Evangelical teens and sex: Good girls do

To be fair, evangelical has become such a broad term, that I wonder how many of these sexually-active evangelicals are nothing more than "Easter-Christmas-Mother's Day" churchgoers who show up for the youth group trip to the beach or the mountains. Not that evangelicals don't have serious issues, but because evangelicalism is so cultural in the South and Midwest, I think it's often the case that a lot of tag-along churchgoers make the more devout look worse than they really are.

I will say this about gay marriage: a man who chooses to pursue another man is not interested in me. Simply stopping marriage for gays will not make a gay man more attracted to me, other than as a beard. I agree that steps need to be taken to help people stay married longer and to practice abstinence, but the gay marriage argument is complete straw.

This is progress. Of course we need to confront that the singer of "I Kissed A Girl" is the daughter of two Evangelical pastors. Go figure.

It is good that it isn't just liberals that have figured out, "Having to wait until age twenty-five or thirty to have sex is unreasonable."

Of course, soc cons are still going to live to regret failing to condemn out-of-wedlock birth except among Hispanics and blacks.

Frederica Mathewes-Green has a fascinating article called

"Lets Have More Teen Pregnancies"

She advocates exactly what the last paragraph advocates....help the young get married and stay married through tight family bonds and financial support from family and community. Her pont is that obviously teens and abstainance don't work....we aren't biologically programmed for that. Like the fellow above said, waiting until you are 25 to have sex is unrealistic.

Here is the link...it's a real discussion starter for sure!

http://www.frederica.com/writings/lets-have-more-teen-pregnancy.html

I am seeing the impact of tight social community on teen behavior in the young adults at St. John's through the St. James House, an intentional community living situation for 18-20-somthng singles at our parish. Those young people have the ideals....from their parents and informed by faith....and they have eachother to discuss the reality of actually living out those ideals! That isn't to say they are all perfect virginal christians but they have a heck of a lot more thoughtful support to stay true to their hopes and aspirations.

again a mini-Benedict Option for young adults.

This is absolutely news. Among my friends, all married, all at least 30 or so, about half had premarital sex with someone other than their spouse, while they were practicing evangelical Christians. Most of that half were the husbands. All but a couple of my close girlfriends, myself included, waited to have sex until we were married, and we got married at widely varying ages, from 23 to 32 or so. My girlfriends and I all felt very supported among each other to wait to have sex, but that didn't seem to be the case as much among our husbands. As to the claim that it's unrealistic to expect young adults to wait until they're 25-30 for marriage to have sex I say, no. It's not unrealistic, but it's definitely difficult, and a strong support system is essential.

I've seen this phenomenon, up close at our church when we lived in the South. Three sisters, all members of the youth group, baptized and professing Christians, yet two were pregnant in high school. Those hypocritical Christians, you might say; their teens are even more promiscuous than secular teens!

Mind you, the cards were stacked against these girls right from the start. Their mother, a non-Christian, refused to take care of them and the three different men who fathered them likewise were not in the picture. The eldest girl lived with an aunt and the aunt's boyfriend, both non-Christians. The two younger ones lived with their uncle, a Christian, and his wife, who was not. The uncle did the best he could, but he was not around much during the week due to a long commute and a couple hours spent in church and youth group each week were not enough to counteract all that they had gone through in their short lives.

The middle one turned out fine, she finished school, got married to a nice young Army guy and had a baby AFTERWARDS -- but the other two were hopelessly attracted to the most shiftless sort of boys and both ended up pregnant at 15 and 17. The older one went away to live with another relative in another state; and the younger one got married at 15 and her life was pretty much a train wreck after that as the boy was a drug user who couldn't hold down a job and she kept thinking that more babies would settle him down, with predictably disastrous results.

I've thought of those girls a lot lately, first with the Jamie Lynn Spears pregnancy, and then again with Bristol Palin. I imagine many parents breathe a sight of relief when their teenage daughter gives her life to Christ; but no matter how willing the spirit, the flesh is weak and the hormones strong.

