Study Shows US Bible Belt Has Highest Rate of Family Break-Ups; Is it About Faith or Race?

This map shows the states where family belonging (whether or not a biological mother and father are still married when the child is 15-17) is highest and lowest in the United States. The darker the color, the more belonging.

A study on family breakup as it effects children on the cusp of adulthood revealed that more children experience family breakup before adulthood in the South, well-known for its religious "Bible belt," according to the Family Research Council.

Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr, senior pastor of Hope Christian Church and founding president of High Impact Leadership Coalition, explained the nuances of different ethnic groups, most notably the high rates of family dislocation in the black community. "I think black families are experiencing the worst of the social trends, but they are leading in that direction," Jackson declared. "Half of our children do not feel that they are loved and accepted in their families." While the Asian family has the lowest rates of breakup, Jackson argued that they are going the same way.

The Fourth Annual Index of Family Belonging and Rejection, published Wednesday, measures whether or not kids who are about to become adults have experienced a breakup in their family. For those "age 15-17, towards the end of their childhood at home," the study measures "what proportion of children are still in an intact, married family," Fagan explained.

According to the study, only 46 percent of today's youth ages 15 to 17 were raised with both their biological parents married to each other since before or around the time of their birth. The parents of 54 percent of these children have rejected each other.

Regionally, the South, or the Bible belt, has the lowest rate of family belonging (42 percent) and the Northeast has the highest (50 percent). Among states, Utah ranked number one with 57 percent and the District of Columbia ranked dead last with 17, followed by Mississippi at 32 percent and Louisiana at 36 percent.

Asians proved to be the racial group with the most families intact among these kids (65 percent grew up in intact families) and blacks had the least (17 percent).

"Christians are not living out their faith in family in the South," Fagan declared. He explained that the highest churchgoing states in the country are in the south, and normally high church attendance drives people to keep their families intact. But this is not happening. "For the Christian church in the South, something is really going wrong sexually."

According to another study, published last month, divorce rates are higher among conservative Protestants and evangelicals who are strict on sexual morality than among more liberal Christians. Nevertheless, the study's author admitted that "secularism seems to be more conducive towards divorce than conservative Protestantism."

Fagan explained that the lowest rates of family belonging in the nation occurred in the black community – 9 percent among African Americans in the District of Columbia and 7 percent in Milwaukee. "The black family is just in meltdown crisis on family and on marriage," the researcher argued, "and that's what locking them into poverty."

Jackson agreed, tracing the roots of this civil collapse back to President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," the era of Segregation, and even slavery. "I think that the baggage of the family breakdown worked as a cancer," the black pastor explained. He argued that even in the pre-Civil Rights days, when African American families generally stuck together, they were still under assault.

Jackson traced the "emotional erosion of our African American men regarding their role in family, their value as individuals," through slavery, Jim Crow, and into the 1960s. "When the War on Poverty happened in the sixties, Washington initiatives wound up exacerbating the familial problems of poverty," Jackson claimed. The new relief programs made it acceptable and economically possible for a woman to live on her own and raise a family without a man.

DJ Chuang, a strategy consultant, ideator, connector, and Asian American, explained the cultural ideas behind the strength of the Asian family. "Generally speaking, Asian cultures have very strong values of loyalty, duty, and responsibility to care for their family members," Chuang argued. "These values are culturally reinforced by the societal expectations for staying in marriages, some of which are arranged, and avoiding the social stigma and shame of divorces."

Jackson agreed, and claimed that first generation immigrants from Africa also have a similar dedication to family.

Fagan, however, argued that the problems are still deep, even in the Asian family. "The Asian family now is where the black family was in the sixties when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his book," the researcher explained. Moynihan wrote in order to combat the disintegration of the black family, and now every race is facing the same challenges.

While Fagan condemned the churches which are failing to keep families together, he called for someone like the Old Testament prophets to denounce this shameful situation. "What would the prophets be doing, what would God be speaking through the prophets, about the abandonment of his law?" the researcher asked.

"Pray for the families in urban America – the church has got to do something," Jackson declared. He argued that the entire church should work to find a solution, and reported that "the black church is alarmed at these problems and is attempting to rise up to solve them."

The pastor announced that he would "dedicate my ministry to turn around the black Christian families to regain the strength they once had."

You prove my thesis right, again and again.

You use labels and place your own meaning to them and then ask me why “my comrades” don’t think like I do. Only a certified moron resorts to this strategy of forcing guilt by (accusative) association.

