STUDY: Can divorce turn your child into an atheist?

Study finds correlation between divorce and non-religious.

If you want your kid to be an atheist, get divorced. That's the result of a new study from the Public Religion Research Institute. The study evaluated the correlation between divorce and children who grow up to become non-religious.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - A new study from the Public Religion Research Institute reveals that divorce has a major impact on whether kids turn out religious or not when they become adults. The study found that children from divorced parents are much less likely to grow up and be religious.

Divorce rates reached about 50 percent in the 1980s. Since then, children from those divorces have grown up. At the same time, the number of people who are religiously unaffiliated has risen from 5 percent in 1972 to 25 percent today.

There is a correlation between the two. Thirty-five percent of children who come from divorced families have grown up to be non-religious compared to twenty-three percent non-religious from married households.

The conclusion is that divorce makes it 12 percent more likely a child will be non-religious.

The "nones" as they are often called, cited three major reasons for their departure from the faith.

Nineteen percent said they left due to clergy abuse scandals.

Twenty-nine percent said they left because of their church's teaching on homosexuality.

And sixty percent said they simply didn't believe anymore.

The impact of these nones will be felt. Some will become politicians and as 25 percent of the population, they will become a significant voting bloc. The nation will become increasingly secularized and even more distant from its Christian roots.

The epidemic of divorce, which has always been a problem since the 80s, clearly has a major impact on American society. And now it's time to reap the harvest.

---

'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'

Copyright 2021 - Distributed by Catholic Online