'Endgame': Teaching the Way of the Family

We talk a great deal about a “crisis of the family” but do not appreciate how much this bulwark of freedom and civilization has fallen. In their new book, Endgame, Protestant pastor and therapist John Van Epp and Catholic non-profit founder J. P. De Gance lay out the dire statistical data. In the U. S., marriage rates have fallen by 61% over the past fifty years. For the last years available, the American Catholic Church has recorded almost three times as many funerals as they have marriages. Divorce rates, premarital sex rates, and cohabitation rates (which actually predict future divorces) for Christians in general are almost as high as the general population. What has happened is a triple decoupling: sex is decoupled from marriage, romantic relationships from marriage, and parenting from marriage. The end result is that 40% of American children arrive without married parents, the vast majority of whom end up with single parents by age twelve. Those children, as decades of empirical research show, are vastly more likely to suffer from physical, emotional, psychological, and economic ills. Read Full Article »