age: 35-49 34 14 86 39 2155
Age: 50+ 18 6 94 36 2328
white 34 21 79 34 4839
black 31 38 62 36 964
Hispanic 31 41 59 32 834
While being born again makes for less co-habitation it has no effect on the divorce rate (the difference between the two groups being statistically insignificant). One explanation of the current survey is that there is a higher marriage rate amongst the born again than not. The other is releated to Barna’s methodology. They identify born again by asking people to answer doctrinal questions rather than identify themselves. Nevertheless, neither survey shows a positive effect of being “born again” on divorce.
This is well known within evangelical circles. The Baptists who have a higher divorce rates than other denominations have been trying to put together programs to help deal with the situation. Furthermore, they understand that the fruits of such programs will take time.
The Barna study was interesting. I remember some years ago (1999) Barna’s group found atheists were less likely to have ever been divorced (21%) than most other groups. But the study never said whether atheists were simply less likely to have ever been married in the first place (i.e. if you never have been married, you can’t be divorced). So I’m wondering if anyone might know what percentage of atheists in the study had been married in the first place. In that study Catholics also had a 21% chance of ever been divorced, but when you look at the study above, you’ll see if you just include the percentage who have ever been married the rate goes up.
Actually, if you’re still checking messages here, I’ll just say that a more recent Barna poll strongly suggests that the previous low divorce rate for atheists was due to the fact that they were less likely to marry in the first place. This new poll only queried people who had ever been married about their divorce experiences. Thirty-seven percent of atheists had been divorced. This was much higher than the earlier 21% figure and approximately equal to the divorce rate of Protestants as a whole (39%) but substantially higher than that of Catholics (25%).
After reading the post by raj claiming that he lived in Arkansas for 5 years I must say it is utter bullshit. A quarter of the adults are not illiterate. The AIDS rate here is well below the national average.
Link
And HIV is not spread by incest HIV is higest among blacks.
The highschool pregnacy rate is not at 10%
And we do not care about other people’s sex lives.
Me thinks that raj is a queer with a chip on his shoulder and has never lived in Arkansas.
Gee John. Perhaps you prove a point about functional illiteracy.Dale wrote that, not Raj.
Actually John I did live 5 years in Johnson County Arkansas. During this time my life partner and I were active in HIV prevention and AIDS support activities. Every public type event we ever attended had booths promoting literacy, which was a wide spread crusade. In the groceries and other stores it was quite common for people to ask me what a label said because they could not read. The incest stories were anecdotes told me by public health workers with whom we were acquainted, both state and local. Additionally, I have actually met people in this tragic predicament.
I understand that many homosexual people have been slaughtered by many of those who consider themselves Christains, but it is not for us to judge anyone. Your eternal existence is between God and you. It is a personal relationship, and ones salvation is by no means directed by the hands of those on earth. I am a Christian and proud to be one, and I do not take part in bashing others practices believe it or not. I am quite disturbed by the recordings a previous commenter spoke of about Arkansas, specifically Johnson County. I found it to be extremely and thickly judgemental. I’m not sure who you met or where you went, but it as a resident of here I find the description to be rude and outright distasteful. I guess you didn’t meet anyone I knew or go to church with, because we are loving pentacostals who strive for the salvation not the condimnation of others. I don’t understand why someone who apparently has been hurt by others words and judgements would in return do the same to others.
B Willis,
Thank you for posting your kind thoughts.
As a young woman, my grandmother was one of the very first Pentecostal congregants in her town in Perry County, Arkansas. I have a great story written by a great aunt about a gun battle against the Pentecostals when they first started meeting.
My grandmother was a loving person who believed in minding her own business. I think it had to do with going through struggles of her own.
And while I suspect that you and I would have vastly different views on some political issues, you sound much like my Grandma Elsie when it comes to how to treat others – and I can respect that.
I appologize if you were offended by some of the things said about your county. I hope that you will realize that Dale was not trying to be critical of the county’s residences as much as he was trying to confirm that illiteracy and incest were, sadly, what he had observed.