Women Are More Interested In Sex Than You Think, (2016) Studies Show – Men underestimate their wife’s or girlfriend’s sexual desire; read the signals

Women Are More Interested In Sex Than You Think, (2016) Studies Show – Men underestimate their wife’s or girlfriend’s sexual desire; read the signals

The majority of Christians will disregard this study, because it does not fit their culturally- based gender stereotypes that men are sexual animals and visually oriented while all women are supposedly, basically uninterested in sex and only interested in emotional closeness, weeping at beautiful poetry, and knitting scarves.

It is true: for all their bloviating on how they adhere to “sola scriptura,” many Christians take their secular-cultural based assumptions about women and read them back into the Bible. The Bible no where teaches that “God designed men to be visual” or that “men are more interested in sex than women are.” Christians get those assumptions from their culture or perceived personal experiences – not from the Bible.

(Link): Women Are More Interested In Sex Than You Think, (2016) Studies Show

Excerpts

by E. Bernstein

Men underestimate their wife’s or girlfriend’s sexual desire; read the signals

Rarely are researchers’ findings so satisfying. Women may want more sex than their husbands or partners think.

New research by psychologists at the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario, (Link): published earlier this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that men in long-term relationships often underestimate how often their wives or girlfriends want to be intimate.

The research consists of three studies, following a total of 229 long-term couples, most of whom are heterosexual. (The sample of homosexual couples was too small to be statistically significant, the researchers say.) Participants ranged in age from 18 to 68 years old; the couples had been together six years on average, and they reported they had sex an average of one to two times a week.

….All three studies showed the same thing: Men consistently underestimated their female partner’s desire, while the women had an accurate read on whether or not their partner was interested in sex. And on the days when the men thought their partner was less sexually interested than she actually was, the women reported being more satisfied in and committed to the relationship.

Taking the Opposite Position from Neo Calvinists Just Because It’s the Opposite of Neo Calvinists

Taking the Opposite Position from Neo Calvinists Just Because It’s the Opposite of Neo Calvinists

I touched on this in an earlier post or two, such as this one: (Link): No Man’s Land – Part 2 – On Post Evangelicals or Ex Christians or Liberal Christians Ignorantly Hopping Aboard Belief Sets They Once Rejected.

But this time, I wanted to discuss Neo Calvinism and spiritual abuse blogs and advocates in particular.

I do not support Neo Calvinism, or even old school Calvinism. I think Calvinism is a crock of crap.

Many of the NC’s (Neo Calvinists, aka YRRs), are arrogant, narrow minded jerks.

My problem with seeing NC guys, their churches, or their positions discussed and picked apart by some bloggers is that the anti NCs go into reactionary mode.

Their positions often time seem not so much well thought out in and of themselves, but that they will take a position opposite of that held by most NCs just because it’s the opposite of that held by NCs.

I do know a little bit about NCs and their theological beliefs, but not as much as their frequent critics.

According to their frequent critics, NCs believe in a literal six day creation, not an old age of the earth.

(As for me, I am NOT an NC, and I believe in a literal six day creation.)

My issue when I visit blogs or Twitter accounts by people who are vehemently anti NC is that they will, it appears to me, automatically take the opposite position on anything John Piper, The Gospel Coaltion, and other NC guys say just to be contrary.

More Criticisms of the Pope’s Anti Childless Anti Childfree Comments

More Criticisms of the Pope’s Anti Childless Anti Childfree Comments

The Pope recently said that people who do not have children will end up “bitter” and “lonely,” among other anti-childless, anti-childfree comments. Here are some editorials criticizing his views.

(Link): Why Parents Can Still End Up Lonely

Hey, Pope Francis: Being child-free doesn’t make you bitter, and having kids certainly isn’t proof against ending up alone.

• Amanda Marcotte (Link):

has already done a fabulous job

• outlining why Pope Francis was wrong to dismiss those of us living the child-free life as shallow, future bitter types.

But besides misjudging those who consciously choose not to have children when they are not financially or emotionally ready to be good parents as selfish, the pope’s argument has another flaw: the idea that having children is a surefire way to avoid loneliness later in life.

(Link): Hey, Pope Francis: Kids Aren’t a Retirement Plan

• ADULTS WHO HAVE KIDS CAN STILL BE PLENTY LONELY, WRITES KELI GOFF

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff
Posted Jun 9, 2014 11:57 AM CDT

(NEWSER) – Pope Francis recently exhorted his followers to have kids, saying that to do otherwise would lead to “old age in solitude, with the bitterness of loneliness.”

Well Keli Goff at the Daily Beast has some news for the pontiff: “Children are not a surefire way to inoculate against loneliness.”

Adult children constantly abandon their elders to nursing homes, for one. “One director of a local nursing home said 85% of his residents had no visitors,” the head of a volunteer organization called Visiting the Lonely Ones tells Goff.

Loneliness can set in before nursing home age, too— “I know of divorced people who struggled during holiday seasons” as custody arrangements kept their kids away, Goff writes.

Ultimately, your happiness is your own responsibility, and there are no guarantees. “I think it is selfish to have a child only to have a caregiver later in life,” one family therapist says. “I think that is quite narcissistic to do something like this.” Click for Goff’s full column.

