A Rite for the Uncommitted
Samuel Pascoe on “Shacking Up”
It is a new millennium, and by some accounts, that is reason enough to loosen the church’s long-held and well-reasoned conviction that the covenant of marriage is the only safe, healthy, life-affirming, and godly context for sexual relations. But there is one issue on which even conservative Christians tend to loosen the church’s teaching: Many of them, not least many conservative clergy, advocate abandoning the traditional ban on marrying couples who have lived together before their marriage.
Why is this bad? some people will ask. At least the couple are finally getting married. At least now they’re making a public commitment, and one that’s harder to get out of than simply living together. The man, as used to be said, is “making an honest woman” of his live-in partner. (And vice versa, of course.)
Deep Confusion About Marriage
Why is this bad? Because it is bad for marriage. The early results of the Sexual Revolution are coming in, and the results are not encouraging. Teen pregnancies are at an all-time high. (One-third of the babies born today are born to unwed mothers. The United States occupies the unenviable position of number one in the world rates of divorce and unwed motherhood.) Abortions continue at a level that makes the horrendous incidents of ethnic cleansing seem mild by comparison.
Reported cases of sexual assault, misconduct, and harassment proliferate at all levels of society, from preschools to the presidency. Even the Church is not immune, and the news media regularly report the sad news of yet another Christian leader who was overtaken by the spirit of the age.
Let us not forget what all this has done to the next generation. The predictable result has been a generation of children now deeply confused about sex, and following their parents in giving sex without commitment and following them too in suffering the consequences.
According to Reuters, reporting on the National Marriage Project’s The State of Our Unions 2000, the young people who preferred living together to marriage believe “that sex is for fun and has no strings attached,” fear divorce, and see marriage “as a potential economic liability.” Many young women, who begin to want to marry but are “disenchanted with the pool of prospective partners and the likelihood of finding a mate,” choose single motherhood.
Yet they find they want what they have prevented themselves from getting. “Oddly, however, most of the young men and women who participated in the study expected some day to meet and marry somebody who fulfilled their emotional and spiritual needs. The problem, researchers said, is that their current mercenary mating habits do not easily lead to the fulfillment of that goal.” As Barbara Dafoe Whitehead has said, “we may be in a period of cultural cluelessness.”
Yet, all too often, and even in the face of such a crying need, the church’s response has been to loosen its belt to accommodate the increasingly flabby moral fiber of its people. Those churches that adjust their moral compass are usually motivated by a genuine desire to love God’s people, but in the words of the prophet, they have “healed the people’s wounds lightly.” They proclaim “‘Peace! Peace!’ when there is no peace.”
These churches seem genuinely to desire to maintain relationships at any cost in order to gain a hearing for their message. But as a result of accommodating such wide deviations from Christian discipleship and godly living, such churches have abandoned any message worth listening to.
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more on sex from the online archives
27.3—May/June 2014
Facts versus Stereotypes About Love & Marriage in the Land of the Free by Allan C. Carlson
28.2—March/April 2015
Man, Woman & the Mystery of Christ
An Evangelical Protestant Perspective by Russell D. Moore
more from the online archives
21.10—December 2008
Early Christian Teaching on the Incarnation & Redemption by Patrick Henry Reardon
32.6—November/December 2019
on Taking Heed of the Parallels Between the Crises of Yesterday & Today by Korey D. Maas
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