Early Marriage
I read the cover story from the most recent Christianity Today last week. The title was: “The Case for Early Marriage.” Provocative title to say the least, and a provocative article in a few parts. Several of my friends, including some of the other Mentoring Project interns, talked about the article with me. It was interesting to see how each person came out of reading it with a different opinion/perspective.
Here are some of the key parts to the author’s argument (written by Mark Regnerus):
“Over 90 percent of American adults experience sexual intercourse before marrying. The percentage of evangelicals who do so is not much lower. In a nationally representative study of young adults, just under 80 percent of unmarried, church-going, conservative Protestants who are currently dating someone are having sex of some sort. I’m certainly not suggesting that they cannot abstain. I’m suggesting that in the domain of sex, most of them don’t and won’t.
What to do? Intensify the abstinence message even more? No. It won’t work. The message must change, because our preoccupation with sex has unwittingly turned our attention away from the damage that Americans—including evangelicals—are doing to the institution of marriage by discouraging it and delaying it” (emphasis mine).
I heard the message all growing up.
Have a purity ceremony (which I did), wear a purity ring (did that too), give it to your spouse when you get married (yep…that one too). This is how you establish a healthy marriage that will last a lifetime.
In essence the message is:
Purity before marriage = Longevity/happiness in marriage
Is it any wonder why Christians aren’t following this line of thinking then? Because we all know the truth is that purity before marriage is just one small aspect in the effectiveness of a marriage. Sure, coming into a marriage with previous sexual relationships makes the marriage more difficult at times, no doubt about it…but it doesn’t mean your marriage will fail.
And I think this is the lie we are teaching. I fully agree that purity is a worthy cause (and something Christ desires from us), especially considering how few are following it. But if it isn’t met with solid teaching on what a Christ-honoring marriage looks like, it loses value.
Any thoughts on this and/or the article?
Check out some great thoughts and different perspectives on this article from:
Kevin from SingleChristian.org
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Tyler Braun.
well…early marriage, (not only Americans) all youngsters are getting hitch at an early age because they are PREGNANT. As of now, all the brides that I had witnessed who walked down the aisle were already carrying an embryo on their womb.
That is the trend nowadays….
our world is really turning UPSIDE-DOWN.
Do you have any kind of support to that statement? I know TONS of friends who have gotten married in the last 3 years…and none were pregnant. Seems like a bit of an overstatement to me.
Tyler, as I’ve said. “As of now, all the brides that I HAD WITNESSED” . .
That may be a secular trend, but I think the trend amongst Christians is to rush into marriage at a young age so that they can have “legal” sex. Generalization? Yes, but it is fair to say that marriage is motivated by sex amongst believers because they have all grown up believing that marriage is the “key” to being able to have sex. Instead of being an act that glorifies God, it’s become a rule, lending itself to a legalistic faith. Let’s stop making rules and promises of what purity prior to marriage will do for us. Let’s start asking how can we worship God through the act of sex within marriage.
Tyler, check out this message by Mike Erre. He gives the best picture I’ve heard so far of sex within marriage. Imagine hearing this message growing up and how that would have impacted lives. I’d love to hear what you think: http://www.rockharbor.org/resources/messages/mp3s/2005-10-23.mp3
Sorry I totally comment jacked this post…
Tyler, I think you’ve hit on a very important aspect of the problem. The problem isn’t with waiting until marriage. It’s embedding the idea that if you wait until marriage, everything will work out okay. It’s a terrible assumption to hold, because as anyone who has been married for a while knows trouble will come.
Awesome I just saw that based on the statistics, my chance of divorce is 6.5%. Now I just have to make sure I stay single past 39, maybe it’ll go down to 2.1% maybe even zero!
As a Christian who waited to have sex with my first husband until our wedding night, and who got divorced a decade later, I was really alarmed to see this article in Christianity Today. We were encouraged to marry early, so that we wouldn’t “live in sin.” My new husband and his first wife also grew up in the church, and were encouraged to marry even younger (20 for him, 22 for me), and they waited until their wedding night to have sex, too. We both directly “blame” our divorces on how young we were when we married, and how little we understood about ourselves. We also had fairly messed up understandings of sex, which played into the state of our first marriages.
