Does religion help couples stay together?
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I’m often asked if Christians have lower divorce rates than anyone else. Although I point out that I don’t know of any UK studies on this, evidence from the US is fairly mixed that religion – or ‘religiosity’ as it’s usually called in the academic papers – is linked to higher rates of stability.
In any case, if you were going to make a social science hypothesis based on what you read in the Bible, there’s a much better candidate than simply whether one subscribes to a certain religion or not. Jesus is reported in the gospels as saying: “What God has joined together, let man not separate.” Therefore anyone who includes God in their marriage ought to do better.
And so it seems. US studies show very nicely that people who apply their faith into their marriage – those who see their marriage as ‘God-inspired’ or ‘sacred’ – tend to do better.
Anyway, I thought it was about time we had a look at the link between religion and stability. So I asked my long-time colleague, and world-class sta...
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