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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Evangelical students & early marriage
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Amir Emrra
Apprentice
# 18100
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Posted
Hello, I am fishing for information and any experiences you have about evangelical students in the UK getting engaged quickly and marrying early.
Much to my alarm, Sprog1, a soon-to-be-fresher, tells me that a substantial proportion of evo couples in the CU get engaged within months of meeting, and that even getting married at university, whilst not the norm, raises few eyebrows. It seems to be based on some eisegesis of 1 Cor 7v9, i.e. why bother resisting sexual temptation when you could just get married?! It sounds more like the praxis of extreme con-evos or fundies.
Anyone? Thanks.
Posts: 37 | From: UK | Registered: May 2014
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
Hi Amir. Welcome to the ship. (Did you notice the sign as you came up the gangplank that said Abandon hope all ye who enter here?)
It's been a long time since I was at uni, or been involved with Christians who were at uni. But as far as I can see, it has always been relatively common for CU people to get engaged quickly. As you suggest, part of this stems from teaching which - in summary - says "we really wish you didn't have any sexual contact at all before marriage but we reluctantly accept that this is rather unrealistic, so it would be better if you got married and had sex, rather than not get married and still have sex."
I think that there are other factors involved, as well. One is that there is a strong expectation on "Good Christians" that they will settle down quickly, get married and have children and be a model family. This means that as soon as a couple start dating, church leaders begin to ask when they are going to get a ring! There really isn't that much scope at times for young people to experiment by dating a few people and finding out who (or what) they like or don't like.
Another factor is that it will be assumed that the couple "Have Prayed Earnestly" before going on a date. Therefore, if you've prayed about it and God has said "yes" (however you discern this!) it can be very, VERY hard to then breakup. After all, why would God direct two people to go out, if He didn't want them to get married??
Finally, there is simple peer pressure. Once you have a few engaged couples in the CU, the pressure is then on others to follow suit, especially if they are dating.
I would just like to add a couple of other comments. First of all, it is worth noting that the change that has happened in when people get married is not among Good Little Evangelical Christians, but among the rest of society. It is not really that long ago that many people got married in their early twenties. But as society has moved towards people getting married much later (in my last parish in the UK, the average age of the couples getting married in the church was early to mid 30's), CU Christians have mostly remained with the older tradition of getting married earlier.
Secondly, I do have to confess that I met Mrs Grouch at university, and yes we DID go to the CU. We got married as soon as I left uni. So it is not ALL bad!
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
My experience tallies with Oscar's - CU members marrying ASAP after graduating (not come across anyone marrying while at uni mind) is very common. However my former housemates, both liberal Anglo-Catholics so very much NOT in favour with the CU, have just done the same so I don't think it's automatically a bad thing or exclusively the preserve of fundies. As Oscar says, it's more that delaying marriage is so common for wider society that makes it seem so unusual now.
I would also agree with the idea that churches don't help - IME young couples at churches are often gently or not-so-gently pushed towards marriage, and I don't think that's helpful.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
I agree with Jade. I was not in the ECU but my wife and I still got engaged within a couple of months and married 7 months later, at the end of our second year of university. And my wife's not even a Christian. Our 10th anniversary is in a month's time (no wee ones yet, alas).
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Snags
Utterly socially unrealistic
# 15351
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Posted
A quick mental survey of friends/friends off-spring who are (non-con)evangelical would indicate it's not the norm.
Many of them have long term, and long distance, relationships (or no obvious romantic relationships at all after a normal period of short term ones in teens) but very few engaged at university (or equivalent age) let alone married. Most of them seem to wait until the end of university, or shortly after, to get engaged. Which is not dissimilar to my day. I do know a small number engaged/married whilst at uni but they are exceptional in my experience.
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Vain witterings :-: Vain pretentions :-: The Dog's Blog(locks)
Posts: 1399 | From: just north of That London | Registered: Dec 2009
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
My direct experience of evangelical student groups is now 20 years old, and things may have changed since then.
The ECU did have a "dating agency" reputation, with quite a few couples, though personally in 7 years I was never part of a relationship. Though, the Methodist and Anglican chaplaincy groups were not substantially different in that respect. In the first few years after graduation I went to a few weddings of university friends - from the Methodist and Anglican groups, not the ECU.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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GCabot
Shipmate
# 18074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amir Emrra:
Much to my alarm, Sprog1, a soon-to-be-fresher, tells me that a substantial proportion of evo couples in the CU get engaged within months of meeting, and that even getting married at university, whilst not the norm, raises few eyebrows.
