Why are there more divorces in the Bible Belt?

Episcopal cafe ^ | 26 August 2011 | Andrew Gerns

[Fido969]

Because more people in the Bible belt get married.

You can't get divorced if you don't get married. The alternative is to live together, or be unwed parents, which I think you'll find higher instances of in non-religious communities.

This stat has been around for years to try to embarrass religious people. It is a perfect example of: Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

[Cronos]

Various non Catholic groups also frown on divorce.

[Cronos]

Yet one can easily make a mistake choosing a partner at 25 as you can at 35, right?

[Cronos]

Immigrants is a very plausible option. South Asians, Africans etc don’t accept divorce.

[napscoordinator]

Look at presidents. No democrat president has been divorced. Republicans have had reagan, trump and even a First Lady. Republicans have decided that divorce is apart of life.

[ronniesgal]

i know she’s full of crap!!! I was raised in a religious household so i know the drill.
She can quote bible passages like nobodies business, but this bunch of babies and no wedding ring from any dad is ok with her.

[bankwalker]

What is your source for that statement?

[bankwalker]

More homos, feminists, and alimony in the northeast ...

[Alas Babylon!]

Exactly.

The South is the most racially diverse part of America.

We’re not all monolithically white rednecks beatin’ on Bibles.

{We got a lot of Black rednecks beatin’ on Bibles!}

[only1percent]

Yet one can easily make a mistake choosing a partner at 25 as you can at 35, right?

Pretty much no - divorce rates decline pretty steadily by age of first marriage. When you're 35, you know yourself pretty well and have gotten a lot of your screwing up out of your system -- both able to pick a partner better and be an accurate choice yourself.

Also, the younger first marriages that are driving that end of the divorce rate are 25 at the old end of the range - lots of teenagers and 20/21 year olds getting married.

[trebb]

Nah - we don’t believe in them “open marriages”.

We tend to go with the, “If you can have my spouse -— you can have my spouse” theory.
Let the cheaters deal with the cheaters so we can look for someone who believes in the bonds.

[Jonty30]

That’s because you can’t be compelled to testify against your spouse.

[napscoordinator]

Lol. Good point.

[Texas Fossil]

I don’t buy the premise that there are more.

Figures never lie, but liars figure.

Long ago, I took a statistics class.

[daniel1212]

" This has been true a long time. The reason is the Northeast has more Catholics. When you’re taught that marriage is for life, you tend to hesitate to marry and then hesitate to divorce. "

Littler doubt that is the intent of this post, but by the same measure we can say that the Northeast is more liberal because is has more Catholics. And indeed voting records testify to this correlation in which Catholics overall vote about 50/50 for the liberal vs. conservative Pres. candidate versus approx. 80% of evangelicals - which tend to have highest divorce rates - consistently voting conservative. And also in past decades affirming conservative values and basic beliefs far more than Catholics.

And since Rome manifestly considers even proabortion, prohomosexual public figures as members in life and in death (showing her understanding of canon law), liberal Catholics cannot be dismissed as CINOS. Meanwhile the term "Protestant" (55% of once-married black Protestant have been divorced) is far too broad to be very meaningful as far as correlation to faith specifics (and the once-distinctive term "evangelical" is increasingly watered down. Even in 2006 Barna reported that just 8% of the adult population in fit the criteria its nine questions used to categorize people as evangelicals, versus 38% of the population) except that the typical broad allowance of divorce in Protestantism and even among many or most in the evangelical subset has much to do with the divorce rate, while one annulment for every 6.5 marriages celebrated in the Catholic church in American also should be factored in.

And the level of faith-devotion certainly is correspondent to divorce rates:

The federalist.com

As is practice versus profession:

(http://nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com/2013/07/unmentionables-faith-and-sex-principles.html)

Pope's proclamation, like views of U.S. Catholics, indicates openness to nontraditional families Six-in-ten Catholics say the church should allow those who are divorced and have remarried without obtaining an annulment to receive Communion, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center Survey. - https://www.pewresearch.org/topic/family-relationships/marriage-divorce/divorce/

yet other reasons proffered in this thread also must be considered, with income level having the more correspondence to divorce rates. "An annual income of over $50,000 can decrease the risk of divorce by as much as 30% versus those with an income of under $25k." (https://www.wf-lawyers.com/divorce-statistics-and-facts/)

Also related is education level:

(https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/14/as-u-s-marriage-rate-hovers-at-50-education-gap-in-marital-status-widens/) And with evangelicals having the lower income..

Another factor is the increase in co-habitation and less people being married, which seems to correspond to these stats:

The data show that nine of the twenty one countries surveyed in Europe have experienced falls in divorce rates over 25 years. The biggest falls in divorce figures were in the UK (-27%), Switzerland (-22%), Germany (-17%), and Hungary (-14%).

The biggest risers were Italy (+151%), Spain (+32%), Latvia (+29%) and Poland (+26%). (http://nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com/2013/09/divorce-still-less-likely-among.html)

Thus using divorce rates alone as a barometer of faith and morality then secularism would be credited. Meanwhile.

Religious tradition	Married	Living with a partner	Divorced/separated	Widowed	Never married	For full question wording, see the survey questionnaire.
Buddhist	39%	11%	10%	2%	37%	263
Catholic	52%	8%	12%	7%	21%	7,176
Evangelical Protestant	55%	5%	14%	8%	18%	8,562
Hindu	60%	3%	5%	1%	32%	198
Historically Black Protestant	31%	6%	19%	9%	36%	1,907
Jehovah's Witness	53%	5%	12%	8%	21%	244
Jewish	56%	6%	9%	6%	23%	843
Mainline Protestant	55%	6%	12%	9%	18%	6,048
Mormon	66%	3%	7%	5%	19%	661
Muslim	41%	4%	8%	1%	45%	234
Orthodox Christian	48%	5%	9%	6%	31%	182
Unaffiliated (religious "nones")	37%	11%	11%	3%	37%	7,523	(https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/marital-status/)

[Yo-Yo]

They have more divorces because they have more marriages. They are less likely to just “shack up.”

[foreverfree]

bump

[sauropod]

true dat.

Speaking from experience.

[kosciusko51]

It wasn’t clear from the article if this 10-year-old study counted annulments as divorces or not.

[left that other site]

Perhaps more people are more likely to get married in the more religious or conservative areas, and thus there are more divorces as well.

In the "oh-so-hip-and-trendy" Northeast, people hook-up, break-up, make-up, move-on, and so on, without being legally married. Hence, fewer divorces.

Just a theory. I have no documentation for my musings.