A recent study reveals most single Christians are having sex. We undress why.

Like other believers she knew growing up, Maria Kearn* planned to save sex for marriage. She made it through high school with her virginity intact, but when she was 20 she started having sex with her college boyfriend.

“It seemed everyone in my life, older and younger, had ʻdone it,ʼ ”Kearn says. “In fact, I waited longer than most people I knew and longer than both of my sisters, even though we were all Christians and came from a good home.”

Kearn continued to have sex with her college boyfriend for years as they maintained an on-again/off -again relationship. “I was so hooked on him that it took me too long to finally break up with him,” Kearn says. “The straw that broke the camelʼs back was that I came down with HPV, highlighting the fact that even though I was only with him, he [had been with] other people.”

Stories like this arenʼt often heard in church, but that doesnʼt mean they arenʼt common. In fact, a recent study reveals that 88 percent of unmarried young adults (ages 18-29) are having sex. The same study, conducted by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, reveals the number doesnʼt drop much among Christians. Of those surveyed who self-identify as “evangelical,” 80 percent say they have had sex.

Eighty percent.

So much for true love waits.

Whatever Happened to Abstinence?

Apparently, the concept still exists even if few are following it.

Dr. Jenell Williams Paris, an anthropologist and the author of The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are, says the high rates of premarital sex are a call to the Church to live in reality.

“We need to talk to people as they really live in the world they really live in,” Paris says. “If rates of premarital sex are really that high, but we continue to talk as if the vast majority of people are virgins when they get married, weʼre out of touch. We need to address reality."

And the reality is the numbers arenʼt going down. Of those 80 percent of Christians in the 18-29 age range who have had sex before marriage, 64 percent have done so within the last year and 42 percent are in a current sexual relationship.

In addition to having premarital sex, an alarming number of unmarried Christians are getting pregnant. Among unmarried evangelical women between the ages of 18 and 29, 30 percent have experienced a pregnancy (a number thatʼs actually 1 percent higher than among those who donʼt claim to be evangelical).

According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly half of all pregnancies in America are unintended. And of those, 40 percent end in abortion. More than 1 million abortions occur in the United States each year. But perhaps the most disturbing statistic for the Church: 65 percent of the women obtaining abortions identify themselves as either Protestant or Catholic (37 percent Protestant and 28 percent Catholic). Thatʼs 650,000 abortions obtained by Christians every year.

The pregnancy stats are shocking to many—and the abortion stats horrifying— but the root problem is the willingness to have sex before marriage. Without sex, pregnancies and abortions donʼt happen.

If abstinence messages were actually working—and this generation of Christians was genuinely committed to saving sex for marriage—then the other issues would dwindle considerably.

If this generation wants to reverse the trend and reduce the number of Christians having premarital sex, the first step is trying to figure out why so few are waiting.

Why Waiting Is So Hard

The mediaʼs marketing of sex, the cultural endorsement of the “do what feels good” mentality, the prevalence of pornography and the widespread misunderstanding of sex that prompts people to chase after love and acceptance in unhealthy physical relationships are all factors that make it difficult to practice chastity. The reality is chastity is not the norm. And such a discipline is certainly not easy.

Godʼs picture of sex and marriage is certainly a beautiful one, but itʼs also … old. Biblical times were a lot different than current times. Is such a picture still relevant?

Scot McKnight, author of One.Life and professor in religious studies at North Park University in Chicago, is aware of the difficulties facing unmarried Christians and the shifts in the “reality” of living chastely.

“Sociologically speaking, the one big difference—and itʼs monstrous— between the biblical teaching and our culture is the arranged marriages of very young people. If you get married when youʼre 13, you donʼt have 15 years of temptation.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average age for first marriages for both men and women has been increasing for the last 45 years. In 1965, the average man first married at age 22.8; the average woman, 20.6. In 2010, the average age was 28.1 for men and 26.1 for women.

Abstinence messages have often been geared toward teenagers, but as the average marrying age creeps closer to 30, the time period when Christians are called to be chaste can easily extend a decade beyond their high school graduation—or much longer. So what does abstinence look like as Christians “grow up” and enter the real world but are still single?

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