This joke meme tweet about Christian marriage is amusing, but it sparked a sympathetic conversation about how messed up these situations can actually be for Christian youth:
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It is weird seeing “Christian” being used here to describe behaviours that don’t resemble those of any Christians I know. I am aware that there are some extremist groups in the USA that supposedly behave that way, but they are far from typical.
These Christians are not far from typical. They are a major force pulling the politics of the USA in a terrifying Christian nationalist direction. The percentage of teen girls who make a virginity pledge is estimated to be between 12-23%. It was not until 15 years ago that the majority of states in the USA did not require abstinence only education be provided in public schools. Despite the evidence that it does not work, 17 out of the 50 states still require abstinence only sexual education be taught in public schools, this means no discussion of barrier methods, hormonal birth control, IUD’s, etc, but also no discussion of practical STI prevention. Meaning that when these kids do sneak around and have sex they are much more like to get a sexually transmitted infection! Additionally in many states, these teenagers cannot get access to reproductive health services without their parents finding out about it, so they frequently forego any treatment when they do have an STI, and they certainly do not get any kind of regular screenings. 35 states in the USA *currently* require abstinence be emphasized in any public school sexual education. I grew up in one of the most liberal towns in the entire USA, in one of the most liberal states. I, a very outspoken proponent of safe sex education, still knew multiple people who were “saving themselves for marriage”. (Look, I was literally a kid in the ’90s handing out condoms at school. In my school district it was specifically prohibited for school staff to make contraceptives available on campus – in one of the most liberal places in the entire United States.)
Purity culture is out of control here and it is indelibly linked to the puritanical ideals this country was built on.
Hard disagree. Not sure where you live, but this mentality is extremely common throughout all of the Bible Belt, most of the Midwest, and some other pockets that are in rural areas which may be in coastal states but are still very insular.
I grew up as a catholic in Philadelphia and I still was taught that it was sinful to have sex before marriage, and all the rest of this bs… and the superchurch types are far more radical than Catholics!
This is a typical situation for evangelicals. Which are one of the largest groups of Christians in the nation. If this wasn’t your experience, then be grateful. But this belief system screwed up millions of kids and created immense misery. Don’t dismiss it as a fluke.
Christianity likes to take ownership of the very concept of marriage, and claim that there’s only one way it can or should be done,and that anything that doesn’t fit with their idea of it in the here and now is sinful.
Well, just within the Abrahamic faiths alone, there’s massive disparity in the concept of marriage. Polygamy used to be considered okay in the Jewish faith, as long as it was one man to many women – and divorce was acceptable too, if the man was the one wanting it. In Islam, polygamy still IS acceptable. And there have been polygamous Christian and pseudo-Christian sects since Christianity began. All of which show that, even if you were to credit marriage as an Abrahamist concept (which is utterly ridiculous), whackjobs like the modern purity cultists don’t even come close to understanding what ‘Christian marriage’ has looked like through the ages.
But of course, marriage was around for at least tens of millennia before these faiths came along. And during that time, it’s had innumerate variations. Ever heard the term ‘breaking a jar’ as a reference to marriage? That comes from the ancient Egyptians, who would break a wine jar and count the large shards – which number would become the years the marriage would be legally binding for. The term ‘jumping the broom’ references a practice in a Romani arranged marriage, which has since been adopted by modern neo-pagan movements. ‘Handfasting’ represents a ceremony of binding the hands in a marriage to last a year and a day, and is old Celtic. And on it goes.
Marriage and the strictures and limits thereof has been an incredibly varied thing throughout history, as bound by political considerations as by anything else and in no way necessitating a virgin bride or groom in the vast majority of cultures. One of the few cultures for which we have a list of pre-set marriage options are the Celts, who described 13 different types of marriage – from the handfasting aforementioned, to marriage until a child is born and reaches the age of 5, to marriages of prescribed years’ length, all the way through to the lifelong marriage… and even a marriage considered binding beyond the grave!
Marriage IS NOT and does not have to be what the Christians of today claim it does – much less what the whackjob purity cultists say that it must be. Marriage is simply an agreed union between peoples, however you wish to arrange it or the laws of your state are prepared to allow it. Open relationships can occur in a marriage context just fine, if that’s what the people in the relationship decide they want. The ideas of a Hellenised Middle Eastern doomsday cult don’t get the final say on what marriage was, is or should be.
Do what feels right for you. And definitely don’t let some narrow-minded, backwards-looking faith bound up in the words of ‘holy’ books scribed 2,000 years ago by ignorant Hellenised Jews decide the right way for you to live in a technological society in the 21st century or beyond.