Why is this so alarming to you?
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The child that is born unto us is more than a prophet; for this is he of whom the Savior saith: "Among them that are born of woman, there hath not risen one greater than John the Baptist."
Posts: 285 | From: The Heav'n Rescued Land | Registered: Apr 2014
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
The trouble with this kind of question is that it is easy to be lured down the road of confirmation bias. I can certainly think of some who would fit that criteria but is that indicative of a "substantial proportion".
Then you must also factor in general shifts in societies over time.
It is my understanding that in the UK, the average age for a first marriage is going up. So when my parents were married (at the time they were anglicans), then being 21 & 20, it was not considered unusually young. Today, it might seem so.
Some friends I know got married shortly after university, indeed one in my church proposed to his girlfriend a few days after finishing his last exam! In my own family, one sister got married at the end of her second year of uni, one married a few years later and I never got hitched - unless one considers being married to a job to be anywhere near an approximation, at least in terms of time and effort.
I'd rather see some sound statistics than rely on anecdotal evidence before coming to a conclusion as to the question posed.
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
Posts: 3791 | From: On the corporate ladder | Registered: Jan 2012
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Nicodemia
WYSIWYG
# 4756
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Posted
How many of these early marriages, even among GLE's, last? From my experience (a good few years old, of my daughter's generation, many of them result in divorce, or at least separation.
And maybe they get married because, unlike the rest of the students, they don't just "shag and move on" in the process learning about themselves and others.
OK, I'm cynical in my old age ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
Posts: 4544 | From: not too far from Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2003
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Many Christians have been brought up with the belief that Christians should not marry non-Christians and given the general organisation of CUs, that is very likely to be the party line. Essentially a bit of guidance that there may be compatibility problems got turned into a prohibition which is a very common belief amongst folks from an evo background. This can create two different kinds of anxieties. Firstly, that you have a restricted choice. Secondly, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!
The unequally yoked scripture has been looked at a lot in both serious scholarship and also on SoF a few times and it does not mean the prohibitive belief; it is about mission, not marriage. You can infer it of course. Or you can take it as a piece of common sense that if you want to marry someone with a different world view to your own you need to do some considerable exploration of what that would mean for you as a couple. There are likely to be substantial challenges for you to work out together.
Now, interestingly, that bit of common sense also should apply to Christians in the wider question of compatibility. As many have discovered to their cost, you don't resolve the issues of compatibility simply by marrying someone of the same faith. Compatibility issues are not just about macro differences over world views.
What I think may happen in CUs is that the bird in the hand/restricted choice factors may produce a certain optimism! There's an opportunity to link up with members of your peer group, why not make the most of it? The consequences of acting in haste, for whatever reason are often repentance at leisure. As we have daily proof, as the divorce rate implies. The divorce rate is high generally; most of the stats I see suggest it is not a lot different when the couples share the same faith.
We've done marriage prep for years, and the line we've always taken is that it's wise to explore compatibility issues seriously in advance. Beliefs, temperament, character, differences of experience, how marriage has been modelled to us in our growing up, all factor into that. Life time commitments shouldn't be entered into lightly or unadvisedly. It's worth taking your time over that. Whatever your beliefs over mixed marriages may be.
[ 26. June 2014, 07:57: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
TheAlethiophile: quote:
It is my understanding that in the UK, the average age for a first marriage is going up. So when my parents were married (at the time they were anglicans), then being 21 & 20, it was not considered unusually young. Today, it might seem so.
If Ken was here ( ![[Frown]](frown.gif) ) he would probably be reminding us about now that the average age for most people to marry in the nineteenth century was late 20s/early 30s, because that was how long it took you to save up enough to start your own household unless your family was fairly rich. So things are going back to the way they were.
I only know one couple who got married whilst at university and I lost touch with them, so I don't know whether their marriage lasted. More than half of the couples I know who got married just after university are still together, suggesting that the divorce rate among my acquaintances is about the same as the rest of society. I don't think you can assume that getting married at university or just after graduation is always going to be a bad thing. It may be unusual nowadays, but that's because most people now wait until they've bought a house together (or until they're ready to have children) before getting married.
I myself am glad I didn't get married as an undergraduate, though, because I didn't meet my Other Half until I was on my postgraduate course.
