Born-again Christians are just as likely to get divorced as adults who are not born again Christians, Barna Research Group reports.
Researchers found that 33 percent of born-again adults who have been married have been divorced compared with 34 percent of adults not considered born-again Christians who reported the same experience.
The study also found that 29 percent of Catholics and 32 percent of Protestants have been married and divorced.
“More than 90 percent of the born-again adults who have been divorced experienced that divorce after they accepted Christ, not before,” said George Barna, president of Barna Research Group, in a statement. “It is unfortunate that so many people, regardless of their faith, experience a divorce, but especially unsettling to find that the faith commitment of so many born-again individuals has not enabled them to strengthen and save their marriages,” Barna said.
He said the people surveyed did not claim to be born-again Christians but met the group’s definition for them.
Cohabitation trends
The Ventura, Calif., research firm also studied trends in cohabitation. It found that 33 percent of all adults had cohabited.
Twenty-five percent of born again Christians had cohabited, compared to 39 percent of adults who were not born-again Christians. Thirty-six percent of Catholics and 30 percent of Protestants had cohabited, according to Barna.
The data on cohabitation is based on a national telephone survey of 1,005 adults in February and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points, are based on a combination of seven samples of adults totaling 7,043 who were interviewed by telephone between January 2000 and July 2001.
Barna conducted a study in 1999 that found that born-again Christians had a slightly higher rate of divorce than those who are not born-again Christians.
(RNS)
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