(Link): Conservative and Childfree

• Does being a conservative mean I must have children?
• By A. J. Delgado

Daily Beast columnist Amanda Marcotte is getting rough treatment from conservatives over her Friday piece “Pope Francis Is Wrong About My Child-Free Life,” which makes a persuasive case that it’s OK to not have kids.

Full disclosure: I am in that child-free camp. (I call it “child-free” while some pro-parentage folks may prefer the term “child-less” — one’s choice of term likely gives away one’s view on the matter.)

Like Marcotte, I’m a woman in my 30s (34 to be exact) with, at the present time and likely into the future, no interest in being a mother.

Motherhood seems wonderful for others, and I respect and cherish the role, though I have sensibly decided it simply isn’t for me. I’ll pass on parenting.

But I am also a conservative. Can those two be reconciled? Does being a conservative mean I must have children or, at the very least, like Pontifex, encourage others to do so?

It’s a question that has been lingering for quite some time. After all, conservatism is family-friendly and socially traditional, stressing family as the core building block of society. But as more and more men and women nowadays rule out the idea of having children, are these individuals any less conservative than those who are parents?

No Man’s Land – Between Agnosticism and Christianity / Also: It’s Emotional Not Intellectual (Part 1)

No Man’s Land – Between Agnosticism and Christianity / Also: It’s Emotional Not Intellectual (PART 1)

This will be a series of posts where my thoughts wander in and out and all over, and it rambles, but there is a point or two behind it.

Since I’ve been in a faith crisis the last couple of years, somewhere between being an agnostic and a Christian, I have noticed I don’t fit in anywhere. I reside in No Man’s Land.

(Even before then, when I was a total, committed Christian, and politically, I was, and am, right wing, I still didn’t fit in at most blogs and forums, including political ones, and including ones for right wingers!

I tend to be one of those personalities who annoys or angers everyone, even those on “my side” of an issue, except a small number of people, who are either on my side of a topic or not, who “get me” or who appreciate where I’m coming from – again, this is true for even the ones who disagree with me on whatever topic we are discussing.)

I am in this really weird place now, where I am critical of some aspects of conservative Christianity, and see where conservative Christians get some doctrines and other things wrong, but, too, I am not fully on board with militant atheism (I find the New Atheists to be arrogant, vile, hateful and rude), and I don’t even care for lukewarm atheism.

Nor am I in the camp of anything and all things liberal Christianity, except where I think they get the occasional point correct (such as their rejection of gender complementarianism).

Since drifting away from the Christian faith more the last few years, I more often began frequenting forums or blogs for and by atheists, ones by liberal Christians, ones by ex Christians, or by Christians who were abused by a former church who remain Christian but who dropped out of Church, or who now are on a crusade to expose abuse by preachers or the absurdity and harm of current evangelical gimmicks.

THE MILITANT ATHEISTS

A clarification: when I say I have been visiting atheist forums and blogs more often, I am very picky about which ones I regularly visit.

I do not like the frothing- at- the- mouth, extremely bitter, biased- against- Christians- type atheistic communities.

The bitter atheist groups sound like a bunch of irrational, hate-filled loons who reject Christianity for emotional reasons, but who lie to others and themselves and say, “Oh no, it’s purely intellectual.”

But their unrelenting, insane amount of hatred at any and all things God and Christian, is just a total turn-off to me, so I try to avoid such sites.

These angry, always-ranting atheists are really nothing more than Fundamentalist Atheists or Taliban Atheists. They are just as dogmatic about their atheism as Muslims are in their Wasabi Islam or Baptists are in their Neo Fundamentalism.

Really, those types of atheists are just as bad as the religious groups they claim they hate, but they don’t seem to spot that they are. It’s ironic – and it’s hard to stomach the day in, day out anger and hatred, so I try to avoid their sites.

HYPOCRITICAL CHRISTIANS VS NON HYPOCRITICAL CHRISTIANS

Also, you have to be honest with yourself, which I do not find militant atheists to be, by and large: not every single Christian is a hypocrite, jerk, idiot, dullard, or complete jackhole.

I say this as someone who is very fed up with Christianity and Christian persons myself these days.

But your average militant atheist will never admit that some Christians are in fact okay and not being hypocrites.

I have known and met a few Christians who were sincerely trying to live the Christian faith out, such as my mother, who is now deceased, and her mother before her (my grandmother).

I’ve met a few honest, sincere Christians online who do help people and show compassion to the wounded.

So it’s not fair to completely dismiss the entirety of Christians and their faith or treat them all like jerks because some are liars, mean, or abusive.

Which is not easy for me personally, because at the same time, I do keep noticing that a lot of self-professing believers do NOT live out what the Bible says.

Many self professing Christians today, for example, do not protect victims, such as young church members who have been sexually molested by preachers.

Nor do many church goers today hold accountable preachers who bilk their church goers out of millions to buy big mansions and jets.

These idiots, these lemmings, actually defend their greedy pastors online, which I’ve written about here: (Link): Your Preacher Sucks – and People Have a Right To Say So And Explain Why.

Then you have a conservative or evangelical culture, which claims to care deeply that people preserve sex until marriage, but if you actually find yourself 40 years of age and still single – and therefore still a virgin, such as myself – these same churches and Christians do not offer you any support.

