It turns out that young evangelical Christian kids aren’t far behind their non-evangelical peers in the doin’ it department. CNN’s Belief Blog teased an upcoming article in Relevant magazine about sex and single Christians, which highlighted an interesting statistic in a recent study: 80 percent of unmarried evangelical youths (age 18-29) said they’d had sex as opposed to 88 percent of unmarried adults.
So, lower—but not that much lower. Why? Yes, there’s the biology and peer pressure we all had, but there’s the abstinence movement, the purity pledges and other efforts to keep Christian youth out of hormones’ way. What’s causing them to cave?
Aside from the usual suspects, such as our pornified culture, Relevant brings up an intriguing angle: in Biblical times people married really, really young. And we are doing the reverse— waiting longer and longer. One author told the magazine “Sociologically speaking, the one big difference – and it’s monstrous – between the biblical teaching and our culture is the arranged marriages of very young people. If you get married when you’re 13, you don’t have 15 years of temptation.”
So, it sounds similar to the reason people used to be skinnier: not (just) because they were more disciplined dieters but because did physical instead of sedentary work and ate apples instead of Krispy Kremes ™.
How to address the problem of an old world ideal in the new world? CNN didn’t say. But maybe those purity rings should come with a pack of condoms. Just sayin’. 80 percent.
So, lower—but not that much lower. Why? Yes, there’s the biology and peer pressure we all had, but there’s the abstinence movement, the purity pledges and other efforts to keep Christian youth out of hormones’ way. What’s causing them to cave?
Aside from the usual suspects, such as our pornified culture, Relevant brings up an intriguing angle: in Biblical times people married really, really young. And we are doing the reverse— waiting longer and longer. One author told the magazine “Sociologically speaking, the one big difference – and it’s monstrous – between the biblical teaching and our culture is the arranged marriages of very young people. If you get married when you’re 13, you don’t have 15 years of temptation.”
So, it sounds similar to the reason people used to be skinnier: not (just) because they were more disciplined dieters but because did physical instead of sedentary work and ate apples instead of Krispy Kremes ™.
How to address the problem of an old world ideal in the new world? CNN didn’t say. But maybe those purity rings should come with a pack of condoms. Just sayin’. 80 percent.
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