And over at Suzie All-Caps' Fetus Emporium, we have Suzie crowing over the clearly superior morality of the Godly:
Quite right, Suzie ... I am suitably impressed that a full 74 per cent of evangelicals take that "'Til death do us part" bit seriously, as opposed to a pathetic 67 per cent of the non-Godly. But, what the hell, let's pop over to that link, where we can keep going to the actual Barna Group study, where we read ... uh oh ...
The study showed that the percentage of adults who have been married and divorced varies from segment to segment. For instance, the groups with the most prolific experience of marriage ending in divorce are downscale adults (39%), Baby Boomers (38%), those aligned with a non-Christian faith (38%), African-Americans (36%), and people who consider themselves to be liberal on social and political matters (37%).
Amoral cretins, the lot of them. But hark! What's this?
Among the population segments with the lowest likelihood of having been divorced subsequent to marriage are Catholics (28%), evangelicals (26%), upscale adults (22%), Asians (20%) and those who deem themselves to be conservative on social and political matters (28%).
Why, those tricky, tricky Asians ... upstaging God's own people like that. The nerve. But hang on ... what the hell?
Born again Christians who are not evangelical were indistinguishable from the national average on the matter of divorce: 33% have been married and divorced. The survey did not determine if the divorce occurred before or after the person had become born again...
In fact, when evangelicals and non-evangelical born again Christians are combined into an aggregate class of born again adults, their divorce figure is statistically identical to that of non-born again adults: 32% versus 33%, respectively.
Ooooooh ... that's kind of embarrassing, isn't it? So from where do we get Suzie's grandiose claim of superior morality and loyalty among the devout? Ah (emphasis added):
Stanton said the study also dispels the common misperception that divorce rates within the Church mirror those outside the Church.
“That is true only if you look at just church affiliation,” he said. “But if you look at church activity — how people really live out their faith — then that absolutely is not true because people who take their faith very seriously and have action to back that up have a significantly lower divorce rate than the general public.”
Sound familiar? Why, yes ... yes, it does. But thanks for playing, Suzie.
What do we have for the losers, Johnny?
5 comments:
That's a bit odd, since the same polling firm came to the conclusion that evangelical Christians had a higher divorce rate than the general population only 7 years ago.
Dumbfounded by divorce
A study saying that born-again Christians divorce more often than non-Christians has raised eyebrows, sowed confusion, even brought on a little holy anger. So much, in fact, that the study's author, evangelical George Barna, put out a special letter to "our partners in ministry" trying to calm their fury and let his fellow believers know that he was standing by his stats no matter how distasteful they might be.
The Barna Research Group's national study showed that members of nondenominational churches divorce 34 percent of the time in contrast to 25 percent for the general population. Nondenominational churches would include large numbers of Bible churches and other conservative evangelicals. Baptists had the highest rate of the major denominations: 29 percent. Born-again Christians' rate was 27 percent. To make matters even more distressing for believers, atheists/agnostics had the lowest rate of divorce 21 percent.
Have things really changed that much in 7 years or does it have to do with the polling samples and questions asked?
There a distinct lack of informaton in all this. I'd like to find more about this:
The survey did not determine if the divorce occurred before or after the person had become born again...
My personal experience with people who call themselves born again (admittedly, it's not very broad, since I find these people's proselytizing tedious and have to start acting like a pious seminarian to get them to stop) is that there's usually some trauma in their past such as addiction, abuse, poverty, or under-education that led them to makes choices (sexual promiscuity, abortion, early marriage and divorce) they later recant in the process of their being "born again."
gosh. i'm only 7% less moral than SUZIE. with a little work, i bet i could double that figure....
KEvron
Obfuscation and half-truths aside, does SUZANNE post this under the assumption that divorce is universally regarded as bad?
does SUZANNE post this under the assumption that divorce is universally regarded as bad?
As a Catholic, she would, although even Catholics recognise a religious divorce.
She and I might agree that divorced or separated parents can be a hardship for children, but scolding grown-ups about it and preventing people from having children when the conditions aren't right are simple-minded responses that don't work...especially for women...who she hates, anyway.
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