You either go ignored, or preachers and talking heads of such groups “run down” and insult celibacy as well as older, celibate adults. Churches treat single (and especially celibate) adults as though they are flawed, lepers, weirdos, or losers.

Churches wrongly counsel abused wives to return to their spouses – this is particularly true, again, of churches or Christian groups who buy into “biblical womanhood” (aka “gender complementariansm”) or “patriarchy.”

Churches and average Christians also remain ignorant or callous about matters pertaining to mental health issues, from P.T.S.D. to depression and anxiety attacks.

Some Christians wrongly and insensitively teach that “real Christians” can never get depression or other mental health maladies.

Or, some Christians believe and teach that prayer, faith, service to the poor, or Bible reading alone can cure one of mental illness.

Still other Christians (or the same type) will shame and guilt suffering Christians for using anti-depressant medications, or for seeing secular or Christian psychiatrists and therapists (see this link for more, “Over 50 Percent of Christians Believe Prayer, Bible Reading Alone Can Cure Mental Illness (article) – In Other Words Half of Christians are Ignorant Idiots Regarding Mental Illness”).

Yet other Christians are incompetent at, or unwilling, to provide more ordinary, “every day,” run- of- the- mill comfort to other Christians who are hurting, such as a Christian who is stressed out over a job loss, someone who is in mourning for a deceased loved one, etc.

Christians are dropping the ball in numerous ways.

And this failure, this huge failure, causes life long Christians like me to look long and hard at the faith and wonder if it’s true at all.

It causes even someone such as myself to ask if the faith is true, because

• it doesn’t appear to be working,
• it doesn’t make a difference in people’s life who profess it,
• most who claim to follow Christ don’t actually do what he taught,
• and some Christians refuse to hold Christians caught in bald faced sin accountable but excuse them for the sin,

~ and it makes you wonder “what is the point, then.”

I find this discrepancy between confessed belief and actual practice shocking, because I myself sincerely tried living out the faith since childhood.

Also, my Christian mother was a role model for me, and she genuinely, consistently lived out and by biblical teachings, including getting up off her ass and actually HELPING people (giving them money if they were in a bind, cleaning their homes for them when they were sick, listening to them cry and rant about their problems for hours without judging them or interrupting them, etc).

I am not seeing most other Christians do any of this. They say they believe in those things but then they do not do them.

BLOGS AND FORUMS FOR SPIRITUALLY ABUSED OR THOSE HURT BY CHURCHES

Before I actually get into this topic (which I discuss more in Posts 2 and 3), here is some background leading up to it.

As far as the sites I have visited by liberal Christians, ex Christians, atheists, as well as sites by Christians for the spiritually abused:

By and large, these have been wonderful, supportive sites and groups to visit (the ones run by Christians for hurting Christians).

I have noticed, though, that there are problems even within these types of communities, and I don’t entirely fit in at them, either.

Gender Complementarian Christians Who Teach Gender Inequality Even in Afterlife – an UPDATE

Gender Complementarian Christians Who Teach Gender Inequality Even in Afterlife – an UPDATE

Hat tip again to Julie Anne of the Spiritual Sounding Board who announced in a Tweet today that CBMW (which is a Christian gender complementarian group) removed a looney editorial by Walton from their site, which I wrote of in an earlier post, here:

(Link): Christian Gender Complementarian Group Teaching That There Will Be Marriage in Afterlife and That Women Must Submit To Males in Heaven

Julie Anne wrote an update about the situation recently, here (at Spiritual Sounding Board):

(Link): Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Removes Article about Complementarian Roles in New Creation Did they change their minds?

• Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood removes Article about complementarian roles in new creation

… Let’s be clear – pulling the article does not mean CBMW has changed their ideology.

She also provided a link to the screen shot of the CBMW page, before it was removed, and it can be viewed here:
(Link): Screen capture of Weirdo “marriage in the afterlife” CBMW Page by Walton

Someone in the thread linked to this related material, from the Strange Figures blog:
(Link): A letter to our sisters, on biblical womanhood in heavenly places

The piece starts out serious (as you can see from the excerpt below), and the author goes into satire (not excerpted here):

• • I think the author, Mark David Walton, has shown us the end toward which complementarian theology is heading. While Walton’s piece is several years old, it’s still out there as a resource and other articles have expressed the same idea – the gendered headship/submission model is not temporal. It’s eternal. Get used to it, ladies.
  — end  excerpts—

Julie Anne also mentioned that Owen Strachan is the Executive Director of CBMW, and Rachel Held Evans recently took Strachan to the woodshed here:

(Link): If men got the Titus 2 Treatment…

Also related (off site; from RHE’s blog):
(Link): Patriarchy and Abusive Churches

From RHE’s blog:
(Link): If marriage is not eternal…

(Though I do have excerpts from Walton’s the page on (Link): my previous post as well, if you’d like to read for yourself some of the nutty things Walton wrote.)

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Related posts, off site:

(Link): Complementarianism: even in its best form, it is Patriarchy

(Link): The “CAN’T” Chant of Complementarianism

(Link): Com­ple­men­tar­i­an­ism Sucks : Telling Women to Stay Quiet in the name of Jesus

(Link): Question to complementarians: What is my [single, adult woman] gender role?

