Prayer and Love: Couples Enjoy Greater Satisfaction When Praying Together


Donna St. George, writing for the Washington Post (www.washingtonpost.com) on Thursday, August 12, 2010, has featured what is described as “the first major look at relationship quality and religion across racial and ethnic lines.”

St. George said that researchers reported a “significant link between relationship satisfaction and religious factors for whites, Hispanics and African Americans.”

The study she was referring to, appears in this month's issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

According to St. George, the research found that 40 percent of blacks in marriages and live-in relationships who attended religious services regularly had a partner who did the same, compared with 29 percent of non-Hispanic whites, and 29 percent of Hispanics.

The story went on to say, “White couples, in general, reported greater relationship satisfaction than other groups, presumably because of income and educational advantages, the study says. But the racial gap lessens when religious similarities come into the mix.”

W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, and the study co-author, told the Washington Post, “What this study suggests is that religion is one of the key factors narrowing the racial divide in relationship quality in the United States.”

The strongest difference-maker for couples was spiritual activities such as praying or reading the Bible at home.

“Praying together as a couple is something that is very intimate for people who are religious,” Wilcox went on to say. “It adds another level of closeness to a relationship.

St. George said that the findings bear out in the four-year marriage of Sade and Charles Dennis, who live in Bowie, Virginia. “Our relationship with the Lord has definitely been the glue that has held it together,” said Sade, 34, an author and artist.

She added that sometimes the couple prays by phone as Charles commutes to his job as an accountant, or as Sade is just waking up and Charles reads her a devotional from his BlackBerry. At times of disagreement, when one can't see the other's point of view, one will interrupt and say: “Let's just pray,” Sade said.

“Prayer is the great reconciler,” she said. The Dennises attend monthly fellowships as part of a couple’s ministry at the First Baptist Church of Glenarden, Maryland.

St. George also reported that in the whirlwind of daily life, prayer is also a moment to connect, Sade said. “We pray over every important milestone,” she revealed. “We just really feel that God is the third person in this marriage. It's me, Charles and the Lord.”

The Washington Post journalist added that when one partner attends services regularly and the other does not, relationship satisfaction is lower.

“Two nonreligious partners are more content together than partners with different practices, the study says,” she wrote.

She then quoted Wilcox as saying, “When couples do things together -- whether it's bird-watching, playing tennis or attending church -- they tend to do better,” and “when they don't share these activities, particularly when they are important, couples are more likely to suffer.”

Still, experts such as Frank Fincham, director of the Family Institute at Florida State University, question whether the “active ingredient” that leads some couples to report greater satisfaction is really faith-based.

Fincham suggests maybe it's not religion but something else about the people who embrace it, or some other activity that couples do together.

“The study's results are based on a recent analysis of a 2006 U.S. survey of 1,387 adults ages 18 to 59. Nearly 90 percent were married, and the others were living together,” stated St.George in her story.

“The authors noted limitations of the study, such as relying on interviews with one partner rather than both. They controlled for income, age and education but not for other factors that might lead to relationship satisfaction, such as personality traits.”

She concluded her story by saying that the Rev. James E. Terrell, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Northwest Washington, said that among his members he has observed shared beliefs as a source of marital unity.

“People seem to do better when they think there is a spiritual aspect to their marriage,” Terrell said. That includes services and praying but also “seeking the Lord in terms of resolving problems and differences,” he said. “Without a doubt, it helps to keep a marriage together.”


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The Darwin Debate

David Masci writing for The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life noted "almost 150 years after Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Americans are still fighting over evolution."



He went on to say,if anything, the controversy has recently grown in both size and intensity. In the last five years alone, for example, debates over how evolution should be taught in public schools have been heard in school boards, town councils and legislatures in more than half the states. Throughout much of the 20th century, opponents of evolution (many of them theologically conservative Christians) either tried to eliminate the teaching of Darwin's theory from public school science curricula or urged science instructors also to teach a version of the creation story found in the biblical book of Genesis.



