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This is another post based on information from When Baby Makes Three, the 2011 State of Our Unions a report from the National Marriage Project.
The report has some encouraging things to say about the importance of faith, and more specifically shared faith, with regards to marital happiness and not ending up divorced. For men and women, “both spouses having above average marital spirituality” was the third highest predictor of not being prone to separation or divorce. For men, this was the fifth most important predictor of being very happy in their marriage. Additionally, both spouses attending religious services at least once a week was the fourth highest predictor of not being prone to separation or divorce for men.
Overall shared religious attendance results in an increase in the likelihood that married couples with children will say they are “very happy” in their marriage with an increase of nine percentage points for men and 14 for women. Additionally, such couples decrease the chance of separation or divorce – a 15-point drop for men and nine for women. There are two keywords here – attendance and shared. Identifying as religious doesn’t have any effect, but actually attending regularly does. Secondly, the attendance must be shared – both husband and wife must go.
Even more substantial was the effect of both the husband and the wife agreeing that “God is the center of our marriage” with a massive 50% increase in both genders saying they were very happy in their marriage. Additionally, such couples have only a 1% divorce rate.
Bottom line: Faith can make a huge difference to both the happiness and longevity of a marriage, but that faith must be active and shared.
[This post first appeared Dec 18, 2011.]
A post worth reading:
Dr. Corey Carlisle | Not our own ◄ Speaking of God…
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A fascinating and pertinent topic for me. A decade ago (when you first posted this), I probably would have seen it as a simple statistical curiosity. A decade later after my wife has left Christianity, it hits a bit closer to home.
I know that a single blog post cannot cover everything there is to know about a topic. Obviously, for me, the really interesting part of this topic is about those marriages that run counter to the general correlations (what makes a couple with dissimilar beliefs more likely to stay together, for example). Perhaps a discussion about changes to faith and belief and spirituality over the course of a married lifetime (you share the same faith when you marry, then something happens and one spouse changes beliefs in some way). I suspect there are differences in how this plays out when the believing spouse chooses a “high demand” versus “low demand” denomination. And so many other interesting dynamics.
I don’t know how much of your community has lived experience with making an “unequally yoked” (as St. Paul put it) marriage work, but I find it to be a rather interesting space. I can certainly see how the correlations in the source paper in the OP make sense, but I also don’t believe they are prophetic in any way. There are plenty of examples of so-called “mixed faith marriages” out there that work to make me believe that these stats are just correlations and may or may not have anything to do with how any one couple chooses to live their marriage
@MrShorty – There are always outliers, but the numbers on this are too large to ignore.
I’d say shared faith makes it easier to have a great marriage. You can have a great marriage without it, but you have to work at it harder. If a couple has other issues, or one is not willing to work hard enough, the marriage will be poor or will fail.
Rather than prophetic, I see it as a warning. “If you don’t have this, you need to work harder.”