New Report Finds Failures in Family Life Bring Declines to Christian Faith
News Brief by Cassy Benefield | FāVS News
A recent survey shows a decline in marriage has a strong link to an increase in loneliness and a rise of non-affiliation.
Communio, a church consulting group and Christian marriage-promoting ministry, conducted the Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships.
The survey consisted of the responses of 19,000 church attendees in 13 states on a particular Sunday. The church locations included 112 evangelical, Protestant and Catholic congregations.
J.P. De Gance, the study’s author and the founder and president of Communio, compared the results of his survey with national studies done on the same topics, including “The Fifth Annual Index of Family Belonging and Rejection” by the Marriage & Religion Research Institute.
De Gance highlighted in his study that church attenders are more likely to have involved fathers and to have parents who are not divorced. He noted these kinds of families also bring about less loneliness.
‘Flight from Marriage’
“Everyone is deeply concerned about the rise of religious non-affiliation,” De Gance told Deseret News on Oct. 19. “Second, they are concerned about loneliness. Our survey IDs both of those phenomena as being caused by the same thing: our society’s flight from marriage.”
The survey results also showed “never have fewer people been married, which also means Americans are at the highest point in the nation’s history where adults have grown up without the continuous presence of a father in the home,” De Gance also told Deseret News.
The report used these statistics to recommend churches reverse the declining number of marriages by preventing loneliness and promoting marital health in their ministries.
From the report: “To evangelize fruitfully in the twenty-first century, we must reverse the declining number of marriages, improve marital health, and increase the effectiveness of fathers in those marriages. … The link between marriage and faith is clear, yet 85 percent of all churches in the United States report spending $0.00 annually on marriage and relationship ministry.”
By the Numbers
The report includes several statistics including:
- Less than half of all young adults today had continuously married parents through childhood. Yet, 80% of all church goers had continuously married parents through childhood.
- While 18% of married people report struggling with their marriage, 32% of cohabiter’s report they struggle in their relationship.
- Marriage rates have dropped 31% since 2000 and 61% since 1970
- 68% of never married men and 64% of never married women in their 30s are considered lonely.
- Cohabiters are 85% more likely to be lonely than married people.
Visit the study’s website for more statistics and conclusions. Communio’s objective is to help churches grow by evangelizing and discipling people toward healthy relationships and marriages.
Thanks for this interesting article, Cassy. While I can see the basis of Communio’s concerns, it is also true that churches also provide a home, a family, for many single people….this is certainly the case in my church.
Yes! Great comment. I didn’t go over that part of the survey – about singles – but the survey also showed loneliness levels of singles in the church, more single women than men in the church and how ministries need multigenerational aspects that include singles in more. So you’re spot on there.
I would ask whether churches are really serious about building up marriages. When the PK’s (preacher’s kids) at bible colleges and seminaries hone, and aven brag about, their powess at narcissistic manipulation and gaslighting, there’s clearly no Holy Spirit at work. I’ve seen this a lot, and not just in 1 denomination. Worse yet is the ad uxorem attack upon families which became plain to me when I last called on behalf of a church. A husband denied us entry to the home so the bible worker said, “We will end their marriage.” Here’s how ad uxorem works:
(1) The woman of the home is considered stereotypically more inclined to spiritual things so efforts are focused upon her. (2) The woman will bring the children to the church with her. (3) The man will either come believing already, come to keep the family together, or there will be family discord resulting in divorce. (4) Church leaders understand that courts will typically favor the mother in child custody cases, so the kids are more likely to be secure. (5) The believing woman is then married off to a believing man. (5) The church leader presents this as the “work of the Holy Spirit,” justifying the manipulation through 1 Corinthians 7:15 and blaming the never-believing spouse.
Either way, the church claims to have gained a family unit. But in reality is hasn’t. All it has done was work to divide a family and connect with remnants in order to assert control by church leadership. This is no work of the Holy Spirit. This is an abomination and pure hypocrisy. After seeing such things, I look at the Communio report as just another attempt to foist a pre-determined conclusion upon statistics because its people have a pre-existing motive to maintain the position of clergy to sanctify marriages. Loss of faith due to lack of marriage integrity? Or is it really lack of marriage integrity because church leaders don’t believe in real spiritual dynamics in the first place? The report didn’t prove its case to me.