Posted on 11/27/2013 5:57:51 AM PST by Gamecock
Dr. Donna Freitas, perhaps the nation’s leading expert on university hookup culture, has being doing research among college students and on college campuses regarding sex, the hookup culture, and student religiosity for several years. She has produced many scholarly publications and studies. One consistent finding she has observed is that evangelical college students are significantly less likely to hookup than any of their counterparts (Catholic or secular). Why? An excerpt from an interview:
The attitudes toward sexuality on evangelical campuses were remarkably different from everywhere else. Everyone is struggling with sex, but they do it in very different ways.
It’s impossible on an evangelical campus to have a conversation about sex without also talking about faith. This is simply because, at evangelical campuses, the Christian tradition stands at the very center of who the students are. Every decision is made by consulting that core identity. They don’t think about sex except in light of their faith. It’s just who they are: they are Christians. For these students, you cannot even think about choosing your major without consulting your faith. This is empowering, in many ways. These students have a strong sense of who they are, and where to go for advice. Most of the time, this is really great. But with regard to sex, it can be exceedingly stressful.
The opposite is true of all the other campuses I visited for the study, and it holds true even for the forty-five or so other campuses I have visited since the book was published. Whereas evangelicals cannot think about their sex liveswithout religion, students at secular or Catholic institutions cannot think about their sex lives with religion. The notion that religion would have anything important or useful to say to them about sexual decision-making is almost impossible to take seriously.
She also finds this:
Why such strong differences between evangelicals and Catholics? From another summary of her work:
The only exception Freitas found to the “hook-up” culture was at evangelical colleges: “Life at an evangelical school is, in a sense, enclosed by the Christian faith in a manner suggestive of what sociologist of religion Peter Berger calls the ‘sacred canopy.’” Like the moral communities that Burdette and her colleagues identify, Freitas discovered that “evangelical campus culture is religiously infused on every level.” Students who attend evangelical schools tend to expect that their peers are Christian, attend church, study the Bible, and pray often. Within evangelical student campus culture, the focus is on courtship and marriage while emphasizing chastity. Freitas says that “a quest for purity and chastity reigns supreme on these campuses.”
In contrast, when Freitas talked with students on Catholic campuses, she found a general sense of apathy toward the Catholic faith and its teachings on sexuality. Many responded with laughter, noting the “impractical,” “unrealistic,” and “archaic” nature of the Catholic teaching on contraception and pre marital sex. Unlike evangelical students, many Catholic students enter college without a strong foundation in Scripture, and many lack knowledge of Catholic moral teachings. While many evangelical students have a lifetime of Bible camps and strong Christian schools, few Catholic students bring a similarly strong catechetical background with them to college. Weakened teaching in theology or Scripture at the Catholic elementary and high school levels have left many Catholic young people ill-equipped to deal with the culture that greets them on a Catholic campus. And while this does not excuse the problems on Catholic campuses, it is clear that evangelical students arrive on campus much more biblically aware—and better-prepared theologically and scripturally—than most Catholic students are when they arrive on campus.
From another study (cited below*), we find that religious feelings are not an important factor in sexual purity among college students. What appears to matter is religious practice and teachings (spiritual disciplines).
I would also just like to point out, by way of encouragement, to evangelical parents a major implication of her research. Biblical Christianity works. To a significant degree, spiritual discipline and diligence by parents and churches in inculcating Christian teaching and practice among their youth is used by God to produce greater purity (and happiness). Apparently, there is empirical truth to the proverb (Prov. 22:6): Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it later in life.
*Penhollow, T., Yoiung, M., & Bailey, W. (2007). Relationship between Religiosity and Hooking Up Behavior. American Journal of Health Education, 38(6), 338+.
Troy Gibson is a Political Science Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, specializing in Religion and Politics in America. He attends Woodland Presbyterian Church (PCA) with his wife, Natalie, and three children, Caleb, Noah, and Sarah Ann.
Singular, narrow minded, mocking judgement of others is often built on hypocrisy and sadly produces individuals lacking both intelligence and creativity through the fear based inability to have a heart and mind open to new information and love.
