Shaunti Feldhahn has done research that shows the divorce rate has never been half of marriages, we only saw a spike in divorces where marriage rates fell in the late 1970s so it was briefly half the rate per thousand that people got marrked.
From the article, Divorce Shocker: Most Marriages Do Make It
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2014/May/Divorce-Shocker-Most-Marriages-Do-Make-It/
“First-time marriages: probably 20 to 25 percent have ended in divorce on average,” Feldhahn revealed. “Now, okay, that’s still too high, but it’s a whole lot better than what people think it is.”
Shaunti and Jeff point out the 50 percent figure came from projections of what researchers thought the divorce rate would become as they watched the divorce numbers rising in the 1970s and early 1980s when states around the nation were passing no-fault divorce laws.
“But the divorce rate has been dropping,” Feldhahn said. “We’ve never hit those numbers. We’ve never gotten close.”
And it’s even lower among churchgoers, where a couple’s chance of divorcing is more likely in the single digits or teens.
I suspect Christians will make up an increasing share of divorces as more and more others simply don’t bother getting married anyway (co-habituating instead), thus effectively removing themselves from any divorce statistics. I’m surprised not just at how many of my children’s classmates have divorced parents, but how many of them have unmarried parents.