Marriage is a creation ordinance. Before the fall, before giving the law, before establishing the church, the Lord God said to the man he had formed from the dust, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen 2:18). He then brought the woman to the man, and the man recognized her as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Scripture presents this union not as a concession to human weakness nor as a mere social arrangement that can be redefined at will, but as a gift—an institution established, blessed, and ordered by God himself for the good of his image bearers. It is the ordinary context in which men and women are to find companionship, mutual help, raise godly offspring, and live as a picture of Christ’s love for his church (Eph 5:22–33).

Because marriage is ordained by God and he declared it “very good” (Gen 1:31), we should expect to see tangible benefits flowing from it—for men, women, children, and society. The data confirms what Scripture has long declared. Yet in our day, a steady stream of cultural messaging works hard to obscure that reality. From certain corners of the online right and the progressive left alike, marriage is portrayed as a trap, a bad deal, or an obstacle to self-fulfillment. Young men are told they will be happier and richer if they remain single and “play with their toys.” Young women are told that career advancement and independence will deliver what marriage cannot. Even within some Christian circles, the old claim continues to circulate that Christians divorce at the same rate as everyone else, breeding quiet discouragement and a diminished confidence in the goodness of God’s design.

In a bit of a departure from my ordinary practice, rather than making a theological argument or analyzing a great deal of biblical data, I want us to look at the creation ordinance of marriage from the perspective of its positive impact on society writ large—as a blessing of providence, or what is sometimes referred to as part of God’s common grace. In this brief series, I want us to think about the immense benefits of marriage and the net good it produces in men, women, and society overall, as well as in the church.

Everything that follows remains undergirded by the theological premises noted above. But by examining the evidence produced by researchers—much of it from secular universities and institutes—we will see more clearly what we are up against culturally, and we will also find ourselves encouraged that when God’s people determine to live according to his Word and his ways and actually believe that his pattern for life is a blessing, the Lord often makes it to be just that in their lived experience—a blessing. Imagine that!

Clearing Away the Myths

Two claims, or tropes, have hardened into conventional wisdom in our culture, and both are misleading. The first is the oft-repeated assertion that half of all marriages end in divorce. The second is that the divorce rate inside the church is essentially the same as the rate outside it. Both statements obscure important realities and need to be examined more carefully.

The Myth of the 50 Percent Divorce Rate

The idea that 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce is a simplification that has been repeated so often it has become conventional wisdom. The reality is more nuanced. The annual divorce rate in the United States (measured as divorces per one thousand people) has been relatively low and declining in recent years—around 2.4 to 2.5 divorces per one thousand people. Part of that decline is almost certainly due to the parallel decline in the marriage rate itself. More people are content simply to cohabit and sometimes even to have children without ever entering the legal and covenantal bond of marriage. Fewer marriages naturally produce fewer divorces. But the larger problem with the 50 percent figure is methodological. It typically arises from a crude comparison of the total number of marriages and the total number of divorces recorded each year. This method does not track the same couples over the actual life of their marriages. It also includes second and third marriages, which have significantly higher dissolution rates; some estimates place the divorce rate for second marriages around 60 percent and for third marriages even higher.

When researchers look more carefully at first marriages only, the estimated share that ultimately ends in divorce falls into the low to mid 40 percent range. Recent analyses of marriages formed in the 2010s suggest that the long-term divorce rate for those unions may settle even lower, closer to 40 percent or below. The common 50 percent claim is therefore an overgeneralization—true in a broad cultural sense if one includes all remarriages and uses a crude annual comparison, but not precise when one examines the life cycle of individual first marriages.¹

The Myth of the Divorce Rate in the Church

The second claim—that divorce rates inside the church are no better than those outside—is likewise inaccurate once actual religious practice is considered. The misconception often stems from earlier surveys (including some well-known Barna Group data) that grouped all self-identified Christians together without distinguishing between nominal affiliation and active practice. When frequency of church attendance is isolated, a consistent and encouraging pattern emerges across multiple studies.

