The shape of things to come. . .

By the time I entered my teenage years nearly 85% of all those in America between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four were, or had been, married. As I headed out of my teenage years the marriage rate fell by some sixty percent. Fast forward and approximately one-third of Gen Zs today are on track never to marry (that does not quite account for those who cohabit temporarily or even over longer terms).  Not surprisingly, the birthrate also fell to its lowest point -- down to 1.62 births per fertile female or not enough to replace the parents.  So the US, with every other developed nation except Israel, is facing the very real threat of demographic decline.  Clearly this is not simply about abortion or birth control.  It is about the increasingly hostile view of marriage and family by our culture and society.  It is hostile simply by virtue of the fact that it is optional and non-essential to the way we see ourselves and our lives today.

I wonder if all our years fighting against a poorly argued Supreme Court invention in 1973 has left us blind to the onslaught of change that has moved marriage and family from its front and center place to the fringes of our lives.  I wonder if we thought that overturning a SCOTUS decision would be all that needed to be done to make a course correction.  I wonder if we are up to the major task of restoring what has been lost and in particular restoring the need for and blessing of marriage and family.  If all we want are children, IVF and our great reproductive technology can do the deed but if we want to repair what is broken among us we will need boys to become men and girls to become women and both to want and desire a lifelong union in marriage and to have and raise their children within the home as gift and blessing.

Although I wish it were not so, churches are not necessarily aligned in this goal.  Most churches have either formally or tacitly accepted the reality of birth control that makes children the exception and sex mainly for pleasure.  Most churches have either formally or tacitly accepted the reality that marriage is but one of the choices available to people and not even the first or best choice.  Most churches have either formally or tacitly accepted the reality that children are optional to marriage (or to individuals) and that fewer is better than many.  If you do not believe me, look at how they talk about marriage or family or children.  Since the 1930s there has been a sea change among conservative Protestants as well as the mainstream of evangelicals in America and it has not left Rome immune from this influence either.  Rome has official doctrine that insists against birth control and for children but in practice those in the pews have largely overlooked or ignored what Rome has said and prefers to do what they think is right for them.  Even in Missouri we had our own dalliance with birth control as the wise steward approach to the issue of children and we even had our own moment toying with the idea that abortion may not be so bad either.  We have recovered an official stance but it has not necessarily affected or directed how our youth see these things.  Our soft underbelly is that the world has proven at least as influential and probably more than our doctrine upon the views and desires of our youth.

Marriage, traditional marriage of one man and one woman in lifelong union, has become the radical choice and not the normal one.  Children and more than 1 or 2 have become radical choices and not the normal one.  If you want to be a radical in America today, hold to the idea that marriage is one man and one woman in life long fidelity, that love is sacrificial, that birth control is not the norm but children are.  That is the most radical thing in an America in which we are increasingly unfriendly to marriage, family, and children.  If you don't believe me, try going into a restaurant in America with you six children and see the looks people give you.  One look says it all.  By the way, you just might get the same look when you walk into a church in America and plant the same size family in the pew.