TruthBook Religious News Blog

Mar. 04 2010
By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.|Christian Post Guest Columnist

Rightly understood, marriage is all about permanence. In a world of transitory experiences, events, and commitments, marriage is intransigent. It simply is what it is - a permanent commitment made by a man and a woman who commit themselves to live faithfully unto one another until the parting of death.

That is what makes marriage what it is. The logic of marriage is easy to understand and difficult to subvert, which is one reason the institution has survived over so many millennia. Marriage lasts because of its fundamental status. It is literally what a healthy and functioning society cannot survive without.

And yet, modernity can be seen as one long attempt to subvert the permanent - including marriage. The modern age has brought the rise of individual autonomy, the collection of populations in cities, the weakening of family commitments, the waning of faith, the routinization of divorce, and a host of other developments that subvert marriage and the commitment it requires.

Added to this list is the phenomenon of cohabitation. The twentieth century saw the phenomenon of cohabitation become the expectation among many, if not most, young adults. But the end of the century, the progression of intimacy (including sexual intimacy) was likely to follow a line from "hooking up" to cohabiting.

A new study conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics suggests two very important findings: First, that cohabiting is now the norm for younger adults. Second, cohabiting makes divorce more likely after eventual marriage.

"Cohabitation is increasingly becoming the first co-residential union formed among young adults," states the report. The facts seem daunting. The percentage of women in their 30s who report having cohabited is over 60 percent - doubled over the last fifteen years.

Reporting in The New York Times, Sam Roberts documents the rise of cohabitation among the young. He cites Pamela J. Smock of the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center. "From the perspective of many young adults, marrying without living together first seems quite foolish," she explains.

That perfectly captures the new logic - that it would be foolish to marry without first cohabiting. How can you know if you are really meant for each other? How can you measure compatibility without the experience of living together?

That logic makes perfect sense in a society that is increasingly sexualized, secularized, and "liberated" from the expectations of the past.

Reacting to the research findings, Professor Kelly A. Musick of Cornell University asserted, "The figures suggest to me that cohabitation is still a pathway to marriage for many college graduates, while it may be an end in itself for many less educated women." The study report affirmed her assessment: "Cohabitation is increasingly becoming the first co-residential union formed among young adults ...As a result of the growing prevalence of cohabitation, the number of children born to unmarried cohabiting parents has also increased."

But, as this new report suggests, cohabiting before marriage does not lead to a stronger and more permanent union. Instead, the experience of cohabiting weakens the union. As Roberts reports: "The likelihood that a marriage would last for a decade or more decreased by six percentage points if the couple had cohabited first, the study found."

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This is an interesting and thought-provoking article. Given the state of marriage (and divorce) in America, there might be good reason to re-think our ideas of what marriage is, and what it could be...

From The Urantia Book:

Ideal marriage must be founded on something more stable than the fluctuations of sentiment and the fickleness of mere sex attraction; it must be based on genuine and mutual personal devotion. And thus, if you can build up such trustworthy and effective small units of human association, when these are assembled in the aggregate, the world will behold a great and glorified social structure, the civilization of mortal maturity. Such a race might begin to realize something of your Master's ideal of "peace on earth and good will among men." While such a society would not be perfect or entirely free from evil, it would at least approach the stabilization of maturity.(160:2.10)

Said Jesus:

"...it is the divine will that men and women should find their highest service and consequent joy in the establishment of homes for the reception and training of children, in the creation of whom these parents become copartners with the Makers of heaven and earth. And for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall become as one." (167:5.7)

Labels: cohabitation, divorce, marriage, R. Albert Mohler

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Friday, July 31, 2009

Interfaith relationships require strength

Married couples of different religions find ways to make it work
July 25, 2009
BY TINA ARONS

Santos Uvalle glanced at his wife as he thought about how to describe the first half of their marriage.
"It was hell on wheels," the 33-year-old said.

He married his wife, Myra Uvalle, when he was 17. She was 16. They promised the usual things — for better, for worse — but they never thought getting through religious differences would be so hard.