A fourteen-year Harvard University (which is not exactly known as a bastion of conservatism sympathetic to the teachings of Christianity) study of more than sixty-six thousand participants found that regular religious service attendance (more than once per week) was linked to approximately a 50 percent lower risk of divorce compared with those who never attend, even after controlling for prior attendance and other factors.² Analyses from the Institute for Family Studies indicate that those who attend church regularly (two to three times per month or more) have significantly lower divorce rates than less frequent attenders, with the pattern holding across decades. Broader reviews by sociologists such as W. Bradford Wilcox show that active, regular churchgoers are 30 to 50 percent less likely to divorce than nonattenders or secular individuals. One analysis of evangelicals found that 60 percent of those who never attend church had been divorced or separated, compared with only 38 percent of weekly attenders.³

These findings do not mean that every churchgoing couple enjoys an easy or trouble-free marriage, nor do they erase the real pain of marital failure that occurs within congregations. They do, however, dismantle the notion that Christian commitment is irrelevant to marital stability. Active participation in the life of the church—hearing the Word preached, receiving the sacraments, living under the mutual accountability of a covenant community—correlates strongly with greater durability. This should not surprise us. The God who designed marriage also designed the church and the fellowship of the saints as indispensable ingredients within a healthy Christian life.

The Cultural Assault on Marriage

If we were to believe what is often trumpeted online and in the media, we might conclude that Christianity is bad for marriage, families, and children. Consider a few real questions that young men have posed to researchers in recent years: Isn’t marriage a trap, mostly for men? Don’t most married couples end up getting divorced? Aren’t most men happier when they are single?

Dr. W. Bradford Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and executive director of the National Marriage Project, reports that these are the kinds of questions he regularly hears from young men whenever he makes the case for marriage at speaking events on college campuses and in high schools. He does not need to ask where these young men heard that marriage is a trap. It is a message invariably repeated on the online extreme right, most prominently by figures such as Andrew Tate, and it is reaching a great many teen boys—even groups of young men from more conservative religious backgrounds.

Tate has been described as the “king of toxic masculinity.” A former kickboxer with enormous online reach, he argues that the institution of marriage is a bad deal for men in our egalitarian age. “I don’t think many men actually benefit from marriages or relationships anymore,” he has said.⁴ In his view, any man in his right mind ought to stay single, make lots of money, and play with his toys rather than make a long-lasting commitment to love and serve a wife. He is joined by other online voices, including some female influencers, who claim that roughly two-thirds of marriages end in divorce and that because most divorces are initiated by women, scores of men are divorced unwillingly and unjustly.⁵

But the antimarriage propaganda comes from the opposite end of the political spectrum as well, only there the claim is that marriage is a bad deal for women. Headlines from major outlets such as Bloomberg have announced that “Women Who Stay Single and Don’t Have Kids Are Getting Richer.” Opinion pieces have offered “What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse”⁶ and have framed divorce as “an act of radical self-love.”⁷ One law professor wrote that she divorced her husband not because she did not love him but because she loved herself more.⁸ The cultural message is unmistakable: Devote yourself to career and personal advancement rather than marriage and family, and you will find true prosperity.

What the Numbers Actually Show

Yet this alluring counsel, so characteristic of our individualistic age, simply does not line up with the evidence. Consider the economic data. In 2020, married mothers ages eighteen to fifty-five had a median family income of $108,000, compared with $41,000 for childless single women in the same age range—more than twice as much, even when the income is shared with a spouse. As married women head toward retirement in their fifties, they have typically accumulated median assets of roughly $357,000, compared with less than $30,000 for their single peers. The same pattern holds for men. Stably married men heading toward retirement have approximately ten times more assets than their divorced or never-married male peers.⁹

Wilcox also analyzes so-called emotional riches. No one calls their lives happier and more meaningful than men and women who are married, according to the 2022 General Social Survey.¹⁰ Women ages eighteen to fifty-five who are married are almost twice as likely to report being “very happy” with their lives (37 percent) compared with their single peers (19 percent). Married men in the same age range are more likely to be “very happy” (34 percent) than their unmarried peers (13 percent). Meanwhile, 23 percent of unmarried women ages eighteen to fifty-five say they are “not too happy” with their lives, compared with only 13 percent of married women. Cohabitation does not deliver the same benefits. It is less committed, more unstable, and generally less happy than marriage. In fact, marriage itself is a better predictor of happiness than education, work, money, frequent sexual activity, or even regular religious attendance considered in isolation. And despite what some online voices claim, most first marriages do not end in divorce; only about 40 percent do.¹¹