Oh - and what Barnabas said.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
My CU was impressively resistant to coupling up for the first couple of years. We were all just very close friends, boys and girls. And then suddenly in the final year there were engaged couples everywhere. Some of us suspected a bandwagon ![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
I don’t necessarily think it’s wrong to get married early if you’re sure you’re with the right person. Nonetheless I do think there’s a lot of pressure on students to get with the program and form nice little evangelical families. A non-Christian fellow student of mine, hearing about this, did comment, “that’s really awful. It just confirms what we all think, that Christians get married just so they can have sex.” If this is true (IMO it’s a bit more nuanced than that, but I do think it’s a factor) I personally view this as a bad reason for getting married.
I think the other problem I saw was this: if getting married at the end of university = “normal”, the people (like I was) who are still very, very single and with nary a date in sight can start feeling like there’s something wrong with them. Getting married is somehow equated with some sort of spiritual success. Now it probably didn’t help that at the time I was also attending a church whose approach to the family was firmly stuck in the 1950s, but even so, I was 23 years old and pretty much convinced I was on the shelf. Being in that kind of environment can skew your judgment that way, and the phenomenon is amplified at university, I think, because for many evangelical students, their whole friendship group comes from the CU. Single at 23 doesn't make you weird. It’s married at 23 that’s unusual these days.
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
Posts: 3696 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Amir Emrra
Apprentice
# 18100
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Posted
Wow, I am bowled over by the quality & quantity of your responses, private & public, and in such a short time. Thank you one and all. It's already difficult to respond to all the points made, I'll try to do so in separate posts, but first, to be fair, I must answer GCabot's “why so serious?” question:
I must confess that, in raising the issue, I am wearing my “Overly-protective dad. Grrr.” t-shirt. I don't want (evo) Sprog1 doing something rash and regretting it. I realise that “young love” can work, e.g. arethosemyfeet, but common sense says it should not be normative and the risk is very high. What could I do about it anyway? Sweet FA, of course.
However, apart from my personal self-interests, it does raise a serious question about a potential time-bomb of failed evo marriages at the T+10year mark. I read recently (sorry, lost the citation) that 48% of young marriages fail within 10 years (USA, general population, recent), which, as a reasonable analogue to the subject in discussion, does not bode well. I predict a pastoral nightmare, and a loud “told you so” from la vie en rose's friend and society in general. Also, what the hell are evo pastors doing, affirming this unwise trend by performing the marriages?
[ 26. June 2014, 10:55: Message edited by: Amir Emrra ]
Posts: 37 | From: UK | Registered: May 2014
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Amir Emrra
Apprentice
# 18100
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
Hi Amir. Welcome to the ship. (Did you notice the sign as you came up the gangplank that said Abandon hope all ye who enter here?)
Thanks Oscar, yes I noticed but merely shrugged as I shuffled past the blood-written sign, because I had no hope left to abandon.
Posts: 37 | From: UK | Registered: May 2014
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ElaineC
Shipmate
# 12244
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nicodemia:
How many of these early marriages, even among GLE's, last? From my experience (a good few years old, of my daughter's generation, many of them result in divorce, or at least separation.
And maybe they get married because, unlike the rest of the students, they don't just "shag and move on" in the process learning about themselves and others.
OK, I'm cynical in my old age
I met Mr. C in the college CU. We got engaged in my third (of four) year and were married as soon as I graduated.
This August we will celebrate our 40th Wedding Anniversary.
One couple who married the year before us and another couple who married the year after us are also still married.
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Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing. John Erskine
Posts: 464 | From: Orpington, Kent, UK | Registered: Jan 2007
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Coming out of a Lutheran college situation, it was very much the same. People paired off in second or third year and married after graduation in the fourth. But that might be partly due to the fact that so many were going on to seminary/graduate school out of town, and the summer before made a handy time to rearrange your life. Others were going on to take calls out of state, which had the same effect.
I'm aware of two failed marriages among the crop that produced my own. That's pretty decent IMHO, especially since the two were very, very predictable, and warnings were issued (at least to the first couple) since everyone could see what was coming.
Of course, the fact that we were all attending a denominational school tended to cut down on one source of incompatibility from the start.
There's also the fact that most of us had parents who married at the same time in life, or shortly after (seminarians were not permitted to marry till after grad school, so age 26 maybe).