I also suspect that one of the reasons this is such a problem in "evangelical" circles is partly what others have stated -- there are plenty of people who self-identify as "Christian" but who do not actually attend church, pray, or attempt to live a Christian life -- it is a purely cultural thing to them, much like the Catholics who only go to mass on Christmas, or the Orthodox who only go for the ethnic component.

I have three daughters myself, and I sincerely hope that a strong Christian family and a close-knit community of believers will counteract the world.

But I totally can see how a Christian teen, whose family is maybe nominally Christian or maybe not anything at all, whose friends are not Christian and are probably teasing her about being a prude and God-girl and all, and whose boyfriend is whispering in her ear that it's OK, 'cause we love each other, and I'll never leave you, could get caught up in the heat of the moment, and then think, well, she's not a virgin any more, so does chastity really matter now?

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Youth marriage (socialogically) generally refers to marrying prior to age 20. Study after study has shown there is no benefit to waiting past age 23 for women and 25 for men.

The problem is we're too busy "crusading" and we're not living up to the standards we're mandating. This isn't 1968. We need to think of other ways to resist the cultural shifts besides "We Shall Overcome" on picket signs and sandwich boards at the Washington Mall. We're too busy being political and not busy enough in growing in communion with our good God who loves humankind.

If we didn't look like such a pack of hypocrites, perhaps more people would find it tenable that marriage is indeed something more than a legal contract. They need to see it first, though. So I can't blame this society for moving the direction it has. They haven't been seeing any example to follow. And that's no one's fault but our own.

Perhaps if these young people actually lived in a community that took _all_ of the demands of Jesus and Christianity seriously they would be less likely to get in trouble this way? Modern Evangelicals, or Christians in general for that matter, are great at picking and choosing what parts of the faith they think are important. All the stuff about justice, whether "social" or otherwise, gets ignored, along with applying Christian ethics to business, government, or any other "public" area. Even in questions of war and peace, how many Christian war mongers do you know? Given the example set by their elders, who can blame the young for treating Christian ethics like a Chinese buffet? They're not the ones who set the precedent. While I don't expect the church to be perfect, it should be substantially better than the surrounding culture and right now it isn't. Until that changes don't expect anybody, even self-professed Christians to act as if Christian morality mattered.

"Did I mention that ALL, as in every single one, of our college friends who married right around the time we did (that is, at 21 or so) are still with their first spouses? That we're all in our early 60's now?

Did I mention that we all went to Stanford, not exactly the most foremost Bible college in the world?"

Not to pick nits, but the fact you all went to Stanford is probably what prevented you from having young marriages that ended up in divorce. What hurts young marrieds is the economics of raising kids without good job prospects and education. They are less able to deal with the stresses created by marrying young and having kids young.

What is your church doing, if anything, to help singles live chastely but non-neurotically, especially in dealing with the loneliness?

We have guidelines for dating (none until 16 and then only group dates). We have Young Single Adult Congregations (ages 18 - 30) with an abundance of activities ranging from sports and crafting to inspirational speakers, support networks (i.e. people assigned to help you in good times or bad), Bible study, etc. And incredibly these activities are run by the single adults, not a youth pastor, not a minister, but activities for singles by the singles.

What is your church doing, if anything, to support young marrieds?
We have marriage preparation and marriage improvement classes that are held either during the Sunday School hour or on a weeknight. We again have support networks for marrieds (actually everyone should have that network).

That said, however, I think the majority of my support came from my family. Everything else, from my church leaders to my liberal high school sex-education, merely enriched my knowledge and strenthened my values.

"Having to wait until age twenty-five or thirty to have sex is unreasonable,"

I don't think it's unreasonable, difficult, maybe, but unreasonable, no.

Daniel, re the economics of young marriage. I have asked this question here before about FMG's early marriage model, that I don't see how the economics work.

