MERGE: Why Courtship is Fundamentally Flawed/Courtship

[snuggles911]

Does anyone have any idea how common the courtship thing is? Are we talking hundreds of families? Thousands? A million?

I really have no clue how big a thing this is. It's not something I've heard of in my actual life so don't know if it's a big thing, or only known among a few?

It's gotten much more popular since I had a modified courtship in the early 1990s, even among fairly moderate Christians. I attend a Methodist denomination and there are families in my congregation who practice it. Books such as "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" by Josh Harris and "When God Writes Your Love Story" by Eric and Leslie Lundy are still often read in teen Sunday school class even though they were written more than a decade ago.

Both books promote emotional as well as sexual purity. Save your kisses for the altar and don't date until you're ready to get married and believe that the person is "the one." "When God Writes Your Love Story" promotes waiting for God to deliver your mate, which in my opinion, can lead people to stay single well until their 30s and beyond.

There also seems to be a renewed interest in young marriage. I've lost count of the women in my congregation who were engaged before graduating college and I recently attended a wedding of a couple where the girl had just turned 18, the groom was entering his freshman year of college, and neither kissed before saying "I do."

[Bazinga]

I wanted to add my two cents into what BrownieMama has been sharing as I have similar feelings to her on the rise of teen sex and sexuality in schools. My husband and I are both teachers. So for the past many years we have watched teens every day at school. We have overheard conversations (it is quite hilarious that teens really think we can't hear them because they huddle around each other), as well as caught some teens in inappropriate situations. It also amazes me how oblivious parents truly are to what their teens are doing. Many just truly don't want to believe their child could or would do such a thing and often turn a blind eye on what is really happening in our school system. ***Right now you might be thinking...um not me you are being ridiculous Bazinga....but, many parents are like this. They just don't care or don't really want to know what is going on.****

To name a few:

-Sex in the band room. (Yes this really did happen. Teacher caught them on his prep period.)

-Texting naked pictures during school hours(this was a HUGE thing one year. Lots of girls and boys involved.)

-Crass talking (I F***** so and so last night, etc.) Now this doesn't mean it actually happened. I know kids like to talk a big talk, but doesn't it mean it didn't happen.

-Multiple pregnancies every year.

-Lots of break-ups and the typical crazy hormonal fights in the hallway.

-Plus there is always a death it seems every year due to a teen drinking (or under the influence of drugs) and driving.

Now that is not to say that there weren't great kids. There were many wonderful students who wouldn't get caught up in this. But....it does seem that every year it gets worse and worse.

I'm not trying to say these things to scare anyone or make public schools seem like one giant orgy. It's not. However, these things ARE happening and quite frequently.

So is BrownieMama over exaggerating? Who knows exactly for sure...but I do know that this type of teen behavior is more common then one might think.

Ok- stepping of the soap box now.

[salex]

It's gotten much more popular since I had a modified courtship in the early 1990s, even among fairly moderate Christians. I attend a Methodist denomination and there are families in my congregation who practice it. Books such as "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" by Josh Harris and "When God Writes Your Love Story" by Eric and Leslie Lundy are still often read in teen Sunday school class even though they were written more than a decade ago.

Both books promote emotional as well as sexual purity. Save your kisses for the altar and don't date until you're ready to get married and believe that the person is "the one." "When God Writes Your Love Story" promotes waiting for God to deliver your mate, which in my opinion, can lead people to stay single well until their 30s and beyond.

There also seems to be a renewed interest in young marriage. I've lost count of the women in my congregation who were engaged before graduating college and I recently attended a wedding of a couple where the girl had just turned 18, the groom was entering his freshman year of college, and neither kissed before saying "I do."

The southern baptists have come out lately encouraging younger marriage

tennessean.com/story/news/religion/2014/08/12/southern-baptists-double-marriage/13894197/

The Southern Baptist Convention used to tell couples to wait until they reach financial stability, said Jon Akin, pastor of Fairview Church in Lebanon. "What we've communicated to our young people is finances are more important than sexual sin, and the Bible seems to say the exact opposite of that."

Now, the denomination is emphasizing practical and theological reasons to marry younger. Marriage helps keep young people from sexual sin in the midst of their sexual maturity, Akin said, and helps them fulfill God's design for men and women as complementary beings.

A couple of things. The areas in the country that have long encouraged early marriage among evangelicals (OKlahoma used to be among them) had the highest number of divorced evangelicals back in the 90s, and they traced it back to encouraging early marriage to avoid sexual sin. So, apparently people can't / don't learn. I was just at a wedding where the minister went on and on about the couple COULD NEVER DIVORCE NO MATTER WHAT (despite the fact her mom was divorced and remarried, her step dad was on wife number 3 and they are members of the minister's church)

Marrying because you are a horny teen despite limited economic options doesn't seem like something any church should encourage.

