Marriage is a gift from God. But marriage is in a sad state in America today, and we all suffer because of it.

I read recently about the movie star Joan Crawford who was legendary in her promiscuity. As her rival Bette Davis once reportedly sneered about her, “She slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie.”

Apparently, in the miserable and difficult childhood of Lucille LeSouer (who later adopted the name Joan Crawford), there was a wound from the absence of her father, according to Shaun Considine’s book, Bette and Joan, which became the basis for the mini-series, The Feud.

Considine quotes someone else about Crawford’s childhood: “Being abandoned so often traumatized Joan…She spent the rest of her life looking for a father—in husbands, lovers, studio executives, and directors.” To this Considine adds, “When she found the ideal candidate, Joan felt safe, secure, validated. In time she expected them to leave, to reject her. When they didn’t, she grew suspicious, then resentful, and found ways to make them depart.” So sad.

So far from God’s design, which is one man, one woman for life. His prohibitions against sex outside of marriage are for our good.

A fascinating article in a recent Wall Street Journal (February 5-6, 2022), highlighted the findings of a study based on the marriages and many divorces among 50,000 women in the National Survey of Family Growth.

One can infer from the article’s headline that it’s best to avoid cohabitating before marriage: “Too Risky to Wed in Your 20s? Not If You Avoid Cohabiting First: Research shows that marrying young without ever having lived together with a partner makes for some of the lowest divorce rates.”

Brad Wilcox and Lyman Stone, the article’s authors, observe, “The idea that cohabitation is risky is surprising, given that a majority of young adults believe that living together is a good way to pretest the quality of your partners and your partnership.” But couples who live together before they wed “are less likely to be happily married and more likely to land in divorce court.”

Through the years, similar studies have found the same results: to prepare best for marriage, save sex for marriage. Even in the archives of the UCLA, they cite a 1990s study from the Family Research Center in Washington, D.C., which says:  “Other findings indicate that saving sex for marriage reduces the risk of divorce, and monogamous married couples are the most sexually satisfied Americans.” If you’re unfaithful before marriage, why should you be faithful after getting married?

In previous generations, cohabitation was viewed as more of a scandal. Of course, not all marriages were good by any means.

My dad used to tell a story where he and mom were playing bridge one day against another couple. The woman kept yelling and berating her partner at every turn.

Finally, dad asked her, “Are you two married?”

And she snapped, “Of course we are! Do you think I’d live in sin with an idiot like that?”— pointing to her henpecked husband. When I shared this anecdote with a friend, he thought that that story might discourage someone from considering marriage instead of cohabitation. Well, without proper preparation, bad marriages happen. (Sadly, sometimes even with preparation.)

I thank God that I have 42 years of empirical evidence that I married a saint. After all, my fantastic wife has put up with me for more than four decades. Thankfully, we spent more time preparing for the marriage than we did for the wedding.

I write this on Valentine’s Day 2022—when we celebrate love and romance. Christian author Bill Federer notes that the best historical evidence is that Valentine’s Day customs go back to a third century Christian leader, who fell afoul of the Roman Empire and was martyred on February 14, 269.

The reason for St. Valentine’s martyrdom was not only his rejection of Roman idolatry but also because he defied the emperor, who forbade men in the Roman army to marry. Writes Federer: “Roman Emperor Claudius II needed more soldiers to fight the invading Goths. He believed that men fought better if they were not married, so he banned traditional marriage in the military.”

But some of these soldiers wanted to be married, and Valentine secretly performed weddings for them. When the Roman leaders found out about this, he was arrested and sentenced to death. The jailer, who had a sick daughter, asked his prisoner, the holy man, to pray for his child. She got better, and the saint wrote her a short, encouraging note, signing it from “your Valentine.”

Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” That includes our relationships.

God’s design for marriage is for our good, and it helps spare people a lot of unnecessary unhappiness.

This article was originally published by JerryNewcombe.com.

Written by Dr. David J. Ayers

When I visit my family physician, he starts by checking my vitals. It’s amazing how critical are simple things like blood pressure, temperature, and pulse.

We social scientists know that vital signs matter in organized religion, too. There are a lot of details we can look at, but basics such as how many people identify with churches, whether they attend services regularly, or apply their faith to their daily lives, are awful important. Here is what we know: the vital signs of American Christianity are in serious decline.

Recently, I compared crucial vital signs for Americans aged 18 to 44, surveyed in the respected National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). I compared the data released in 2013 to the same survey released just six years later, in 2019. Here’s what the data show:

For both males and females, membership in Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant, and historically Black Protestant churches declined a lot. Meanwhile, those professing no religious faith—called “Nones” in sociological circles—rose sharply: from 26 percent to 38 percent among males, and from 22 percent to 28 percent among females. Within each of these three divisions of Protestantism, the percentages of both males and females who reported attending church every week or more declined quite a bit, while those who attended rarely or never increased. The percentages of both males and females who claimed that their faith is “very important” in their daily lives also sank in each of these Protestant groups.

Mainline Protestantism, especially, is on life support. In this survey and age group, the numbers went down one-fifth, and were only 12 percent in the latest NSFG. Among mainliners, only 20 percent of males and 28 percent of females went to church every week, 28 percent of males and 18 percent of females said they that they never go to church, and only 28 percent of males and 40 percent of females considered their faith to be very important. Optimistically, this means that less than 5 percent of Americans from 18-to-44 are actively committed to a Mainline Protestant church.

This is a double decline whammy. The numbers are dropping, and the commitment of those who remain is also falling among our young and early middle-aged adults. The future of American Protestantism is in steep decline.

What about Catholics? Their percentages have declined for males but not females, and they are holding at a little under one quarter of those 18 to 44. However, their church attendance levels edged downward for both males and females. In the last NSFG, less than one in five Catholic males, and a little over one in three females, attended Mass weekly. Those never or rarely going to Mass increased. And while the percentage of Catholic women in this age group who consider their faith “very important” has held steady at about half, males have declined somewhat in this category and are now down to less than one in three.

So, every major wing of American Christianity declined just in this latest six-year period. To make matters worse, these were the alarming vital signs well before the COVID-19 tsunami. By all accounts, church involvement has plummeted enormously since Spring 2020, and will struggle to revive to even close to these dismal 2019 levels. The only question is how much steeper the ongoing decline will be because of the pandemic, not whether there will be one.

This is not a problem that will only impact the survival of churches representing most of American Christianity. Committed religious faith has long been associated with numerous goods in American life, such as higher marriage and fertility rates, lower divorce, more charitable giving, and the vitality of religious organizations serving their local communities.

This is a loss for all of us.

The patient is gravely ill, but she is not dead. Many of us know, and are even part of, flourishing churches. Most of us are not “Nones” yet, and most of us who are not are professing Christians.

Churches should certainly be doing outreach, but more than that, we need to do a lot more “in-reach.” That is, we need to aggressively reach out to those who claim to be part of our church families but lack commitment, to gather with the church week by week, and to live consistently with the faith we profess. If our commitment is lackluster, how can our churches recapture the Nones? Why would they even want to join us?

Now is a great time to start. Go to church this Sunday, connect with the people, approach God in prayer and worship, soak up the sermon, reach out to your brothers and sisters, encourage them by your presence and care. Do what faithful Christians have done for over 2,000 years.

See you in church.

This article was originally published by the Institute for Faith & Freedom, where Dr. David J. Ayers is the Fellow for Marriage and Family. His latest book is “Christian Marriage: A Comprehensive Introduction.”