My opinions stand by their own merit. Since you obviously couldn’t dispute the arguments I made to support my views, this is in itself a proof of their absoluteness. Hence you resorted to the cheap (but failed) trick of trying to pigeon-hole me into labels to hide your failure. The reasons I gave are not out of whim. The point is, if you can’t dispute them, there is inherent truth in them. You repeatedly mention that the truth to me is anything I may reason for my own fancy. The problem with this silly excuse for reasoning on your part is that you’re unable to prove me wrong. You keep missing the point that this failure (of yours and any one else who tries, for that matter) is proof of the absoluteness of my claims.

List these other “atheist reasonings” you keep touting and cowering under. Let’s see how they stand.

You are still missing the point, which again is not that atheists cannot arrive at moral conclusions, but that atheism cannot point to an accepted transcendent moral standard which defines morality - which evolutionary science does not - thus this being what the atheists position lines up with, even interpretively, or by which they are judged by. Lacking this, each atheist can argue that their reasoning is superior to yours in opposing you on such an issue as fornication. I am sorry if this was not made clear enough to you.

Moreover, i could provide some examples of those who disagree with you, but you have not specified what you mean by fornication, such as do you reject any and all premarital sex and all homosexual relations, and exclude gay marriage?

You haven’t provided the examples you keep referring to. Why are you avoiding this?

WHY??? Because while i certainly have examples of atheists who disagree with you, ready to provide when you clarified, as asked, what you mean by fornication, and how it relates to homosexual marriage. And also actually deal with the real issue, but it is YOU who keeps avoiding this, while resorting to your usual ad hominem non-sense about being me being "weasel-worded," "a certified moron," etc.

Which is only an extension of your redundant expressions of scorn for God and religion on this proGod forum, which occasions you seem to look for.

Thus what you have done once again is avoid answering what might incriminate you, and which evasion and crass insults has thereby rendered yourself as unfit for further attempts at meaningful exchange. Which, after seeking to antagonize, is perhaps your wish, but simply supplies more evidence against atheism. Now that you will be ignored then perhaps you may actually deal with the real issue. Or resort once more to spitballs.

But for the record, here is a little of the conclusions of your atheistic comrades based on their reasoning, whom you can debate with, which still does not change the fact, but works to illustrate, that atheism cannot point to an accepted transcendent standard which defines morality, and by which they are judged.

For Atheists? Well, it’s a case of whatever legal activity rings your bell, or floats your boat, or raises your flagpole. Homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, one at a time or in multiples…it doesn’t really matter. If you are curious about something, go ahead and try it out. If you like it, great, and if not then don’t do it again. But there are no eternal consequences one way or another. You will not spend sleepless nights contemplating ultimate damnation in your final years agonizing over a single homoerotic encounter in your teens. Have fun, and see if it works for you. Who knows? You might find a new hobby...

You have to obey the laws that apply where you live or happen to be at the time, but otherwise you are free to enjoy your own sexuality without guilt. You still have the humanistic values that apply to those relationships: namely, you don’t harm others, you are honest with people, you don’t exploit people, etc. But within those moral precepts, you are free to enjoy yourself in whatever way is best for you. - See more at: http://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog/deandrasek/five-reasons-why-sex-can-be-better-atheists#sthash.p70ZM5Qc.dpuf — http://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog/deandrasek/five-reasons-why-sex-can-be-better-atheists#sthash.p70ZM5Qc.dpuf

Fornication is not in and of itself inherently evil....While I would agree that adultery is not appropriate conduct, I would not take my view so far as to believe that every sexual relationship outside of a monogamous marriage is necessarily evil.

On the whole I do not agree with Aquinas on homosexuality or sexual morality...Homosexuality, sexual urges, desires, and fetishes are all natural. As such, I find I disagree with Aquinas completely. - http://atheismandmorality.blogspot.com/2011/11/religious-morality-and-homosexual-sin.html

Now we all agree that sex with very young people is indeed immoral, and it’s recognized as such by laws in many places. But unmarried sex? That’s not a sin, but a great blessing. — http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/sin-of-the-day-fornication-2/ Rational people now recognize that there’s nothing immoral about being in love with, and having sex with, someone of the same gender. — http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/sin-of-the-day-homosexuality/

>Yes, gays are asking the body-politic to recognize their relationships as being kinship bonds — and there is no good reason why they shouldn’t be so recognized. There is nothing about the relationships of straight couples which makes them any more “worthy” of legal, social, and moral obligations we traditionally structure as “marriage.” - http://atheism.about.com/od/gaymarriage/a/whymarriage_4.htm

What a poster said a while ago sums it up quite well,

That's just it - atheists cannot have any objective moral standards. They are necessarily ethical scavengers. When an atheist tries to discuss moral issues with a theist, they usually do so by completely miscomprehending the theists starting point, and then try to play little "gotcha" games that are based off of those miscomprehensions.