Suppose a couple marry when she's 18 and he's 19. Let's put him in a plumber's apprentice program, a trade beloved of some posters here. So he's got almost a family supporting job, and MAYBE health insurance in the best of worlds. She has a child at 19, one at 21, one at 23. When the youngest goes to kindergarten, mom will be 28. Now she can resume post-high school education. She probably can't go to school full time, so maybe she's mid-thirties when she finishes and can start looking for her first professional job (competing in the job market with people 15 years younger). Oops, child #1 is almost ready to have his/her first child under this model, and mom #1 is expected (under the FMG model) to help with (grand)child care!

How does wanting this kind of world not close off women forever from any semblance of participation in professional life? (Spare me the comments that I devalue child care. I've done it all--working full time with kids, at home full time with kids, working part time with kids. Many women don't find raising their children to be the be-all and end-all of their existence.)

The Benedict Option will backfire, badly, in the long run, as the next generation leaves and then takes revenge in the form of tell-alls about how horrible their lives were and possibly even abuse lawsuits.

Yeah, you see things like this all the time among the Amish and Mennonites.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, Larry, but actually there is quite a lot of defection among those subgroups. Unless, of course, the order enforces such an oppressive life that people literally have no way out.

Not. While the kids may leave, I haven't noticed any tell-all's on the magazine racks at the supermarket checkout, nor heard of any abuse lawsuits. The "Benedict Option" actually has a long history in the Christian tradition, dating back at least to the early Celtic church, and the monastic/separatist traditions have survived from generation to generation without too much scandal. Not every member of succeeding generations may choose to continue the tradition, but there are generally new members coming in from the outside, too.

The above comment is me. Sorry. What I was trying to say is that people love to blame others for societies problem. They get a lot less enthusiastic when you point out their own role in things.

Sex education, whether it be teaching safe sex or absence isn't the responsibility of the state, schools or anyone, it's the responsibility of the parents and only the parents.

The idea that close, warm, supportive families help kids avoid premature sexual activity, regardless of family religiosity, rings true. If children are raised with all the affection they need and are treated as whole persons (as opposed to behavior-units) at all ages, why would they be interested in interactions that only involve genitals? They are going to expect the whole package - respectful communication and affection. And how many teenage sexual encounters can deliver that?

I think everyone agrees that sex education SHOULD be the parent's responsibility, but what do you do with those kids when parents refuse to educate their own children?

"How does wanting this kind of world not close off women forever from any semblance of participation in professional life?"

Connie, that's the flaw in FMG's fantasy. In fairness, I don't think she expects that women would want that life or has considered the consequences in terms of a woman spending ages 18-30 out of the job market/college on future life.

Susan wrote:
Although early marriage may be a good option for two very devout young adults, it is not a good option for the rest of the culture. The statistics are overwhelming: early marriage leads to much higher rates of divorce. I am an attorney who has worked with many individuals and families. I can recall only one person who regretted marrying too late in life. But I have had countless people say to me, "We married too young."