I guess I'm saying it doesn't HAVE to be problematic. If it is, perhaps that is due to an idea that "I've got to snatch at this now, however imperfect, or I might graduate and never find anyone else out in the cold, dark world."
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Amir Emrra
Apprentice
# 18100
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ElaineC:
I met Mr. C in the college CU. We got engaged in my third (of four) year and were married as soon as I graduated.
This August we will celebrate our 40th Wedding Anniversary.
One couple who married the year before us and another couple who married the year after us are also still married.
I'm genuinely happy about your grand tally ElaineC, I'm 20 years behind you! Please note, I am not rejecting young marriages outright, but I am concerned about the high risks involved. Yes, it may work for some, but should it be normative?
Posts: 37 | From: UK | Registered: May 2014
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
My university experiences are personally over 20 years old now, but I did spend most of the next 20 years in a evangelical "student" church, so I did get to see first-hand how things developed.
My first, overwhelming impression is that being a (conservative) evangelical Christian seemed to be no bar to separation and divorce. My original homegroup consisted of about four married couples, two engaged people who came singly, and a few who were singles. Only one of the marriages has survived, and one of the engagements was broken off. The marrieds were, at the time, all older than me, but had more-or-less met at university and married soon after. That said, fewer of my contemporaries have subsequently split up.
But to answer your question, yes. There was not just an undercurrent, but an overt subtext (if you can have such a thing) that finding someone at church/CU and marrying them was Biblical. The youth workers and younger clergy often took the role of unofficial matchmakers.
Despite that, I managed to not marry the woman I met in my first week, first term, until 8 years later, having not gone out at all until about 10 months before the wedding.
Sprog1 sounds like they're aware of the pressure, which makes it easier to avoid. I'd simply recommend that they took their time.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Amir Emrra
Apprentice
# 18100
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TheAlethiophile:
The trouble with this kind of question is that it is easy to be lured down the road of confirmation bias.
I'd rather see some sound statistics than rely on anecdotal evidence before coming to a conclusion as to the question posed.
Good point, well made. I have tried but failed to find direct, statistical evidence. However, your caution sparked me and I am pursuing another line of enquiry now, with the UCCF. I'll let you know what they say.
Posts: 37 | From: UK | Registered: May 2014
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Tubbs
Miss Congeniality
# 440
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amir Emrra:
Wow, I am bowled over by the quality & quantity of your responses, private & public, and in such a short time. Thank you one and all. It's already difficult to respond to all the points made, I'll try to do so in separate posts, but first, to be fair, I must answer GCabot's “why so serious?” question:
I must confess that, in raising the issue, I am wearing my “Overly-protective dad. Grrr.” t-shirt. I don't want (evo) Sprog1 doing something rash and regretting it. I realise that “young love” can work, e.g. arethosemyfeet, but common sense says it should not be normative and the risk is very high. What could I do about it anyway? Sweet FA, of course.
However, apart from my personal self-interests, it does raise a serious question about a potential time-bomb of failed evo marriages at the T+10year mark. I read recently (sorry, lost the citation) that 48% of young marriages fail within 10 years (USA, general population, recent), which, as a reasonable analogue to the subject in discussion, does not bode well. I predict a pastoral nightmare, and a loud “told you so” from la vie en rose's friend and society in general. Also, what the hell are evo pastors doing, affirming this unwise trend by performing the marriages?
I'd imagine that in the con-evo world, an unwise marraige is still better than an unwise shag. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
As you can't say much other than a passing comment about them being sure and having their whole lives ahead of them etc, direct them towards a marriage prep course. Their church may offer one, but if they don't, it may be possible to find one locally. That will give them a good basis to build on and will help them think through some of the issues that concern you.
But, TBF, many couples don't think about much before heading down the aisle. It's amazing how much thought goes into The Day compared to the Life Afterwards. Rev T and I got married in our thirties and did marriage prep with a group of a similar age. (IIRC, we were the only couple not already living together). Most of them hadn't discussed things like children, money etc. ![[Eek!]](eek.gif) Some of them had wildly different ideas about what they wanted. The car journeys home must have been very interesting!
Tubbs
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"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it up and remove all doubt" - Dennis Thatcher. My blog. Decide for yourself which I am
Posts: 12701 | From: Someplace strange | Registered: Jun 2001
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
My experience is pretty much the same as Lamb Chopped. The year after we graduated, we attended six weddings of couples who had met at University, became engaged when they graduated and married the year after. Most had dated for a couple of years at Uni prior to becoming engaged, so they didn't get married quickly.