Santos Uvalle, who works at an oil reclamation plant, grew up evangelical. Myra Uvalle, a student nurse, grew up Catholic.

"He refused to change, and I refused to change," Myra Uvalle, 32, said.

Jason Harmeyer, pastor of volunteer ministries at CrossRoads Fellowship, said differing faiths can "play a very significant role" in a marriage.

Harmeyer, who works with married couples in their 30s, said research usually ranks religious disagreement somewhere in the top 10 causes for divorce.

"I counsel four to six couples per week dealing with relationship issues. No doubt some of that comes down to belief issues," he said. "By the time it gets to my office, these things are inflated. You might consider it a pebble in the shoe, but these people have been walking with that pebble in their shoe for six months to a year."

For Santos and Myra Uvalle, the pebble bounced around for a decade.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: divorce, interfaith, intermarriage, Tina Arons

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Friday, May 23, 2008

70 percent of Americans find divorce 'morally acceptable', says Gallup survey

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

An alarming 70 percent of Americans now believe that divorce is “morally acceptable,” according to a recent poll by Gallup’s 2008 Values and Beliefs survey.

The new figure – the highest on record – represents an 11 percent increase from just 7 years ago and a 3 percent increase from 2 years ago. Only 22 percent of Americans said they believed divorce was “morally wrong,” according to the results.

The acceptability of divorce among Americans was ranked higher than all of the other 16 ethical issues surveyed – including the death penalty, gambling, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, abortion and medical research on animals. Additionally, divorce has risen faster in moral acceptability among Americans than any of the other ethical issues.

Although the recent results revealed that the acceptability of divorce has risen steadily to the point where it is now “morally acceptable by a majority of nearly every major demographic category of Americans,” respondents who identified themselves as “conservative,” “religious,” or over 65 years in age were more likely to say that divorce was “morally wrong.”

Respondents who identified themselves as “liberals,” “independents,” and “non-religious,” on the other hand, registered the highest number of responses that said divorce was “morally acceptable.” Nearly 91 percent of those who said religion was “not very important” in their lives said divorce was “morally acceptable,” according to the results.

While the recent poll reveals a steady and alarming rise in the acceptability of divorce, more than 70 percent of Americans continued to rate suicide, cloning humans, polygamy, and “married men and women having an affair” as “morally unacceptable.”

The Gallup poll results were based on telephone surveys of over 1,000 adults.

Aaron Leichman
Christian Post Reporter

Labels: Aaron Leichman, Americans, divorce, Gallup Poll, morality

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Saturday, September 29, 2007

Children of divorce

Children of divorce
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 09/29/2007

Many children of divorce go on to have a complicated connection to faith, according to a study by Elizabeth Marquardt, who questioned 1,500 Americans ages 18 to 35 as part of a three-year survey of young adults from divorced families.

* Only 56 percent of children of divorce say they attended religious services every week or almost every week when they were growing up, compared to 74 percent of young people from intact families.

* Of those children of divorce who regularly attended a place of worship, 2/3 said no one from the clergy or congregation reached out to them when their parents split up; only 1/4 said that someone at church did reach out.

* As young adults, 68 percent of young people from intact families say they are "very" or "fairly" religious, compared to 55 percent of young people from divorced families. Further, 63 percent of young people from intact families, compared to 49 percent of children of divorce, say they are currently a member at a house of worship.

* More than 37 percent of children of divorce agree with the statement, "Religion doesn't seem to address the important issues in my life," compared to 29 percent of people from intact families. Almost half of children of divorce (46 percent) agree, "I believe I can find ultimate truth without help from a religion," compared to 36 percent of their peers from intact families.

* If children of divorce are religious they are more likely to be evangelical. In the survey, 41 percent of young people from divorced families describe themselves as born again or evangelical, compared to 37 percent of their peers from intact families.

* Children of divorce are more likely to say that their relationship with God is an outgrowth of lacking a loving father or parent when they were growing up, with 38 percent of them agreeing (compared to 22 percent from intact families), "I think of God as the loving father or parent I never had in real life."

Labels: children, divorce, Elizabeth Marquardt, faith, families, religion