"An Episcopal diocese in California overwhelmingly passed a series of resolutions yesterday that position it to secede from the Episcopal Church and affiliate with conservatives in the global Anglican Communion.

If the Diocese of San Joaquin affirms the move in a second vote next year, the small diocese, with 48 parishes and 7,000 members, would be the first to try to break from the Episcopal Church, which has been torn by conflict since the consecration of a gay bishop in 2003. Until now, only individual parishes have severed ties.

... The San Joaquin diocese, which does not ordain women, has long been one of the most conservative of the church's 110 dioceses. It is among seven dioceses that were so disturbed by the church's decision to consecrate a gay bishop that they have refused to accept the authority of the church and its presiding bishop."

"'God knows I've made mistakes and been criticized for them,' Ms. Chenoweth said unflinchingly. (Some have even been turned into TV fiction on "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.") 'When I was promoting 'As I Am' last year,' she said, 'I went on 'The 700 Club,' ' Pat Robertson's talk show on the Christian Broadcasting Network. 'I wasn't thinking about what it represents. I guess I was living in a little bit of a bubble, and I was surprised that it upset so many people. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't go, because I don't agree with that antigay stuff. I don't understand what the big deal is with gay marriage. Get over it, people. What if it was a sin to be short? Well, I guess it is in the Miss Oklahoma pageant.' (She was the runner-up in 1991.)"

Given the retreat from marriage and high rates of out-of-wedlock childbearing among African Americans, some observers see little hope for a recovery in marriage in urban America. Yet a study by Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia and Nick Wolfinger of the University of Utah finds that both the idea and the reality of marriage remain very much alive among urban blacks that attend church regularly.

Using the first two waves of data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, the sociologists focus on urban parents of more than 3,000 children born between 1998 and 2000 that were interviewed shortly after childbirth and one year later. As expected, they found that church attendance is more prevalent among urban mothers that are married (p<.001) and urban mothers that are African American relative to those who are white or Hispanic (both correlations, p<.001). But they also discovered that unmarried mothers who attend church regularly are more inclined to marry within a year after childbirth than their peers that do not worship regularly (p<.10).

This association of church attendance with marriage after childbirth was especially strong among African American mothers, remaining statistically significant (p<.05) in models that controlled for variables found to also increase the likelihood of marriage after childbirth. Those variables included mother's commitment to marriage as normative (p<.001) as well as father's regular church attendance (p<.01), father's sexual fidelity to the mother (p<.01), and father's supportiveness (p<.001).

The researchers also found that mothers identified as conservative or "sectarian black Protestant" are more likely to marry after childbirth (p<.05) relative to those with no religious affiliation, a correlation that was not significant with any other religious affiliation, including "mainline black Protestant."

While African-American mothers who attend church still face lower odds of marriage than do white churchgoing mothers, the odds are reduced by a third when the comparison group is white mothers who do not go to church. "Taken together, these results show that the low rate of marriage among black urban mothers would be even lower were it not for their high levels of church attendance."

As their findings document a reciprocal relationship between church and family, the researchers observe: "One of the ways religious institutions foster marriage is by promoting relationship-related beliefs and behaviors that are conducive to marriage." At the same time, "women who believe strongly in the importance of marriage are probably more likely to seek out religious institutions that reinforce their commitment to marriage."