A seventh couple married the following year, and then we were the eighth; we waited until my salary was enough to support my PhD student husband.
All eight couples are still married, over 25 years later.
My younger is also a soon-to-be-fresher, but right now I'm more concerned about the cost of student accommodation than the possibility of her getting engaged at an early age!
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nicodemia:
How many of these early marriages, even among GLE's, last? From my experience (a good few years old, of my daughter's generation, many of them result in divorce, or at least separation.
In the summer following my graduation, I went to five weddings (my own included). Of those five, four are still going strong (15 years later) and one resulted in separation and divorce in the first couple of years. In the following couple of years, a few more of our student couple friends married, and they're still married too.
Of the set, one couple were more or less GLEs., and of the rest about half are Christian, and half atheist or agnostic.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I believe there is a peer expectation in some groups that works in favor of early weddings. The example I can offer is the US military. Army people marry early, partly because all of the benefits and support systems are geared to the wedded pair and not the mere girlfriends or friends-with-benefits.
The first I heard of my daughter's marriage was when she sent me an Instant Message. It said, in total and I quote, "He gave me a ring!" I instantly replied, "What is this HE? what is this RING?" This was in October. If they wanted to be posted together, the wedding had to take place by December. It was brutally difficult.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Jane R wrote: quote:
If Ken was here ( [Frown] ) he would probably be reminding us about now that the average age for most people to marry in the nineteenth century was late 20s/early 30s, because that was how long it took you to save up enough to start your own household unless your family was fairly rich. So things are going back to the way they were.
Maybe in the first part of the 19th century it was (I can't find figures for that), but the median age of first marriage was lower than that by the end of the century. It dropped until around 1950, and has been rising since then. I think in the UK it's around 30F/32M at present.
Historically - before the 19th century - the situation in European countries has tended to be that women married between 20 to 30, and men between 25 to 30, though it varied somewhat. So we have overshot the long-run historical figures by a bit at present.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Maybe I misremembered the dates - actually now I think about it, I have a feeling he was talking about early modern marriages (16th-17th century). That's more likely than Ken getting his facts wrong.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Maybe I misremembered the dates - actually now I think about it, I have a feeling he was talking about early modern marriages (16th-17th century). That's more likely than Ken getting his facts wrong.
Yes, getting married at around 27 was the norm in the 16th century, at least for the common people.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
I think my concern is not so much for the couples, but for those who don't find someone to marry early on, particularly those who have other factors at play (obvious DH issue is obvious). I echo La Vie En Rouge's comments - if, as many more conservative evangelicals do, you exist more or less in a con-evo bubble, getting married to a GLE of the opposite gender ASAP and having GLE kids ASAP is seen as a mark of spiritual success. The consequences for those who to their community are lacking in this area are more serious than for the couples themselves. You end up thinking there is something wrong with you for not being married by 23, and that is a very destructive thing for churches to be encouraging or at least not discouraging.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
Several of you keep using the acronym GLE. What does this stand for? I'm allergic to undefined acronyms and can't find anything reasonable on acronym finder.
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
Posts: 3791 | From: On the corporate ladder | Registered: Jan 2012
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
Sorry - GLE = Good Little Evangelical. See also GLC = Good Little Catholic etc, it's not just used for evangelicals.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
Well, now that I've seen that page, I'm going to think Gas-Like Element everytime someone says they used to be a GLE. Most fun with acronyms since I mentioned I was SDA and someone googled it and assumed I belonged to the Soap and Detergent Association.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amir Emrra:
Wow, I am bowled over by the quality & quantity of your responses, private & public, and in such a short time. Thank you one and all. It's already difficult to respond to all the points made, I'll try to do so in separate posts, but first, to be fair, I must answer GCabot's “why so serious?” question:
I must confess that, in raising the issue, I am wearing my “Overly-protective dad. Grrr.” t-shirt. I don't want (evo) Sprog1 doing something rash and regretting it. I realise that “young love” can work, e.g. arethosemyfeet, but common sense says it should not be normative and the risk is very high. What could I do about it anyway? Sweet FA, of course.
