Lies About Christian Men and Marriages: What the Data Really Say!

The problem accusations against Christian men and marriages is that accusers ignore the data from the social sciences. Sociologists have examined these accusations and asked, ‘What was the evidence?’ So they went back and did the studies.

And now it’s very clear that husbands and fathers who attend church regularly are the most loving husbands and engaged fathers. Unlike the average American family, evangelical men are the most loving to their wives. These wives report feeling the most loved and appreciated by their husbands. They’re the most engaged with their children in terms of shared activities like sports and church youth group and discipline like setting screen time and bedtime. They have the lowest level of divorce of any group in America. They have the lowest rates of domestic violence of any major group in America. Even Christians don’t know this.

Brad Wilcox wrote an article in The New York Times, saying that the happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives. 73% of wives who hold conservative gender values and attend religious services regularly with their husbands have high-quality marriages. Then he says, ‘You academics need to cast aside your prejudices against evangelicals, and religious conservatives in general and realize that evangelical, protestant men have the best marriages, are the most loving husbands and the most engaged fathers.’

The reason that the statistics show something else is that we hear that Christians divorce at the same rate as others. Those researchers returned to the data and separated truly committed authentic Christian men who regularly attended from nominal Christian men. These men might check the Baptist box, but whose Christianity is mostly cultural, they don’t attend church regularly. The differences between these two groups are shocking. Nominal Christian men have the worst marriages and report the lowest level of happiness. They’re the least engaged with their children and have the highest divorce rate and domestic violence, even above secular men.  

And this is why the statistics become skewed. You get a misleading statistic if you take truly committed Christian men and put them alongside nominal Christian men who are worse than secular men. That’s another reason most of us don’t realize that truly committed Christian men are doing far better than any other group in America. 

 

- Nancy Pearcey