Family First highlights the disproportionately high rates of Divorce amongst Christians & it’s related effects on The New Zealand Economy

Fundamentalist Christian based political party and lobby-group, Family First has released new research that shows the devastating financial effects that divorce has on New Zealand.

Family breakdown and decreasing marriage rates is costing New Zealand taxpayers at least $1 billion a year, according to new research.Prepared by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER), the research was commissioned by Family First NZ."The study shows that the decline of marriage, New Zealand's high teenage fertility rate, and our rate of solo parenthood is not just a moral or social concern but should also be a concern of government and policymakers,'' said Family First NZ national director Bob McCoskrie."The report states that even a small reduction in family breakdown and increases in marriage rates could provide significant savings for taxpayers.''

Research of this kind is always selective and done in isolation, does nothing but state the bleeding obvious.

What Family First should have mandated NZIER to find-out is -'who for example is it getting divorced?'

With such a break-down in divorce statistics, we could then start finding a solution to the problem.

NZIER should have scrapped the surface more by finding-out who exactly is getting divorced and why? What race they were? Age? Income? Even their religious beliefs?

Fortunately International Research along these lines has been undertaken, and Mr McCoskrie will be delighted to know the task was completed by none other than a Californian Christian Survey Company, The Barna Research Group.

He may not be so delighted, to read their results:

11% of all American adults are currently divorced
25% of all American adults have had at least one divorce

27% of born-again Christians have had at least one divorce
24% of all non-born-again Christians have been divorced
21% of Atheists have been divorced
21% of Catholics and Lutherans have been divorced
24% of Mormons have been divorced
25% of mainstream Protestants have been divorced
29% of Baptists have been divorced
24% of nondenominational, independent Protestants have been divorced

Naturally there's more to this research (do a google yourself) Barna break it into demographics, states, race etc - but you get the picture.

Put simply this Christian Survey Company concluded: the more extreme your Christian beliefs are, the more likely it was you would end-up filing for divorce.

These statistics make a mockery of Family Firsts presumptions that Christian occupy some ‘moral high-ground’ when it comes to divorce.

Research indicates just the opposite is the case.

The fact is Christians divorce more on average than Atheists & if we want to lower the incidences of divorce and its related economic ill-effects, we actually need more Atheists in New Zealand and less ‘firebrand’ Christians like Bob McCoskrie!