Responding to Jehovah's Witnesses

Do not deny the study. Do not wave it away. This is a real piece of sociological research in a top-three journal, and an apologist who dismisses it loses all credibility in the first exchange. Instead, engage it on three specific points that the study itself makes. First: the unit of analysis is county-level, not individual-level or congregation-level. Second: the authors' own proposed mechanism is early marriage — conservative Protestant communities encourage early marriage to avoid premarital sex, and early marriage is a well-documented risk factor for divorce across all populations. Third: the study does not — and cannot — measure Jehovah's Witness marriages directly, because JWs were not a variable in the county-level demographic data. Once you have conceded the finding and shown the scope, the conversation can move to whether low JW divorce rates are a like-for- like comparison (they are not — see the statistical-artifact argument). The seed you plant is that engaging studies honestly is a Berean discipline, and that the Watchtower rarely does this when the study cuts the other way.

I am not waving it away. I am taking it more seriously than most people do. The full citation is Glass and Levchak, American Journal of Sociology 117:4 (2012) — "Red States, Blue States, and Divorce: Understanding the Impact of Conservative Protestantism on Regional Variation in Divorce Rates." It is a genuine finding and I accept it: counties with higher conservative Protestant density do have higher divorce rates. What I want to know is whether you have read the paper itself, because the authors give their own explanation, and it is not what you might expect.

Early marriage. Conservative Protestant communities encourage early marriage because they want young people to avoid premarital sex. Early marriages — at any religious affiliation, for any reason — have substantially higher dissolution rates than later marriages. The study shows that early marriage is the dominant mechanism driving the county-level correlation. That is the authors' own conclusion, in their own words. So the finding is real, but the cause is demographic and behavioural, not doctrinal.

Agreed — the outcome is real. But now the question changes from "what does Protestant teaching produce" to "what does early-marriage culture produce." And that is a much narrower claim. Reformed confessional Protestants in Boston or Sydney or Edinburgh, who marry in their late twenties, are not in the Glass-Levchak dataset in any meaningful way. The Bible Belt is a specific regional and demographic phenomenon, not a summary of global Protestantism.

The Glass and Levchak study did not include Jehovah's Witnesses as a variable. It measured county-level conservative Protestant density against county-level divorce rates. JW divorce rates come from entirely different sources — mostly internal Watchtower reports and Pew data — and they are not directly comparable. Before we compare them, we need to ask whether they are measuring the same thing. There is a separate issue about how JW divorce rates are calculated, which I would like to raise next, because members who leave the religion rather than divorce are not counted in the denominator.

No — I have already conceded the study's finding. Bible Belt divorce rates are higher. That is not an excuse, that is an admission. What I am doing is reading the study carefully enough to know what it actually shows and what it does not. That is the Berean discipline Paul commends in Acts 17:11: examining the scriptures daily to see whether the things said were so. It applies to sociological claims as well as to biblical ones. Have you ever been encouraged at the Kingdom Hall to read a study the Watchtower cites, from the original source?

I claim what the study's authors claim: that in counties with a large share of conservative Protestants, divorce rates are higher, and the dominant mechanism is early marriage. That is all. It does not prove that Protestant teaching causes divorce. It does not prove that the Bible Belt represents global Christianity. It does not prove that any particular denomination has higher or lower rates — county-level data cannot do that. And it says nothing about Jehovah's Witnesses one way or the other. The study deserves to be read with exactly the rigour Jesus commands in Matthew 7:16 — by its fruit, yes, but the fruit has to actually be attributable to the tree you are judging.

The finding is real: counties with higher conservative-Protestant density do show higher county-level divorce rates. But notice what the study is and is not measuring. "Conservative Protestant" is a sociological category — it lumps together Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, charismatic non-denominationals, and others. It is not a doctrinal category, and it does not pick out any specific tradition's teaching. Glass and Levchak's own explanation for the correlation is the early-marriage mechanism: conservative Protestant communities encourage early marriage to avoid premarital sex, and statistically, marriages contracted before age 22 have higher dissolution rates regardless of religion. The study measured county-level demographics, not any individual's marriage and not any specific denomination's teaching. Treating a county average as a verdict on a doctrinal tradition is what sociologists call the ecological fallacy — it confuses what is true of an aggregate with what is true of its members. The honest reading of Glass and Levchak is: early marriage is a real driver of dissolution, and conservative Protestant communities should think hard about that. It is not: "Bible-believing Christianity produces broken marriages."

I would engage any study the same way — including studies the Watchtower cites. The "loophole" is the authors' own conclusion, on page after page of their paper. If a study's own mechanism contradicts the headline use a polemicist makes of it, that is not a loophole — that is what honest reading looks like. And it is worth asking: what would it take for you to read a study the Watchtower cites, from the original source, to check whether the headline matches the body of the paper? Because that same discipline is what I am offering here.

Read Glass and Levchak, "Red States, Blue States, and Divorce" (American Journal of Sociology 117:4, 2012), at least the abstract, discussion and conclusion, so you can honestly say you have read it. Then write down in your own words what it does and doesn't show: the unit is the county, not the individual or the congregation; the authors' own mechanism is early marriage; and Jehovah's Witnesses were not a variable. Learn to explain the ecological fallacy in one sentence. Read Acts 17:11 and Matthew 7:16. Practise conceding the finding aloud before you narrow it. Rehearse the "the JW rate still beats the Bible Belt" reply, and refuse a numbers duel at the door.