# How religious beliefs do, and don't, influence sex



## Scott (Jun 1, 2007)

REVIEW: H. Rosin in Slate



Even Evangelical Teens Do It
How religious beliefs do, and don't, influence sexual behavior.
By Hanna Rosin 
SLATE
May 30, 2007 
A 19-year-old virgin walks into a bar. He's got his lucky cross in his pocket and his best jersey on. Please God, he says to himself, let this be the night. He spies a girl sitting at a table--blonde, wholesome-looking, just his type. He sidles up closer to the girl, who is chatting with some friends. Over the din, he can make out snippets of her conversation: at Bible study the other night...Pastor Ted says...saving it for marriage. Discouraged, he walks away in search of a more promising target.

Did he make the correct decision? Or did he make a hasty judgment and miss a chance for a possible love connection? The answer to such a question can be found in Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers by Mark Regnerus, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. The book is a serious work of sociology based on several comprehensive surveys of young adults, coupled with in-depth interviews. But it could also double as a guide for teenage boys on the prowl (who's easier, a Catholic girl or a Jew?) or for parents of teenage girls worrying about what will happen if their daughters keep skipping church. 

Regnerus goes to some length to justify his unusual pairing of subjects. Most researchers of youth behavior tend to ignore the influence of religion, he argues, and instead focus on other factors--parental input, peer pressure, race, or socioeconomic status. But sex is one area where religion has a strong impact, at least on attitudes. When academics do consider religion, they tend to make lazy assumptions that religious communities are inherently conservative, universally condemn sex, and encourage abstinence. Regnerus complicates the picture by examining the varying attitudes of different religious communities. And while sex surveys are notoriously unreliable, his great innovation is to compare conservative attitudes with actual practices. 

Which brings us back to Romeo at the bar. It turns out that the answer is: He has indeed made a hasty judgment, and a common one. The girl he had his eye on is speaking the modern idiom of evangelese, and Regnerus' most surprising findings are about her type, who make up about one-third of all teenagers, but who dominate the culture's notions about religion and sex. 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.

Evangelical teens today are much less sheltered than their parents were; they watch the same TV and listen to the same music as everyone else, which causes a "cultural collision," according to Regnerus. "Be in the world, but not of it," is the standard Christian formula for how to engage with mainstream culture. But in a world hypersaturated with information, this is difficult for tech-savvy teenagers to pull off. There are no specific instructions in the Bible on how to avoid a Beyoncé video or Scarlett Johansson's lips calling to you from YouTube, not to mention the ubiquitous **** sites. For evangelicals, sex is a "symbolic boundary" marking a good Christian from a bad one, but in reality, the kids are always "sneaking across enemy lines," Regnerus argues. 

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. 

Regnerus' ultimate conclusion is not all that surprising. What really matters is not which religion teenagers identify with but how strongly they identify. After controlling for all factors (family satisfaction, popularity, income), religion matters much less than religiosity. Among the mass of typically promiscuous teenagers in the book, one group stands out: the 16 percent of American teens who describe religion as "extremely important" in their lives. When these guys pledge, they mean it. One study found that the pledge works better if not everyone in school takes it. The ideal conditions are a group of pledgers who form a self-conscious minority that perceives itself as special, even embattled. 

I recently spent a year among some evangelical teenagers who belong to this elite minority, and I can attest to the inhuman discipline they exert over their hormones. They can spend all evening sitting on the couch holding hands and nothing more. They can date for a year, be alone numerous times in a car or at the movies, and still stick to what's known in the Christian youth literature as "side hugs," to avoid excessive touching. Muslims have it easy compared to them. At least in Saudi Arabia the women are all covered up, so there's nothing to be tempted by. But among this elite corps of evangelicals, the women are breezing around in what one girl I know called "shockingly slutty conservative outfits" while the men hold their tongues. (No, they don't hold anything else. Masturbation is strongly discouraged in the literature because it promotes selfish, lustful behavior.) 

So, where does that leave our Romeo, still scanning the bar for a date? If he wanted to stick with the wholesome blonde, he would have to introduce himself and ask the relevant follow-up, namely, how often do you see Pastor Ted, or do you go to Bible study every week? If he ruled her out, here are some general guidelines: Definitely out of the question is an Asian-American who attends church weekly-84 percent of them are virgins. A Mormon is a long shot. They are unlikely to have sex and if they do, they don't tend to repeat the experience. A Catholic or a mainline Protestant teenager is a much better bet than a Jew (around 30 percent of the first two groups have had sex, compared with 17.6 percent for Jews). But a Jew could net a higher reward: Jews are more likely to say sex is pleasurable and more likely to have experienced oral sex. 

Romeo's best bet confirms the conventional wisdom. From out of the millions of shy, guilt-ridden teenagers, there emerges this 17-year-old from Florida who calls herself nonreligious: "I don't see why sex is such a sacred thing to so many people," she told the researchers. "'It's just pleasure, it's physical pleasure, and that's what it is,' said Carol, who estimates she's had 10 or 11 sexual partners."

Romeo, that's a sure thing.


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## Anton Bruckner (Jun 1, 2007)

chalk up another victory for arminianism.

anyway the article raises some powerful points.


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## tdowns (Jul 27, 2007)

*Raising teenagers.....*

Hello parents, I almost started a new thread for this, but it relates to this article, and I think I'll use this article for the starting point of a series I want to lead in a class.

Does anybody have any suggestions, for a good book, on raising teenagers...and of course, this will entail talks of courting, puberty, etc........

Dobson has a nice short one, that looks ok, you never know with him....

