The latest season of “The Bachelorette” laid bare a widespread practice among Christians — premarital sex.
But Scripture plainly speaks against sexual activity outside of marriage. So how did we get here?
Patrice Kelsey Jean, 23, believes the media is partly to blame.
“The media makes it seem so abnormal to be abstinent. The desire to have sex is natural and if nobody is telling you it’s wrong, why would you wait?” she told The Christian Post.
Jean watched the entire season of “The Bachelorette,” where Hannah Brown, a 24-year-old professing Christian, tried to find her future husband. What sparked controversy and a national discussion was when one of the men, Luke Parker, expressed his Christian convictions for purity.
Parker told Brown that he wants a wife who believes what he believes when it comes to sex.
“Let’s talk about sex and how the marriage bed should be kept pure,” he said. “Let’s say you have had sex with one or multiple of these guys, I would be wanting to go home.”
Offended and feeling judged, Brown confessed that she had “physical relations” with other contestants but that “Jesus stills loves her.”
Their spat continued on Twitter after the show.
The phrase “Jesus still loves me” is now a coined phrase in the media and social media platforms.
Brown is not alone when it comes to Christians engaging in sexual relations (and being OK with it) before marriage.
There was a major movement in the ’90s and early 2000s where young singles were taking a vow of celibacy and wearing rings that signified their purity. The slogan “true love waits” became a motto then.
At the time, an estimated 2.5 million American teenagers publicly pledged to abstain from sex until marriage. However, a study done for the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2001 showed that 88% of purity pledgers had premarital intercourse.
More recently, as previously reported by CP, a study on Christian attitudes toward dating and marriage revealed a broad acceptance for cohabitation and premarital sex and a rejection of traditional gender roles.
According to the “2014 State of Dating in America” report published by Christian Mingle and JDate, 61% of Christians said they would have sex before marriage.
Pastor JC Mejia of Vida Church Delan in Los Angeles believes there are three major factors contributing to the decline in purity: lack of Bible reading, lack of mentors, and societal pressure.
Though some have placed their faith in Jesus they likely have not engaged in reading the Bible, he said.
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SOURCE: Christian Post, Jeannie Law
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