{"id":1139,"date":"2018-12-07T10:36:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T14:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2019-03-24T07:17:10","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T11:17:10","slug":"the-church-needs-to-teach-chastity-instead-of-abstinence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/the-church-needs-to-teach-chastity-instead-of-abstinence\/","title":{"rendered":"The Church Needs to Teach Chastity Instead of Abstinence"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a new piece over at The Federalist<\/a>:<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the problem with purity culture. It purports to be about saving sex for marriage, but the whole point of purity rings and abstinence is to refrain from sex while delaying marriage. It\u2019s all supposed to help young people remain celibate while dutifully fulfilling their worldly priorities first\u2014namely, education and career\u2014until marriage hopefully just comes along and happens somehow.<\/p>\n

There, in that demand for celibacy, lies the rub. As the Church of Rome has been proving for the last 1,000 years, celibacy doesn\u2019t actually work for most people, no matter how many oaths, ceremonies, and monastic environments are used to facilitate it. If you don\u2019t have the Apostle Paul\u2019s relatively rare gift, it\u2019s not sustainable long term. After all, humans have always struggled with sexual temptation, and our culture ramps that temptation up to 11 through mass media and loose mores. The Christian prescription for that struggle isn\u2019t celibacy\u2014it\u2019s marriage.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s the perverse culture of theological liberalism or the celibate culture of conservative evangelicalism, the root problem is that they\u2019re both attempts to baptize feminism. The liberal end with its vagina-worship is your basic sex-positive feminism, in which chastity is seen as a shackle from which women need to be freed.<\/p>\n

But the conservative evangelical side is likewise feminist, because its pours its effort into baptizing the elevation of education and career above marriage and family. It just simultaneously tries to force that into the mold of Christian prohibitions on fornication.<\/p>\n

It might be odd to think of conservative Christians as feminists, but one must remember that conservatives are first and foremost traditionalists. Feminism is now a wrinkled old lady that has been marching through our institutions for generations. It\u2019s become traditional in many respects. Conservatives may balk at the latest extremities, but they\u2019re mostly on board with things like egalitarianism, serial monogamy, and blaming men for everything.<\/p>\n

Christians need a third path\u2014something that actually encourages marriage instead of choosing between fornication or celibacy. The church needs to recover the virtue of chastity.<\/p>\n

You can read the whole thing here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a new piece over at The Federalist: That\u2019s the problem with purity culture. It purports to be about saving sex for marriage, but the whole point of purity rings and abstinence is to refrain from sex while delaying … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,34,25,33],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Church Needs to Teach Chastity Instead of Abstinence - The 96th Thesis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/the-church-needs-to-teach-chastity-instead-of-abstinence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Church Needs to Teach Chastity Instead of Abstinence - The 96th Thesis\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have a new piece over at The Federalist: That\u2019s the problem with purity culture. 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