Why the decline of marriage is driving America’s faith crisis

By J.P. De Gance, Op-ed contributor Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Faith didn’t collapse in America over the last 40 years because of secularism’s inevitable march or the triumph of reason. It collapsed because of marriage’s demise.

A recent survey from Pew Research Center suggests that the long decline of religion in America may have slowed or stopped. But unless we understand what drove the decline in the first place, any recovery is likely to be short-lived.

As founder of Communio, a national ministry helping churches strengthen marriages and families, I’ve gathered over 150,000 surveys of churchgoers in recent years.

A trend that stands out across denominations is quite clear — the family of origin of those who sit in the pews. Data shows that our upbringing shapes our worldview — moral, religious, and political. Those under 60 in church are far more likely to have grown up in a continuously married home than their non-churchgoing peers.

Since 2008, less than half of all adults in America grew up in an intact married family. Yet the Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships found that 74% of churchgoers under 30 grew up in a married home with their biological parents.

The pattern is even clearer among men. Of churchgoing single men born in 1999, 81% were raised in married homes — the same as married church-going men born in 1964. Fewer young men are in church today because far fewer grew up in intact families.

Scripture tells us that parents are to teach God’s commandments to their children. When children are not raised in married homes, there are fewer parents present to pass on that faith. Many miss the experience of an earthly father’s love, and so are less likely to understand the love of a heavenly one.

In short, faith follows family. 

The married, intact family began declining in the 1960s. About a generation later, religious non-affiliation began to rise as those children reached adulthood. Social scientists call this generational succession, where each generation is less religious than the last. Marriage and family trends began to level off between 2008 and 2015, likely influencing today’s slowdown in religious decline that Pew recorded.

If this hypothesis is accurate, we would expect other factors shaped by our family of origin to show up as differences between those who attend church and those who do not.

Harvard economist Raj Chetty found that having continuously married parents predicts future economic mobility. Even children raised in single-parent homes benefit when they grow up in communities where married households are more common.

Stable married families do not just help their own children; they shape the neighborhood around them. Better norms, stronger schools, and more adult support do not stay inside one home. When those supports weaken, the consequences spread. Marriage isn’t just privately beneficial; it plays a part in shaping healthy communities.

America can’t keep seeing the home broken and expect the church to stay strong. Over time, our culture has separated things that were once connected — sex from marriage, marriage from parenting, and parenting from lasting partnership. Faith was then weakened as well.

When raising children in married homes becomes rarer, faith becomes harder to pass on — yet 85% of churches report spending nothing on marriage and relationship ministry. Little is done to help young people form strong marriages or to support those already married.

Today, America leads the developed world in the share of single-parent households. According to Pew, it’s also the only country surveyed where the majority say the morals of their fellow citizens are bad.

If Americans want to rebuild the country’s moral compass and social trust, strengthening marriage must become a priority. Policy can play some role, but renewal cannot come from government alone. It requires churches, families, and communities to stop treating marriage as optional or outdated and see it again for what it is.

The latest Pew data may offer a glimmer of hope. But unless family life is rebuilt, that hope will fade quickly. If we want faith to endure, we must rebuild the place where it is first lived and passed on: the family.