Weekly survey project closure
The 2026 weekly survey project is closing.
We are deeply sorry to announce that the 2026 Christian Thought Survey weekly survey project is closing. The email platform we used experienced a bug that caused some participants to receive multiple emails, effectively spamming them. That was never intended, and we deeply apologize for the inconvenience, frustration, and loss of trust this caused.
The response from participants made clear that continuing would not be responsible. We are disappointed that we cannot carry the weekly survey project forward, and we are grateful to everyone who participated, suggested items, read the reports, or otherwise helped up to this point.
Existing public reports and archives from the weekly survey project will remain available, but no further weekly surveys, invitations, reminders, participant requests, or newsletter requests are planned.
Final public report. The SurveyOL Email collector is closed and this report uses the final privacy-safe aggregate summary from the reviewed CTS export.
Final close: Tuesday, June 30, 2026, 20 days after the first Week 1 production invitation window.
Finalization note: finalized June 30, 2026 from 58 complete responses after the SurveyOL Email collector was closed and the final CTS export was reviewed.
Executive Summary
This first revived weekly Christian Thought Survey report is both a substantive survey on divorce and remarriage and a test of the new weekly reporting rhythm. The survey was sent through the CTS email invitation system to the ministry-focused CTS participant list, with responses tied privately to participant records for later aggregate analysis while public reporting remains privacy-safe.
The survey uses the CTS 0-100 credence model rather than a simple yes/no format. Respondents are asked to indicate the strength of their agreement with each statement, where 0 means strong disagreement, 50 means unsure or mixed, and 100 means strong agreement. That format is especially useful for a topic such as divorce and remarriage, where ministers often distinguish between clear biblical grounds, pastoral emergencies, contested boundary cases, and questions of church discipline.
At final close, CTS showed 58 complete responses from 409 invitations. The item-level aggregates are final for the Week 1 public report; subgroup patterns remain intentionally unpublished until a separate privacy-threshold review supports them.
- The clearest agreement concerns safety and careful abuse discernment. 57 of 58 respondents placed both the physical-safety and coercive-control items in the high-agreement band.
- Classical grounds remain strong, but adjacent cases spread out quickly. Adultery, physical abuse, abandonment, and remarriage after a legitimate divorce show high medians; pornography, nonsexual romantic infidelity, and pastoral review show much wider distributions.
- The most useful interpretive work will be around divided items. Formal discipline for illegitimate divorce, whether churches are too permissive, political naming, fasting expectations, and worship-source avoidance all show meaningful tension rather than a simple center of gravity.
- The participant ballot produced the Week 2 independent items. Naming specific false teachers, formal membership before public ministry, and recreational marijuana avoidance led the ranked ballot.
Email collector invitations sent.
Complete responses in the final export.
All started responses are complete.
Reported by CTS.
Final close and report update.
Participant note: Thank you to the ministers willing to help test this revived weekly format. The final Week 1 response is modest but useful, and the quality of the answers and suggestions showed why the attempt was worth making even though the weekly survey project is closing.
Interpretive caution: The final response count is sufficient for item-level reporting and for one broad profile contrast that clears the public subgroup threshold. Detailed denomination, gender, race, marital-status, role, education, and ministry-experience comparisons remain suppressed unless a separate privacy-threshold review supports them.
Exploratory Profile Patterns
A private Week 1 profile audit found one broad participant-profile contrast large enough for public aggregate reporting: respondents who self-identified as evangelical in their CTS 2026 registry profile (n=42) compared with respondents who did not self-identify as evangelical (n=16). These are self-identification categories, not external classifications. The smaller group clears the minimum public subgroup threshold of 15 but remains below the preferred threshold of 20, so these patterns should be read as descriptive signals rather than settled subgroup estimates.
| Item | Evangelical Mean | Non-Evangelical Mean | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Formal discipline for knowingly pursuing an illegitimate divorce | 76.3 | 5.9 | +70.4 |
| Churches are generally too permissive about divorce and remarriage | 66.3 | 17.1 | +49.2 |
| Pastoral review before affirming remarriage | 80.3 | 45.4 | +34.9 |
| Regular fasting as a normal expectation for mature discipleship | 67.8 | 35.8 | +32.0 |
| Avoiding worship songs from ministries with serious doctrinal error | 59.3 | 37.6 | +21.7 |
| Persistent pornography use as possible grounds for divorce | 62.3 | 79.6 | -17.3 |
| Severe persistent emotional or psychological abuse as possible grounds for divorce | 73.7 | 93.1 | -19.4 |
Profile privacy note: The public audit suppresses detailed denomination/fellowship, gender, race, marital-status, role, education, and ministry-experience cuts because the Week 1 respondent cells are too small or too imbalanced for responsible public reporting. No respondent-level profile data is published.
Strongest Final Patterns
Safety comes first
Almost every respondent agrees strongly that churches should prioritize immediate physical safety before trying to restore an abusive marriage.
Abuse needs careful discernment
Respondents strongly agree that pastors should distinguish ordinary marital conflict from patterns of coercion and control.
Church discipline is contested
Ministers are almost evenly split on whether churches should use formal discipline when members knowingly pursue an illegitimate divorce.
Several practical questions remain unsettled
Responses spread out more on political warnings, fasting, worship-song sources, pornography, nonsexual infidelity, and pastoral review before remarriage.
All 15 Slider Items At A Glance
The table uses the CTS 0-100 credence scale: 0 means strong disagreement, 50 means uncertain or mixed, and 100 means strong agreement.
The distribution column uses observed 10-bin sparklines with light neighbor smoothing, scaled consistently on a fixed 0-100 public display scale. The 100% guide line marks the top of that scale. The Doubt/Dogma ratio is shown as green non-endpoint responses to red endpoint responses.
| Item | Mean | Interquartile range The middle 50% of responses, from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile. A range such as 49-92 means half of respondents landed between 49 and 92. | Doubt/Dogma ratio Shown as n:m. The green first number is non-endpoint responses, from 1 to 99; the red second number is endpoint responses, exactly 0 or 100. Higher first numbers mean respondents avoided absolutes more often. | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loading aggregate results... | ||||
Item-Level Detail
Each item card shows the public aggregate distribution only. Respondent-level records and identity-linked data remain private.
Participant Ballot
The ballot asks participants which independent survey items they most want considered for future live survey use. CTS currently shows 47 usable ranked ballots in the score table.
| Rank | Ballot item | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Loading ballot results... | ||
Participant Suggestions
Twenty-one future-question suggestions have been received so far. Raw free-text suggestions are not being published automatically; they will be reviewed, grouped, and polished for clarity, neutrality, and survey suitability before any become ballot items.
Participant suggestions are more likely to be accepted when they are already phrased as clear statements that other ministers can rate on the CTS 0-100 credence scale.
For the next participant ballot draft, five usable suggestions have been converted into rigorous 0-100 credence items. The top two Week 1 ballot items are also carried forward, producing a seven-item independent-topic ballot.
Next Participant Ballot Draft
These are candidate independent-topic items for the next participant ballot. Five are polished from this week's participant suggestions, and two are carried over from the strongest Week 1 ballot results.
| Rank | Candidate item | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Loading next ballot draft... | ||
Public Data Note
The current public data file contains aggregate item summaries, distribution series, endpoint counts, ballot scores, and a privacy-safe self-identified evangelical-profile contrast only. It excludes names, email addresses, response identifiers, respondent-level rows, raw free-text suggestions, and small subgroup cuts.