Family Research CouncilPosted on 02/14/2014 7:58:05 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Family Research Council
This map shows the states where family belonging (whether or not a biological mother and father are still married when the child is 15-17) is highest and lowest in the United States. The darker the color, the more belonging.
A study on family breakup as it effects children on the cusp of adulthood revealed that more children experience family breakup before adulthood in the South, well-known for its religious "Bible belt," according to the Family Research Council.
"The Bible belt is in deep, deep trouble on family," Pat Fagan, director of The Family Research Council's Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI), told The Christian Post in an interview on Thursday. "Those who worship less have more family intactness and those who worship more have less," Fagan marveled.
Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr, senior pastor of Hope Christian Church and founding president of High Impact Leadership Coalition, explained the nuances of different ethnic groups, most notably the high rates of family dislocation in the black community. "I think black families are experiencing the worst of the social trends, but they are leading in that direction," Jackson declared. "Half of our children do not feel that they are loved and accepted in their families." While the Asian family has the lowest rates of breakup, Jackson argued that they are going the same way.
The Study and Its Results
The Fourth Annual Index of Family Belonging and Rejection, published Wednesday, measures whether or not kids who are about to become adults have experienced a breakup in their family. For those "age 15-17, towards the end of their childhood at home," the study measures "what proportion of children are still in an intact, married family," Fagan explained.
According to the study, only 46 percent of today's youth ages 15 to 17 were raised with both their biological parents married to each other since before or around the time of their birth. The parents of 54 percent of these children have rejected each other.
Regionally, the South, or the Bible belt, has the lowest rate of family belonging (42 percent) and the Northeast has the highest (50 percent). Among states, Utah ranked number one with 57 percent and the District of Columbia ranked dead last with 17, followed by Mississippi at 32 percent and Louisiana at 36 percent.
Asians proved to be the racial group with the most families intact among these kids (65 percent grew up in intact families) and blacks had the least (17 percent).
The Failures of the Church
"Christians are not living out their faith in family in the South," Fagan declared. He explained that the highest churchgoing states in the country are in the south, and normally high church attendance drives people to keep their families intact. But this is not happening. "For the Christian church in the South, something is really going wrong sexually."
According to another study, published last month, divorce rates are higher among conservative Protestants and evangelicals who are strict on sexual morality than among more liberal Christians. Nevertheless, the study's author admitted that "secularism seems to be more conducive towards divorce than conservative Protestantism."
The Black Family
Fagan explained that the lowest rates of family belonging in the nation occurred in the black community – 9 percent among African Americans in the District of Columbia and 7 percent in Milwaukee. "The black family is just in meltdown crisis on family and on marriage," the researcher argued, "and that's what locking them into poverty."
Jackson agreed, tracing the roots of this civil collapse back to President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," the era of Segregation, and even slavery. "I think that the baggage of the family breakdown worked as a cancer," the black pastor explained. He argued that even in the pre-Civil Rights days, when African American families generally stuck together, they were still under assault.
Jackson traced the "emotional erosion of our African American men regarding their role in family, their value as individuals," through slavery, Jim Crow, and into the 1960s. "When the War on Poverty happened in the sixties, Washington initiatives wound up exacerbating the familial problems of poverty," Jackson claimed. The new relief programs made it acceptable and economically possible for a woman to live on her own and raise a family without a man.
The Asian-American Family
DJ Chuang, a strategy consultant, ideator, connector, and Asian American, explained the cultural ideas behind the strength of the Asian family. "Generally speaking, Asian cultures have very strong values of loyalty, duty, and responsibility to care for their family members," Chuang argued. "These values are culturally reinforced by the societal expectations for staying in marriages, some of which are arranged, and avoiding the social stigma and shame of divorces."
Jackson agreed, and claimed that first generation immigrants from Africa also have a similar dedication to family.
Fagan, however, argued that the problems are still deep, even in the Asian family. "The Asian family now is where the black family was in the sixties when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his book," the researcher explained. Moynihan wrote in order to combat the disintegration of the black family, and now every race is facing the same challenges.
Church Reform As Solution
While Fagan condemned the churches which are failing to keep families together, he called for someone like the Old Testament prophets to denounce this shameful situation. "What would the prophets be doing, what would God be speaking through the prophets, about the abandonment of his law?" the researcher asked.
"Pray for the families in urban America – the church has got to do something," Jackson declared. He argued that the entire church should work to find a solution, and reported that "the black church is alarmed at these problems and is attempting to rise up to solve them."
The pastor announced that he would "dedicate my ministry to turn around the black Christian families to regain the strength they once had."
But seeing you are an atheist, upon what basis does atheism consistently determine which things are sin?
Surely, those aren't the only two alternatives (or at least the relationship between different factors is a lot more complicated than that).
