Christian Teachings on Relationships: One Reasons Singles Are Remaining Single (even if they want to get married)
I’ve discussed this before, but it’s worth mentioning in its own post:
Many Christians say they are concerned that more and more Christians are not marrying at all, or not marrying until later in life. They don’t understand why.
One of several reasons single Christians are remaining single is due to typical teaching about dating and marriage from most conservative Christian preachers, bloggers, and authors.
Because many Christians remain terrified of other Christians possibly getting involved in fornication, most of their relationship advice, even to unmarried Christians over the age of 35, comes down to: stay away from the opposite sex.
Telling females to stay away from males and vice versa, will only result in keeping Christian singles single.
Other approaches, such as “courting” and telling Christians to “date in groups” doesn’t work, either.
I can understand the group dating approach for teens or maybe blind dates, but for adults over the age of 25?
Evangelicals and Baptists guarantee prolonged or life long singleness by making the dating process convoluted and making singles paranoid of the opposite sex, or acting as though each and every meeting between the genders can and will end in sex.
If Christians want Christians to marry, and they keep saying they do, they need to stop advising Christian singles to stay away from singles of the opposite gender.
That should be obvious, but in many areas of American Christianity, it’s not.
–Some Christian Women Shy Away From Marriage Due to “Biblical Gender Complementarian” Teachings–
On another note, I’ve seen several younger Christian ladies say on other blogs that one reason they stay single is that they are afraid to get married.
They are afraid to get married because many churches teach ‘biblical gender complementarian’ garbage.
These young ladies are being told that being married to a Christian guy equals giving up your choices, your identity, and that you became a maid and a slave to a guy.
Which is, let’s face it, exactly what biblical gender complementarianism boils down to, all charges by those who believe in it to the contrary. It’s not a straw man.
(I know what I’m talking about, because up to my mid-30s I (Link): was a gender complementarian myself, so I am quite familiar with their teachings).
Christians who are more honest and consistent about biblical gender complementarianism admit it – they say it’s more accurate to say they into full-blown patriarchy.
It is all so ironic when one considers that most biblical gender complementarians assume it is secular feminism that is turning women (and some men) off to marriage, when, in reality, it’s biblical gender complementariam that is the culprit, in some cases.
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Related posts, this blog:
(Link): How Christians Keep Christians Single (part 4) – and Emotional Virginity Teaching
(Link): Discipling Healthy Male/Female Relationships in the Church Part 1 by Wendy Alsup
(Link): How Christians Keep Christians Single (part 3) – Restrictive Gender Roles Taught as Biblical
Christian Pundit 
Stumbled across your site and am enjoying your thoughts. You’ve put a lot of effort to provide links to thought-provoking articles. Would love to spend the day(s) reading all of your site and subsequent links, but alas work gets in the way.
Similar feelings and experiences can be found on the other side of the gender aisle. Marriage in the USA is a mess, and the Christian churches aren’t really helping the situation with creating/teaching doctrines about the process of what we typically call “dating” that isn’t found in the Bible anywhere.
I haven’t noticed a marriage crisis myself, only people not getting married at 20. But l like your thoughts.
Thank you for the reply. Yes, there is a huge problem among Christians and among Non- Christians staying single longer, or not getting married at all. And many of these are people who want to get married (they have not chosen to remain single), and churches continue to ignore these people.
There are Christian ladies my age (early 40s) who wanted marriage and expected for it to happen, but it never did, and the same thing is happening to Christian women in their late 20s and 30s now.
Christians and Non Christians are also marrying later than they were a few decades ago. Census data show that the age of first marriages for most Americans has gone up from early 20s or mid to late 20s.
Unfortunately, some Christians are pushing for young Christians right out of high school to get married as a solution to this delayed marriage phenomenon, which I have discussed before on this blog.
Here is a previous post I made about it:
(Link): The Nauseating Push by Evangelicals for Early Marriage
Related links (some are posts on this site, some are off site):
(Link): America’s Exodus from Marriage (copy)
(Link): Article: Why Are So Many Professional Millennial Women Unable To Find Dateable Men?
(Link): The Nauseating Push by Evangelicals for Early Marriage
(Link): Want To But Can’t – The One Christian Demographic Being Continually Ignored by Christians | Re: Marriage Not Happening for Hetero-sexual Christians Over the Age of 30
(Link): Do Women Need Marriage Any more?
(Link): American Churches Need to Address Growing Numbers of Unmarried / Single People