I agree with point 3 on the list on this site (I do not, however, agree with the author that a literal understanding of the Bible should be rejected, or that the Bible supports homosexuality):
(Link): Reality: The Problem with Complementarianism

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Related posts (on this blog):

(Link): Christian Gender Complementarian Group Teaching That There Will Be Marriage in Afterlife and That Women Must Submit To Males in Heaven (post at Spiritual Sounding Board)

(Link): The Irrelevancy To Single or Childless or Childfree Christian Women of Biblical Gender Complementarian Roles / Biblical Womanhood Teachings

(Link): Independent Fundamentalist Baptist College Kid Friendship Permission Form – Christians lowering marriage rates due to their own stupid teachings about sex, dating, marriage, etc

(Link): Christian Gender Complementarian Group (CBMW) Anti Virginity and Anti Sexual Purity Stance (At Least Watered Down) – and their Anti Homosexual Marriage Position

(Link): Celestial Sexism: Why Don’t Muslim Women Get Rewarded With ’72 Studs’ in Paradise?

Ways To Avoid Sounding Like a Sexist Jerk – Even If You’re a Woman (mentions marriage and parenthood)

Ways To Avoid Sounding Like a Sexist Jerk–Even If You’re a Woman

This list has eleven tips. I am only copying 2 or 3 of them.

(Link): 11 Ways To Avoid Sounding Like a Sexist Jerk–Even If You’re a Woman

by Jessica Bennett

Sheryl Sandberg wants to ban the word bossy, but that’s just the tip of the demeaning language iceberg

Whatever your opinion of the campaign by Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In foundation to ban the word bossy — which, for the record, I advised on — one thing is indisputable: the power of words is stark.

Call a little girl “bossy” and she starts to avoid leadership roles because she’s afraid of being seen as unlikeable. People are already wary of assertive women at work, but call a woman “aggressive” out loud and they will probably like her less.

Call a female politician a ballbuster enough times, and people may actually be less likely to vote for her.

Words tell us something about the way our culture perceives women in power, and whether we believe they’re supposed to be there.

So, in an attempt to save you — writers, speakers, humans, journalists — from falling into the gender bias trap unintentionally, we’ve put together this handy guide:

On Husbands and Marital Status or Being a Mom.

We’re talking about pointing out that a woman is “unmarried” or even that she’s a “mother of two.” As Allyson Jule, the author of “A Beginner’s Guide to Language and Gender,” puts it: “These representations of women trivialize their lives and place an extra level of personal judgment on them.”

Please Stop Asking If Women Can ‘Have It All.’

When in doubt, read this column, from the public editor of the New York Times, published last month amid outrage over a magazine cover titled, “Can Wendy Davis Have It All?” “Despite its well-intentioned efforts,” the Times ombudsman wrote, “this piece managed to trip over a double standard with its detailed examination of Ms. Davis’s biography, including her role in raising her two daughters.”

And while we’re at it, let’s stop asking how women manage to “do it all.”

Tina Fey declared this “the rudest question you can ask a woman.” Because the answer is simple. She’s doing it the same way a dude would, except that he doesn’t have to answer questions about it.

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Related posts this blog:

(Link): Five Things Single Women Hate to Hear

(Link): Annoyances of Being a Christian Single

(Link): Conservatives Are Rather Inconsistent About Morals and Women’s Sexuality – Regarding: The College That Considers Valentine’s Day Cards A Form of Sexual Harassment

Singled Out: How Churches Can Embrace Unmarried Adults by Christena Cleveland

Singled Out: How Churches Can Embrace Unmarried Adults by Christena Cleveland

This is a rather long blog post. I do not want to reproduce the entire thing, so please visit the blog and read the entire thing.

I would also encourage you to read the visitor comments at the other blog. Those are quite informative too.

She raises points in her blog post about Christians and singleness and marriage that I have been discussing at my blog here for over a year to two years now, including the concept of “married people privilege,” which I blogged about months ago here on my blog: (Link): Christian ‘Married People’ Privilege – Marrieds Think Single Life = Easy / Marrieds and Parents Turn All Topics Into Them And Their Needs / Problems

Here is the link to the other blog entry about singleness:

(Link): Singled Out: How Churches Can Embrace Unmarried Adults by Christena Cleveland

By christena on December 2, 2013

… After doing extensive interdenominational research, Dennis Franck,the national director of single adult ministries for the Assemblies of God denomination, concluded:

“The vast majority of evangelical and Pentecostal churches of any denomination are ‘marriage and family focused.’ That in itself is not a bad posture. Most Christian leaders understand the importance of marriage and the church’s role in strengthening the family unit. The unfortunate reality, however, is that our marriage and family emphasis many times does not include single adults. This is not necessarily by design but is often by ignorance and neglect.”

… Meanwhile, single people are relegated to the margins.[ii] Whether this is intentional or not, this “married people monopoly” results in a Christian world in which single people are often misunderstood, ignored, overlooked for leadership positions, caricatured, equated with immaturity, and little more than a punchline or an afterthought. To me, it makes sense that churches and Christian organizations have a poor track record when it comes to honoring single people.

… [A]fter interacting with the church, many singles start to wonder:
Is there something wrong with me? Is God working in my life? Am I as valuable (to God, to the church) as married people? Does God love me as much as he loves married people? Does God have good things in store for me as a single person?