Others have commented already that teen marriage may in many cases be too young, but little is gained by waiting until one is in one's late 20's or later. Ideally, both a family environment and a church environment present norms and values that equip a person for sound choices, and then support that person to the extent possible in the choices they do make. One phenomenon of the late-60's through maybe early 80's period that I wish were explored with greater scrutiny is that many in the upper middle class in this country subtly began to discourage post-collegiate marriage. Some might argue that some parents (or some young people) were infuenced by feminism, and while I think that is possible in some cases, I think something else was occurring at the same time. An idea began to take hold in the leafy suburbs that if you wanted to make something of yourself, you put off marriage -- "don't get married to soon. Have some life experiences". What this meant for the considerable number of people who lacked a solid grounding in Christian principles (whatever nominal Christianity they shared) was that with the endorsement of their parents, their parents' friends, and their sector of the culture, they heeaded into a decade or more of serial relationships, and a life trajectory that made it difficult to make long term commitments. Now, I know and many of the rest of you know people who movede out of that milieu, got married, and have stayed married. But what was abandoned along that path I think was an express willingness to endorse and then to support the possibility of marriage for people who were in love in their early 20's. Decades later, we have the phenomenon of mainline churches like my own denomination (Episcopal) that would not know a functioning singles or young couples ministry if it fell out of tree and broke the windshield on their parked Lexus. Meanwhile, we all smirk at the Mormons (many of us Christians) and they follow an intentional practice of stewarding a singles ministry that accommodates young couples' love in the direction of marriage and -- guess what? -- that denomination is growing. I realize that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I think for reasons that may include but that run deeper than mere feminism, the American upper middle class lost its cultural appetite to model, to celebrate and to encourage marriage among the young and motivated. The result has been to leave a lot of unhappy and confused and lonely twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings coming back to Christmas dinners alone year after year. I see them on the Metro every day.

Richard

I haven't read the other comments yet, so please excuse me if I'm repeating something which has already been said. The other thing I would add is that the church needs to reclaim the idea of celibacy as a vocation (even if it ends up being a temporary vocation). Traditionally celibacy was seen as a superior lifestyle because the celibate was living in dependence on God to remain chaste and out of this dependence came maturity and a stronger manifestation of spiritual gifts. People who were celibate are also freer to serve other around them which brings its own spiritual benefits. Right now our message, at best, seems to be "don't have sex because it's meant for another time in your life." Celibacy as a vocation which the church leads and supports us in is a much more meaningful, positive and historically faithful view of abstinence which ought to be revived.

I waited until I got married at 28. Not impossible, but damn difficult. Let me tell you what helped me the most. My mother talked openly with me about sex. And often. It was not taboo. Sex, she taught me, was wonderful and pleasurable, but to be only enjoyed within marriage. Even while I was single, I was not out of touch with my sexuality and I didn't deny it. I even wore sexy nighties even though no one but me would see it. I have always been a sensual person- enjoying the sounds, textures, tastes, feel, of just about everything including food, moss, drink, fabrics, etc. I have a vocation as a sculptor where instant gratification is not a part of my life. I was used to working hard and waiting. Also, I had my best friend who would kick my ass if I had had sex before my wedding day. ;-P

I sometimes wish I'd had children in my 20s rather than my 30s. One advantage is that you're still young when they're grown up. Another is that they get to know more generations - my grandmother and mother both married in their teens, so my sons live near their great grandmother as well as their grandmother, and, as my elder is 12, it's not impossible that he could have children who have a great, great grandmother.

On the issue of chastity - are there strong grounds for saying that premarital chastity leads to happier marriages? I'm pretty unhappily married, in staying-together-for-the-sake-of-the-children mode, despite my wife having been a virgin at marriage, and me having been pretty inexperienced. I don't think there are any easy answers about what leads to good marriages, happiness, etc.

"No benefit except, you know, waiting till you've found the right partner."

Ah yes, the best being the enemy of the good. "The right partner" is a pernicious myth. There ain't nobody who's perfect, and every relationship will be subject to buyers remorse.

Lasting marriages just deal with it; love is an act of the will, not of the heart.

Actually, the one ADVANTAGE to having children in one's 30s or even 40s is that, when you are 80 and need somebody to take care of you, the obvious candidate will be 40 or 50 and still physically up to the task. I see so many 80+ mothers and their 65-y.o. daughters struggling against two sets of infirmities at once. Of course, back in the Good Old Days, an 80+ mother might have a whole bunch of children, ages 40 through 65. At least in some subcultures, the youngest daughter might be the Designated Caregiver, who, it was presumed, would not marry and would spend her entire life with her parents. In return, she would eventually inherit the family house. One of my great-uncles married a woman who had survived this arrangement.

I'll join TfT in praise for Bearded Professor.