Evangelical Christians have higher-than-average divorce rates, new report shows

The research is part of a new report released by the Council on Contemporary Families.

The council report coincides with the 50-year anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal to discriminate against individuals on the basis of race, national origin, religion or gender. The council's report, which included findings by a dozen researchers, dealt with changes in the past half century for each of the populations affected by the law: religious groups, racial and ethnic minorities and women. Baylor's portion of the report dealt with 50 years of religious change, from 1964 to 2014. Other findings included:

• The proportion of Americans who do not identify with any religious tradition has grown dramatically -- from 3 percent in the 1960s to 20 percent today -- despite the fact that 90 percent of Americans professed a belief in God or a higher power.

• Protestants have declined in their share of the American adult population, from 70 percent in the 1950s to a little less than 50 percent today.

• The protracted decline in Protestant shares of the American population is largely due to the decline of Mainline Protestant denominations (e.g., Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians), whose numbers have halved over the same time period

• Evangelicals rapidly increased their share of the population until the early 1990s, but that segment has experienced some decline since then.

• The percentage of Catholics has remained steady, but their ethnic makeup has changed dramatically due to steady Latino immigration.

• The proportion of people who affiliate with non-Judeo-Christian religions has doubled since the 1950s.