However, apart from my personal self-interests, it does raise a serious question about a potential time-bomb of failed evo marriages at the T+10year mark. I read recently (sorry, lost the citation) that 48% of young marriages fail within 10 years (USA, general population, recent), which, as a reasonable analogue to the subject in discussion, does not bode well. I predict a pastoral nightmare, and a loud “told you so” from la vie en rose's friend and society in general. Also, what the hell are evo pastors doing, affirming this unwise trend by performing the marriages?
Hi Amir Emrra - welcome on board!
The data you are probably looking for is published by the Office for National Statistics (i.e. the current UK situation). Data on current marriage and divorce rates are published annually - the data for 2012 were published a few months back.
However, it's difficult to analyse it for marriage survivability statistics - to do that you would need to compare the data for the cohort that divorced in 2012 with the appropriate statistics on marriage for each age group from each year they married - stretching back at least 30 years. Tricky.
However, they did put out a report in 2008 doing just those calculations. I don't know if it's been updated more recently - a quick Google didn't find anything - but I doubt if things have changed much. You can download the report here. (It's a pdf file). But basically, marrying young does indeed carry a higher risk of divorce for pretty well all potential marriage duration classes.
One other factor which I picked up a couple of years ago in another place was between two statisticians who worked in this field - they were discussing the observation that marriage survivability by age appeared to be becoming a bimodal distribution. The general tenor of the discussion was that fewer people were getting married, but those that do fall into two groups. (i) - the majority, who are sticking with it longer than before whatever age they marry at, and (ii) those who marry early and divorce early.
The second group was being dubbed "celebrity marriages". I haven't seen ONS publish a report on this, though they are obviously aware of it - Here's a link to an article in the Torygraph on the subject, though they are referring to this group as "starter marriages". The whole concept does mean that we need to be increasingly careful of how we interpret marriage survivability statistics if this trend continues.
The question then is to what extent this may apply to GLE* young marriages. I can't see this group being particularly overawed by Sleb Culture. Rather the reverse in fact. But if you recast the issue in terms of young people swayed by peer group pressure, then there's more to worry about I think.
(* - sorry, the Alethiophile!)
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Amir Emrra
Apprentice
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amir Emrra:
Latest stats on UK marriage from the ONS, 2012, say median age for marriage is 25-29 yo age group.
ONS Infographic
ONS research paper
Yoiks, sorry, cross-posted with Mr Bacardi.
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Snags
Utterly socially unrealistic
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amir Emrra:
However, apart from my personal self-interests, it does raise a serious question about a potential time-bomb of failed evo marriages at the T+10year mark.
FWIW I met Mrs Snags at university. We started "going out" (and staying in, we shared a house as friends before romance landed) in my final year, and owing to my intense inertia didn't get engaged until after we had both left college (Mrs Snags is an educational year younger than me).
We've hit 19 years married + 2 engaged (don't ask, long engagements, never do them) without any major threats to marital stability, despite some Big Issues in that time.
Friends who got married later and with more "field work" behind them have split up and divorced*, so ...
It's as much about both of you genuinely having the same attitude to what marriage is, and what commitment you're making, and to keeping broadly in step with each other as you grow as it is about your age at the time.
*Although amongst our main friends, church or otherwise, there are actually very few divorces/long term relationship breakdowns. I can only assume we all lack the imagination or the energy.
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Vain witterings :-: Vain pretentions :-: The Dog's Blog(locks)
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Yes, that's the most recent year's data. But as I say, getting a view of survivability data from it is hard work(!).
(edited to add - reply to Amir Emrra)
[ 26. June 2014, 16:57: Message edited by: Honest Ron Bacardi ]
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Kwesi
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Now regarding marriage and 1 Corinthians 7, I would have thought evangelicals would have been opposed to sexual relations at all. If they recommend abstinence for gays, let alone marriage, I think they ought to adopt the higher standard for themselves.
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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I don't have any stats to back this up, but my impression is as follows:
a) Marrying younger increases the overall possibility of the marriage not lasting.
b) However, although divorce rates for Christians are not significantly different from the rest of the population (last time I looked), anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that Christians couples getting married during or after uni seem to last pretty well.
Although I haven't kept in touch with many of the people I was at uni with, all the ones who (like me) got married immediately afterwards are still together.
In fact, I think I've only known one such marriage that has failed - and that was almost immediate. The wife left uni, did a year's teacher training and ended up leaving husband for a teacher she met at her first placement school.
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
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Pomona
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# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Now regarding marriage and 1 Corinthians 7, I would have thought evangelicals would have been opposed to sexual relations at all. If they recommend abstinence for gays, let alone marriage, I think they ought to adopt the higher standard for themselves.
