# Cohabitation and Marriage



## Backwoods Presbyterian (Aug 29, 2011)

Very worthwhile read in today's National Review Online concerning the rising number of young couples that choose to not marry and "cohabitate" and the problems this causes for children.

The Cohabitation Revolution - Rich Lowry - National Review Online


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## Rufus (Aug 29, 2011)

If your going to have kids, just get married, it's not that hard. I saw a clip of Peter Hitchens once (the conservative Anglican, the polar opposite of his well known brother) saying that the only people who want to marry now are either religious, famous, or homosexual, that was from a British perspective and American culture is still somewhat more favorable to marriage.


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## GulfCoast Presbyterian (Aug 29, 2011)

Our pastor read a statistic from the Barna group yesterday that shocked me. He quoted that 41% of couples in the Evangelical Church* were either co-habitating outside of marriage, or were in a sexually active non-marital relationship. I almost fell out. I have asked him for the source since I want to see it myself. 

*I don't know how "Evangelical Church" was defined.


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## Stargazer65 (Aug 29, 2011)

GulfCoast Presbyterian said:


> Our pastor read a statistic from the Barna group yesterday that shocked me. He quoted that 41% of couples in the Evangelical Church* were either co-habitating outside of marriage, or were in a sexually active non-marital relationship. I almost fell out. I have asked him for the source since I want to see it myself.
> 
> *I don't know how "Evangelical Church" was defined.



Most of these 41% are self professed evangelicals. When the Barna group filters them with actual theological questions, only about one in five meets the actual definition of evangelical.


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## Rufus (Aug 29, 2011)

GulfCoast Presbyterian said:


> Our pastor read a statistic from the Barna group yesterday that shocked me. He quoted that 41% of couples in the Evangelical Church* were either co-habitating outside of marriage, or were in a sexually active non-marital relationship. I almost fell out. I have asked him for the source since I want to see it myself.
> 
> *I don't know how "Evangelical Church" was defined.



Definitely needs to be checked on how "Evangelical Church"is defined. Most of modern so called "evangelicalism" is hardly evangelical, much less Christian. After I first heard of Christless Christianity from Micheal Horton I was quite angry. I've seen a couple "evangelical" websites saying that premarital sex and other sexual immoralities are actually moral and we've been deceived for 2000 years of church history. There are websites out there calling for the introduction of "christian" (I'll keep the "c" lower case) p0rnography . When your in the context of much of the American church where your saved by saving the sinners prayer and the Gospel and sanctification are highly ignored than we obviously have a problem, or that you can be a so called christian that has Jesus as savior but not as Lord, the truth is you cannot have Jesus as savior without having Him as Lord.

Up until the '60's, as my Pastor pointed out, you couldn't buy an apartment as a couple unless you where married, because you where living in sin. My Nana (grandmother) mentioned that once, and sighed and said "they're still living in sin". 

However, I don't want the statistics from christless-christianity, moralistic thereputic deist type churches affecting the rest of us. On the same note, I'm not giving up hope, I'm going to continue praying for America and the church here instead of having a pessimistic attitude about it.

I actually wanted to write a paper on this but forgot about it.


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## GulfCoast Presbyterian (Aug 29, 2011)

LOL: My grandmother who lived in a college town used to call travel trailers "portable dens of iniquity."


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## Rufus (Aug 29, 2011)

GulfCoast Presbyterian said:


> LOL: My grandmother who lived in a college town used to call travel trailers "portable dens of iniquity."



 My grandmother was born in 1943 and in many aspects is still culturally shocked by the changes that have occurred since her 1950's childhood. It's sad really, not that prior to the 1960's sexual revolution we where living in a perfect society.

I'll say it, I hate the 60's. I watched a British BBC documentary called "I hate the 60's" and enjoyed it, I'd post it but there was some unnecessary nudity in it. Peter Hitchens (who I mentioned above) was one of the commentators and has quite a few criticisms of the 60's out there from the British point of view. I believe he pointed out how the rest of Britain was still fairly socially conservative at the time, it was small parts of London and thus the political realm that got overwhelmed with the social change, the hippie Londoners and the disillusioned politicians pushed new social values on the rest of the country.


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## timmopussycat (Aug 29, 2011)

Rufus said:


> GulfCoast Presbyterian said:
> 
> 
> > LOL: My grandmother who lived in a college town used to call travel trailers "portable dens of iniquity."
> ...



Same thing happened in Canada a few years later, my compatriots will remember "Trudeaumania".


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