Carter and Glick, in their 1976 book on Marriage and Divorce, point out that the USA had the highest divorce rate in the world in 1900, when the divorce rate wa

Carter and Glick, in their 1976 book on Marriage and Divorce, point out that the USA had the highest divorce rate in the world in 1900, when the divorce rate was 5%. Although it is difficult to get accurate numbers for 1800, the USA almost certainly had the highest divorce rate in 1800, as it was one of the few nations that had legal divorce in 1800. The background history is that in all Western nations the trends followed a path driven by Protestantism. Till the Reformation, divorce was illegal in all Western countries. The early Protestant reformers, both Luther and Calvin and the others, argued that divorce was a right given to women by Biblical law (the only grounds for divorce being extreme physical abuse). So all of the nations that became Protestant during the 1500s legalized divorce. Divorce then remained legal for 50 to 70 years, till all of the original generation of Reformers were dead. Then divorce became illegal again. In most Western nations that were Protestant, divorce remained illegal until the late 1800s. During the 1600s, only the most radical Protestant sects continued to argue that divorce should be legal. These were the sects that were the most likely to banned in their home countries, and thus they made up the bulk of people moving to the British colonies in North America during the 1600s. As such, early on, due to various religious factors, the USA had a culture that allowed for divorce. Divorce remained rare in the USA till the mid-20th century, but the USA's background and history left it ripe for a cultural revolution that would allow for divorce to become much more common. The Catholic Church in the USA has been effected by the overall trends of divorce in the USA. 90% of all the annulments that the Catholic Church grants, worldwide, happen in the USA.