I think a lot of evangelicals see celibacy as being for gays and Catholics, and as something that's somewhat effeminate. Mark Driscoll et al don't help this view.
[ 26. June 2014, 18:24: Message edited by: Jade Constable ]
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
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SvitlanaV2
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One website I came across suggested that early marriage and frequent divorce in American evangelicalism was possibly due to the fact that most American evangelicals are relatively poor. Poverty is a significant contributing factor to divorce.
Another website suggested that the stats refer to those Americans who self-identify as evangelicals, but not to those who go to much effort to practice their religion; Christians who have higher levels of religious practice have lower levels of divorce in general.
The poverty factor probably applies less to English evangelicals than to American ones. Moreover, there doesn't seem to be a diffuse English 'evangelical culture' that tolerates 'disorderly' family behaviour and low levels of religious practice. I suspect that
English evangelicals who are moving in that direction simply lose their evangelical identity and merge into the general secular environment, and their behaviour is no longer taken to be representative of evangelicalism.
However, it also occurs to me that because English evangelicals have a younger age profile than most other Christians, it's inevitable that their divorce rate will appear higher. The average age at divorce in the UK in 2011 was 40-44, but non-evangelical churchgoers in particular are likely to be older than this.
[ 26. June 2014, 21:04: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
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Amir Emrra
Apprentice
# 18100
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
One website I came across suggested that early marriage and frequent divorce in American evangelicalism was possibly due to the fact that most American evangelicals are relatively poor. Poverty is a significant contributing factor to divorce.
Yes, I saw a US study that said, regarding teen marriages, dropping out of school raised that person's chances of chronic poverty by 11% , but getting married early raised the chances to 31%.
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Amir Emrra
Apprentice
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So, all things considered, do we think that it's not such a big deal after all, or is there a need for a pastoral response from uni chaplains, UCCF & student churches?
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
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I don't think that getting married very shortly after leaving university is necessarily a problem (it may be for some couples ... but delay things 10 years and there would still be some couples where marriage results in problems).
Would improved pastoral care and response be a good idea? Of course. But not just to discourage marriage within 2 years of finishing university. Relationships in general are a very difficult time for young people. University should be a time when young people can prepare for becoming fully fledged adults. IME, CUs, chaplaincies and the like were good (though rarely perfect, or even very good) at preparing students to take up roles in churches, preparing them to enter jobs where they may not be surrounded by a supportive Christian community, etc. But, at preparing for relationships they basically sucked.
Especially in the evangelical groups the emphasis on "no sex before marriage" basically drives people into either rapid progression to marriage or to not forming relationships at all (because they could be seen as the fast track to marriage in order to have sex). It fails some people who marry too quickly (though, as stated, not all such marriages are a problem). It fails others as they don't get to experience relationship at a time when that would benefit them. Let me tell you, it sucks to have never kissed a girl, or gone to the cinema, a quite meal, to sit together in the pub etc. It sucks even more when someone finally shows an interest in you, you fall in love and get married in your mid-to-late 30s only to then experience first break up 10 years later.
So, let the kids have space to go out, spend a bit of time together, kiss and hold hands, maybe a bit more. Without forever having the "Is this the person I'll be spending the rest of my life with?" question constantly there. And, that requires pastorally sensitive guidance on relationships, and pastoral care to pick up the pieces if needed.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Amir Emrra
Apprentice
# 18100
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Yes, I'm not so bothered about post-uni weddings, but I am alarmed at the real example quoted by Sprog1 of dating for 1 term, getting engaged and marrying a year later, while still at uni.
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amir Emrra:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
One website I came across suggested that early marriage and frequent divorce in American evangelicalism was possibly due to the fact that most American evangelicals are relatively poor. Poverty is a significant contributing factor to divorce.
Yes, I saw a US study that said, regarding teen marriages, dropping out of school raised that person's chances of chronic poverty by 11% , but getting married early raised the chances to 31%.
And those American teens probably come from relatively poor families to start with.
I'm in England, and times have changed from when I was in the Methodist/URC Soc at uni in the early 90s. It didn't seem weird for Christian students to meet up and then get married after graduating. But neither was it a big fashionable thing to do.