Whatever you see or not, marriage as an institution evolved in societies independently, worldwide for a reason - societal stability. It goes in parallel with evolution itself, is a subset thereof (cultural evolution) and needs no appeal to superstition / deity to see its validity and justification.
In the context it was used in it means any opposition to liberal ideology and its agenda, which, like "homophobic," is meant to avoid facing up to the negative evidence against them by personally disparaging the opposition by relegating them to being driven by an invalid irrational motive, thereby placing the person on the defensive, and thereby validating the liberal.
This can extend to making any judgment based upon race. In the early 1990's in Boston i was handing out gospel tracts in the subway system (when you could still do so rather freely). The Red Line has trains that went to Quincy/Braintree (mostly white) and another to Ashmont station, for Dorchester/Mattapan (mostly black).
A train had just left and a lady coming onto the waiting area asked me which train had just left. I looked down the dock and saw mostly white people and and said i thought it was the Quincy train since a lot of black souls were still there. Her response (and i think she was white) was that this was a very racist thing for a man of God to say.
Likewise, quoting a statistical fact that 72% of black babies are born to single women must therefore mean you also are racist. This is the manner of moral reasoning America has much been deceived into.
Blacks in Mississippi rarely marry but whites usually do
In TN..
white trash is a big issue.....not so sure
BTW
Black illegitimacy was one in five in 1962
10-20 times that of whites then
I see. So sin is that which is seen as promoting societal stability for the preservation of the species. It certainly does, and it is not as if God had no reason for requiring that sexual union be between opposite genders in a life long covenant, thus providing the security that sexual vulnerability and intimacy should have, and for the normal result of that.
But atheists can just as well argue that fornication is not immoral, and in fact at least one poll finds the substantial majority affirmed pornography and cohabitation as a moral behavior. And thus it is no surprise to find that the marriage rate is much lower among atheists.
Moreover, they can just as well argue that incarcerating or otherwise removing children from the homes of evangelical Christians, or even a certain race, would be best for societal stability and preservation and advancement of the species.
Certain one can do the same upon a religious basis, invoking their respective "holy book," yet all religions are not the same, while at least there is an objective supreme transcendent standard to interpret.
In so doing with the Bible, one can hardly justify flying airplanes into the WTC, or the Inquisitions, which actually was executed under the premise that the church (like as in cults), not Scripture, was supreme, and which hindered literacy in it by the laity. And which literacy would have its outworking in forsaking the use of the sword of men by the church to deal with theological nonconformity. which early Protestantism had to unlearn.
However, in atheism there is no objective transcendent supreme standard to judge by, and what seems reasonable to an atheist can be that of a Mao Zedong or a Mussolini, etc., under the premise of what is ultimately best for societal stability and advancement of it.
This does not mean an atheist cannot be a relatively moral person, even more so than a religious, but this is judged upon a basis for morality, which cannot simply be what seems reasonable to each individual, but based upon a standard shown to be so when obeyed.
1. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving kindness; in your great compassion blot our my offenses.
2. Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.
3. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
Ps 51
You make the error of confusing “morality” with stability.
I said, for societal stability, marriage is crucial. Evolution is about throwing random combinations into a box and seeing which one survives the tests made to endure. Something will almost always survive. If that’s the goal, then yes, you can have chaotic behaviour and still survive, albeit at a non-optimal level.
With the stability of the marital unit, however, human resources are better leveraged toward managing the (seemingly) mutually contradictory goals of individual survivial and greed versus societal survival and converts them into mutually supportive goals. The stability of the marital unit allows the environment of supportive collaboration to be strengthened (the bedrock of societal existence) thus enhancing individual survival whilst also feeding back to the societal structure and reinforcing it. This is all evolutionarily favorable, and the reason why disparate societies have adopted the strategy (convergent social evolution).
Fostering fear and violence within society disrupts mutual collaboration. Justice is essential whenever punitive action is taken, in order to prevent the upsetting of societal stability - because otherwise, large sections of its comprising members will act upon the feelings of injustice and resort to destabilisation. Empathy fosters collaboration. A society that fosters elimination of its weaker sections will also foster instability by increasing insecurity. This is all a no-brainer. I’m surprised you’re asking, even:
No superstition / deity necessary to witness the logical reason for all of this.
That's what this is a map of. Read the article.
I made no mistake: morality is necessary for stability, for reasons you list, which was not needful as the wisdom of marriage was not the issue. And i am glad you support marriage (which i presume is monogamous?).
A society that fosters elimination of its weaker sections will also foster instability by increasing insecurity.
But some will argue fostering a constant high degree of insecurity is necessary for stability, that of a controlled society, as in the atheistic Soviet Union.
