What is the minimum age for marriage?
Mark Regnerus in Christianity Today:
What to do? Intensify the abstinence message even more? No. It won’t work. The message must change, because our preoccupation with sex has unwittingly turned our attention away from the damage that Americans—including evangelicals—are doing to the institution of marriage by discouraging it and delaying it.
And,
Unfortunately, American evangelicals have another demographic concern: The ratio of devoutly Christian young women to men is far from even. Among evangelical churchgoers, there are about three single women for every two single men. This is the elephant in the corner of almost every congregation—a shortage of young Christian men.
Try counting singles in your congregation next Sunday. Evangelicals make much of avoiding being unequally yoked, but the fact that there are far more spiritually mature young women out there than men makes this bit of advice difficult to follow. No congregational program or men’s retreat in the Rocky Mountains will solve this. If she decides to marry, one in three women has no choice but to marry down in terms of Christian maturity. Many of the hopeful ones wait, watching their late 20s and early 30s arrive with no husband. When the persistent longing turns to deep disappointment, some decide that they didn’t really want to marry after all.
Given this unfavorable ratio, and the plain fact that men are, on average, ready for sex earlier in relationships than women are, many young Christian women are being left with a dilemma: either commence a sexual relationship with a decent, marriage-minded man before she would prefer to—almost certainly before marriage—or risk the real possibility that, in holding out for a godly, chaste, uncommon man, she will wait a lot longer than she would like. Plenty will wait so long as to put their fertility in jeopardy.
Read the whole thing here.
So far, I’ve just read the parts you’ve shared, but I look forward to the whole thing.
Good stuff, brother.
I believe this article touches on important themes and has some excellent points.
I think it is possible that the differential between mature Christian women and mature Christian men is even greater than suggested in the article (it says 3:2). My experience is probably more like 2:1 (in terms of maturity).
The church is reaping what it has sown here as the church has been living off denying the importance of maturity for quite sometime now (youth ministries have been thriving exactly on BEING YOUTH ministries, and the church has been embarrassed of its older saints) and its commitment to maintaining “maturity” is merely social convention and can be redefined according to personal preference.
Yet I expect the article remains on the edge of addressing the real problems at the center. Delaying marriage is a concern, but probably is a symptom more than the main problem and so marrying younger probably will not yet get at the heart of the problem.
I disagree with the phrase “…it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex.” I, and many others I know, married late and waited until marriage. Jesus ‘waited.’ Paul was unmarried and ‘waited.’ The list could go on. Given the relational habits and low standards of safeguards in our time it may be unreasonable, but that doesn’t mean it can not be expected.
The article seems to suggest that legitimate sex in marriage is an adequate prevention to immoral sex outside of marriage. I think the evidence of this is far from convincing, both Biblically and experientially. Yes, it is better to marry than to burn (with passion, 1Cor 7), but marriage is not a cure for sexual immorality.
Tim – – I agree with you point for point. I have no statistics, but it seems at least that high in terms of the ratio of women to men. I think the value of this article may be for parents, in particular, who discourage marriage until couples are better established economically. But, I also disagree with the “unreasonable” phrase.