At any rate, I plan to blog on this issue myself, when I get home from vacation next week (and I’ve also already addressed it in other blog posts, including one called “Politics, religion & sex:” http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/?p=143)
Thanks for getting this important discussion going, Tyler.
To me, encouraging people to rush into marriage for the sake of purity has always felt like a giant cop-out. From my angle, the real problem is simple: churches aren’t teaching the biblical way of purity.
They have the talk. The rings. But you rarely find care groups for pregnant teens in churches. There’s nowhere for kids to go after they HAVE had sex, because churches in general don’t know how to deal with it.
Bottom line: if you steal or lie, the grace of God covers you and you can start fresh. But once you have sex, your purity is ruined. That’s what most christian young adults truly believe.
Purity isn’t about internalizing your desires and relying on your own will power ’til you can’t hold it anymore. That’s what the doctrine of young marriage teaches.
As a church, we’ve treated sex like a disease instead of a gift from God. We’ve tried to change our situation instead of addressing the root issues. Can’t wait to see this headline on Christianity Today someday:
“Can’t stop smoking cannabis? Move to Spain, where it’s legal!”
There’s nowhere for kids to go after they HAVE had sex, because churches in general don’t know how to deal with it.
-That is good thought Dustin and one I generally agree with.
Young marriage, in order to stay pure, should not be the motivating factor, as Kristen said.
I am speaking from a vantage point of 27 years past taking vows, in a young marriage. No I was not pregnant.
As is the case with most guidelines in the Bible, they are there for our own good. I have witnessed a lot of struggling marriages. Those that chose purity beforehand and those that did not. I don’t think there is a marriage that does not struggle from time to time. However, the practice of purity, especially with the person one ends up marrying, helps strengthen the endurance power of a marriage.
Some strengthening areas that I have identified, pertaining to sexual purity before marriage:
1) it is rehearsal for saying ‘no’ to anyone other than the spouse, once married
2) it witnesses strength in this area to the spouses, which breeds trust
3) it allows development of the other communication aspects of the relationship
4) it affirms that fidelity can be prospered, even if future health issues interfere with or redefine that sexual relationship. Yes, that does happen, despite what media may drive young people to believe, much more commonly than advertised.
Clearly these do not make a marriage foolproof, because, well, we are often fools.
You can’t help but agree that God has our best interest in mind, pertaining to sexual purity. Hurrying into marriage at a young age does not allow for any of the strengthening of 1-4 points. Those points would advertise a paced dating period to build those strengths.
I am a big fan of the article. It put early marriage within the realm of possibility for someone who thought that it was utterly foolish to get married young. (And I’m thankful that I’m still single as opposed to marrying the man I was engaged to at 22 who was entirely wrong for me.)
A good friend’s pastor once told him “if you’re getting married to have sex, just have sex.” I’m not one to put all responsibility on the church because the church can be saying all the right things and still seeing few positive results.
It seems like churches are constantly talking down to people who have had sex outside of marriage. (Or maybe I just go to churches where the pastors were all virgins when they got married.) There comes a point when it would be nice to stand up in service and say “Ok, ok, I get it. I screwed up. Can we move on now?” Certainly sin needs to be condemned from the pulpit, but Pastor Deuteronomy berating me for 45 minutes doesn’t mean I get to go back and make it right.
People get it. We get that premarital sex is wrong. We just fail to act on it. While I loved the perspective of the article, simply telling people to get married young isn’t going to make it easier to act out what we already know is right.
Agreed.
Tyler,
By the way any reason why you and Kurt have the same picture of this wedding couple?
Pure luck. Google “marriage” and it probably comes up or something.
Sorry forgot to say, I think the article has subtle negativity towards men as if we were only aiming for one thing. As for the question “Where Are All the Christian Men?” I can speak from first hand experience that there are TONS of criterias that these women are holding in their back pocket, but unwilling to share publicly. I ain’t claiming I’m a ‘good’ or ‘perfect’ Christian, but I know for sure many of these women are constantly looking for that ‘perfect’ guy and while they keep complaining (alternative word used here) about not being able to find any guy. I read some comments from that article, I totally agree…the article talked as if by the time the woman reaches 30, there are no ‘quality’ Christian guys left. I’m pretty sure for a few non-quality Christian guys, there are also quite a few damaged goods Christian women too. Even though I am still very much marriage minded, I’ve witnessed and experienced enough in dating world to feel quite sour of the whole thing (at least in the US).
