{"id":5515,"date":"2009-08-07T00:01:17","date_gmt":"2009-08-07T00:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2009\/08\/should-we-marry-younger.html"},"modified":"2009-08-07T00:01:17","modified_gmt":"2009-08-07T00:01:17","slug":"should-we-marry-younger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2009\/08\/should-we-marry-younger.html","title":{"rendered":"Should We Marry Younger?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow, did you see this piece in CT<\/a><\/i>? It’s by Mark Regnerus.<\/p>\n

Indeed, over 90 percent of American adults experience
\nsexual intercourse before marrying. The percentage of evangelicals who
\ndo so is not much lower. In a nationally representative study of young
\nadults, just under 80 percent of unmarried, church- going, conservative
\nProtestants who are currently dating someone are having sex of some
\nsort. I’m certainly not suggesting that they cannot abstain. I’m
\nsuggesting that in the domain of sex, most of them don’t and won’t. <\/i><\/p>\n

What to do? Intensify the abstinence message even more?
\nNo. It won’t work. The message must change, because our preoccupation
\nwith sex has unwittingly turned our attention away from the damage that
\nAmericans–including evangelicals–are doing to the institution of
\nmarriage by discouraging it and delaying it. <\/i><\/p>\n

Late Have I Loved You<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

If you think it’s difficult to be pro-life in a
\npro-choice world, or to be a disciple of Jesus in a sea of skeptics,
\ntry advocating for young marriage. Almost no one empathizes, even among
\nthe faithful. The nearly universal hostile reaction to my April 23,
\n2009, op-ed on early marriage<\/a> in The Washington Post<\/span>
\nsuggests that to esteem marriage in the public sphere today is to speak
\na foreign language: you invoke annoyance, confusion, or both. <\/i><\/p>\n


<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nBut after years of studying the sexual behavior and
\nfamily decision-making of young Americans, I’ve come to the conclusion
\nthat Christians have made much ado about sex but are becoming slow and
\nlax about marriage–that more significant, enduring witness to Christ’s
\nsacrificial love for his bride. Americans are taking flight from
\nmarriage. We are marrying later, if at all, and having fewer children.<\/p>\n

While our sexual ideals have remained biblical and thus rooted in
\nmarriage, our ideas about marriage have changed significantly. For all
\nthe heated talk and contested referendums about defending marriage
\nagainst attempts to legally redefine it, the church has already ceded
\nplenty of intellectual ground in its marriage-mindedness. Christian
\npractical ethics about marriage–not the ones expounded on in books, but
\nthe ones we actually exhibit–have become a nebulous hodgepodge of
\npragmatic norms and romantic imperatives, few of which resemble
\nanything biblical.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow, did you see this piece in CT? It’s by Mark Regnerus. Indeed, over 90 percent of American adults experience sexual intercourse before marrying. The percentage of evangelicals who do so is not much lower. 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