The Wandering Heretic

UPDATE

Per interaction with the author of Forbidden Fruit, I have made some corrections to this post according to the information he provided. Long sections with italics represent added sentences or paragraphs. In areas where I was wrong or ill-informed, I have struck out the original comment and followed it with the correction. I have elected to keep the post because I think the interaction is helpful. The post starts below.

A few posts ago, I correlated the statistics on premarital sex given in the book, Forbidden Fruit, by Mark Regnerus, with the 1999 divorce statistics offered by George Barna. Evangelicals did not fare very well in either survey. From the way the findings were presented by both authors, Evangelical Christians were more likely to fornicate before marriage and to divorce thereafter. It was depressing to say the least.

It now appears that I must alter my original conclusions. (I publicly thank the people who commented on my original post at Intellectuelle for pointing these issues out to me. I also thank Mark Regnerus’s comments on this original post. I owe you much.)

The situation described by Regnerus and Barna is not nearly as dismal as they presented. Evangelicals are certainly not the failures at marriage that Barna described (which may be why his statistics on the 1999 survey were withdrawn from his website). I strongly suspect that Regnerus’ statistics on Evangelical premarital sex may also be as flawed. Certainly both need verification need to be supplemented with further research and analysis.

Yet, the situation is not a cause for celebration either; at least not for everyone.

The issue becomes just how you define the term, “Evangelical.” Barna’s criteria for being considered “Evangelical” are listed on his website here.

“Evangelicals” are a subset of born again Christians in Barna surveys. In addition to meeting the born again criteria, evangelicals also meet seven other conditions. Those include saying their faith is very important in their life today; contending that they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; stating that Satan exists; maintaining that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works; asserting that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; saying that the Bible is totally accurate in all it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today..Being classified as “evangelical” is not dependent upon any church or denominational affiliation or involvement.

Note that Barna identified classifying someone as “Evangelical” based on adherence to a set of propositions and not to allegiance or behavior. Specifically he did not depend on “any church or denominational affiliation or involvement.” On the core level, mental assent to a set of theological statements held more weight with Barna than did church attendance.

This lack is a grave fault in his statistical methods. By its very nature, it was guaranteed to skew his findings to the negative. Though a person may hold to a set of “evangelical” propositions, you need to know the person’s level of allegiance to those beliefs. A minimal measure should be that person’s attendance at church. As the author of Hebrews warns,

..let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Heb. 10:24-25, ESV)

If a person cannot spare an hour or so once a week to show his commitment to Christ, what are the chances of controlling so powerful an urge as sexual desire? Though the person may speak evangelicaleze, without involvement in a church, the person has no chance to be “stirred up to love and good works.” The fact is that Church attendance is the single largest factor in reducing divorce rates. As reported here, according to the GSS and five other national surveys, when one defines “frequent” church attendance as once a week or more, the following patterns emerge in the divorce rates:

58%, non-frequent Black Protestants
54%, non-frequent Evangelicals
51%, no religion (e.g., atheists & agnostics)
48%, ALL NON-CHRISTIANS
48%, non-frequent, other religions
47%, frequent Black Protestants
42%, non-frequent, mainline Protestants
41%, ALL CHRISTIANS
41%, non-frequent Catholics
39%, Jews
38%, frequent other religions
34%, frequent Evangelicals
32%, ALL FREQUENT CHRISTIANS
32%, frequent mainline Protestants
23%, frequent Catholics

As can be seen above, the “non-frequent” church attending Evangelicals have a higher divorce rate (54%) than do atheists (51%) and other non-Christians (48%). However, the church attending Evangelicals have a divorce rate 20% below their non-attending peers (34%). So Evangelical faith, if expressed in church attendance, favorably influences the divorce rate of those evangelicals. Indeed church attendance favorably effects the divorce rate of all Christian denominations, bringing them all well below the divorce levels of atheists and non-Christians.

The issue appears to be, dare I say it, more an issue of race than of denomination. The highest divorce rate occurs among black, non-church attending Protestants (58%). Church attendance also contributes the least to reducing the divorce rate among black Protestants, cutting it only to 47%. This makes the black Protestants almost at a dead heat with the non-Christian in the race to end their marriages.

This factor may be the reason that the Evangelical divorce rates at all levels are higher than are those for mainline Protestants or Catholics. Most blacks are Baptist rather than Roman Catholic or Episcopal and will therefore move up the Evangelical percentages. (It would be interesting to see the divorce rates if the black evangelicals were factored out. It would also be interesting to see the divorce rates of the black church attending evangelicals compared to that of the black church attending protestants as a whole.)

Social-economic factors may also be behind the higher divorce rates of Evangelicals. This factor appears to be behind the “premarital sex” statistics of Regnerus’ book as well. Regnerus did not even have Barna’s criteria for defining “Evangelical” but relied upon a respondent’s self-definition on the surveys. If a responder said they were Evangelical, Regnerus took them at their word. Regnerus (see his comment below) relied upon the responders denomination and if one was not given, identified them as “evangelical.” This may lead leads to some categorization problems, as noted by Hanna Rosin:

Because of the explosion of megachurches, vast numbers of people who don’t identify with mainstream denominations now call themselves evangelical. The demographic includes more teenagers of a lower socioeconomic class, who are more likely to have had sex at a younger age. It also includes African-American Protestant teenagers, who are vastly more likely to be sexually active. (Emphasis added.)

The race card again. And since blacks are more likely than whites to be poor (earning on average $27,000 less per household in 2006), economics is a factor as well. The divorce rate and premarital sex rates for blacks is crippling to that population, whether they are Evangelical or not. At the same time, pregnancy and divorce will continue to hold that population in economic deprivation for the long term future.

(Paragraph with italics was added interaction with Regnerus below.) Against Rosins assertions quoted above, Regnerus isolated out the “fornication rates” of the black Evangelicals into a separate category entitled “Black Protestant.” So though divorce may be more of a black issue than an over-all “Evangelical scandal” such is not the case for the pre-marital sex rates. It remains a scandal irregardless of race.

As Kathy Shaidle asks: What good has Protestantism really done the black community in North America, other than giving them someplace to sing?” If our example in regards to pre-marital sex is becoming as bad as Regnerus asserts, then how can we speak to them regarding their own issues with divorce?

Protestant Church attendance reduces divorce (and I assume, maybe premarital sex) for blacks by 11%; but that only brings them down to the rates experienced by atheists and non-believers. It is not nearly enough to bring them out of the depths of poverty. It is not enough to transform their culture. It is certainly not enough to let them image Christ to a fallen world.

As white Protestants (or Catholics for that matter), we cannot just note that it is a “black problem” and feel relieved that it is not “our crisis.” We are all part of the body of Christ. Historically, the segregationist practices even the abolitionist white churches held after the Civil War may be a major factor behind the crumbling of the black Christian family. It was certainly no help. When an example of a Christian family was needed, blacks were pushed out to fend for themselves. And now it appears our example prior to marriage is shaky at best.

In the Church of Jesus Christ, there is not a category of “their problem and not ours.” We are one body and “their problem” is “our problem.” Having said that, as a suburban white American, I am at a loss for how to turn this statistic around. Staying married myself is a good start, but how do I spread that level of commitment to another community?

Marriage may not be heaven; but let me tell you, at least in the present Age, a society without it is hell.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 7:27 am and is filed under Culture, Rants, Subversive Verse of the Month, Wrong Turns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Or, if you wish, you can find all the posts Caine