Attending religious services predictive of fidelity

A new study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family reveals that attendance at religious services predicts marital fidelity.

Led by David C. Atkins and Deborah E. Kessel of the Fuller Theological Seminary, the study explores how various dimensions of religious life, including prayer, closeness to God, faith, and religious activities related to infidelity.

Religious service attendance was the only unique, religious predictor of infidelity. Prayer, importance of religiousness, and strong reported faith were not predictors.

The authors believe that that attendance likely implies prevention of infidelity in the sense that it is a shared activity between spouses. Attending services can create a strong network of relationships within the church, synagogue, or mosque that can provide social support to the spouses. Also, attending services means that an individual is hearing religious teaching on marital fidelity and the general importance of marriage.

“Our study focuses the spotlight on religious service attendance with respect to this important aspect of marital life” the authors conclude. “It opens the door for a host of questions about why attendance might have this special association.”

The participants for this study were drawn from the 1998 General Social Survey (GSS) conducted by the National Opinion Research Center. The surveys consisted of structured, face-to-face interviews with questions related to religion and spirituality.

Source: Wiley

   

• barakn - Apr 10, 2008
  • Rank: 2 / 5 (4)
  If you are seen smooching a woman in some restaurant and then later you go to church with a different woman that you identify as your wife, it's obvious you're cheating. Since your wife is there at church, they can approach her and tell her you're cheating. So you don't cheat. Your fellow church members are basically a community of spies.
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• gregb - Apr 10, 2008
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  This article does not rise to the level of PhysOrg, which after all is a community of scientists. Where is the quantitative reporting? How significant was the effect? How many subjects in the study? How did they correct for the very common self-reporting biases? As written, there is no content worth reporting. OK for USA Today,...
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• dse471 - Apr 10, 2008
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  Correlation does not imply causation.
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• gopher65 - Apr 11, 2008
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  Keep in mind that they mentioned in the article that the level of religious commitment, belief in God(s), prayer, and self-reported level of faith had no bearing on the results. Only church attendance made any difference.
  
  As they point out in the article, the most likely cause of this is the fact that the spouses are actually doing a regular activity together. They build a similar social network, which not only keeps them from being able to spend time with other people, it also acts in the fashion that barakn indicated (people are naturally curious about their friends and their lives, and people love to stick their noses into other people's problems).
  
  Now what these researchers need to do is to find out whether belonging to a Bowling League or an Astronomy Club has the same effect. I suspect it would. Communication and similar interests are what keep people together. It doesn't matter whether those interests centre around a church or a book club.
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• robbscholl - Apr 11, 2008
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  just another good reason not to attend church sevices
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• GoelandJaune - Apr 11, 2008
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  It could be slightly more subtle... For instance attendance of church may be a strong indicator that faith is put into practice. These individuals who are translating their faith into pratice, can also be more likely to put their marital faithfulness into practice. Both imply to value a given relationship, and to translate it into pratical and constraining actions...
  In addition to that : attending a church is attending a social group holding certain beliefs and values. This is much less likely to be true for other casual social groups (Bowling League or an Astronomy Club). And incidentally, it happens that beliefs and values are probably involved in virtually all our actions. So I would be surprised if you could find the same level of correlation for other social groups.
  
  No need for any spy here...
  And no "other good reason" not to attend church. Just a study which need to be further developped in order to bring anything of real significance...
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