**National Catholic Reporter** All the further I had to read to see the bias.

That is rather desperate, but typical of RCs faced with evidence that impugns Rome, and the fact is that there the NC reporter was only referenced once among the multitude of surveys that testifies to what the Vatican's own poll (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2013/11/vatican-releases-full-text-of-document-and-survey-questions-for-2014-synod-of-bishops-on-the-family) is evidencing.

And which you likely know was the subject of a caucus thread (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3123469/posts) (to keep us out of it) which said,

Before the Vatican ACTUALLY did its OWN poll, they would blow off every poll and survey that came down the pike.

They had to – really. To even acknowledge or lend any credence whatsoever to the results of past surveys would be to admit that there has been a never before in the life of the Church anything like it collapse of the faith.

That would immediately necessitate a conversation of how this happened, which would lead directly back to the bishops...Every excuse in the books – anything to deny, lie or refuse to comply with the truth.

Well, they can’t do that ANY MORE. These are the Vatican’s OWN OFFICIAL numbers – and they show – heck in some cases – results EVEN WORSE than originally thought...

So consider the whole picture. On the one hand, we have an official Church survey PROVING what we have long known – global apostasy as John Paul termed it.

And then we have prominent Church leaders who couldn’t care less and who come out and say it publicly. They are more concerned with the press ASKING about IT then they are with the actual IT.

Nothing new here. This is what RCs keep denying when i provide the evidence: /RC-Stats_vs._Evang

You make the error of confusing “morality” with stability

Then are you arguing that stability is "good" but not "moral?" Because the traditional understanding of morality is the attempt to understand and act upon that which is good. But because "stability" is simply a byproduct of the processes of a series of random changes (aka evolution), then stability versus nonstability are arbitrary variations in the chaos. Nothing more.

But you have argued such attributes tend to promote survival. True, possibly. However, there are cases where "stability" has led to stagnation and failure to survive. So "stability" in the abstract is not an assurance of survival.

But survival itself is presumed to be "good" without rigorous proof. Why is survival good? We are most of us wired to prefer it. But that is tautology, not proof.

The problem to which Daniel refers is very old and very difficult (cf. Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma). Without some final Arbiter of the Good, defining "good" becomes a practical impossibility, as it seems to always defer to some external referent, leading to an infinite regression problem.

However, the regression is stopped if a place can be found where the "buck stops here." Aristotle's Unmoved Mover would be a species of solution to that problem. Of course theists extend that from the realm of pure reason to include divine revelation and such, which is not contrary to reason, but an extrapolation from foundational principles.

Yet Christianity has an accommodation for those who cannot make that leap from reason to revelation. We accept that God has made the universe in such a way that reasonable persons of all theological persuasions, including atheists, can use reason to draw valid conclusions about right moral behavior. Natural law.

So Daniel is simply being consistent with the long stream of Christian thought when he tells you that A) we accept and encourage any logical way of reaching the same conclusion as us on marriage, even when there is no direct reference to God, and B) according to the most rigorous standards of logic, the good arguments you have raised do not resolve the problem of the final Arbiter of the Good. They do not bite through the hard kernel of the problem, but lightly gum around the edges.

And that’s a real problem. If you want society to have moral behavior, people need to genuinely believe in goodness versus badness. Appealing to “survival of the species” is too abstract, and proves nothing. People are practical. If no authentic deity is provided to provide moral accountability, a pseudo-deity will be provided, either in the nature of craven superstition, or by elevating some human elite to play god. Either of these will tend to devolve into totalitarian systems. I believe what distinguishes the conservative from the statist is the intuition (supported by reason) that human freedom depends on avoiding both these errors, relying instead on a higher moral law of divine origin to which we are all accountable. This is the true principle behind the “rule of law,” that no one is exempt from obedience to that universal, uniform standard of right behavior, and no society will get very far toward stability, let alone survival, without it.

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