… In a Church that was founded by a single guy, singles are terribly marginalized. There’s something wrong with this picture.

So without further ado, here are my tips on how church people (pastors, leaders and other influencers) can turn this barge around and begin to create communities that honor the image of God in single adults.

6 TIPS ON HOW MARRIED CHRISTIANS CAN EMBRACE SINGLE ADULTS

1. Admit that singleness is complex and that you know little to nothing about it.

A lot of people seem to think that singleness is to marriage as junior varsity is to varsity.

As a result, married people sometimes mistakenly believe that they know something about singleness when in fact they don’t. Singleness isn’t a junior varsity version of marriage.

It’s an entirely different sport – and if you haven’t played it, you haven’t mastered it.

The average marrying age is 29.8 years for men and 26.9 for women. If you got married before these ages, then it makes sense to acknowledge that your experience as a single adult is below average. In other words, you don’t know a lot about singleness. This calls for humility.

2. Recognize that as a married person, you are privileged.

Married people run the Christian world.

For example,

– Since many pastors, board members, and organizational leaders are married, the married perspective is well-represented in the Church in ways that the single perspective is not.

– Married people are much more likely to get hired as pastors.

– A quick search at Amazon.com reveals that for every 1 Christian book on singleness, there are 298 Christian books on marriage.

– Just for getting married, friends and family members buy married people expensive gifts like Kitchen Aid mixers (a mark of privilege if there ever was one).

– Marriage is the norm, the gold standard.

If you don’t adhere to it, people ask questions.

Case in point: I’m out-and-about in the Christian world a lot these days. As a result, I meet new people all of the time. The fact that we’ve just met doesn’t stop Christians from asking me why I’m not married.

Out of the blue, and with a quizzical look, they’re like, “How come you’re not married?” It’s my most frequently asked question. Seriously.

Please visit her blog page to read the rest. Thank you.
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Related posts, this blog:

(Link): Want To But Can’t – The One Christian Demographic Being Continually Ignored by Christians Re: Marriage

(Link): To Get Any Attention or Support from a Church These Days you Have To Be A Stripper, Prostitute, or Orphan

(Link): Never Married Christians Over Age 35 who are childless Are More Ignored Than Divorced or Infertile People or Single Parents

(Link): The Myth of the Gift – Regarding Christian Teachings on Gift of Singleness and Gift of Celibacy

(Link): False Christian Teaching: “Only A Few Are Called to Singleness and Celibacy” or (also false): God’s gifting of singleness is rare – More Accurate: God calls only a few to marriage and God gifts only the rare with the gift of Marriage

(Link): No Christians and Churches Do Not Idolize Virginity and Sexual Purity [they ATTACK both concepts]

(Link): How the Sexual Revolution Ruined Friendship – Also: If Christians Truly Believed in Celibacy and Virginity, they would stop adhering to certain sexual and gender stereotypes that work against both

(Link): Part 2, The Parable of the Neglected Unmarried – Single – Christian

(Link): Married People Who Find Themselves Single Again – Spouses With Dementia / Married People Who Are Lonely

(Link): Singleness Is Not A Gift

(Link): Astonishing: Evangelical Baptist Marriage Idolater David E. Prince Wants to Know Why Evangelical Baptists Are Not Worshipping Marriage More

(Link): If the Family Is Central, Christ Isn’t

(Link): False Christian Hype About Waiting Until Marriage For Sex – We’ve Gone From “It’s Mindblowing” to Now: “It’s Magical” Re: Timothy Keller / Tim Keller Virginity Celibacy Singles PreMarital Sex

(Link): Christian TV Show Host Pat Robertson Disrespects Virginity – Says Pre-Marital Sex Is “Not A Bad Thing”

(Link): Single Adults – Why They Stay and Why They Stray From Church – Book Excerpts

(Link): The Netherworld of Singleness for Some Singles – You Want Marriage But Don’t Want to Be Disrespected or Ignored for Being Single While You’re Single

(Link): Why So Much Fornication (sex outside of marriage) – Because Christians Have No Expectation of Sexual Purity

(Link): Tim Challies Christian Blogger Who Proclaimed That All Fornicators Are Virgins Is Now Telling People Not to Look In Lust – WTF?

How Not to Help All the Single Ladies (excellent article)

This is an excellent editorial about single women from a Christian source. Most Christian commentary on singleness sucks, but this was good.

(Link): How Not to Help All the Single Ladies

Blaming women for their own singleness is about as productive as a ‘Cosmo’ checklist.

by Sharon Hodde Miller

[snip comments about her meeting with middle aged Christian women friends who had never married]

Several weeks later, I spoke with another friend across the country who also wondered at her singleness and ached to find a godly man.

In each of these conversations, I struggled to find the right words.

Part of me wanted to shout, “What’s wrong with men? These ladies are amazing! They should be fighting guys off with a bat.”

But the situation is more complicated than that. For one, women in the American church outnumber men. In 2009, sociologist Mark Regnerus reported in CT that there are 3 single women for every 2 single men. Simply put, there aren’t enough Christian men to go around.

Add to that the elements of romantic chemistry, life circumstances, and God’s providence—all factors that are simply out of one woman’s control. It’s not her fault, and there’s nothing wrong with her. Nevertheless, most longtime single women are tempted to pause and wonder, Is it me?

