Like, a Virgin?
Russell D. Moore on Christian Courtship & the Awkward Question of Sexual History
Not long ago, a young single woman wrote to me with a question she would have preferred to ask her father, were he still alive. An Evangelical committed to historic, orthodox Christianity, she wants to be a godly wife and mother. She made a commitment at an early age to remain chaste, and in her dating life thus far, she’s kept her commitment. She regrets none of that. But now she worries about how to have “the talk.”
This woman told me she is now dating a young man, also a Christian, who seems commendable in every way—and her family and friends agree. After a month or so of courtship, she is finding in him what she always prayed for in a husband—faithful discipleship, servant leadership, gospel clarity, and family focus. She’s falling in love with him, and she’s afraid of only one question: his sexual past.
Has he been with other women sexually? If so, how many and in what way? Has he ever had a problem with pornography? With every week, she’s becoming more and more attached to this man, and she’s afraid of discovering something potentially problematic after she’s already lost her affections to him.
It’s not, she assured me, that the information would necessarily kill the relationship, but she wants to know exactly what kind of man she’s giving herself to. Her dilemma is that it sure seems awkward to say, “So, enough about C. S. Lewis; let’s talk about your sexual past.” For one thing, she wonders about seeming so forward with a man not her husband. For another, she wonders if the question itself might force too much emotional intimacy too soon. And she questions whether she really needs to know this at all.
This woman was hardly an isolated example. I find myself counseling young Evangelicals in similar predicaments almost every week. In a time when conservative Christians have pushed back against the sexual chaos of the spirit of the age, and instead placed emphasis on chastity and fidelity, this problem has emerged. What happens when one potential spouse has remained free from fornication and the other hasn’t? How much of a sexual past, if any, would doom a potential marriage?
Nothing Casual
The impulse behind the conversation is countercultural in the best way. Courtship for the Christian, after all, isn’t a means of entertainment; it’s about discerning whether someone would make a good husband or wife. But the discussion is fraught with peril because it is tied up with deeper conversations about Christianity itself, about the tensions between law and grace, between justice and forgiveness.
The sexual past of a potential future spouse is important to know about because of the nature of marriage as a one-flesh union (Gen. 2:23–24; Eph. 5:28–33). Biblically speaking, marriage is not a partnership between two individuals who have compartmentalized off parts of their lives. The Apostle Paul dismisses any such notion with his radical statement that a husband’s sexuality does not belong to him but to his wife (1 Cor. 7:4), and vice-versa. In a very real sense, your spouse’s sexual past becomes part of your story, too.
Of course, the act itself, disconnected from the conjugal vow, does not create a marriage; otherwise, there would be no concept of “fornication” in the Scriptures. Even so, in the Christian perspective, there is no such thing as a casual sexual encounter.
Russell D. Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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