Brandon Sutton

Social scientists have found that evangelical family men who attend church regularly are the most loving husbands and the most engaged fathers. Compared to the average American family man, evangelical men are • More loving to their wives • More engaged with their children--3.5 more hours/wk than secular men • Lowest rate of divorce--35 % lower than secular men • Have the lowest rates of domestic violence of any group in the US. One of the nation’s top marriage researchers is a sociologist named Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia, and he wrote an article in the New York Times saying “It turns out that the happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives. Fully 73 percent of wives who hold conservative gender values and attend religious services regularly with their husbands have high-quality marriages.” Wilcox then turns to his secular colleagues and says: “Academics need to cast aside their prejudices about religious conservatives and evangelicals in particular. Conservative Protestant married men with children are consistently the most active and expressive fathers and the most emotionally engaged husbands.” This is not a pep talk from a religious leader. These are the results of rigorous empirical testing. They are evidence based findings showing that Christianity does have the power to reconcile the sexes, as I put it in the subtitle to my book. We should be confident about bringing into the secular arena to debunk secular narrative--and also into the church to help men to see that if they follow God's word, they will have happier marriages and families. (sources are in The Toxic War on Masculinity)