The literature on marital stability and quality has been quite comprehensive in nature and scope, but it has emphasized primarily white marriages. Little research attention has been given to African American marriages and even less to divorce within the African American community (Orbuch & Brown, 2005). The few studies to date that have examined divorce among African Americans rarely go beyond a mere description of differences between African Americans and White Americans (see Orbuch, Veroff, Hassan, & Horrocks, 2002). The current investigation fills the gap in the literature regarding the social contexts and cultural influences that predict the risk of divorce over time. We examine the early development of marriage for a representative sample of urban white couples and black couples who participated in our longitudinal project, “The Early Years of Marriage Study.” Respondents were 199 black couples and 174 white couples first interviewed in 1986, their first year of marriage. We used survival analyses to understand the role of religiosity in predicting the stability of these marriages over the first 16 years of marriage. We also assessed whether objective social and economic conditions account for divorce over time. We found that race, gender, and time act as social and cultural contexts in which to understand the quality and impact of religion and structure in predicting divorce over time. Results indicated that race and education are critical to the risk of divorce over 16 years. Education was a protective factor against divorce for White American husbands and wives and for African American wives, but not for African American husbands. Religion also is important to the risk of divorce, but depends on the contexts of race and gender. We found that although African Americans attend church more often than White Americans, White American couples attend church together more often than African Americans. Our findings suggest for example, that the role of religion in relationships differs for men and women and for African Americans and White Americans. The implications for social work and other professionals is that the stability of a marriage may vary by religiosity, race, and gender and suggests that the most efficacious intervention strategies for dealing with marital instability and divorce are those that consider social contexts and cultural influences within a marriage. References Orbuch, T., & Brown, E. (2005). Divorce in the context of being African American. In M. Fine and J. Harvey (Eds.), Handbook of Divorce and Dissolution of Romantic Relationships. New Jersey: Erlbaum. Orbuch, T.L., Veroff, J., Hassan, H., & Horrocks, J. (2002). Who will divorce: A 14-year longitudinal study of black couples and white couples. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 19(2), 179-202.