A Christian Resource

By Leonardo Blair, Christian Post Reporter | Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Religious marriages are slightly less likely to end in divorce because religion tends to motivate less cohabitation, a known risk factor for divorce, a new research brief from the Institute of Family Studies suggests. But it’s not the only reason.

The brief, which crunches data from more than 53,000 women ages 15 to 49 from the National Survey of Family Growth from 1995 to 2019, shows how age at the time of marriage is also a factor. And depending on when marriage happens for a woman, the impact of religion on divorce can have no effect.

“Without controls for age at marriage or an indicator for premarital cohabitation, women with a religious upbringing do have slightly lower likelihoods of divorce,” IFS researchers Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox wrote.

They found that the annual divorce rate among married women with a nonreligious upbringing is around 5%. It was 4.5% for religious women.

While the difference is clearest among Catholic and Mainline Protestant women, it was less clear for Evangelical Protestant women.

“Overall, if we control for basic socioeconomic background and a woman’s educational career trajectory, the typical marriage of a woman with a religious upbringing is about 10% less likely to end in divorce within the first 15 years of marriage than the typical marriage of a woman with a non-religious upbringing,” they explained.

Researchers stated that when women go from being single directly into a marriage without cohabiting, they tend to have lower divorce rates than women with the same religious background and age but married after cohabiting.

“This was especially true for religious women who married before age 25. For women marrying after age 30, the relationship seems to flip,” the researchers explained.

However, the estimates for women marrying after 30 were seen as less reliable because researchers only observed women until age 44 in some data while observing women up to age 49 in others.

“Women who married past age 30 had fewer years of marriage included in the analysis. But particularly for youthful marriages before age 20 or in the early 20s, cohabiting before marriage appears to be a major risk factor for divorce,” Stone and Wilcox report.

While the IFS researchers couldn’t conclude how religion can foster a higher likelihood of stable marriages, they presented three possible explanations.

“Religion might induce people to ‘make lemons out of lemonade,’ it might give people institutional or community support, or it might positively alter the quality of romantic pairings,” they wrote.

The report suggests that religion contributes to marriage stability because it changes the experience of marriage and may change who women marry in important ways.

“Religion could alter the potential spouses to which women are exposed. Via church communities, religious women may be able to access a larger and more marriage-friendly pool of potential spouses,” the researchers said.

“Second, religion could alter the criteria that women have for selecting partners. Knowing that cohabitation is disfavored and desiring the companionship of a committed union, religious women might more actively pursue ‘husband material’ partners earlier in life than other women,” they added.

Researchers noted that “religion might alter the dynamics between partners in important ways.”

“Religious women might look for spouses who share values, beliefs, or practices that are important for union stability,” the report states. “Sharing these values might reduce the potential for conflict down the road.”

Suspected ISIS-linked extremists beheaded a pastor, handed his severed head to his wife and forced her to carry the head to the police station in the southern African country of Mozambique, according to reports.

The jihadist militants decapitated the pastor, a resident of Nova Zambezia area in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, last Wednesday, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern said.

The killing was also reported by the Daily Mail but the pastor’s name has not been disclosed.

Zimbabwe Daily also reported on the murder, saying the pastor’s wife told police that “suspected Islamic State-linked insurgents intercepted the pastor in a field, decapitated him and then handed over his head to her and ordered her to inform the authorities.”

Earlier this month, the U.K.-based watchdog organization Human Rights Watch reported that an armed group in Cabo Delgado province called Al Sunnah wa Jama’ah, also known as Al-Shabab, had forced kidnapped women and girls to “marry” their fighters.

Other women and girls held captive had been sold to foreign fighters for between $600 and $1,800, according to the report. Some abducted foreign women and girls had been released after their families paid a ransom.

Last November, ISIS-linked militants beheaded over 50 people, including women and children, and abducted others in raids in the Miudumbe and Macomia districts of the Cabo Delgado province.

The day after the pastor’s murder, Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi claimed that the number of jihadist attacks had decreased this year after Rwanda and neighboring countries helped tackle the radical Islamic jihadist insurgency.

The oil-rich Cabo Delgado province, a coastal region on the Indian Ocean, has suffered an emergence of a jihadi movement that has displaced thousands and killed hundreds since 2017. In 2018, the terror group pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. In 2019, the Islamic State confirmed the group as an affiliate and has claimed responsibility for some attacks.

