Barna Divorce Statistics

George Barna was born in Princeton, New Jersey as a Catholic, but later converted to evangelical Christianity. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from Boston College and 2 Master’s Degrees from Rutgers University. He has also completed a doctorate from Dallas Baptist University. The Barna Group founded by him is a market research firm.

Barna Divorce Statistics of various denominations

Those evangelical Christian groups that are not related to any specific denomination are called by Barna as non-denominational. The members of this group are generally fundamentalist in their theological beliefs.

Group	Percentage of total who have been divorced
Lutherans and Catholics	21 percent each
Mormons	24 percent
Mainline Protestants	25 percent
Baptists	29 percent
Non-denominational	34 percent

The Barna Report suggested that –

• Agnostics and atheists have the least divorce rate of all groups
• Mainline Christians have a low divorce rate
• Conservative Protestant Christians have a high divorce rate

From the divorce statistics of various denominations, Barna challenged the concept that churches offer a life-changing support and truly practical approach for marriage.

Religion	Percentage of total who have been divorced
Atheists and Agnostics	21 percent
Other Christians	24 percent
Born-again Christians	27 percent
Jews	30 percent

Barna Divorce Statistics as per age groups

Name of Age Group	Range	Percent that have been divorced
Baby Boomers	33 to 52 years	34 percent
Builders	53 to 72 years	37 percent
Seniors	72 years and above	18 percent

Other Divorce Stats

Some other findings of the Barna Group regarding the divorce statistics as per the region of the United States are as follows –

Region	Percentage divorced
North East	19 percent
West	26 percent
South and Midwest	27 percent each

During August 1997, the Barna Group made a survey of 601 senior Protestant pastors. The conclusion was that 95 percent of these were married. Just 13 percent of these had ever experienced a divorce procedure. It was also found that out of the senior pastors only 3 percent were divorced and not remarried.

The Barna Group also studied the people in the United States as per their race and arrived at the following conclusion –

Race	Percentage of people divorced
Asian	8 percent
Hispanics	20 percent
African-Americans	22 percent
Whites	27 percent

George Barna is of the opinion that the presence of a plethora of divorces has altered the young people. He revealed that one of the most remarkable results of the survey of their group was that when they asked teenagers to disclose their top intentions for the future, the reply was that they desired to get married and maintain the same partner for the whole life.

It has been recorded that the Barna Research Group selected 3,854 individuals who belonged to 48 continental states. It was found that 25 percent of these individuals had gone through the divorce procedure minimum once.

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