[IReallyAmHopewell]

One comment on the discussion of what teens do. I am always concerned with the "facts" of those studies. Like: Where the surveys done in school? If yes only hard-core fanatics would dare write down that they were virgins. The social ramifications would be crippling. How many students/teens were surveyed? Were they compensated? Randomly chosen? From different social and ethnic groups? Different geographical locations. It annoys me when journalists cover breaking news of a scientific "study" and you pull up the study (I"m a geek librarian, I do this sometimes!) and they survey 70 people, but only 14 returned their survey........

I have two teens--there's a whole lot of sex going on and a lot of mind games about what "is" and "is not" sex. It seems to have calmed down now that they are past they are both passed 16. Getting a car is apparently worth more than hooking up. There was MAJOR pressure to my kids way of thinking to lose their viginity, but "secondary virginity" (deciding to not do THAT again for a while) is pretty popular--usually after someone gets pregnant and they discover life is not a tv reality show.

Hopefully not too far off topic here!

[utter solitude]

I can't agree with the idea that things are "getting worse", it seems to me that the teens are just talking about it openly more and society is more open to some things. I'm sure if we had camera phones available to us when I was in high school we'd be swapping nude photos rampantly too.

My mother was in high school in the 60's. She knew people who were having sex with one or a few or multiple people. A couple friends of hers "went to visit their uncle's farm" during high school.

Her oldest brother (significantly older than her) told her the same things. It just seems like it was talked about openly much, much less.

The idea that "the world is getting worse!" is one that grates on me, as every generation claims it of the newer ones. I don't think it has much merit. The world is smaller than it was and we hear things more.

[2xx1xy1JD]

I was surprised at the article's claim that the late 1980s/early 1990s were the high point of hook-up culture. That's when I was in high school and university. You know what I remember? AIDS paranoia. It scared enough adults that we actually got some compulsory sex ed, and the message that we got everywhere was that "you are sleeping with everyone that your partner ever slept with". Back then, AIDS was considered a guarantee of a gruesome death, and people were terrified.

[Mama Mia]

I was surprised at the article's claim that the late 1980s/early 1990s were the high point of hook-up culture. That's when I was in high school and university. You know what I remember? AIDS paranoia. It scared enough adults that we actually got some compulsory sex ed, and the message that we got everywhere was that "you are sleeping with everyone that your partner ever slept with". Back then, AIDS was considered a guarantee of a gruesome death, and people were terrified.

Yeah, that really makes no sense to me. I was a teen ten years earlier, and my peer group ( very rough kids) were extremely promiscuous, extremely young. But that was pre-aids. My kids were teens after the major fear of aids had died down, but I can't see why the height of hook up culture coincided with the height of aids. Even among teens, who tend to be oblivious to health scares- there seemed to be a pretty universal dread.

If incidences of sex actually occurring on campus are increasing, I wonder if it's because it's harder for kids to find unsupervised time/space to have sex away from school? Just idle speculation.

[coexist]

Good post. Now if it could just be sent out to all the fundies...

http://www.thomasumstattd.com/2014/08/c ... ly-flawed/

[coexist]

darn it! I scrolled to see if it had been posted yet and apparently missed the other one! sorry!

[BlondeAgent007]

I graduated from high school in 2004. My friends fell somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of popularity. I'd say about half my friends were virgins, maybe a little less, were virgins at graduation. I was 18 and at the very end of my senior year when I lost mine. Sending pictures really wasn't a thing at that time, so I can't really comment on that.

There was one blow job incident in my school. Two girls were supposed to give one guy a blow job. One backed out. The whole school got abuzz of it and the administration was able to stop it right in the middle. The boy was moved to another school in the district, the girl continued to go to my school. It was a Really Big Deal, and everyone knew about it. If any other one happened it was kept quiet enough that I don't know if there were any others. I went to a public high school (one of three) in an affluent community, so maybe that would be different if I had went to a small town high school or an inner city school. We had a number of girls from the private schools come to ours after being kicked out for promiscuity (sneaking boys into the school and having sex with them there). They tended to be popular among the boys because they usually lived up to their reputations, but none of it happened at school. Mostly at parties, or like I said, if it happened in school nobody heard about it.

[BlondeAgent007]

I guess I should mention too that the boys from the private schools had player reputations. They would date girls from multiple schools at the same time. I don't know if anyone else has experience with kids from private schools having promiscuous reputations, but in my area, it seemed like a lot of messed up shit went on in those establishments

[roddma]

While I agree with Browniemamma that men dont define women and you aren't better for being in relationships,, as others say, the couples go from no touching to the whole nine yards in a few months or even weeks. Girls are trained to be a wife and mother so yes men define them in this sense. I also feel adult women do not need daddy calling shots on their mates.

