Evangelicals: Abstinence Culture vs. Later Marriage

Here’s a very interesting piece from Eric Gorski, the Associated Press religion writer.

In “Wait for sex and marriage? Evangelicals conflicted,” Gorski pits two “two powerful forces — evangelical Christianity’s abstinence culture, with its chastity balls and virginity pledges, and societal forces pushing average marriage ages deeper into the 20s.”

For those unfamiliar with the evangelical subculture, these are powerful forces indeed.

There’s an instinctive expectation of many parents for their kids to wait to have sex. The message (don’t do it) is drummed in at many churches and camps as possibly the worst transgression for a young Christian. Evangelical kids, committed to their faith and to honour their parents, try hard to comply. They often hold strong notions of divine providence, believing God will deliver the perfect mate at the right time.

The view of mainstream culture, on the other hand, is that premarital sex is a fait accompli. Kids don’t wait, kids can’t wait. Evangelical kids, often very romantic in outlook, are nearly as likely to give in as other kids. Not helping matters is the conflicting abstinence/sex (virgin/whore) message peddled via pop culture placeholders like Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Lindsay Lohan or the next Disney ingenue.

Translation: Early sex and early pregnancy are predictors of poorer life chances, but biological pressures are undeniable.

Gorski’s article quickly turns to early marriage, the silver bullet for many pastors and proclaimers of the abstinence only message.

The call for young marriage raises questions: How young is too young? What if marriage is viewed as a ticket to guilt-free sex? What about the fact that marrying young is the No. 1 predictor of divorce?

In real life, silver bullets don’t work. The possibility, or even desiribility of early marriage, is often very small. Being stuck in the traditional gender roles of their parents is not attractive to many young evangelicals. The view of marriage as license for intercourse is also overly simplistic.

Gorski’s definitely on to something with this article. While the average age of marriage is gradually bumping back into the late 20s, parental and ecclesiastical expectations of abstinence remain.

Something’s gotta give.

Gorski’s article is wonderfully diverse. He cites an array of sources, including young evangelicals with different expectations and plans, pastors with different views on what should be taught, and sociologists on what’s happening and why.

But the “wait or marry” debate is just the tip of an evangelical iceberg.

Evangelicals, like many other religious movements, face enormous cultural pressure to adjust their sexual ethics on a variety of fronts. Often they are unwilling, and often they don’t know how. The biblical evidence, cited as the final arbiter of evangelical truth, does not directly address 21st century sexuality head on. Nor does church history. While some appeal to the global evangelicalism as an ally for conservative sexual ethics, there’s really no getting around the fact that sexuality is increasingly the location of evangelical identity in the 21st century.

For a faith struggling between mainstream acceptance and subculture status, the pressure to move to either extreme is great.

Meanwhile there is an unacknowledged existential and spiritual cost to young evangelicals. What role does conflicting expectations around sexual behaviour play in young people leaving the church by the back door?