Future of Christian Marriage: Mark Regnerus in New Book Studies It & Advises

Justyna is a Christian. She be­lieves in Christian marriage, even insisting, in company with the Church, that the matrimonial bond is unbreakable except by death. Justyna is engaged to be married, in her native Poland. But she has been living with her boyfriend for the past two years, while they save up the money for a large wedding. She resents her priest’s warning that this is sinful and unwise. She believes in marriage, but she would rather accept cohabitation than give up her dreams of a beautiful wedding.

Clearly, Justyna is conflicted. And she’s not alone. Young Christians all over the world are wrestling with similar challenges, and we get to meet many of them in sociologist Mark Regnerus’s newest book, The Future of Christian Marriage. This is the book to read if you’ve wondered whether young Chris­tians around the world are more success­ful than their secular counterparts at finding love.

When we last heard from Regnerus, he was analyzing the American mating market, explaining how “cheap sex” was undercutting marriage. In Cheap Sex he painted a bleak picture of a secular America where young men pursue marriage, serial monogamy, or strings of low-commitment hookups in accord with their own personal preferences. His latest work explores a natural follow-up question: Are religious people different?

In an effort to provide an answer, Regnerus has traveled to seven countries, seeking out young adults who are actively involved in Christian communities. He opens windows to Christian communities in Spain, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Ni­geria, Lebanon, and the United States. An experienced interviewer, Regnerus has a talent for eliciting honest reflections from young people. We get to listen in as they agonize about career conflicts, gender roles, financial challenges, and the burden and blessing of Christian chastity.

More than in his previous work, Regnerus in The Future of Christian Mar­riage combines data with some higher-level social theorizing of his own. This makes sense, since he is here talking primarily to fellow Christians. He wants Christians to think prudently about the road ahead, so that we can structure our communities appropriately and give our children sound advice. To that end, three findings are especially significant.

First, Regnerus finds that young Chris­tians are significantly influenced by the culture around them. Like their less religious peers, they are marrying later and less frequently, with less stringent disapproval of fornication and cohabi­tation. Their families are smaller, and they largely accept that traditional gender roles are, if not irrelevant, then at least anachronistic. Regnerus’s subjects do still feel beholden to Christian tradition, but they tend to be conflicted. They see beauty and wisdom in Christian teachings, but they share many of the goals and attitudes of less devout contemporaries.

This leads to the second point. In every country Regnerus visits, young people have a sense of swimming upstream in their efforts to marry and form families. From Warsaw to Lagos to the suburbs of Austin, Texas, young Christians are ask­ing many of the same questions. How can they extricate themselves from a sexual landscape that prioritizes pleasure over long-term fulfillment? What is it reason­able to expect from a potential spouse, and how much should a person be willing to sacrifice for marriage? How can young people establish a secure social and financial foundation, in prepa­ration for family life? To some extent, young people have always wrestled with these sorts of questions, but culture and tradition used to provide more guidance in this regard. As Regnerus sees it, the obstacles to marriage have become ever more daunting as older traditions are undermined by a global “monoculture” that subjugates everything to the demands of the state and of markets. As marriage-supportive customs erode, the up-front costs and sacrifices increase, while the visible benefits become more elusive.

Following on that point, the third is rather startling. Despite all the tumult of recent decades, Regnerus argues, mar­riage as an institution has changed very little. We still understand it, and its fundamental structure remains intact. A marriage, most fundamentally, is a committed sexual relationship, de­mand­ing fidelity and permanence and supplying the foundation for family life. It is typically stabilized by some exchange of resources, because people who merely like each another may eventually grow apart, but people who need each another will work harder to avoid that. On these points, young Christians are substantially similar to their grandparents or great-grandparents. They have not lost sight of the value of lasting love. Fundamentally, they know what it means to wed.