I have too many points to pick with this article and dating in the US (christian/non christian) in general..but my doctor said I have to keep my blood pressure down.
yonas, yes, please keep the blood pressure in check.
i wonder- is waiting til marriage what keeps a marriage intact? i hardly think so- when the divorce in the church is not much different than that outside the church, i think it has less to do w/ sex (though that CAN play a part) and more to do w/ how to conduct a healthy relationship in which both people are serving each other and God.
i am not saying that sex doesn’t have it’s benefits or consequences….but i think we need to go beyond that to determine what holds marriages together, young OR old and what tears them apart. young marriage in society is not as common as it is in the church….and actually, why can’t christians be open to learn from that? b/c there is something to waiting until you’re older to marry….
yonas quoted a statistic earlier that dealt w/ divorce rate and age….could it be that we’re not teaching young people maturity- and perspective and what experience in life can hold and contribute? and in THAT their decisions on sex, love, and relationships will follow.
just a thought..
T:good pt…i’d rather have my sons/daughter know the biblical principle and have the conversations, rather than a DON’T do that attitude. who would counsel a young couple to get hitched just to have sex? if that’s the reason, it’s foolishness…do it right, under God, and establish a firm foundation.
Like many other things, sex is one of those topics we’ve struggled to find balance on within the church. As a woman who married early (18, my husband was 19, we did not have to get married) by choice, I can tell you that there have been hugely positive benefits for us as a couple and as individuals as well. I agree with many of Malinda’s statements above.
I don’t however believe we can across the board rule on whether or not early marriage is beneficial or not. It was good for us, but it totally depends on the individuals involved and the maturity level of those individuals. I wouldn’t take back getting married at 18. I’ve loved it and my husband has been wonderful.
One of the best things that helped Phil and I on the sexual front as a young married couple was the teaching we received in a couple’s class by the pastor’s wife who was a rather large woman with a great sense of humor and a complete ease with herself and the topic at hand. She was funny, irreverent and very, very helpful. This is unusual in churches though. It IS hard to go from “avoid at all costs” to “do it often, with great joy and abandonment, and know what the heck you’re doing”. That’s pretty impossible. For us women, we’re so often taught that Christian women are very UNsexual so that there’s a bit of guilt involved in it all, married or not. We’re not comfortable with this aspect of ourselves because it’s not been celebrated or even discovered perhaps.
Anyway, that’s just my rambling. Don’t know if it answered any questions or not.
This topic (sexuality, purity, and cultural norms concerning marriage) has been one of particular interest to me over the past decade of my life. I grew up somewhere to the right of middle on this one – had a very committed attitude toward abstinence, but never got caught up in promise rings or purity pledges. I was a virgin until my early marriage at 20, but around this time of my life I began to realize that I was missing some vital depth of reality concerning sexuality and marriage.
I feel like I got a pretty good dose of level advice from churches and parents, but that on the whole I was far too over-mystified about the nature of sexuality. I think this is far more the result of our current culture, but also that the church’s recent tactics aren’t helping.
In this I agree with the article, we’ve made far too big a deal about sex, and far too little of marriage.
However, my personal experience of marrying young (which has been amazing) has always left me with the desire to caution others from choosing to marry young. I have realized that my wife and I have many things going for us that others simply do not have. I think that the author of this article makes good points (he very specifically addresses the idea of “marriage for guilt-free sex,” btw), but that he suggests a solution that is easily more dangerous than the problem at hand.
As Tyler emphasized, “The message must change…” I’m just not sure that an emphasis on early marriage is necessarily linked to a better message about mature, healthy marriage.
Thanks for linking to my blog. Seems like the CT article has generated much discussion.
I’ll agree with the CT article on two points:
1. We should not treat early marriage as a death sentence.
2. We should emphasize the Bible’s positive messages about sexuality within marriage and encourage singles to pursue marriage.
But I think Regnerus just took these points way too far and I felt the need to challenge him.
Blessings,
Kevin in Manila