According to Gene Edward Veith of Patrick Henry College, sexual immorality is turning young people away from the Church for the reason that “cohabiting couples and sexually-active singles don’t feel comfortable in church.” Veith’s piece is posted over at Patheos, a site we don’t endorse.
“We overestimate how effectively scientific arguments secularize people. It’s not science that’s secularizing Americans — it’s sex.”
That is the conclusion of University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus in his article Christians are part of the same dating pool as everyone else. That’s bad for the church, in The Washington Post.
His book “Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy” (Oxford, 2017), Regnerus discusses the changes in sexual attitudes and behavior over the last few decades and demonstrates their consequences in marriage, family, and culture. This article looks specifically at the impact of what he calls “cheap sex” on the church, with which he is in sympathy.
Though Christians too are struggling with sexual issues, churches are still made up mostly of adults who are married. But he observes, citing an interesting article about pornography, “Cheap sex, it seems, has a way of deadening religious impulses.”