Your 'narrow minded, mocking judgement' attack is noted.
That seems to work well for FR Mormons!!
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Office of First President & Living Prophet®: July 1st, 2011 The message for this month is -
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narses - someone wants a pitcher!!
We gotta get thru Thanksgiving first!!
*Hey, look at that!*
The *everybody else is doing it, too* argument just isn’t flying like it used to.
This is the crux of the issue. The study itself seems fine, and I should hope so - parents are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this exact experience. I’d venture a guess that these same market forces are at work at the small Catholic schools mentioned upthread.
The real question left unanswered is how evangelical kids are faring at traditional state schools when they’re forced into the pressures and temptations of their secular peers.
My son had a couple of football recruiting visits at ‘Cuse and at the summer football camp, he got a linebackers coach who was quite foul mouthed, bordering on abuse. This was during the Robinson era and it’s a good thing ‘Cuse jettisoned him!
I’m a Catholic and my wife is Baptist. We raised the kids Catholic with my wife’s Baptist influence. They all recieved the Sacraments. Our youngest had his second Baptism at Baptist church with our blessings and he and his wife are Evangelical Christians. “What a strange trip it’s been” ... ;-)
The golden calf, so true, Elsie, so true.
Yikes. Not gonna read this thread but the number of replies at the time of this post had to be addressed considering the topic.
some people never get it. oh well. live well.
You mean Brothel University, down the street from Brothel College.
While TRCs (tradtional RCs) respond to the abundance of stats showing evangelicals as far more conservative and unified than their Catholic counterparts by relegating them to being CINOs, the problem with that is that Rome treats them as members in life and on death.
What can be argued is that modern evangelicalism was a reactionary movement against liberalism (and before that against institutionalization) - including the manner of liberal scholarship seen in the NB commentary on the Vatican's own site.
Thus evangelicalism could be considered the equivalent to TRCs, insofar as being a morally conservative movement.
The problem for the TRC then is that they promote a particular church, but which effectually fosters liberalism where it predominates, as what we believe is shown by what we do, and the latter defines our words. And by her treatment of even long term leftists such as Teddy K, she is teaching what she really means as required fidelity to be counted as a Catholic. And thus what a "rue Scotsman" can be.
In addition, TRCs characterize those who hold Scripture as the supreme authority to be helplessly in disarray, and in need of the supreme magisterium of Rome. Yet without even one centralized magisterium evangelicals overall testify to greater unity in conservative moral views and on core doctrinal issues than Catholics, and the latter testifies that Rome herself is subject to interpretation.
And unlike evangelicals, TRCs cannot formally separate from liberal Rcs (the majority) without themselves being schismatic.
Of course, the real issue is what is the supreme basis for truth claims, Scriptural substantiation or the assured veracity of the magisterium. And the answer to that is seen in how the church began.
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness
[21] ...For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succsession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start out of the ruins of that heathen power.
[22] The language also which they use (both in the churches and in theirpublic acts) being Latin, which is not commonly used by any nationnow in the world, what is it but the ghost of the old Roman language?
[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.
Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.
[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness
Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6. 12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12. 26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid., 9. 34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air";[Ephesians, 2. 2] and, because he ruleth in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world":[John, 16. 11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness."
For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
That’s not going to last long.
Happy Thanksgiving, Elsie
That's an interesting comment. I was a Christian when I went into the military. The cursing never bothered me nor was anyone ever bothered by my non-cursing. Of course, those were the days when cursing really meant something if someone was to deconstruct the sentence.
How times have sure changed. Cursing now is not only looked upon as something people expect of someone, but it has become abusive. If you don't curse or throw in a "F" word occasionally and get in someone's face when you say it, you're deemed strange. If one were to deconstruct some of these sentences they can readily understand that people throw in curse words for lack of a proper vocabulary. But, more importantly, I see this as a breakdown of morality.
I don't know...
Galatians 5:12 has been around a LONG time!
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