This is all a no-brainer. I’m surprised you’re asking, even:
Then you did not understand my point, which which was not that an atheist cannot have solid reasons we concur with for things, but that another atheist can argue against you on such things as marriage, or support gay marriage, etc., porn, consensual sex based upon their reasoning.
Some sanction casual fornication or with a "committed" (overused and often superficial term today), even btwn kids just out of puberty. The atheist Austin Cline over at About.com Agnosticism, when not misrepresenting Christianity with the usual atheistic scorn, thinks "the current Western notion of marriage as being only between a single male and a single female is culturally and historically conditioned - there is nothing very necessary or obvious about it. Other types of marriage can be just as stable, just as productive, and just as loving. There is no reason to eliminate them from the category "marriage" except, perhaps, as a means to promote religious or cultural bigotry.
None of this means, of course, that two people in a committed and loving relationship must get married. ...Not being married is no more a barrier to having a deep and meaningful relationship than is not having religion. - http://atheism.about.com/od/atheistsweddings/a/whymarry.htm
George A. Ricker of Godless in America is even more clear in his support of gay marriage. Which i assume you oppose.
More examples on basic moral issues can be given, and without a proven transcendent moral standard to at least argue from, what you consider a no-brainer can be contrary to what seems reasonable to another atheist's brain.
I don’t think you understood the underpinning reasoning in the points discussed in my previous post. Refute the logic, or give up. Weasel words referring to some “atheists” or some “christians” and their “arguments” is meaningless in this discussion when you haven’t highlighted or brought forth any contradictions in the points made, using the arguments from the sources you mention (the “some atheists”, etc.).
I wonder if this is because people don’t look at marriage as a Sacrament, a holy covenant.
How sacred marriage is held certainly is a factor, income being another, but which relates to character formation. Asian women have the lowest first divorce rate at 10 divorces per 1,000 women in a first marriage, vs. 16.3 for white and 18.1 for Hispanic women and 30.4 for blacks.
Income and race are perhaps the most pronounced aspects in correlation to divorce, with the higher the income, the less divorce, and there are far more black ( 72% of black babies were born to unwed mothers, 2011) Prots than Catholics.
But higher incomes or very high levels of education testify to greater commitment and likelihood they will marry those who have similar character. The black culture overall has eaten the fruit of lies, that of the demonic victim entitlement mentality which is deleterious to character.
And culture often trumps religious affliction, or the latter reflects the former.
Misc. stats:
Only 7% of couples who attend church services once a month will divorce within the first 5 years of marriage. The rate for those who go to church once a year or less is 2 ½ times higher. — U.S. government's National Survey of Family Growth, Atheists won't save Europe by don feder http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27937
77 % of Catholics polled "believe a person can be a good Catholic without going to Mass every Sunday, 65 percent believe good Catholics can divorce and remarry, and 53 percent believe Catholics can have abortions and remain in good standing. — 1999 poll by the National Catholic Reporter. http://www.catholictradition.org/v2-bombs14b.htm
40% Roman Catholics vs. 41% Non-R.C. see abortion as "morally acceptable"; Sex between unmarried couples: 67% vs. 57%; Baby out of wedlock: 61% vs. 52%; Homosexual relations: 54% vs. 45%; Gambling: 72% vs. 59% http://www.gallup.com/poll/117154/Catholics-Similar-Mainstream-Abortion-Stem-Cells.aspxCommitted Roman Catholics (church attendance weekly or almost) versus Non-R.C. faithful church goers (see the below as as morally acceptable): Abortion: 24% R.C. vs. 19% Non-R.C.; Sex between unmarried couples: 53% vs. 30%; Baby out of wedlock: 48% vs. 29%; Homosexual relations: 44% vs. 21%; Gambling: 67% vs. 40%; Divorce: 63 vs. 46% ^
The percentage of percentage of adults Protestants who have been married and divorced is 34% versus 28% for Catholics, while Evangelicals were at 26%. Atheists or agnostic were at 30% (only 65% were ever married, vs. 84% for born-again Christians) while those aligned with a non-Christian faith were at 38%. The largest disparity (17%) relative to divorce was between high and low income levels (22% to 39%). — http://www.barna.org/family-kids-articles/42-new-marriage-and-divorce-statistics-released
31% of Catholics made less than $30,000 per year (2008), while 19% made $100,000 or more (National average: 31% and 18% respectively). The figures for Evangelical Protestants were 34% and 13% respectively. Hindus and Jews had the highest income levels. http://pewforum.org/Income-Distribution-Within-US-Religious-Groups.aspx
Considering the wide scope of possible reasons why a marriage may be annulled, as an est. 400,000 marriages have been annulled since 1970 (http://articles.philly.com/1986-05-08/news/26049605_1_annulments-divorced-catholics-marriage), then how many RCs today are possibly in invalid marriages, even though canon law presumes all marriages are valid until proven invalid?