Don’t get me wrong. There are certainly single women out there who have difficult personalities.

But, there are married women with equally challenging personalities who still managed to find a mate.

Having a strong personality or being independent or failing to look like a supermodel are not deterrents to finding a spouse.

Dating is not simple. There is no tried and true formula.

Which is why I become frustrated whenever I come across articles, blog posts and books purporting to tell women why they are still single, and how they should act to snag a man.

Focus on the Family having financial problems – aw, too bad (not!)

Focus on the Family having financial problems

I can’t say as though I feel sorry for them at all.

Previous post:
(Link): Good Grief! Five Million Dollar Family Idoltary on Display: Focus on the Family Launches $5 Million Project Targeting Family Breakdown, Social Ills – Please, when you say you support marriage, be honest about what you REALLY mean

Focus on the Family is one of those Christian organizations that perpetuates the “Worship of the Nuclear Family / Marriage.”

(Link): Focus On The Family And NavPress Layoffs Due To Large Budget Deficit

Posted: 09/13/2013 4:43 pm EDT

This fiscal year has been a difficult one for two prominent Colorado Springs ministries, Focus on the Family and NavPress, the publishing arm of evangelical group The Navigators. Budget deficits and organizational changes are leading to large layoffs and staff restructuring.

Focus on the Family will eliminate 40 jobs in an attempt to alleviate their $3 million budget deficit, reports The Gazette. However, 11 positions will be added in information technology and digital operations, effective as of Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year.

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Related posts this blog:

(Link): Focus on Family spokesperson, Stanton, actually says reason people should marry is for ‘church growth’

The Way We Never Were (book – Family Idol)

The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz (Author)

Someone on the Jesus Creed blog mentioned the book “The Way We Never Were.”

(Link): BOOK REVIEW : Skewering Myths About the Family : THE WAY WE NEVER WERE: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz

Review is from 1992, by CONSTANCE CASEY. Excerpts:

American families have changed in the last 20 years–nearly half of all families with children have both parents working–and our anxiety about change is no delusion.

There has certainly been some decay in values recently. As Coontz tartly observes, “Twenty-five percent of the people polled in a recent national inquiry into American morality said that for $10 million they would abandon their entire family; a large number of people are evidently willing to do the same thing for free.”

Coontz believes that what we’re experiencing now, however, is not so much the family’s dissolution as “an erosion of commitment to social obligations in general, and to children in particular.” Furthermore, things weren’t all that great before.

Chapter by chapter, Coontz takes on the myths. Divorce may end many marriages now, but largely because of high mortality rates, the average length of marriage in Colonial times was less than 12 years.

The “Life With Father” Victorian family–in which men were the breadwinners and women the domestic angels–owed its existence to the fact that other families were poor. Middle-class women had time to spend with their children because they employed laundresses and maids and cooks. Often these German or Welsh or Irish immigrant servant “girls” really were girls, as young as 11.

While 20% of American children today are poor, she writes, “At the turn of the century the same proportion lived in orphanages, not because they actually lacked both parents, but because one or both parents simply could not afford their keep.”

Coontz’s take on the Golden Age of the family–Ward and June, Ozzie and Harriet–is not brand new, but worth restating. “The apparently stable families of the 1950s were the result of an economic boom–the gross national product grew by nearly 250% and per capita income by 35%.” Most important, there was steady employment for the Ward Cleavers of America.

Ozzie never came home with a pink slip and never applied for welfare. But the Nelsons and the Cleavers were generously underwritten by the federal government. Because of the extraordinary boom, the feds could afford to be generous with everything from education money to housing loans and highway construction.

Part of the mythology of the Golden Age was that only morally deficient families required government help. As refutation, Coontz provides a wonderfully specific example–Phil Gramm, senator from Texas and staunch opponent of government handouts: “Born in Georgia in 1942, to a father who was living on a federal veterans disability pension, Gramm attended a publicly funded university on a grant paid for by the federal War Orphans Act. His graduate work was financed by a National Defense Education Act fellowship, and his first job was at Texas A & M University, a federal land-grant institution.”

Coontz makes it hard for us to blame the usual suspects for family decay–those negligent working mothers and those immoral teen-age girls. She demonstrates that most of the family problems associated with working women rise from “the inadequate and incomplete integration of women into productive work.” And she charges that, “The image of teen-age girls having babies to receive welfare checks is an emotion-laden but fraudulent cliche.” If welfare benefits cause teen pregnancy, “why is it that other industrial countries, with far more generous support policies for women and children, have far lower rates of teen pregnancy?” (Incidentally, the highest rate of teen-age childbearing in 20th-Century America was in 1957.)

“Children do best,” Coontz concludes, “in societies where child-rearing is considered too important to be left entirely to parents.” In order to be elected these days, candidates have to demonstrate that they care deeply about their own children. We should demand that they also care about other people’s children.

Info on the book:

The Way We Never Were examines two centuries of American family life and shatters a series of myths and half-truths that burden modern families. Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, Coontz sheds new light on such contemporary concerns as parenting, privacy, love, the division of labor along gender lines, the black family, feminism, and sexual practice.

And:

Did you ever wonder about the historical accuracy of those “traditional family values” touted in the heated arguments that insist our cultural ills can be remedied by their return?

