Interesting article, Even Evangelical Teens Do It, over at Slate:
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Teenagers who identify as “evangelical” or “born again” are highly likely to sound like the girl at the bar; 80 percent think sex should be saved for marriage. But thinking is not the same as doing. Evangelical teens are actually more likely to have lost their virginity than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. They tend to lose their virginity at a slightly younger age—16.3, compared with 16.7 for the other two faiths. And they are much more likely to have had three or more sexual partners by age 17: Regnerus reports that 13.7 percent of evangelicals have, compared with 8.9 percent for mainline Protestants.
How is that possible? What happened to all those happy, young Christian couples from the ’90s swearing that True Love Waits? Partly, the problem lies in the definition of evangelical. Because of the explosion of megachurches, vast numbers of people who don’t identify with mainstream denominations now call themselves evangelical. The demographic includes more teenagers of a lower socioeconomic class, who are more likely to have had sex at a younger age. It also includes African-American Protestant teenagers, who are vastly more likely to be sexually active.
But partly the problem lies in the temptation-rich life of an average American teenager. The fate of the True Love Waits movement, which began with the Southern Baptist Convention in the ’90s, is a perfect example. Teenagers who signed the abstinence pledge belong to a subgroup of highly motivated virgins. But even they succumb. Follow-up surveys show that at best, pledges delayed premarital sex by 18 months—a success by statistical standards but a disaster for Southern Baptist pastors.
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The results play out in the usual 19th-century way. When evangelical parents say they talk to their kids about sex, they mean the morals, not the mechanics. In a quiz on pregnancy and health risks associated with sex, evangelicals scored very low. Evangelical teens don’t accept themselves as people who will have sex until they’ve already had it. As a result, abstinence pledgers are considerably less likely than nonpledgers to use birth control the first time they have sex. “It just sort of happened,” one girl told the researchers, in what could be a motto for this generation of evangelical teens.
My wife and I just watched Saved! again the other night. Interesting how right on that movie is in certain particulars…
Love this movie.
I read this post coming away from a dinner with my visiting brother who came through town with his youngest son (age 13) for their second “sex trip.” (Not what you think.) C. has taken all 3 of his boys on two trips with Dad (first at age 10, second at age 13) in which Dad explains why love waits and then reiterates.
I’ve long believed that love didn’t always wait for many evangelical teens. And yet, in some cases they do wait and that’s fine. But the whole teaching that sex is the ultimate gift concerns me. It elevates sex to something it’s not IMHO. The ultimate gift, is that long-term connection with your husband/wife that involves the combination of spiritual, sexual, practical. To be partners in all things for many years is an underrated miracle.
Part of what these numbers reveal is the feckless character of a “pledge” when it comes to sex. Lots of these pledges were taken by adolescents who’s emotions had been ramped up by some kind of rally, some spectacle of conviction and fear, and then urged to take a pledge.
Sexual character depends on more than a coerced pledge, so a church that takes comfort in the fact that its young people have pledged themselves to abstinence are shirking their responsibility to those kids.