When It Comes to Marriage, Faith Matters

Focus on the Family recently surveyed?more than 3,800 Americans on how faith impacts personal decisions about marriage and recorded married respondents’ self-assessments of their unions. 

The good news is that 74% of all married couples described their marriages as “healthy.” But even more encouraging is that convictional Christians—those who actively live out and practice their faith—scored higher on all 32 aspects of marriage that speak to matrimonial health—whether it be taking responsibility for mistakes, having compassion toward each other, trust, or financial management. 

The difference between convictional Christian marriages and non-Christian marriages comes into focus, so to speak, when one digs deeper into the research findings. The study found that 25% of non-Christians surveyed said their marriages were in crisis, while only 13% of convictional Christians said so. And among those who profess faith, but not as strongly as convictional Christians, 22% of nominal Christians and 17% of born-again Christians said their marriages were in crisis. 

Thus, when it comes to marriage, faith really does matter. 

But just don’t take Focus on the Family’s word on it. Other researchers have found the same thing. A Harvard School of Public Health study found couples who regularly attend church services are about 30-50% less likely to divorce. 

This statistic also holds true across racial groups. Research done by Kenneth Pargament and Annette Mahoney of Bowling Green University’s Spirituality and Psychology Research Team found that marriages are stronger and happier when husbands and wives understand there is a deeper spiritual significance to marriage beyond feelings or economic security. 

Unfortunately, over the past several decades, the understanding of marriage as a sacred bond between a man and a woman has been lost as faith has diminished and our society becomes more about personal happiness and “self-fulfillment.” It is any wonder why divorce has become so prevalent in our culture, as faith—the glue that keeps couples together—loses influence in our society? 

Or as the late esteemed social scientist James Q. Wilson put it, “Marriage was once a sacrament, then it became a contract, and now it is an arrangement. Once religion provided the sacrament, then the law enforced the contract, and now personal preferences define the arrangement.”

And, sadly, because of these factors, many young people, as the Focus on the Family study finds, are less interested in getting married, with only 56% of single, non-married respondents saying they want to be married someday. 

Thus, the renewal of faith in our culture is essential to solving the breakdown of marriage and the family—the two bedrock institutions that affect both present and future generations either positively or negatively. It is this same renewal of faith that will make marriage an institution to be desired, rather than one that has come with the negative emotional baggage of separation and divorce for so many young people. 

And those of us in healthy marriages need to come alongside those who are struggling to offer support and encouragement. We also need to model what a biblical marriage looks like, through our words and actions, so people will be drawn to what we have, rather than be repelled by what they see when marriages take a wrong turn and head down the wrong road to dissolution. 

Wilson wrote: “The right and best way for a culture to restore itself is for it to be rebuilt, not from the top down by government policies, but from the bottom up by personal decisions. On the side of that effort, we can find churches—or at least many of them—and the common experience of adults that the essence of marriage is not sex, or money, or even children: it is a commitment.” 

To restore the commitment of marriage and the family and begin to reverse the tragic trends of the past 60-plus years, our efforts must start with the renewal of faith and the restoration of the family. By doing so, we will reap benefits beyond just stable families. We will be able to successfully address so many other issues—unwed pregnancy, drug addiction, income inequality, and government dependence—that plague our society. That’s a win for everyone—married and single—and the recipe for a healthy, flourishing society. 

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