Of course, myth is rooted in fact, and certain phenomena of the 1950s generated the Ozzie and Harriet icon. The decade proved profamily–the birthrate rose dramatically; social problems that nag–gangs, drugs, violence–weren’t even on the horizon.

Affluence had become almost a right; the middle class was growing. “In fact,” writes Coontz, “the ‘traditional’ family of the 1950s was a qualitatively new phenomenon. At the end of the 1940s, all the trends characterizing the rest of the twentieth century suddenly reversed themselves.”

This clear-eyed, bracing, and exhaustively researched study of American families and the nostalgia trap proves–beyond the shadow of a doubt–that Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary.

Gender, too, is always on Coontz’s mind. In the third chapter (“My Mother Was a Saint”), she offers an analysis of the contradictions and chasms inherent in the “traditional” division of labor.

She reveals, next, how rarely the family exhibited economic and emotional self-reliance, suggesting that the shift from community to nuclear family was not healthy.

Coontz combines a clear prose style with bold assertions, backed up by an astonishing fleet of researched, myth-skewing facts.

The 88 pages of endnotes dramatize both her commitment to and deep knowledge of the subject. Brilliant, beautifully organized, iconoclastic, and (relentlessly) informative The Way We Never Were breathes fresh air into a too often suffocatingly “hot” and agenda-sullied subject.

In the penultimate chapter, for example, a crisp reframing of the myth of black-family collapse leads to a reinterpretation of the “family crisis” in general, putting it in the larger context of social, economic, and political ills.

The book began in response to the urgent questions about the family crisis posed her by nonacademic audiences. Attempting neither to defend “tradition” in the era of family collapse, nor to liberate society from its constraints, Coontz instead cuts through the kind of sentimental, ahistorical thinking that has created unrealistic expectations of the ideal family.

“I show how these myths distort the diverse experiences of other groups in America,” Coontz writes, “and argue that they don’t even describe most white, middle-class families accurately.” The bold truth of history after all is that “there is no one family form that has ever protected people from poverty or social disruption, and no traditional arrangement that provides a workable model for how we might organize family relations in the modern world.”

Some of America’s most precious myths are not only precarious, but down right perverted, and we would be fools to ignore Stephanie Coontz’s clarion call. –Hollis Giammatteo

From Publishers Weekly

The golden age of the American family never existed, asserts Coontz ( The Social Origns of Private Life ) in a wonderfully perceptive, myth-debunking report. The “Leave It to Beaver” ideal of breadwinner father, full-time homemaker mother and dependent children was a fiction of the 1950s, she shows.

Real families of that period were rife with conflict, repression and anxiety, frequently poor and much less idyllic than many assume; teen pregnancy rates in the ’50s were higher than today.

Further, Coontz contends, the nuclear family was elevated to a central source of personal satisfaction only in the late 19th century, thereby weakening people’s community ties and sense of civic obligation.

Coontz disputes the idea that children can be raised properly only in traditional families. Viewing modern domestic problems as symptoms of a much larger socioeconomic crisis, she demonstrates that no single type of household has ever protected Americans from social disruption or poverty.

An important contribution to the current debate on family values.

Salvation By Marriage Alone – The Over Emphasis Upon Marriage by Conservative Christians Evangelicals Southern Baptists

Salvation By Marriage Alone

Internet Monk asks, from a 2010 entry (at least I think it’s from 2010, I may have the year wrong), have evangelicals and Baptists placed too much emphasis on marriage?

To which I would reply: Does the Pope wear a funny looking hat? Do bears crap in the woods? Is water wet?

(Link): Have We Said Too Much? (About Marriage, that is)

And, on that page, I.Monk links to:

(Link): Is Singleness A Sin?

Excerpts from “Have We Said Too Much? (About Marriage, that is)”

Recently, my daughter returned from a conference at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. She had a fabulous time, but she mentioned something unusual. She said that every public prayer contained a request for God to guide the conference participants in finding a spouse. This wasn’t the theme of the conference, but the conference was primarily single young college students. Was this odd?

It didn’t surprise me. Southern has become increasingly visible in the culturally confrontational Christianity of its President, Dr. Al Mohler. (A personal hero of mine, and nothing that I write here changes that, I assure you.) And Dr. Mohler is on a crusade to get Christian young students to make marriage a priority.

In August 2004, President Mohler gave an address to a group of (primarily) Christian singles under the auspices of Josh Harris’s New Attitude conference. Mohler’s summaries of the address can be found at his web site: Part 1 and Part 2. The audio of the address is also available on the site.

The address created a bit of a firestorm, as Mohler did not just endorse marriage, but specifically criticized those who delay marriage.
[snip obnoxious quotes about singles by Mohler]

This debate is a small part of what I see as a major evolution within evangelicalism; an evolution toward overemphasizing marriage at the expense of much that is Biblical, good, healthy, balanced and normal in human and Christian experience. From the best of motives, some bad fruit is appearing.

…How can we over-emphasize marriage? Let me suggest some trends that disturb me, and make me want to suggest a larger, more critical discussion of the current “family values” emphasis before we buy everything that is being sold in all the current rhetoric.

