It’s a well-worn lament heard from many American pulpits: there is just as much divorce inside the church as there is outside. But if pastors and their flocks are embarrassed by divorce equality, then recent findings published in American Journal of Sociology are likely to give them an even nastier shock: conservative religious beliefs are not only failing to uphold the marriages of religious conservatives, they are actually destroying their neighbors’ marriages too.

The recent study “Red States, Blue States, and Divorce” makes a straightforward claim: “Conservative religious beliefs and the social institutions they create, on balance, decrease marital stability through the promotion of practices that increase divorce risk in the contemporary United States.” For example, by discouraging premarital sex and encouraging early marriage, conservative religious institutions unwittingly contribute to high divorce rates, the authors argue. Their analysis finds that “communities with large concentrations of conservative Protestants actually produce higher divorce rates than others.”

Read the article “A Bit of Religion Can be Bad for Marriage” on thefederalist.com.