Broken down by race and ethnicity, the study found Asian women have the lowest first divorce rate at 10 divorces per 1,000 women in a first marriage. The first divorce rates of white and Hispanic women were similar at 16.3 and 18.1, respectively. African-American women have substantially higher rates of first divorce compared to all other racial and ethnic groups, at 30.4 divorces per 1,000 women in a first marriage...
The association between education and divorce is also curvilinear. The least (no high school diploma or GED) and the highest (college degree) educated women share the lowest rate of first divorce, with 14.4 and 14.2 per 1,000, respectively. - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111103161830.htm?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
33% of all first marriages end in separation or divorce after 10 years (32% of White women, 34% of Hispanic women, and 47% of Black women)...
Black women are more likely to have a cohabitation end, and less likely to marry by age 30, likely to have a shorter marriage if they do marry for both first and second marriage, less likely to formally divorce if they marry then separate, less likely to cohabitate after a divorce, less likely to remarry, and less likely to have a successful second marriage. - http://www.psychpage.com/family/mod_couples_thx/cdc.html
In 1960 72% of adults were married (and 85% were ever married), compared to only 52% in 2008 (and 73% had ever married). Part of the difference is the higher divorce rate in modern times. — 2010, Pew Research Center; http://theosophical.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/americans%E2%80%99-changing-views-of-marriage-and-family/#more-2540
Almost 50 percent of households with children undergoing divorce move into poverty following the divorce. — Julia Heath, "Determinants of Spells of Poverty Following Divorce," Review of Social Economy, Vol. 49 (1992), pp. 305-315. http://www.hispeace.org/html/artic27.htm
Of all single mothers in America, only 6.5 percent of them are widows, 37.8 percent are divorced, and 41.3 percent gave birth out of wedlock. — Ann Coulter: Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America; http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/04/ann_coulter_on_single_mothers.php
Single mothers—unwed or divorced—are estimated to co$t the US taxpayer $112 billion every year, or more than $1 trillion each decade.- http://www.marriagedebate.com/pdf/ec_div.pdf
66 percent of divorced couples in the United States are childless [not necessarily due to abortion], versus with 40 percent who have kids. — http://www.smartmarriages.com/divorce.factors.html
Divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing costs U.S. taxpayers more than $112 billion a year, according to a study commissioned by groups advocating government action to bolster marriage. — Georgia State University economist Georgia State University economist Ben Scafidi’s, Institute for American Values, the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Families Northwest of Redmond, Wash., and the Georgia Family Council,. http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=80&sid=1386915
Those who identify themselves as being conservative on social and political matters lower divorce rates (28%) than those liberal on social and political matters (37%). — http://www.barna.org/family-kids-articles/42-new-marriage-and-divorce-statistics-released
Despite whatever you may think, the fact is that the issue never was whether you could support your position that fornication was wrong, but how atheism consistently determining sin, that without a transcendent moral standard that defines sin, in atheism your argument is only that, as another atheist can disagree with you that fornication is wrong, or gay marriage, etc.
Atheism is like a country without a substantive universal constitution, and under it what seems reasonable to Mao or atheistic Communism can just be easily justified as like Islamic conquests can.
Refute the logic, or give up.
Sheer nonsense.
Simply put, you sacrifice logic to propound your hang-up with labels.
Take for example your own wonderful (and hilarious, BTW) demonstration of this stupidity when you imply you don’t dispute that I could argue that fornication was wrong without invoking superstition / deity and then go on to say that (after obviously being distracted by labels), “atheism” determines “sin” arbitrarily. What else was my point in showing how fornication was wrong (using logical arguments and not superstition)?!
Apparently you aren’t able to make your own mind up on whether what you deem as “ought to do” requires supernatural, superstitious hoopla or not.
Ahem: it is you who fail to see my affirmation of your ability to argue that fornication was wrong based on appeal to reason as an atheist, does not negate my contention that atheism cannot example a consistent morality, as another atheist can just as well reject marriage and support fornication based on atheistic appeal to reason.
Was i not being sufficiently clear or are you purposely avoiding the issue?
LOL.
You’re chasing your own tail there.
Dream on, with your atheistic delusions.
Haha!
Yeah, your delusions are evident in your evasive, weasel-worded replies.
Your replies are are merely an indication of an addiction to replying with any nonsense, just to be the last word.
Such is your recourse when your specious statements are exposed. The fact is that you utterly failed to show how atheism can consistently determine which things are sin, as lacking any supreme standard which defines moral absolutes and sins then sin is whatever every atheist reasons it to be, if he even would any support moral absolutes.
At least you oppose fornication, and i hope exclude gay marriage, but plenty of your comrades differ based on their atheistic reasoning.
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