Divorce statistics - fact or fiction?

50 percent of all marriages end in divorce, whether you're a Christian or not. False.

I've heard this statistic as long as I can remember. But those statics are skewed and over the years it has become an urban legend.

Some explanations of why this myth has perpetuated account for the fact that when you look at the sheer number of marriages and divorces in a single year, there's a virtual two-to-one ratio. The problem is, however, this doesn't factor in all the millions of marriages still existing.

The Barna Group's latest study echoes this with a relatively small sampling of 5,000-plus Americans. Thirty-three percent of those polled had been divorced at least once. Among born-again Christians, that rate essentially remained the same (32 percent), while for evangelicals it dipped slightly (26 percent). Is this difference enough to prove that a walk with God automatically makes you divorce-proof? Of course not. But it also echoes the fact that significantly less—about half, in fact—people are getting divorced than what you hear.

(ht: barna.org)

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