- Feb 5, 2002
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We hear a lot about Christian marriages being different, but what is it that makes a marriage "Christian"?
Though it might seem so, sociologists Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Ueker recently reported that the American youth are as interested in marriage as at any time—more than 95 percent intend to marry someday.10
But from romance novels to reality TV to movies, unrealistic expectations and false understandings about love, marriage, and romance are easily perpetuated. As a result, both those seeking out a marriage partner and those trying to stay in a marriage relationship struggle with misunderstandings of the definition of that relationship itself.
Can the Christian faith make a difference in this understanding and the quest for a meaningful marriage?
Continued below.
www.exploregod.com
Marriage has gotten quite a bad reputation over the years. The butt of a seemingly infinite number of jokes, matrimony is a source of endless social commentary, gender politics, and governmental debate.
In the United States, marriage has fallen upon particularly hard times. Fewer and fewer people are choosing to marry.4 In fact, less than half of current US households are made up of married couples.5 The percentage of Americans who have never married is growing6 while the number of couples living together without marrying is increasing exponentially.7Meanwhile, more and more children are born to single mothers.8
To top it all off, America still has the highest divorce rate among Western nations and the highest incidence of single-parent families of any industrialized nation.9 There’s no denying that the landscape of the American family has changed radically over the past fifty years.
MARRIAGE AND CULTURE
These statistics raise questions about the value and meaning of marriage in contemporary American culture. Given changes in reproductive technology, shifts in cultural attitudes about sexual morality, and the apparent failure of marriage as an ideal relationship, has marriage become irrelevant?Though it might seem so, sociologists Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Ueker recently reported that the American youth are as interested in marriage as at any time—more than 95 percent intend to marry someday.10
But from romance novels to reality TV to movies, unrealistic expectations and false understandings about love, marriage, and romance are easily perpetuated. As a result, both those seeking out a marriage partner and those trying to stay in a marriage relationship struggle with misunderstandings of the definition of that relationship itself.
Can the Christian faith make a difference in this understanding and the quest for a meaningful marriage?
MARRIAGE AND FAITH
Continued below.
What Is Christian Marriage?
We hear a lot about Christian marriages being different, but what is it that makes a marriage "Christian"?
www.exploregod.com
