Couples who share religious practices tend to be happier than those who don't, study says
By Donna St. George
Thursday, August 12, 2010; B01




African American couples are more likely than others to share core religious beliefs and pray together at home -- factors that have been linked to greater happiness in marriages and relationships, according to a study released Tuesday.

In what is described as the first major look at relationship quality and religion across racial and ethnic lines, researchers report a significant link between relationship satisfaction and religious factors for whites, Hispanics and African Americans. The study appears in this month's issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

True to the aphorism, couples who pray together stay together, said study co-author W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, and "African American couples are more likely to have a shared spiritual identity as a couple."

The study found that 40 percent of blacks in marriages and live-in relationships who attended religious services regularly had a partner who did the same, compared with 29 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 29 percent of Hispanics.

White couples, in general, reported greater relationship satisfaction than other groups, presumably because of income and educational advantages, the study says. But the racial gap lessens when religious similarities come into the mix.

"What this study suggests is that religion is one of the key factors narrowing the racial divide in relationship quality in the United States," Wilcox said.

The strongest difference-maker for couples was spiritual activities such as praying or reading the Bible at home. "Praying together as a couple is something that is very intimate for people who are religious," Wilcox said. "It adds another level of closeness to a relationship."

Such findings bear out in the four-year marriage of Sade and Charles Dennis, who live in Bowie. "Our relationship with the Lord has definitely been the glue that has held it together," said Sade, 34, an author and artist.

Sometimes the couple prays by phone as Charles commutes to his job as an accountant, or as Sade is just waking up and Charles reads her a devotional from his BlackBerry. At times of disagreement, when one can't see the other's point of view, one will interrupt and say: "Let's just pray," Sade said.

"Prayer is the great reconciler," she said. The Dennises attend monthly fellowships as part of a couples ministry at First Baptist Church of Glenarden.

In the whirlwind of daily life, prayer is also a moment to connect, she said. "We pray over every important milestone," she said. "We just really feel that God is the third person in this marriage. It's me, Charles and the Lord."

Cheryl J. Sanders, senior pastor at Third Street Church of God in Northwest Washington and a professor of Christian ethics at Howard University, said that with marriage in apparent decline, it is important to know what works in a relationship. "I welcome that kind of information," she said.

Deenice Galloway, 54, said faith has helped her marriage span 30 years, as she and her husband have raised two children in Bowie. "You have to use your faith to work through a whole lot of ups and downs and difficult moments," she said. "It makes it a whole lot easier."

Still, the study shows that religion did not have positive effects for all.

When one partner attends services regularly and the other does not, relationship satisfaction is lower.

Two nonreligious partners are more content together than partners with different practices, the study says.

"When couples do things together -- whether it's bird-watching, playing tennis or attending church -- they tend to do better," Wilcox said, and "when they don't share these activities, particularly when they are important, couples are more likely to suffer."

Still, experts such as Frank Fincham, director of the Family Institute at Florida State University, question whether the "active ingredient" that leads some couples to report greater satisfaction is really faith-based.

Fincham suggests maybe it's not religion but something else about the people who embrace it, or some other activity that couples do together.

The study's results are based on a recent analysis of a 2006 U.S. survey of 1,387 adults ages 18 to 59. Nearly 90 percent were married, and the others were living together.

The authors noted limitations of the study, such as relying on interviews with one partner rather than both. They controlled for income, age and education but not for other factors that might lead to relationship satisfaction, such as personality traits.

The Rev. James E. Terrell, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Northwest Washington, said that among his members he has observed shared beliefs as a source of marital unity.

"People seem to do better when they think there is a spiritual aspect to their marriage," Terrell said. That includes services and praying but also "seeking the Lord in terms of resolving problems and differences," he said. "Without a doubt, it helps to keep a marriage together."