If the evangelical student majority now routinely pair off at uni (are there any figures?) then I suppose there should be relevant group discussions about romance and marriage, etc. to get them thinking. I presume that chaplains have always been available for young couples looking for confidential advice, but do students think to ask?
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Jack the Lass
Ship's airhead
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
So, let the kids have space to go out, spend a bit of time together, kiss and hold hands, maybe a bit more. Without forever having the "Is this the person I'll be spending the rest of my life with?" question constantly there. And, that requires pastorally sensitive guidance on relationships, and pastoral care to pick up the pieces if needed.
I think this is where the nub of the problem is - I'm not sure how normative my CU experience was, but I would say the vast majority of students saw the CU as the main focus of their efforts and energies, and the local church was just where you went on Sunday. There were several churches which were geared up to catering for students, but other than Sunday mornings there was very little contact the rest of the week - we didn't join church home groups or whatever. So there wasn't anyone older and maturer with a pastoral responsibility - the people we looked up to as wise and mature in the faith were the CU committee and fellowship group leaders, even though they were our contemporaries in age. We did have a UCCF staff worker, but they were responsible for CUs in all the universities in their patch, so I think we only saw ours once a term at the main CU meeting. This lack of mature pastoral oversight I think led to a lot of over-enthusiasm being over-interpreted as 'God's will', and there wasn't anyone experienced enough or mature enough to tell us to stop being silly.
I also totally endorse Alan and LVER's observations that the emphasis on forming godly relationships in CUs means that dating is difficult as it is full of pressure from the get-go, and for those of us who weren't dating many ended up wondering what was wrong with us, and that we were leaving university resolutely on the shelf. Not to mention basically clueless as to what to do in relationships.
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"My body is a temple - it's big and doesn't move." (Jo Brand)
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jack the Lass:
I think this is where the nub of the problem is - I'm not sure how normative my CU experience was, but I would say the vast majority of students saw the CU as the main focus of their efforts and energies, and the local church was just where you went on Sunday. There were several churches which were geared up to catering for students, but other than Sunday mornings there was very little contact the rest of the week - we didn't join church home groups or whatever.
Mine kind of went the other way, but the organization required meant the churches involved tended to be seen as controlling or having undue influence. And there was a bit of disconnect between groups from different churches.
So I think it's one of those whatever you do you lose things.
[ 27. June 2014, 21:56: Message edited by: Jay-Emm ]
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Kwesi
Shipmate
# 10274
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Posted
How up to speed were/are married evangelicals at being fruitful and multiplying? I trust they did not/do not resort to contraception and onanism.
Posts: 1641 | From: South Ofankor | Registered: Sep 2005
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Lucia
Looking for light
# 15201
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Posted
Maybe it's something that has changed. When I was a student in the late 80s at uni in the UK there were dating couples in the CU and I know a few who married after graduating. Of those that I am still in touch with they are still together. But there was also a fair amount of dating went on that didn't eventually go anywhere. I had a boyfriend for more than a year who I eventually broke up with but am still friends with now nearly 25 years later.
But I guess we lived in times when it was not considered quite so weird to not be having sex when you were a teenager. So maybe we didn't feel quite the same pressure to get paired off and married so that we could get on with it. That's not to say there weren't tensions, but we just thought that we had to get on and deal with them, decide how far things could go and what our boundaries were and stick to them as much as we could, although I don't think we always succeeded in living up to our principles...
Posts: 1075 | From: Nigh golden stone and spires | Registered: Oct 2009
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
My experience, 10 years earlier than her, was pretty much like Lucia's. There was a fair bit of going out with people ('dating' wasn't a word we used then), breaking up and going out with someone else.
Most of us married what would seem very early nowdays - mostly in our very early 20's, I would say, but that was so with all my friends, christian and non-christian alike.
I recall pressure not to marry a non-christian, but very little not to go out with one. Neither do I remember any pressure only to pair off with someone only with thoughts to marry.
The most pressure I ever got was from a lad who told me I had to go out with him, because God had told him so. I just told him that in that case, God should have told me too, which seemed the obvious answer.
M.
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
If the evangelical student majority now routinely pair off at uni (are there any figures?) then I suppose there should be relevant group discussions about romance and marriage, etc. to get them thinking. I presume that chaplains have always been available for young couples looking for confidential advice, but do students think to ask?
Unlikely in my experience, if only because the eCU distanced themselves from a chaplaincy team that they considered a hotbed of heresy, universalism and liberalism. And possibly dancing.
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