A Confederacy of Divorcées

[Rhyfelwyr]

I was going to say something, then read the article and realised that it has already said what I was thinking:

"In his own research, Stokes found that conservative Protestants who attend church regularly are significantly less likely to have gotten divorced than nonreligious peers.

“The pattern that pops out in this data is that when you look at those who attend church weekly, their divorce rates are the same as other high-attending Christians,” Stokes said. “Nominal Christians are probably getting the community norms but aren’t in a social structure to live the norms out.”"

The bolded bit sums it up. In religious communities, "nominal Christians" (for our purposes, by that I mean those not regularly attending church, in line with the article's definition) probably see their religious peers getting married young, having kids, and then because they live in a culture where marriage is so idealised and is seen as a major life goal or sign of maturity, they want to follow suit and do the same. Of course, once they are actually married, they lack all the advantages that their religious peers have in keeping their marriage solid - a supportive church community, Biblical guidance, God working in them so that they will follow his ways, etc...