By JOHN A. MURRAY Last month, the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) unveiled a new brand strategy to address America's needs, as well as a name change to "the Y." After surveying "a cross section of Americans to learn more about the most pressing issues and challenges facing their communities today," the Y had found that only 51% of Americans were optimistic about the future while 49% were not.

"This is a very important, exciting time for the Y," said Neil Nicoll, president and CEO of YMCA of the USA. "For 160 years, we've focused on changing lives for the better… . People are concerned about the problems facing their communities. Like the Y, they understand that lasting change will only come about if we work together to improve our health, strengthen our families and support our neighbors. Our hope is that more people will choose to engage with the Y."

Problems? Change? Hope? This "new brand strategy" is a puzzle. While the Y's written mission still declares putting, "Christian principles into practice through programs," the newly rolled-out strategy does not mention the change and hope found in Christ.

So, is this organization still the YMCA? Or is this a new brand under the title of the Y, no longer with an emphasis on the "C"?

The Y's new key areas of focus—youth development, healthy living and social responsibility—are no different from the ones YMCA founder Sir George Williams set out to address when he founded the first chapter in London in 1844. What is missing today is the original mission's answer to these needs: the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Unbeknownst to most, there is much more to the YMCA than the Village People impart to us in their disco-era ditty. The organization's original motto—taken straight from Jesus' prayer for believers—reflected its goal to cross denominational racial, and social barriers: "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." (John 17:21)

Men like Williams and those who followed for decades to come sought to develop the whole person—mind, body and spirit. Thus, to the YMCA's founders, the 160 years of what Mr. Nicoll recently called "changing lives for the better" began with the transforming power found in Jesus Christ.

And herein lies the challenge that began when the YMCA moved away from its evangelical mission in the 1930s and continues today—what to do with the C in the YMCA. Speaking to the national council of the YMCA in the 1970s, evangelist Billy Graham said that to change society was to "change men's hearts first." Take, for example, the conversion experience of Cornell student and future Nobel Peace Prize winner John Mott.

In regard to the YMCA's role in Mott's life, historian Clarence P. Shedd noted that Mott had come to Cornell "to get away from religion." But upon hearing a YMCA-sponsored talk at Cornell by famed Cambridge athlete Kynaston Studd in 1886, three sentences forever changed Mott's life: "Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God."

After graduating from Cornell in 1888, Mott was named executive president of the YMCA. During this time, Christian orthodoxy began to disappear from the curriculum and administration of American universities. Yet it was strongly maintained in the undergraduate body through the YMCA and Mott's work. His inspiration and leadership, and the Intercollegiate Movement of the YMCA fostered a missionary zeal at home and abroad, influencing new generations of young men and women to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as documented in Mott's 1905 book, "The Evangelization of the World in this Generation."

In his book "The Soul of the American University," Notre Dame professor George Marsden demonstrates the impact of the YMCA in an era when more than 3,000 of the American missionaries who went aboard from 1899-1915 were products of the YMCAs and YWCAs. "By 1921, the YMCAs reached their numerical peak with 731 chapters on the approximately 1,000 [college] campuses in the country; they had enrolled well over 90,000 members, or about one in seven, in a student population of about 600,000."

Regarding youth development, healthy living and reaching out to neighbors, Mott's work fostered "equality, justice and mutual respect"—which was later noted at his Nobel Prize Ceremony—as he encouraged Christian schools, hospitals and businesses abroad. Traveling to 68 countries from Europe to Asia, to the Far and Near East—Mott served as a Christian diplomat and dedicated missionary to the world—the work of which led to his Nobel Peace Prize in 1946.

Reflecting on the example of John Mott, I believe that it will take more than a brand strategy and a name change to meet our generation's needs today. I cannot help but remember the generational challenge issued by another Nobel Prize winner—Alexander Solzhenitsyn—to Harvard graduates in 1978:

"The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer... We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life."

That is why the "C" needs to remain in the YMCA.

Mr. Murray is headmaster of Fourth Presbyterian School in Potomac, Md.