Over the past month with two different mission trips i have some amazing transparent conversations with teens. Many of those conversations have touched on the issue of premarital sex. to be honest i’m almost dumbfounded by the degree of sexuality activity among teens who have a faith perspective. though i shouldn’t be surprised. my pal rudy carrasco posted a link to this article which led to a couple others that are worthy of any youth leader and/or parents reading. what i found especially troubling (because anthony is right) that Evangelicalism will certainly run from this topic.
Evangelicalism, in part because of the spiritual delusion created by youth ministry, continues to be an #epic fail on forming virtuous young adults some would argue, especially for women. This is, in part, because evangelicals have made sexual sin the highest form of deviance.
Dr. Eric Reitan,citing the research from Forbidden Fruit, by UT-Austin sociologist Mark Regnerus, notes:
“(E)vangelical teen-agers are more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestants, and Jews. On average, white evangelical Protestants make their ‘sexual debut’–to use the festive term of social-science researchers–shortly after turning sixteen.”
“(E)vangelical Protestant teen-agers are significantly less likely than other groups to use contraception.”
From the Archives: Evangelicals and Premarital Sex
Red Sex, Blue Sex:Why do so many evangelical teen-agers become pregnant?
I think part of the problem is the way that society and even Christian parents are insisting that kids wait until they finish college to get married and start their family. I think High School students get into relationships and immediately think that there’s no way they can wait from the time they turn 16 until 23-24 to be sexually active. So they compromise. Coupled with the fact that so many students are in SERIOUS relationships at the age of 14-15 it is exponential. I’m just not convinced we were made to wait until mid/late twenties to “be adults.” Thus the prolonging of adolescents (Shoutout to Marko).