Many people who have spoken with researchers for recent books on marriage echo these findings. One forty-year-old woman described how being married has given her financial stability, a deeper sense of meaning, and confidence—even though life with young children is “messier” than her single years. Another woman in her mid-thirties who prioritized her career in her twenties now looks back with regret and says she would focus earlier on finding a husband if she could do it over again. A thirty-four-year-old unmarried man with an engaging career, a house, and a six-figure salary still finds these accomplishments insufficient. “I’ve got degrees on my wall, I’ve got accomplishments and certificates, but it doesn’t mean anything in the end,” he said. “I have to get up every day and look in the mirror and realize I’m alone.”¹²

This is the message that often emerges from our pop culture, corporate media, and social media: The faith-and-family connection is generally a bad or inconsequential one. Yet the data tells a different story. Cruel, repressed, and unhappy religious unions are the exception, not the rule. Couples who go to church together typically have the happiest marriages and the lowest risks of divorce.

These findings already begin to dismantle the cultural myths that portray marriage as a net loss and the church as irrelevant to its success. In the parts that follow, we will turn to still more encouraging evidence—particularly the distinctive strength of marriages among those who actively practice their faith, the surprising data on the timing of marriage, and the vital role of involved fathers—before considering how the local church can foster a culture that receives marriage as the blessing God intends it to be.

Notes

1. See W. Bradford Wilcox, Lyman Stone, and Grant Bailey, “Divorce in Decline: About 40 Percent of Today’s Marriages Will End in Divorce,” American Enterprise Institute (AEI), July 24, 2025.
2. Shanshan Li, Laura Kubzansky, and Tyler J. VanderWeele, “Religious Service Attendance, Divorce, and Remarriage Among U.S. Nurses in Mid and Late Life,” PLOS One 13, no. 11 (December 3, 2018); see also Tyler J. VanderWeele, “Religious Service Attendance, Marriage, and Health,” Institute for Family Studies, November 29, 2016.
3. W. Bradford Wilcox, “Want to Slash Your Risk for Divorce? Start Going to Church,” Institute for Family Studies, February 26, 2024; see also Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox, “The Religious Marriage Paradox: Younger Marriage, Less Divorce,” Institute for Family Studies, December 15, 2021.
4. Quoted in W. Bradford Wilcox, “Why You Should Get Married,” Institute for Family Studies, February 14, 2024. The original statement appears in a 2022 interview with Tate (widely circulated in video clips under titles such as “Andrew Tate Explains Why Men Should NEVER Get Married”).
5. Per Wilcox: “Tate is joined by Pearl Davis, a female anti-feminist online influencer who recently posted on X, ‘I am anti marriage as it is today. I think it’s silly to think marriage is a good deal for most men today.’ She claims that about 67 percent of marriages end in divorce, and that because most divorces are initiated by women, scores of men are divorced unwillingly and unjustly. (This is also why she believes that divorce should be illegal.)” Wilcox, “Why You Should Get Married.”
6. Mandy Len Catron, “What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse,” The Atlantic, July 2, 2019.
7. Lara Bazelon, “Divorce Can Be an Act of Radical Self-Love,” The New York Times, September 30, 2021.
8. Bazelon, “An Act of Radical Self-Love.”
9. Data drawn from the 2020 American Community Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, as reported in W. Bradford Wilcox, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization (Broadside Books, 2024).
10. NORC at the University of Chicago, General Social Survey, https://gss.norc.org/.
11. 2022 General Social Survey, as analyzed in Wilcox, Get Married.
12. Quoted in Wilcox, “Why You Should Get Married.”

©Sean Morris. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• Sean Morris

  

  Sean was educated at Grove City College, Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, MS), Edinburgh Theological Seminary, and the University of Glasgow (Scotland). He earned his PhD from Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. He is an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, and serves as a minister at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, TN. He also serves as the Academic Dean of the Blue Ridge Institute for Theological Education and has published numerous theological and devotional articles. Sean lives in Oak Ridge with his wife, Sarah, and their children.

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