A September 2011 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, in partnership with Religion News Service, showed that a majority of Americans (57 percent) believe in evolution. But white evangelicals and Tea Party members — a core constituency for the GOP — are significantly less likely to believe in evolution.

A January 2012 survey of Protestant pastors, conducted by LifeWay Research, shows that by a wide margin most of them believe that God did not use evolution to create humans and think Adam and Eve were literal people. It also found that ministers are almost evenly split on whether the Earth is thousands of years old.

Lee M. Williams is professor of marital and family therapy in the School of Leadership and Education Sciences at the University of San Diego. He is the author of several articles on interchurch couples, including “Premarital Counseling With Interchurch Couples: Clinical Implications From Recent Research,” published in 2002 in the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy.

Glenn W. Olsen is professor emeritus of history at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He is the editor of Christian Marriage: A Historical Study.

John Trokan is an associate professor of religious and pastoral studies at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati. He has written for the journal Christian Marriage and Family.

William P. Roberts is professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton in Ohio. He is the editor of Christian Marriage and Family: Contemporary Theological and Pastoral Perspectives.

Michael G. Lawler is a professor emeritus in theology at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. His publications include Christian Marriage and Family: Contemporary Theological and Pastoral Perspectives.

Jeremy Uecker is an assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University and co-author, with Mark Regnerus, of Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think about Marrying (2010).

Philip Lyndon Reynolds is professor of historical theology and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in Atlanta. He is the author of Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage During the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods.