User:Jarrison316/Sandbox

Introduction
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also commonly known as “The Mormon Church,” or “Mormons”) officially discourages divorce, encouraging its members to work around marital problems before they lead to annulment or divorce, yet allows both practices in circumstances of infidelity or other serious cases. Divorce is heavily frowned upon and Church authorities maintain that “Latter-day Saints need not divorce—there are solutions to marriage problems.” Latter-day Saint couples (both with and without temple sealings) are found to have a 23.1% rate of members who have ever experienced a divorce, compared with average of 44.7% among those who state no religious preference. A lower divorce rate among Latter-Day saints may be due to a strong family culture, the difficulty of securing a cancellation of sealing, and other religious influences. Marriage in the temple is strongly encouraged by church leaders, as Latter-day Saint marriages performed in the temple have less than a 6% chance of dissolution. However, the accuracy of this statistic is disputed on grounds that the process required to obtain a temple recommend artificially limits the test group to those who are already less likely to divorce, for example the temple recommend requires Church members to abstain from pre-marital sex, a behavior associated with a higher divorce rate.

Societal Pressure
The Church discourages divorce partly on account of its theology of the family. The Proclamation to the World warns that  Tim B. Heaton explains, “The key tenet in the Mormon Theology of the family is that, given the proper circumstances, family relationships will be perpetuated in heaven.”

The Encyclopedia of Mormonism states that:

“The Church distinguishes between (1) civil marriages, which are valid for "time" (until divorce or the death of one spouse), and (2) temple marriages, or sealings, solemnized by proper ecclesiastical authority, which are binding for "time and all eternity."

The Church allows its members to seek civil divorce independent of ecclesiastical authority, but cancellation of a temple sealing may only be performed with special permission from the First Presidency of the Church. The cultural impact of a divorce upon an LDS couple is significant. Church leaders have stated that “every divorce is the result of selfishness on the part of one or both,” and maintains that selfishness is a leading cause of marital stress and divorce. Divorced Latter-Day Saints may report feelings of alienation from fellow church-members and some Latter-Day Saints may see divorce as “a sign of failure”