And Now For Something Completely Different

There’s an old adage that goes There three kinds of lies:  lies, damned lies, and statistics.  The truth of the matter is that numbers are rarely as objective and accurate as we have been taught to trust that they are.  Numbers can mean a lot of different things depending on which numbers you’re looking at and how you want to talk about them.

Case in point for the sad ‘fact’ that Christians divorce at a rate rather similar to the general population.  Christians and other religious folks have divorce rates of around 42%, while the divorce rate for non-religious folks is right about 50%.  However reviews of these popularly touted statistics turned up an interesting anomaly – the numbers vary depending on how you define Christian.  

When the numbers are recrunched to be specific to Christians who regularly attend worship, then the numbers change, with divorce rates running more at 38%.  It’s not a huge drop, but it’s definitely farther off of the average of 50% for non-religious folks.  Furthermore, people who claim to be evangelical Christians but never attend church have a divorce rate closer to 60%.  A brief diagnosis of the facts is here.