Wirt Atmar writes:
    >
> > http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0008C341-648C-1C6D-84A9809EC588EF21
>
>
> Of interest, it is important point to note that the states marked on the
> SciAm divorcee map are where divorcees move *to*. The "hostspots" shown on
> the map aren't the point of origination of the divorces. There is apparently
> a strong net migration away from the Southern/Bible Belt states and into the
> West and Florida once the divorce has occurred, a process that makes a
> certain amount of sense.

Huh?  I'm not even sure what you're claiming here.  Are you saying that the number
of divorcees is high in the West because people move West after they are divorced
AND that the divorcees are moving from the South?  I don't see how you conclude
either of these things.   Certainly in the 1990s, most of the migration to
California was from Mexico and other countries (non-Hispanic whites declined in
absolute numbers from 1990 to 2000).

The map gives percentage of people who were divorced in 1997--that is, _status
divorced_, not _ever divorced_, so I doubt you are seeing a significant effect from
previous decades.

According to the Barna research survey, if you look at "ever divorced", the
percentages are 26% in the West v. 27% in the South and Midwest, statistically
identical.  The striking thing is that it's only 19% in the Northeast.

> >  http://www.divorcereform.org/mel/rgeog.html
>
> This website provides substantially conflicting information compared to what
> is now considered the conventional wisdom:
>
> "In truth, the National Institute for Healthcare Research says weekly
> churchgoers throughout the U.S. are less apt to divorce than people who claim
> "no religion" and those who attend religious services less than once a week.
> Devout Catholics have especially low divorce rates - apparently because
> Catholic parishes often take the responsibility of marriage preparation and
> enrichment more seriously than Protestant churches do."
>
> The question is how could one or the other conclusion be so wrong?

I'm not sure that a single poll by the Barna Research Group establishes
"conventional wisdom".  Nor are two finding contradictory.  One gives the percentage
of divorce by self-identified religious affiliation, the other by a specific
behavior.


[omitted: Wirt goes on to question the source]

> >   http://www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/bg1373.html
> >  Church attendance is the most significant predictor of marital stability;
>
> Although the great majority of facts presented in this "backgrounder" are
> correct, especially that divorce greatly improverishes women and children and
> has effects that may last for generations, the Heritage Foundation is an even
> more right-wing organization and is notorious for presenting its propaganda
> buried in fact.

"I can't find anything incorrect in this one and they give independent sources but
they disagree with my prejudices so I'm going to ignore them anyway."

Well, I found the same claim other places on the web, e.g. in the lecture notes for
a sociology class, but the Heritage site gave the most complete references.

Here are some excerpts from an interesting paper I found this morning:

http://www.geron.uga.edu/pdfs/mullins.pdf

Chi and Houseknecht (1985) found as one example that congruency in
religious affiliation and ideology led to more harmonious and satisfying
marriages. But the same study also found that, among the different
denominations, Protestant fundamentalists had the highest marital
dissolution (separation and divorce) rate when controlling for race, age
at marriage, education, and marital interval. Also, it was found that
incongruent spousal religions made fundamentalists of any denomination
more likely to be dissatisfied with their marriage than
non-fundamentalists.

...

Other studies have emphasized the importance of homogamy of religious
beliefs. Again, the results have been mixed. Shehan and Bock (1990)
reported that religiosity does have a positive impact on marital
happiness, but only among homogamous Catholics. In one of the most
definitive tests of this hypothesis Heaton and Pratt (1990) found that
persons whose spouses are of the same religious affiliation do report
higher levels of marital happiness than do those in heterogamous
marriages. They found, however, that these differences proved to be
almost entirely attributable to the positive effect of church attendance
on marital happiness.  Thus, from the Heaton and Pratt findings, one
can conclude that those who attend church more frequently are less
likely to marry heterogamously and more likely to have happy marriages.

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