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September 27, 2011 | 11:18 am

Why more evangelical Christians are having premarital sex

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Here is a surprising lede from Relevant magazine:

Eighty percent of young, unmarried Christians have had sex. Two-thirds have been sexually active in the last year. Even though, according to a recent Gallup poll, 76 percent of evangelicals believe sex outside of marriage is wrong.

I’m not sure what I find more surprising: that so many evangelicals have had premarital sex or that only 76 percent believe its immoral. Probably the latter.

The entire Relevant article is worth reading here.

In following up on this article, both CNN and the Belief Beat blog tease out a theory about why more evangelical Christians are having sex before marriage. Nicole Neroulias writes:

the Bible and traditional social mores come from a time when puberty and marriage were synonymous, if not even reversed. So “waiting until marriage” was kind of a no-brainer. But now, the average Americans don’t wed until they are over 25. That’s another decade or more of polishing those purity rings — twice their lifetimes, at that point, and during the years when hormones and peer pressure are at their most insistent.

That is, no doubt, an important point. The longer one has to wait, the more difficult it is. It’s the reason that one of my college church friends used to say that if a guy at church was single, not married and not unusually weird, then he also wasn’t a virgin.

The question is what are the implications for churches and the U.S. Christian community? How should they respond?

3 Comments — Leave your comment

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Brad, Evangelicals would be less concerned with who has engaged in extramarital sex in the past and more concerned with unmarried Evangelicals being presently sexually active. This is the “it’s not where you’re coming from, it’s where you’re going” argument. Additionally, some evangelicals (Southern Baptists seem to be an example) almost assume a period of spiritual drift accompanied by moral lapses during the college years. Theologian Russell D. Moore wrote about this “Mardi Gras” period in a recent edition of Touchstone: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=24-04-023-v

Comment by Jeff Walton on 9/27/11 at 11:51 am

i just have to shake my head in shame that these are the people that are held up as leaders in the christian community.  this might have been surprising news 20 years ago.  maybe.  and then, to go on with this obsession on sex, and sexuality, and having to rethink their ideas on how to control it.  it’s not supposed to be controlled, it’s supposed to be used.  and sure, you’ll come back with “in the proper context”.  but you’ve changed the context.  the context now is nothing like in the bible where people married in their teens usually.  no, the context now is that materialism has usurped christianity.  now, the general expectation is that both the man and woman will have to go to college and get degrees, and increasingly, advanced degrees to meet your material demands.  and because we are so material and kneel at the altar of capitalism, it is expected that you attain this preparation for your material future as a single person on a shoestring budget, not putting additional demands on the system by getting married and having kids.  in the meantime, those very years that were designed by the Creator for having children and forming bonds with your mates are passing you by.  if you wait as long as 35 to have children, then the risk of Down’s Syndrome goes up significantly.  the currently-adopted system is self-destructive.

now, i’m not against education.  i think it’s a wonderful thing that is all-too-often sorely lacking.  but the process needs to be re-imagined, as something a bit more community-minded, and dare i say, maybe a dash of socialism.  perhaps you could rethink a system where young married couples with children are the norm in colleges.  and don’t bore us with stories about exceptions, and how it can be done.  because the overall truth is that for most it can’t and isn’t.

Comment by Proton Soup on 9/27/11 at 2:45 pm

What is also interesting that this is a problem where simple attention, exposure, got it to disappear. Where the old “power of the pen” becomes reaffirmed in the internet age.
Moleskin

Comment by Moleskin on 11/18/11 at 12:04 pm

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