A newly released analysis of recent marriage data shows that couples who attend weekly church services have significantly lower rates of divorce than couples who do not. The study further confirms what numerous previous studies have shown, indicating that a shared faith in a higher power and the communal life that churches provide help to strengthen marital bonds.

Writing for the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), Ohio State University sociologist Jesse Smith laid out his findings after analyzing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, looking at marriages from 2009 to 2018. He found that, particularly for couples who marry young, church attendance has a significant impact on keeping them united. “[F]or people who married at 21 or younger and did not go to church, over half were divorced by 2018,” he reported. “For weekly attenders, this proportion goes down to just over a third.”

For couples who married at older ages, Smith found that the differences were smaller. Those who married between the ages of 22 and 25 had “a 22% divorce probability for those who didn’t attend weekly, but only 14% for those who did.” For those who married at age 26 or older, the data showed no difference in divorce rates by weekly church attendance.

“The takeaway is that going to church can help keep marriage on a steady path, and that it helps the most for those who marry at young ages when that path might be the bumpiest,” Smith posited.

Other studies bolster Smith’s findings. As observed by University of Virginia sociologist and IFS Senior Fellow Brad Wilcox, General Social Survey data shows that regular church attendees are most likely to be married (56%), compared to those who occasionally attend (44%) and those who rarely if ever attend (39%). Wilcox further notes that “Americans who regularly attend church are between about 30 and 50 percent less likely to divorce. They are also about 15 percentage points more likely to say they are happily married, compared to secular couples.”

Still more evidence has come from highly secular institutions that are by no means pro-Christian or even pro-marriage. In 2018, Harvard University released the results of a massive 14-year study involving 66,000 participants, revealing that “regular religious service attendance is associated with 50% lower divorce rates in later life.”

Wilcox points to three main reasons why regular church attendance is so vital to strong marriages. He describes how churches reinforce biblical “norms” like fidelity and forgiveness that are critical for spouses to practice in order for their marriages to thrive. These norms are often preached from the pulpit and are witnessed to by fellow churchgoers, which help to ingrain them into couples and protect them from landmines like affairs or alcohol addictions.

Another arena identified by Wilcox is the “networks” that churches provide to married couples. These networks provide friendships and intergenerational mentors for couples to interact with, providing crucial resources like advice to navigate inevitable challenges that arise in spousal relationships and parenting, as well as practical help like babysitting and even financial assistance when needed.

A third vital sphere Wilcox highlighted is the “nomos” that churches provide to couples — the “collective endeavor that religion affirms through rituals and beliefs, rooting individuals to a sacred moral order.” This gives couples the perspective of the reality of God, who is the essential “third” person within the two spouses’ marriage. This trinitarian vision of marriage has been articulated by past theologians, who have expounded on the integral marital perspective that a couple’s ultimate reliance on God instead of each other frees them from unrealistic expectations of their spouse and grounds them in the trust that God is the true North Star of their marriage.

As America’s marriage and birth rates continue to plummet within the wider culture, Smith zeroes in on church attendance as key to sparking a reversal. “If we want a culture of young families, a key ingredient is to foster a culture of faith,” he concludes.