Re;young marriage

When is marriage based on sex a good thing? Im not saying to sleep with everyone, but marriages based on sex only can create issues. Maybe it's best to have 'sexually sinned' than be with someone you have no psychical compatibility with.

[TrueRebel1]

And Doug Wilson responds:

dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/why-courtship-is-fundamentally-awed.html

If I didn't know it was written by DW, and that in the end he still promotes courtship, I would actually nod in agreement to some of his points.

[louisa05]

And Doug Wilson responds:

dougwils.com/s7-engaging-the-culture/why-courtship-is-fundamentally-awed.html

If I didn't know it was written by DW, and that in the end he still promotes courtship, I would actually nod in agreement to some of his points.

But again with the black and white approach. It is either courtship or being promiscuous in junior high. Never a middle ground with these people. :?

[sockinshoe]

Part of the reason people are aware of teen sexuality is that it has become less discreet. When my mother graduated high school, she didn't know which of her friends were and weren't virgins. I knew, because it was talked about. Also, the rise of texting/sexting/etc. means that sexuality can be proven. A naked photo is forever, being flashed isn't.

The "hookup culture" has always existed, except now it's a thing that we're hyper-aware of. To say "oh no! Those damn teenagers and their sex!" is really, imo, a form of slut shaming. It's natural and healthy and okay to experiment sexually. People who talk about "hookup culture" are isolating a symptom (and a fairly benign one at that) of a greater conflict, that between generations (which has always existed). I wholeheartedly reject the "those damn youths" mentality, being one of the damned youths, but also recognizing that this has literally happened as every single generation comes of age.

All of that being said, I do think that children are becoming too sexualized at an early age and I don't think that has anything to do with early, comprehensive sex education. When infants are put in bikini tops, and little girls wear high heels, I think there's a problem. I think it's wrong that 10-11 year olds buy thongs and wear underwear with "Peekaboo" or "Come and get it" on the bum, especially given that these things are usually designed and marketed by adult men. If your 11-year-old is caught performing apparently consensual oral sex on a classmate, that's disconcerting. If it's your 16-year-old, I'd say it's fine, if indiscreet.

[Toothfairy]

Courtship is much more harder than dating. If you break it off it causes even more heartache since that person was suppose to be for you chosen be god

[bea]

To toss in my own two cents (and I am very aware that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data"), I graduated high school in 1990. There were 38 people in my class - it was the Catholic Diocesean high school for a rural-ish area of Indiana. Our sex ed was "don't."

At graduation, three girls out of 17 were pregnant, and in my three years at the school, I saw six or seven girls in grades above and below me get expelled for being pregnant (nothing says "pro-life" like being expelled, amirite?).

The issue wasn't dating, as far as I could tell. The issue was that there was absolutely fuck-all to DO other than have sex and smoke weed. Personally, I think realistic sex ed classes that included information like "hey, at 14 or 15, you're probably not ready to have sex, so you CAN tell him no, his balls won't fall off. Also, having birth control does not make you a slut, it makes you prepared for something if you choose to have it happen and have it NOT end in an unwanted pregnancy." would have gone a long, long way to reducing the pregnancy rate in my school.

My sister-in-law, who is 17 years younger than me, grew up in a slightly larger but still rural town and went to public school. She got the kind of sex ed I'm talking about. Her class of a few hundred had one pregnancy in the senior class. None prior to that. Her belief was that they had cell phones, the Internet, and other things to do.

As for courtship, I think some families do it as sort of a supervised dating thing, which seems sensible if you're into that, and some families take it so far it verges on arranged marriages. I think a lot of people - led by models like Gretchen at the YLCF - had totally unrealistic ideas and expectations of courtship and had it backfire, in the form of "failed courtships," miserable marriages, etc. The evangelical culture as a whole seems to be turning away from it, from what I've read. And about time, too.

[16strong]

One of my FB friends (not a real-life friend) posted this rebuttal from some guy named Bryan Davis on Facebook. Never heard of this guy, but says he has 7 kids. I guess maybe he's fundie lite? I :ew: :ew: :ew: :ew: when I saw it. Is this viewpoint REALLY infiltrating mainstream Christianity?

[johara86]

I read the article and the comments. To me courtship is not fool proof and does not guarantee that person in private is the same around your family for chaperoned dates. Courtship is rigid and is a man made idea of some romanticized notion that a relationship is built upon. It is not biblical. People think courtship is the safe route. I differ in opinion and it also adds to the first kiss phenomenon that one sees on blogs all over. You are not a bad person or have lost some integrity if one kisses before marriage or dates normally. Its all foolishness.