Married to the Wrong Plan
Jan. 20th, 2004 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdMarried to the Wrong Plan
January 16, 2004
From Newsday
Holy Britney Spears!
Here's a fact I couldn't find anywhere in George W. Bush's $1.5-billion plan to prop up American marriage.
The pro-Bush red states, especially those in the rural South, have a far higher divorce rate than Al Gore's blue states.
This is the Bible Belt?
Actually, it's more like the Divorce Belt, where the pro-marriage president's staunchest supporters tend to congregate.
For this little nugget, we are indebted to the insightful research of George Barna, who is probably America's leading pollster of religious attitudes. The Barna Research Group of Ventura, Calif., has spent the past 18 years tracking various church and cultural trends.
Trends like Baptists (29 percent) and nondenominational Christians (34 percent) getting divorced more frequently than do atheists/agnostics (21 percent).
Forget all that family-values talk from the Religious Right.
"Divorce rates among conservative Christians were much higher than for other faith groups," Barna says flatly.
And to think: I'd always heard that godless relativists in places like New York were undermining marriage.
Well, not so you'd notice on the marital-political map.
The five states with the highest rates of divorce - 50 percent more divorce than the national average - all went for Bush in 2000. There's the quickie-divorce capital of Nevada, of course. But Nevada is joined as a Bust-Up Champ by pro-Bush Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma.
These people will soon be telling us how to run our marriages?
January 16, 2004
From Newsday
Holy Britney Spears!
Here's a fact I couldn't find anywhere in George W. Bush's $1.5-billion plan to prop up American marriage.
The pro-Bush red states, especially those in the rural South, have a far higher divorce rate than Al Gore's blue states.
This is the Bible Belt?
Actually, it's more like the Divorce Belt, where the pro-marriage president's staunchest supporters tend to congregate.
For this little nugget, we are indebted to the insightful research of George Barna, who is probably America's leading pollster of religious attitudes. The Barna Research Group of Ventura, Calif., has spent the past 18 years tracking various church and cultural trends.
Trends like Baptists (29 percent) and nondenominational Christians (34 percent) getting divorced more frequently than do atheists/agnostics (21 percent).
Forget all that family-values talk from the Religious Right.
"Divorce rates among conservative Christians were much higher than for other faith groups," Barna says flatly.
And to think: I'd always heard that godless relativists in places like New York were undermining marriage.
Well, not so you'd notice on the marital-political map.
The five states with the highest rates of divorce - 50 percent more divorce than the national average - all went for Bush in 2000. There's the quickie-divorce capital of Nevada, of course. But Nevada is joined as a Bust-Up Champ by pro-Bush Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Oklahoma.
These people will soon be telling us how to run our marriages?
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 10:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 01:26 pm (UTC)The research is comparing born again christian's (and evangelicals) to -everyone- else. Not the non-religous. Furthermore, while there is data that might hint at what the writer is trying to claim, the data is incomplete and does not come anywhere near supporting his claims (and I suspect wouldn't support his claims, which is why he made this all up).
Remember, newspaper writers are often morons. Especially those who write for Newsday (I've gotten drunk with a few of them, trust me, bricks are smarter).
As for the born again crowd and the evangelicals, well most of them are posers (like goths or the vampire chic people). I know as I've had some experience with them (shudder) via my -very- religous parents who were involved with the movement for a while until they realized that a good many of the people in the movement were fakers (you now, the oral roberts/jimmy baker kind of con men, or the desperate wannabe followers). The 'all style but no susbstance' types never made it with my folks when it comes to religion, which they take seriously (which is even more fun because my parents belong to two DIFFERENT religions, talk about religous wars all you want, I've lived thru 'em).
So in short, all this survey says is that basically the people in the charismatic movement are no better than everyone else. Which is about what I'd expect having seen them. It doesn't however compare people who are religous versus those who are not. It doesn't even compare say christian or judeo-christian to those who are not.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-21 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-21 01:30 pm (UTC)Cathy
divorce belt?
Date: 2004-01-21 05:56 pm (UTC)