The Al-Shabab group in the majority-Christian country of Mozambique is not believed to have any connection with the deadly Somalia-based terror group with the same name.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), the Cabo Delgado province had suffered from at least 776 “organized violence events” since 2017, and as of January 2021, 2,578 “fatalities from organized violence” and 1,305 “fatalities from civilian targeting.” 

The United Nations estimates more than 745,000 people are internally displaced in Mozambique due to Islamic extremism since 2017.

Mozambique also ranks as the 45th worst country for Christian persecution on Open Doors USA’s 2021 World Watch List. This 2021 report is the first time the country has been listed on Open Doors’ annual list.

Extremist attacks have killed many Christians, and terrorists have burned churches and schools in the country.

By Michael Gryboski, Christian Post Reporter | Sunday, December 19, 2021

Throughout the extensive history of the Church, there have been numerous events of lasting significance.

Each week brings anniversaries of impressive milestones, unforgettable tragedies, amazing triumphs, memorable births, notable deaths and everything in between.

Some of the events drawn from over 2,000 years of history might be familiar, while other happenings might be previously unknown by most people.

This week — Dec. 19 through Dec. 25 — marks the anniversary of the Methodist Church’s “Christmas Conference,” the election of Pope Pius IV, and the conversion of a pioneering Iriah preacher to Methodism.

By Michael Gryboski, Christian Post Reporter | Sunday, December 19, 2021

A group of church leaders in Jerusalem have issued a joint statement calling for greater protection for Christians living in the Middle East, as well as a special cultural heritage zone for Christians in Jerusalem.

In a statement issued earlier this week, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem spoke with concern about the rising trend of violence against Christians in the Holy Land.

“Since 2012 there have been countless incidents of physical and verbal assaults against priests and other clergy, attacks on Christian churches, with holy sites regularly vandalized and desecrated, and ongoing intimidation of local Christians who simply seek to worship freely and go about their daily lives,” they stated.

“These tactics are being used by such radical groups in a systematic attempt to drive the Christian community out of Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land.”

The church leaders went on to note that while they appreciated the Israeli government’s commitment “to uphold a safe and secure home for Christians in the Holy Land,” they believed that this commitment was being undermined by “local politicians, officials and law enforcement agencies to curb the activities of radical groups.”

“The principle that the spiritual and cultural character of Jerusalem’s distinct and historic quarters should be protected is already recognized in Israeli law with respect to the Jewish Quarter,” continued the church leaders.

“Yet radical groups continue to acquire strategic property in the Christian Quarter, with the aim of diminishing the Christian presence, often using underhanded dealings and intimidation tactics to evict residents from their homes, dramatically decreasing the Christian presence, and further disrupting the historic pilgrim routes between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.”

The church leadership called on political authorities in Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories to dialogue with them, to deal with the radical groups, and to work on the “creation of a special Christian cultural and heritage zone to safeguard the integrity of the Christian Quarter in Old City Jerusalem.”

The World Council of Churches’ acting General Secretary, the Rev. Ioan Sauca, issued a statement on Thursday in support of the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem.

“Recognizing the gravity of the threat accelerating the already tragically steep decline in the Christian presence, the WCC strongly supports the church leaders’ call for an urgent dialogue with the political authorities of Israel, Palestine and Jordan with a view to addressing the challenges posed by radical groups and to protecting and supporting the Christian community,” Sauca said.

“The Christians of the Holy Land must be respected and valued as part of both the heritage and future of the region, and assured the same rights as others and protections appropriate to a threatened minority, for which the political authorities of the region are both legally and morally responsible.”

The statement comes as Israel faces allegations of discrimination for not easing a travel ban for Christian pilgrims seeking to visit the country during the Christmas season.

Recently, Israel eased a restriction on travel due to the omicron variant of COVID-19 for Jewish individuals seeking the “Birthright” program, however, they maintained the ban for non-Jewish Christian pilgrims.

“Racist discrimination should never be accepted in any way,” said Wadie Abunassar, a spokesman and adviser to churches in the Holy Land, as reported by The Associated Press. “I urge the Israeli authorities to treat all those who want to visit the country equally without any discrimination between religion.”