Then my entire vision vanished. McClintock is not alone. Recent studies by the Barna Research Group reveal that 27 percent of born-again Christians have been divorced. That compares with 24 percent of adults who are not born-again. Those statistics are sending Christian leaders scrambling for answers.
Some observers blame Christian idealism for giving couples unrealistic expectations of marriage.
Others say divorce among Christians has little to do with faith at all. David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., says the answer to that question has little to do with religion and more to do with education level and age at marriage. One reason is that people with a higher education level don't marry as young. Others suggest that cohabitation, more prevalent among non-Christians, keeps some bad marriages from ever happening and skews the divorce rates. Since Christians are less likely to live together without marriage, their weak marriages become divorces, while cohabitors who split up don't show up in the statistics.