Chuck Colson suggests that your greatest happiness can come from your marriage and other relationships.  He even puts a dollar amount on the happiness you can gain from your marriage.  However, he argues that our thinking about happiness is a little off.  Check out his article by clicking here.

Fox News put out an article calling Americans to start caring about marriage in a tangible way.  Being active about caring for our own marriages and creating programs that help build healthy marriages will alleviate many other social problems.  This article is best summed up in the last paragraph.  “Americans need to stop thinking of marriage as a consumer relationship-if we don’t, we’ll always want a refund or an exchange because there is no perfect product.  But when we view marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman unto death, not as a throwaway consumer relationship, the chances are enormously higher for personal growth, better health, greater happiness, a longer life, and greater well being for our children.” (Weber, 2010)

Click here to read the article.

Weber, S. (2010, February 5). Why You should care about marriage in america. Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/02/05/sheila-weber-national-marriage-week-family-happiness-children/

Facebook has quickly found its way into our lives and helped us connect with people in a way we never could have imagined a decade ago.  Unfortunately, its also creating a disturbance in many marriages.  Check out this quick clip Facebook causing divorces?

The Manhattan Declaration calls the Church to take a stand for those things that God deeply cares about.  It refers to Life, Marriage and Religious Liberty as three areas of concern in society today that Christians simply cannot compromise.  Christians must be advocates of life at all stages, build a culture of marriage and demand the freedom to express what we know to be moral and immoral.

Click here to read the document or a summary.

Tony Perkins, Washington Update Family Research Council <frcpub@frc.org>

According to research released yesterday by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), America is rapidly becoming a nation of unwed parents. While the social shift has been underway for years, few could have predicted just how quickly it would sweep the country’s households. In 2002, 1.4 million babies were born to unmarried women–doubling the number from 1980. Five years later, the data spiked to 1.7 million babies born to unwed moms in their 20s and 30s. To put things in perspective, four of every 10 babies are now born to single mothers.

In the blink of an eye, the United States has gone from a relatively gradual uptick in unwed births to being completely Europeanized. Experts cite plenty of reasons for the surge, but the de-emphasis of marriage and family is by far the largest. As more men retreat from responsibility, women are delaying marriage or foregoing it altogether. That’s bad news for children and for anyone hoping for a return to limited government. As the foundation of our homes splinter, Washington will look for new ways to fill in the cracks. Most liberals, like those presently in control of government, believe that Washington can do a better job supporting families and raising children. Instead of policies that strengthen families, the White House will look for ways to bolster the government’s role in them.

Of course, a lot of fiscal conservatives ignore marriage as a policy issue because they think of it as a cultural or religious institution. What they fail to realize is that it’s also an economic institution that has enormous implications for the role of the federal government. Every year, state and federal governments fork over $280 billion in welfare, food stamps, and other anti-poverty programs just to keep these broken families afloat. That means that in one decade, the decline of marriage has taken $3 trillion dollars out of taxpayers’ pockets.

As our own Dr. Pat Fagan writes, “This system is a massive injustice. Married people are the source of a massive transfer of payments to broken families. Those who stay together are also paying for those adults who do not.” If the federal government could reduce family breakdown by a single percent, taxpayers would save around $3 billion dollars a year. And those are just the fiscal benefits. Having a happy, two-parent home to grow up? That’s priceless.

A recent article in a publication called “BreakPoint”, which reaches more than a thousand outlets nationwide, outlined some of the same principles Marriage Inc stands for. Our mission to preserve marriage at a local level is clear to us. But it’s nice to have that same vision affirmed from those in the public eye.

One paragraph stood out after reading the article. It eloquently describes both Marriage Inc’s goal and the consequence of not achieving it:

“Christopher West, author of Theology of the Body Explained goes on to explain that when a marriage is “open to God’s inspiration and ordered toward love and life, it builds families and, in turn, a culture of love and life.” West goes on to warn, however, that the first step in the disintegration of civilization—toward a “culture of utility and death”—is the devaluing of marriage.”

Click here to read the rest of the short article on the Breakpoint website