"The Gospel of Judas, which remained virtually unknown to us from the time it was written 1,700 years ago until its publication this week, says that when Judas Iscariot handed Jesus over to the Romans, he was acting on orders from Jesus to carry out a sacred mystery for the sake of human salvation: 'Jesus said to Judas, "Look, you have been told everything. You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." ' "

"So, are these articles just shilling for the 'Da Vinci Code,' or just the national media trying to get in on the Easter news cycle....?"

Although the retreat from marriage in the United States, expressed in declining marriage rates and increasing age of first marriage, is well documented, a study by three Mississippi sociologists finds that the extent of that retreat varies considerably according to one's faith tradition. In general, the more "conservative" the faith tradition, the greater likelihood that its members will marry and will marry at an earlier age, relative to their peers from a more liberal faith tradition or no tradition.

The researchers analyzed the first wave of data of the National Survey of Families and Households, working with a sample of more than 10,000 respondents. They found that both men and women who are Mormon, conservative Protestant, or moderate Protestant reveal a "greater propensity" to marry -and to marry at considerably younger ages - than the unaffiliated. In terms of the age of first marriage, Mormons marry earlier than conservative Protestants, who marry earlier than moderate Protestants, although the differences between these three groups were not statistically significant.

Although their faith tradition would be considered conservative, Catholics stood somewhere between the early marrying Mormons and Protestants and the later marrying liberal Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated. In fact, the statistical tests yielded no significant differences in marriage timing between Catholics and liberal Protestants. Persons of the Jewish faith, as well as liberal Protestants and the unaffiliated, were found to be the most likely to postpone or delay marriage.

These findings withstood a variety of controls for sociodemographic factors, including education and employment status, that affect marriage timing, leading the researchers to conclude: "The strength and persistence of these patterned associations further demonstrate that there are robust and multifaceted linkages between two prominent social institutions, namely, religion and marriage."