Statistics
I came across all of the material below while searching for stats on the average age of first marriage for Christians. Alas, after two hours it was not to be found. Anecdotally, I'd put the number around 22/23, right around college graduation--I'm convinced that Christians here must be younger than the population at large (27 for men and 25-26 for women, depending on the source).
On Christians and divorce, from George Barna (2004):
On Christians and divorce, from George Barna (2004):
Among married born again Christians, 35% have experienced a divorce. That figure is identical to the outcome among married adults who are not born again: 35%.On the UK:
George Barna noted that one reason why the divorce statistic among non-Born again adults is not higher is that a larger proportion of that group cohabits, effectively side-stepping marriage - and divorce - altogether. "Among born again adults, 80% have been married, compared to just 69% among the non-born again segment. If the non-born again population were to marry at the same rate as the born again group, it is likely that their divorce statistic would be roughly 38% - marginally higher than that among the born again group, but still surprisingly similar in magnitude."
Barna also noted that he analyzed the data according to the ages at which survey respondents were divorced and the age at which those who were Christian accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. "The data suggest that relatively few divorced Christians experienced their divorce before accepting Christ as their savior," he explained. "If we eliminate those who became Christians after their divorce, the divorce figure among born again adults drops to 34% - statistically identical to the figure among non-Christians." The researcher also indicated that a surprising number of Christians experienced divorces both before and after their conversion.
Multiple divorces are also unexpectedly common among born again Christians. Barna’s figures show that nearly one-quarter of the married born agains (23%) get divorced two or more times.The survey showed that divorce varied somewhat by a person’s denominational affiliation. Catholics were substantially less likely than Protestants to get divorced (25% versus 39%, respectively). Among the largest Protestant groups, those most likely to get divorced were Pentecostals (44%) while Presbyterians had the fewest divorces (28%).
More and more couples are choosing to cohabit and in June 1999 the Guardian reported that more than 70% of couples in their first serious relationship choose to live together.On weddings, from Forbes:
... The average age for first marriages in England and Wales in 2003 was 31 for men and 29 for women. This compares with 26 and 23 for men and women respectively 40 years earlier.
The average wedding in the U.S. today costs over $23,000 and includes an average of168 guests, 100 of whom actually give wedding gifts that average $85 each. But the costs of attending a wedding are not limited to the gift—amazingly the typical guest spends on average $500 to attend the event when new attire, travel, gas, parking and hairstyling are factored in.And because all of this isn't exactly encouraging:
... The wedding of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas cost between $1.5 and $2 million dollars but was offset by the sale of exclusive photos to a British magazine for $1.6 million and a $24,000 settlement again another British magazine for publishing unauthorized photos. With all that dough on the table, you may wonder if a pre-nuptial agreement was part of the deal? You bet. With Hollywood marriages
breaking up faster than you can say “Brad and Jen”, pre-nups are almost as common as marriage vows. In Zeta-Jones case, if the marriage breaks up, she gets $2.8 million for each year that the marriage lasts.
Labels: divorce, marriage, statistics
posted by Dawn @ 10:35 PM
4 Comments:
At 5:39 AM, March 28, 2007,
Beth said…
Those are interesting stats.
About the average age of first marriage for Christians: I was thinking about that, and speaking anecdotally as well, I think it'd be a bit older than 22/23.
I know that many Christians get married around that age (if you could poll all Christians who are or have been married, and broke it down into first-marriage-age groups, the percentage in the 22/23 age group might even be a plurality, I bet). So I can certainly see why you'd name that age. However, I don't think it's average, considering the Christians who don't date much at all, or don't date seriously, until they're older. And then there are also the ones for whom that serious relationship or two didn't work out. I know quite a few Christians in those categories. Although those people may be the minority (which I'm not sure they would be), they'd still have to pull the average up somewhat. (After all, it's not like there are 12-year-olds getting married to pull the average down and offset all the people who get married in their late 20s, 30s, and up.) I think the average would have to be higher.
At 9:18 AM, March 28, 2007,
The Prufroquette said…
I think it's "nothing short of unspeakable" how silent the Church has (largely) become respecting divorce while keeping up its outcry against other sins like cohabitation and homosexuality, when there is no other issue in Scripture against which God speaks as curtly and succinctly as he does against this one. "I hate divorce," He says in Malachi 2:16, and Christ makes clear in his Sermon on the Mount and Sermon on the Plain that divorcees who remarry make themselves and their new spouses adulterers.
How has this become unclear? These aren't even Scriptures that churches try to twist (as other advocates of traditionally heretical stances do) so much as completely ignore.
The church in which I grew up experienced a rash of affairs and divorces when I was a young teenager, starting with the pastor and spreading through the eldership and the layfolk. It was a small church, granted, but of the twentyish families who attended, at least six fell apart, and I got to watch the kids who were like my great big extended family become horribly messed up as a result, while their parents bickered and split and then blithely continued their church attendance as though they had done nothing wrong. And it was, and still is, unfathomable how they got away with it.
I'm not saying there aren't circumstances where a couple needs to separate -- abuse, for example. But the only biblical allowance for divorce is adultery, or, with Paul's addition, when one spouse becomes a believer and the spouse who remains an unbeliever wishes to leave the marriage.
In Christ's day, divorce was common and lightweight enough that if a man didn't like his wife's cooking, he could divorce her, and a woman often had little to no say as to whether or not she stayed married (thus throwing the experience of the woman at the well in John 4 in a different light -- women had very little political power or civil redress), so Christ's asssertion that adultery was the only valid grounds for divorce was, to the people of his day, conservative in the extreme -- and a call to return to the fundamental meaning of marriage. Marriage is permanent. Marriage has a spiritual dimension. It is a cleaving, a union of two into one. It is not something that can or should be lightly sundered.
The fact that this is again becoming an extreme teaching, and among God's people, is a grave concern. What happened? What can be done?
At 2:22 PM, March 28, 2007,
erin said…
Amen Sarah! I think in our rush to accept people and to soothe their hurts, we fail to address the sin behind the problem. And that makes it look as though we don't view divorce as the terrible tragedy that it is. If we go back to our Bibles we can see that God hates divorce! I don't know what the solution to this problem is, though. It's not easy to reverse widespread trends.
At 8:15 PM, March 28, 2007,
Dawn said…
I read an essay during the course of finding those stats in which an author asserted that we should make marriage a series of five-year renewable contracts. This is an idea that's been offered in science fiction as well. I can see why someone would think it a good idea, seeing the current state of affairs, but it totally destroys the idea of marriage in any sense.
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