1. Saying that delaying marriage is bad is overemphasizing marriage. This is too simplistic, and we all know it. Don’t get me wrong. Mohler sees a legitimate problem: singleness as an excuse for immaturity and rejecting legitimate adult responsibilities. There are such people. I’ve met them. Kick them in the pants.

On the other hand, there are so many other legitimate, good reasons people delay marriage, it’s almost beyond belief that they are ignored. Mohler is speaking to the culture that he sees influencing America in sitcoms like “Friends.” Let me speak about the single’s culture I see at our ministry here.

…thers are single because they have no real marriage prospects. Some are delaying marriage to care for parents or to pursue a larger career path beyond OBI… Of course, we also have divorced and widowed singles as well.

Frankly, many of the singles I know are more mature than I was when I was first married at 21. I absolutely encourage our high school students to delay marriage until they have matured in many different ways. Mohler is right to point out that marriage is a maturing experience, but it is not the only maturing experience, and it is not an automatically maturing experience. …

…Sometimes, listening to the current advocates, you would think that marriage is unfallen, or at least a refuge from the fall. While I agree it is a common grace, and even has sacramental qualities, it is thoroughly fallen and is not our salvation.

2. We overemphasize marriage when we say only “spiritually gifted” singles are truly in God’s will. Again, when Mohler talks about those called and gifted to be “single” as the only “normative” singles, he is running along a very narrow path, with plenty of ways to fall off.

The contemporary concept of spiritual giftedness has proven to be far from perfect or even helpful in many cases. I have done far more counseling with individuals who were confused about their spiritual gift than those who were finding assurance and joy from knowing their spiritual gift. How does one know he or she is called to celibacy and their delaying or passing on marriage is approved by God? In particular, given the differences in male and female sexuality and sexual development, how does a young man know that he is called to celibacy?

The concept of being “called to celibacy” occurs in the Bible in two ways: purposeful vows to be single, and pastoral advice to those who are single. Where in the New Testament do we see a “gift of celibacy” being considered by young singles in the way spiritual gifts are discussed in today’s church?

I have total respect for all those who believe God has called them to a life of celibacy, but I have to be honest. I know many who concluded God called them to singleness who later married. Our Roman Catholic friends could tell us a lot of stories about this.

3. It is an overemphasis of marriage when marriage is automatically called a “priority” for the unmarried Christian. Here is where I hope my readers will think carefully along with me.

…Does this mean that every Christian young person needs to make “finding a spouse” their major business? I say this as a youth professional and a youth minister who is watching many Christians- especially females- literally make finding a spouse the priority of their lives. Instead of boy crazy teenager girls, we have spouse-obsessed girls, who are seeing marriage as the most important, all consuming principle for living their lives. It is the focus of their prayers, the basis of their reading, the guiding principle of their involvements and a priority in all decisions. This concerns me.

… Should I be advising my daughter to put finding a husband as first on her list of priorities? Should my kids be, literally, pursuing mates in their relationships? (I use that word because I see this increasingly happening, and it’s not particularly spiritual.) Is there no value to a social activity with the opposite gender except what may lead to marriage?

In fact, shouldn’t the priority of general Christian character and growth be clearly ranked above any specific matter like marriage or missions, especially for a young person? Am I wrong to tell young people to pursue general Christian growth as the foundation of understanding God’s will in other areas? And will that general Christian growth always indicate that, yes, marriage should be the assumed priority for their life, even though Jesus wasn’t married and the New Testament shows a remarkable openness to single people in ministry?

4. We overemphasize marriage when those who are not married are out of the “center” of the Christian community, thus violating clear implications of the ministry of Jesus. I am extremely concerned that the emphasis on marriage in contemporary evangelicalism has created an imbalance within the body of Christ. I am already sensitive to this because of my own life experience.

I grew up in a fundamentalistic Baptist Church where the divorced were ostracized, baited, humiliated and blamed at every opportunity. (No, I am not exaggerating. Drinkers and divorced people were what was wrong with the world. Oh….and anyone who married a Catholic was bad, too.) This is why my dad only heard me preach, in person, five times in his life. What is outrageous about this is that 1) it was done by elevating never divorced families to the center of the church community, and 2) ignoring Jesus’ ministry to the marginalized and broken.

Jesus would have included- even preferred in some instances- the divorced, the single and the rejected in his community of followers. It is inconceivable to me that a church pastored by Jesus would put the emphasis on marriage that I saw in my childhood- or in many circles today. Today’s mega-churches specialize in that traditional family with two kids and a dog. Yes, many of them also successfully minister to singles and other groups, but am I the only one who hears such an incessant drumbeat of teaching on marriage, threats to marriage, crisis in marriage, marriage success principles and so forth that it can sometimes appear the church is preaching the “Good News of Marriage and Family” a bit louder than the Good News of Jesus?

I know single people can be whiners. Every pastor has those single members who don’t want to be single and annoyingly keep complaining that God is unfair. But are singles wrong when they say the church looks so much like a club for families that they don’t feel like they are normal, whole and blessed? Are so many family-oriented events and ministries done with serious thought to how Jesus did ministry? Did Jesus emphasize marriage as we do in most churches?

Video: Dating Advice for Single Christian Guys (satire)

Video: Dating Advice for Single Christian Guys (satire)

At least I’m assuming this is satire. I hope to goodness it’s satire.

(Link to video): 10 Dating Tips For The Christian Man