Here: Amazon.com: Raising Teenagers Right (Pocket Guides): Books: James Dobson

What I like about Dobson's, is it's cheep and I can get a bunch of copies used for a buck or two....

Any suggestions?


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## LadyFlynt (Jul 27, 2007)

There is a book called Emotional Purity That is for teens and touches at the root of what brings about sexual intimacy for many teens.


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## raderag (Jul 27, 2007)

That study showed that the evangelicals that were serious about chastity were much more successful with it than average. Not surprising.


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## ServantOfKing (Jul 31, 2007)

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ is an excellent book for older teens who don't need an anatomy lesson but need to understand why sex is sacred. It is edited by Piper with various other authors. I highly recommend it. The only thing I would be slightly wary of is the section on the Song of Solomon. The writer takes the view that it is not at all allegorical. 
I know that Joshua Harris also has gotten a lot of bad rap, but I found his second book Boy Meets Girl to be very helpful also. 
I have also read Emotional Purity and while the author's theology isn't exactly right on, her point is excellent. She calls for clarity of relationships between men and women and not for men to lead women on without giving them a clear purpose for the relationship.


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## Me Died Blue (Jul 31, 2007)

ServantOfKing said:


> I know that Joshua Harris also has gotten a lot of bad rap, but I found his second book Boy Meets Girl to be very helpful also.


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## Scott (Aug 17, 2007)

New related article in World:
Sex and the Evangelical Teen

I think it all boils down to this:


> But might we also blame the culture of the church? Not only because so many of today's evangelical churches follow the path of cultural conformity as a way to grow bigger and bigger. It goes deeper than that.
> 
> Churches used to teach and exemplify self-control, the necessity of keeping one's emotions in check, the discipline of self-denial and mortification of the flesh. Today the typical evangelical church, in its example and practice, cultivates "letting go," emotionalism, self-fulfillment, and an odd religious sensuality.
> 
> The Bible is utterly realistic about the weakness of our fallen flesh. The law alone and external restrictions cannot make anyone righteous. We need Christ for that. An encouraging finding of Regnerus is that the 16 percent of American teenagers who say that their faith is "extremely important to their lives" are living chastely.


First, the ones who succeed are the ones to whom faith is important. Second, we must have a mindset of self-denial and mortification of the flesh.


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## Theoretical (Aug 18, 2007)

Me Died Blue said:


> ServantOfKing said:
> 
> 
> > I know that Joshua Harris also has gotten a lot of bad rap, but I found his second book Boy Meets Girl to be very helpful also.


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## BJClark (Aug 18, 2007)

Interesting article..

I was talking to my 19 yr old daughter the other day about sex and waiting till marriage, and the why's of it..we've had similiar talks over the years but this one was very different, because now she's dating.

She was saying she didn't know if she wants to remain a virgin before she marries..I asked her why, she said she didn't know...I said, well, that isn't a very good reason..then she said, "well, none of my friends are virgins anymore" I said, "and? Your not your friends" I told her, "No matter what YOU decide, your the one who is going to have to live with the consequences of that choice, NOT your friends...if you feel guilt and shame because you chose to go against something you've always held to, your going to have to learn to live within those feelings...not them...your the one who will have to answer to God one day for your choice, not them, your the one who is going to have to go to your wedding night knowing your not giving him something very precious that God has given you..the gift of your sexual purity, and once you give it away to someone who your not even sure loves you, and who is ready to commit only to you by marriage...you can never get it back." 

I told her, if you get pregnant, your the one who is going to have to llive with that consequence, not your friends, if you get an STD, your the one whose going to have to live with that, not them...I asked her do you really want to have to tell your future husband you contracted an STD while single, and that now for him you have to take precautions so that they aren't transmitted to him, and even some of those can be transmitted to your future children. Is that really something you want for the rest of your life? and for your future marriage and children? And everytime you'd make love to your husband your reminded of your past sins because your having to take those precautions, and deep down inside you would be hurting knowing things could have been so different...and even though yes, God can forgive you, the consequences of the choice would still be there between you and your future husband, not me, and certainly not your friends" And I certainly don't want that for you, but ultimately, the truth is, your the one who is going to have to decide IF you want that for you or if you want something better...and your the one who will have to make the decision for yourself and what you want for you, not me. I know what I want for you, and it certainly isn't that..I want you to have a marriage that is pure, and everytime you make love to your husband you can do so without having to be reminded of past choices, one where you can give yourself to your husband without hesitation, without any barriers standing in your way..and fully enjoy each other sexually the way God intended marriage to be." She just looked at me and smiled, I told her I love her, and just take time and think about what I've said...and weigh it all out in her own mind and her own heart and go from there.

All I can do is share with her what I can, and allow her to make her own choices for herself..
and trust God, that what I've shared will make an impact on her choices..


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## Ivan (Aug 18, 2007)

God bless you, Bobbi. You're a good Mom.


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## BJClark (Aug 18, 2007)

Ivan,

Thank you, but I don't always say/do the right thing..and after thinking about it afterwards I have to go back and let them know...I was wrong.

I'm so thankful there is no statute of limitations on parenting when it comes to teaching our children things. Even when they are older and out of the house and/or are married we can always go back and let them know...what we've learned..and where we messed up and make those corrections...

But we can't really blame the church for not teaching our kids, IF we as parents aren't stepping up to the plate and teaching them ourselves..


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## Ivan (Aug 18, 2007)

BJClark said:


> Ivan,
> 
> Thank you, but I don't always say/do the right thing..and after thinking about it afterwards I have to go back and let them know...I was wrong.
> 
> ...




Amen, sister, amen.


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