Slate has an article about sociology professor Mark Regnerus’ book, Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers. His findings are that evangelical teens are actually more likely to be sexually active than other teenagers:
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.
This is a big point to consider. In his book Disciplines of a Godly Man, Kent Hughes says we are the modern Corinthian church, because we live in a culture marinated by sexuality and we allow so much of it to pass unfiltered into our hearts and minds.
So what’s the solution? Going Amish-style and cutting ourselves off from society? Not quite the idea Jesus had in mind when he called us to be the salt of the earth. I think the answer lies in what Jesus left behind: the family of God.
That’s why at Harbor we’re big fans of the XXXChurch ministry and their free software, X3Watch. I’m still waiting for a version for Intel Macs, but if you have Windows or a PowerPC Mac, you need to have this on your computer. It won’t try to filter out obscene web sites; there’s no way a piece of software can stop them all. What it does is to silently keep track of the sites you visit. Then once or twice a month it sends an email to a friend of your choosing that lists all the sites you’ve visited that might be sexually explicit. The point is to keep Christian brothers and sisters talking about what they allow into their lives, the way Paul intended when he said in Galatians 6:
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor.