Divorce rates, Political Conservativsm, Bible Belt and how they cooralate....

I read an article about a study done by Brown University on which cities and states have the highest divorce rates.  Because I have been raised to believe that the left wing liberal agenda of the democrats run against the sanctity of marriage and are proponents of gay marriage I was ready to see a map of blue states leading the charge in the rise of divorce rates. 

I was wrong.  And so I did a bunch of research and pulled together some interesting maps that might be a little un-nerving to the Evangelical Conservative Right Wingers.

Lets start with this.

Okay so if you note the scale at the bottom 'divorce rate per 1000 people', lighter means less, darker color means more.  I was astonished when California, New York and Michigan who are considered some of the most liberal states politically/socially had the lowest average.  There map seems to be a large dark area through the mid south and deep south of the country.  I started to wonder, wait isn't that the so called "Bible Belt"?  Then found this (below).... the red denotes the "Bible Belt". 

 

 

Interesting.

 

So that got me thinking about Evangelical Conservatives and how they hold "sanctity of marriage" as one of their political foundations they stand on when voting.  So I cross referenced these two maps with the map of Red and Blue states in the 2012 election. 

 

Hmmmmm.  Oh boy I was again hit with this conundrum.  It seams that the very people "voting" for candidates based on their definition of marriage and stand for "conservative" values don't seem to be living out those values in their own marriages.  In fact many of the blue states are actually lower in divorce rate than that of the red states!  As statistics can lie sometimes, I figured I would then cross reference this political map and bible belt map with a map showing the Religious Affiliation across the US.  This is where it gets extremely messy and if the Evangelical Conservatives are honest with themselves it gets somewhat hypocritical. 

So according to this map the states that we are seeing the highest average of divorces is definitely through the bible belt, but also where Evangelical churches are the predominant religious affiliation. 

Listen I consider myself a political conservative and an Evangelical so this research makes me sad.  I am also a visual learner so this puts it in context that I can easily see.  My conclusion is this, that social/political/religious conservatives don't seem to be holding their own marriages to the biblical standard they are holding others to, or saying they want our country to hold to.



 

Brennan Manning said it best when he said.
"The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle."

As Christians lets make our actions (marriages) speak louder than our blind support of political candidates.  Lets renew our commitment to OUR marriages and families, then the world will want we have.  Jesus. 

Blessings.

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