Promoting Healthy Marriages in Chinese Church Communities: Survey of Chinese Couples’ Marriages, Virtue-Based Training for Leaders, and Outcomes

Abstract

Couple research, and specifically religion and couple research, is commonly conducted in individualistic cultures. The collectivistic milieu of China makes a useful contrast to Western culture. With Chinese churches, we conducted two studies on marriage relationships. In Study 1 ( N = 810), we report a survey on marriages of parishioners. Satisfaction was high among most couples with general relationship problems such as communication reported as the highest concern. Marriage happiness was negatively correlated with couple problems. In Study 2 ( N = 241), we describe a virtue-based couple counseling program, developed collaboratively with 20 Chinese key informants. We administered an 8-hr virtue-based couple-oriented training to 241 church leaders. Training increased church leaders’ self-efficacy and hope for effective ministry. We compared responsiveness to the training by pastors and lay leaders. Lay counselors were more responsive than were pastors. This program evaluation was a field study that also included a brief follow-up interview of randomly selected recipients of the training ( n = 16). Friendship counseling was reported in the follow-up interviews as the most common way to address marriage problems.