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

"Pride Month" - Normalizing Sin

Pride Month was and still is obviously upon us. From the ubiquitous rainbow flags and public  drag celebrations to the quasi-aborted attempts by retailers such as Target to normalize what, just five seconds ago, every average American would have said was absurd, the message is clear: “Join us in celebrating every sexual deviancy known to man, or we will cancel you, shun you, shame you, and punish you, for your intolerable intolerance.”

In the face of such societal deconstruction, how are we to respond? More specifically, how should traditional Christians react in a market square of ideas that is so laden with antipathy for the traditions and teachings of the Gospel that just yesterday were assumed to be the cultural glue that held our country together? 

The following is intended to be an intramural discussion. This message is for those who claim to hold to a biblical worldview and the redemptive truth of the Gospel. If you’re not a follower of Christ, you can listen in if you want, but please recognize the context: This is for the church and those who say they believe in Jesus. 

So here it is.  

Dear Church:

What is wrong with you? How did you become so blind? Why did you stoop so low? Who removed your mind, and when did you darken your soul? 

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: When you buy the lie that your identity is nothing more than the sum total of your inclinations, there is no limit to the lengths you will go to normalize your sin. 

Surely you can see that this is the exact opposite of biblical holiness, can’t you? 

Do you no longer believe in 2 Corinthians 5:17? Are you not a new creation in Christ? Hasn’t the old passed away? Haven’t all things become new? Have you given up the blessed hope of transformation? Have you actually come to the point where you think you’re defined by your desires? Have you forgotten that Jesus himself explicitly said, “You must be born again,” and that he never affirmed anyone simply because they were “born that way”?

Your message of “love is love” is not love. It is enablement, and it is cruel. It is the opposite of sanctification. It is sinful, and it is wrong. 

Your “affirming” mantra is not only bad theology, but it is terrible ontology and anthropology. When you accept the definition of the person as being “gay, trans, bi, queer,” or even cis, for that matter, you are admitting that you think those who have a given sexual appetite are defined by that desire. You are essentially saying that you think, “That’s just who they are.” You implicitly place no value on repentance, revival, renewal, confession and self-control.   

This is the ultimate insult to God and God’s creation. We are the imago Dei; we are made in the image of God. We are not defined by our bellies or our libidos. We are not animals. We are not the imago dog. 

We (the body of Christ) should never cede any ground in Satan’s game to redefine God and redefine His people. The entire nomenclature of LGBTQ and Pride, by definition, consigns people to their own unique “communities,” i.e., gulags. This balkanization is not the way of Christ or the way of the church. We are better than this. We are more than this. We should love people enough not to label them in such a demeaning way. 

To our shame, even nonbelievers such as Gore Vidal and Michel Foucault understood this. Foucault once said, “We are creating a hermaphrodism — a false species.”

Vidal later added: “There is no more such a thing as a homosexual person than there is a heterosexual person. These are behavioral adjectives.”

A final word: It never ceases to amaze me how those of you who wave your rainbow banners of “love trumps hate” in your respective churches become so vitriolic when presented with a cogent argument that challenges the vacuity of your moral paradigm: Head pastors and parachurch leaders posting ad hominem attacks dripping with mockery and sarcasm. Youth pastors call anyone who is 10 years their senior “judgmental and old.” And all under the banner of “acceptance,” “respect” and “inclusion.”

Do you not see the irony? Are you blind to the fact that you are sawing off the very branch upon which you sit? The words of Jesus come to mind here: “Physician, heal thyself.” Or perhaps those of Isaiah: “Woe unto him who calls good evil and evil good.” And dare I add, woe unto him who calls love hate and hate love? 

Yours is not the good news of the Gospel. It is not the message of Christ. It is sin, and if Jesus were still in his grave, he’d be rolling over. But as it is, he sits upon his throne, preparing to utter some of the most frightening words known to man: “Depart from me; I never knew you.” 

by Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host.