This is a remarkable claim in our time, though, oddly, Regnerus does not present it as such. He never troubles to rebut competing theories about how marriage is being revolutionized or disfigured by modern mores. Clearly, his many years of field research have led him to glimpse something enduring and uniform in people’s views of marriage. It isn’t infinitely malleable. Periodically, efforts have been made to remove certain pieces of this basic model, for the sake of accommodating polyamory, open mar­riage, or the term-limited “wed­lease.” None of these arrangements has gained much traction. By nature, Homines sapientes mate for life.

Conservatives could see this as cause for celebration. If marriage is so deeply written into our nature, it probably won’t disappear. Deviations from traditional marital norms are likely to be faddish, or marginal enough to have only a minor impact on the mainstream. The young will go on looking for love, and the world will still be peopled. Civilization will continue.

Regnerus seems to expect all of this to hold true, but he still is not jubilant. This book feels every bit as grim as Cheap Sex — mainly because young Christians, on this account, look just as embattled as their secular counterparts. Regnerus does not see them as an invigorated, creative minority, working eagerly in the fields of the Lord. Rather, like T. S. Eliot’s hollow men, they wander wretchedly between incompatible worlds, tormented by loneli­ness and uncertainty. Regnerus observes their struggles with sympathy and com­passion. Everywhere he looks, he sees malign forces wearing down youthful impulses toward fidelity and self-sacrifice. A wedding industry charging exorbitantly inflated prices discourages young couples from tying the knot. Dating apps dangle countless potential mates before their eyes. Everyone’s sensibilities are formed (or malformed) by ubiquitous cheap sex, and even parents seem sus­picious of marriage, regularly urging their children to prioritize education or career achievements. Like an acid, the global monoculture seems to be eating away at the bonds that once cemented human relationships. Is there anything to celebrate here?

These impressions should be taken very seriously, even by readers with more libertarian leanings. Regnerus has a great deal of practical experience working with young adults, and the vulnerability he sees is an enormous social problem that no one can afford to ignore. Without stable families, no nation can build a flourishing culture. Marriage as an insti­tution may withstand stringent assault, but particular relationships can easily end in a whimper. Somehow, developed nations must find better ways to support marriage and family forma­tion. This is Regnerus’s take-home message in the final chapter of the book. We need to build a more “familist” society, priori­tizing marriage and child-rearing over individual achievement.

It’s hard to argue with this broader claim, but Regnerus’s mood may still be excessively grim. He sees that young Christians are struggling to retain ancient beliefs and traditions in a modern world. To him, the glass appears half empty, and he expects that it will continue to drain. What if the struggles of young Christians today ultimately prove creative, in a positive sense? It might be hard for Regnerus to evaluate this possibility because his analysis, so detailed in its description of mainstream culture, be­comes nostalgic and vague when it comes to supplying contrast points. He teases us periodically with romantic glimpses of older marital ideals, but if any subculture today is doing things right, we don’t hear much about them. He is heavily fixated on the casualties of the global monoculture, and those reflections understandably leave him depressed.

Haven’t we gained some things, too? Historically, most “familist” societies assumed that ties of blood and soil should be both identity-forming and determinative of a child’s future. Sons might be bound in piety to assume their fathers’ professions, or to work their an­cestral lands. Daughters’ options were likely even more limited, since they probably didn’t enjoy all the benefits of full citizenship. Public offices might be open only to people from particular classes, regions, or bloodlines. Modern people tend to view these arrangements as unjust, leaving too little space for personal freedom and individual develop­ment. They all make a great deal of sense, though, if one’s priority is to reinforce family and community bonds.

Americans aren’t going to resurrect feudalism, nor has Regnerus recom­mended that we do. It’s worth pondering this history, though, because it seems inevitable that any shift toward a more familist ethos would necessarily involve some subordination of individual goals and projects. Whose goals get sacrificed? How voluntary will that process be? Until those questions are answered, it’s hard to say whether young Christians are slipping away from their traditional roots or, instead, engaged in an im­perfect but largely healthy process of translating traditional mores into a more singable key.

Marriage is not disappearing. Future generations will still come to the altar, for the same reasons their ancestors did. For our culture, survival is less assured. Let’s hope that the coming years are replete with wedding bells, for Justyna and many other young Christians.