Charles Darwin, a biologist developed the theory of natural selection which concluded, All living things derived from simple forms, through a gradual process of descent with modification, to paraphrase. He proposed the idea that all things must adapt to their environments, and yet only the fittest survive. His book The Origin of The Species (1859)discusses natural selection and the process of evolution. To explore the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church regarding evolution, and in order to understand fully the foundations of it, one needs to reflect back to the encyclical Humani Generis (1950) written by Pope Pius XII. The encyclical was clear in that it rejected the theory of evolution, but rather supported the monogenism, a belief connected to the notion that human beings are literally descended from one set of parents-Adam and Eve.



In his theory of evolution Darwin attempts to explain how creation came about. Someone wise once said God created man, and Darwin explains how God did it.



The Darwin Correspondence Project was founded in 1974 by an American scholar, Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith, a zoologist in the University of Cambridge (UK). They originally set out to locate, research, and publish summaries of all letters written by Charles Darwin (1809-82). The Project has been able to bring to light Darwin's personal connection to the church via a series of letters.



According to The Darwin Correspondence Project, In 1842, within six years of his return from the Beagle voyage, Darwin moved to Down House, in the village of Down, Kent. There was no Unitarian chapel in the vicinity, and the family went dutifully to the local Anglican church of St Mary’s each Sunday. All the children were baptised and confirmed in the Church of England. The whole family took the sacrament, although Emma used to make the children turn around and face the back, on occasions when the rest of the congregation recited the Trinitarian Creed. The Darwins placed a large gravestone near the entrance to the church, and over the years they buried their children Mary, Charles and Elizabeth, Darwin’s brother Erasmus, Emma’s sister Sarah, and Emma herself, in the churchyard at Downe (Moore 1985).



It is interesting to note that clergymen with whom Darwin corresponded were his personal friends, and also provided him with data he used for his publications.



The Science-Religion debate seems not have been abated in more recent times. Kevin McGill writing for The Associated Press pointed out there are disagreements on what exactly will result from policy language the state education board adopted for teaching science in Louisiana public schools, but one thing looks pretty clear: sooner or later Louisiana is going back to court in a case that will look like a descendant of the 1987 argument over "scientific creationism."



The story went on to say, Barbara Forrest, staunch opponent of anything that might bring the religious-based concept into science classes, thinks such a fight is just what some supporters of the new state policy have in mind. She points fingers at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a think tank that backs, among other things, the idea of intelligent design -- the concept that there is scientific evidence that living organisms were designed.

Book information

Woman Priest: A Collection of Reflections And Commentary on Today's Issues
by Jackie O'Neal, S.T. M.

To place an order, visit: http://www.publishamerica.net/product88402.html



Synopsis:



Woman Priest: A Collection of Reflections And Commentary on Today's Issues
by Jackie O'Neal, S.T. M. chronicles the spiritual journey of The Reverend Jackie O'Neal, S.T.M. from her early discernment in an Episcopal parish, the Church of the Ascension in Atlantic City, NJ, to her eventual incardination to The Old Catholic Church of the Americas headquartered in Florida and Kentucky. The book consists of spiritual reflections, anecdotes,commentary on issues affecting the world and the church, and international projects the author is part of as an arm of her ministry.

The reader will come away with a better understanding of the role of women in the church, and the book will make the reader aware of urgent needs outside of their borders, and encourage them to reach out. In addition, the book explores several theological issues from sacramental theology to Ecclesiology. The book is intended to be a collection of reflections. It explores the perspective of a female candidate for the priesthood in a predominantly male culture by drawing upon anecdotes, clergy killers, reflections on the lives of the saints,interviews, and shares with the reader some of many steps involved in becoming a church leader in a church facing great transition.

Bio:

Jackie O'Neal has been regular contributor to award-winning The Press of Atlantic City, The New York Amsterdam News , The Huffington Post, USA Today.com among others. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry and Fiction from the renowned, Sarah Lawrence College. In addition, she holds a Masters Degree in Sacred Theology from Agape Seminary. O'Neal taught Developmental Writing as a Senior adjunct professor at Atlantic Cape Community College where she was nominated for an Excellence in Teaching Award 2007.

Originally from New York, O'Neal taught at York College of the City University of New York. Currently, she is an ordained priest and the only woman in 126 years to be nominated for the priesthood at her parish, The Church of the Ascension in Atlantic City, N.J. Her work includes being part of a chaplain's team at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center,and collaborating with international ministries in the developing nations. She has been married for over a decade to Mason O'Neal, a retired NYC investigator.