HAPPY MARRIAGE BEGINS AT CHURCH DOOR, BGSU STUDY REPORTS

Toledo Blade    April 14, 2007

By DAVID YONKE      BLADE RELIGION EDITOR

From 1980 to 1999, there were only 75 quantitative studies on religion and marriage or parenting. Since 1990, there have been approximately 300, . . .

The BGSU researchers said couples who attend services regularly are less likely to divorce - 44 percent compared to 60 percent of non-attenders.

Their research also indicates that religious couples are 50 percent less likely to hit or be hit by each other, according to Ms. Mahoney.

BOWLING GREEN - People who go to church regularly have a higher rate of

marital satisfaction and commitment, better communication and conflict resolution skills, and give their children more hugs and kisses than do others, according to the research of two Bowling Green State University professors.

Kenneth Pargament and Annette Mahoney, professors of psychology, gave an update in a lecture to several hundred people in the BGSU student union Tuesday afternoon. The report comes midway through a four-year study titled "Sacred Matters: The Spiritual Dimensions of Marital and Family Ties."

The pair are looking into how "a sense of sacredness" can affect 175 couples making the transition to parenthood by having their first child. The research is supported by a $1.2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Mr. Pargament, who joined the BGSU faculty in 1979, and Ms. Mahoney, who came to the university in 1994, have been conducting pioneering research in the scientific study of spirituality's impact on human beings.

Previous studies have included research on such topics as spirituality and its effect on mental health, mortality, and health and healing.

A 2005 study of college students, for example, showed that those who perceive their bodies to be "temples of a spirit" have healthier lifestyles, including less alcohol and drug use, better eating habits, and more regular exercise.

And church attendance has been proven to be a predictor of mortality, Mr. Pargament said. Caucasians who go to church one or more times a month live an average of seven years longer, while African-Americans add an average of 14 years to their lives by going to church regularly.

But spirituality can have a negative impact as well, he said. People who feel that an illness is the result of punishment from God, or that God has abandoned them, face an increased risk of dying.

The subject of spirituality and interpersonal relationships has been largely overlooked in academia, Ms. Mahoney said. From 1980 to 1999, there were only 75 quantitative studies on religion and marriage or parenting. Since 1990, there have been approximately 300, of which 70 percent referenced Mr. Pargament's work.

Yet despite the lack of extensive research, religion and spirituality are "pretty significant" factors in the lives of Americans, with 50 to 60 percent attending services at least once a month, Ms. Mahoney said.

She cited a comment from one interviewee to illustrate how important religion is to some people: "To me, it would be like being inside a room with no air, not to have God in a marriage," the woman said.

The BGSU researchers said couples who attend services regularly are less likely to divorce - 44 percent compared to 60 percent of non-attenders.

Their research also indicates that religious couples are 50 percent less likely to hit or be hit by each other, according to Ms. Mahoney.

At the same time, divorce is often more stressful to people who attend church regularly than to non-attenders.

"Equating the union of marriage with the union with God can be devastating for people going through a divorce," one researcher said in a 1985 study. "If the marriage has been a metaphor for union with God, then the obvious sequel is that the divorce symbolizes separation from God."

Mr. Pargament quoted another woman, interviewed for a 2001 study, whose child was diagnosed with autism as saying, "If there is a God looking out for us, he certainly is cruel."

The current BGSU study seeks to assess the "perceptions of sacredness" of new parents, asking them if they agree with such statements as: "I see evidence of God in nature and creation" (78 percent responded affirmatively); "I see God's presence in all of life" (75 percent); "I experience something more sacred in life than simply material existence" (76 percent), and "I see my life as a sacred journey" (55 percent).

The professors' longitudinal study, which involves a series of observations over a long period of time, includes both self-reporting by the couples and in-home interviews, questionnaires, and direct observations of marital and parent-child interactions at four points: the third trimester of pregnancy and then when the child is 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months old.

The study is showing that people "are motivated to preserve and protect the sacred" and "to invest their resources in the sacred," Mr. Pargament and Ms. Mahoney said.

But Ms. Mahoney added that "the research is still embryonic."

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