Part 4: Church Attendance and Marriage

The Harvard Human Flourishing Program study on divorce deserves deeper attention. A 50% reduction in divorce rates is a striking finding — and it raises an important question: why does church attendance have such a powerful effect on marriage? There are at least four overlapping reasons:

1. A High View of Marriage. Christianity teaches that marriage is not fundamentally a romantic relationship to be maintained as long as it is emotionally satisfying, but a covenant — a binding promise of lifelong fidelity. In an age when marriages are fragile and feelings are unsteady, the church’s teaching on the permanence of marriage creates space for love to truly flourish.

2. A Community of Marriages. The church provides something invaluable for flourishing marriages: a community of other marriages. When you are in a church, you see other couples navigating the same problems and conflicts you face. This normalizes struggle and provides perspective. And it creates natural relationships of accountability and support — brothers and sisters in the faith who are in the same boat with you and cheering you on.

3. Pastoral Counseling. One of the most practical gifts the church offers struggling couples is the care of a pastor who can serve as a third-party mediator: someone who does not take sides, but helps each spouse move toward forgiveness and reconciliation. Congregations empower their pastors to counsel and care for marriages.

4. Gospel Resources for Love and Forgiveness. Christianity uniquely provides resources for sacrificial love and forgiveness that is necessary for any marriage to survive. Every couple gets married, to some degree, under starry-eyed conditions in which the deep flaws of their spouse are hidden. Married life brings forth those flaws. In the end, marriage can only survive if the husband and wife realize the purpose of marriage is not happiness, but holiness, and the central problem in marriage is not a flawed spouse, but your own selfishness and blindness. That insight can began to heal the marriage.

The ultimate model and motivation for marital, sacrificial love is Christ, who gave himself for the church: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:25) A marriage shaped by this vision can endure and thrive through seasons of difficulty.