Christians' rates of extramarital sex

(Post 2 in a series)

Let's start with a important distinction: Extramarital sex is very different than extra marital sex ;-). One is a great idea, the other isn't.

As I have done in previous series published here, I will compare Christian denominations vs. other religions vs. people of no religion. I will also separate religious people by the frequency of their attendance, with the idea being that more frequent attendance represents greater commitment and involvement.

Also, as discussed in previous posts, these are cross-sectional data that simply answer if Christians are different. Why they are different is a much more difficult question to answer. Perhaps Christianity makes people act differently; perhaps people who act differently join Christianity; perhaps Christians answer sensitive survey questions differently.

With these qualifications in mind, let's go to the numbers. These are statistics drawn from the General Social Survey, one of the most frequently used data sets in the social sciences. I used data from 1990 - 2004, encompassing over 20,000 respondents.

The GSS asks "Have you ever had sex with someone other than your husband or wife while you were married." As such, these data do not include people who were never married.

Rates of extramarital sex by religion/ attendance levels are as follows:

27.7%, Black Protestant, non-active
26.1%, No religious affiliation
22.8%, Other religions, non-active
19.6%, Evangelical, non-active
19.3%, Black Protestant, active
18.8%, Catholic, non-active
17.1%, Mainline Protestant, non-active
16.1% All Christians
15.1%, Jewish (predominately infrequent attenders)
13.2%, Other religions, active
11.0%, Evangelical, active
10.3%, Catholic, active
9.9%, Mainline Protestant, active

What do these data tell us? There seems to be a big religion effect, in that people who are involved in any religion have lower rates of adultery than those with no religious affiliation. There is also a big attendance effect--people who attend religious services weekly are much less likely to have extramarital sex. Finally, there's a moderate Christian effect in that compared to other religions, Christians have relatively low rates of extramarital sex.

It is possible, however, that what looks like a religion effect is really a gender effect. Maybe more women are both more likely to be religious and less likely to have affairs, so the measures of religion here are simply proxies for gender. I'll address this issue tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Christianity, extramarital sex, and gender

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