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In this episode, Dan continues decoding a card from a church bulletin that outlines the features of a particular church, focusing on number five on the list: “young marriages.” The focus here is the church’s ministry to “young married couples,” or “young marrieds.” But what does that mean? And why is this particular demographic so important to the church that they show up on this list? What ideology of gender, sexuality, and family is encoded in “young marriages”? Check this week’s episode to find out!
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As always, welcome to It's In The Code, a podcast that is part of Straight White American Jesus.
I am your host, Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
Delighted to be with you.
As always, please invite you to reach out.
DanielMillerSwaj, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
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Just going to dive in. We are continuing to work through this, I don't know exactly what to call it, this little card that we've been looking at for some time.
It appears to be an insert that would go into like a church bulletin, church mailers, and so forth, a little card, and it has eight items on it that tell us when you walk into the church that produced it, what it is that you will encounter.
And we're just working our way down the list, and we are up to point number five.
We're past the midway point of the list.
And point five is another one that I've been kind of looking forward to getting to.
It is young marriages.
And it ties in with other terms on the list, specifically smiling wives, obedient children, and strong handshakes.
I've talked about those before.
Strong handshakes was just the last episode.
And in important ways, I think this Young Marriages, it rounds out the vision of gender and sexuality and family expressed in this card.
And it also provides a window into some really key elements of conservative American Protestantism.
Welcome to my show!
That could sound pretty freaky.
Let me just get this out of the way.
It almost certainly is not a reference to young people getting married, like child marriage or something creepy like that, okay?
People outside of that context hear young marriages and they're like, whoa, what are they advocating?
Child marriage? That's not what they're focused on, okay?
The focus here is on the term that would be used, God, everywhere within conservative Christian churches is young married couples, or even, it'd be shortened down to young marrieds, the young marrieds, we need to reach the young marrieds, we're ministering to the young marrieds, the young marrieds, okay?
And the idea is men and women, and remember, we've talked about this with the smiling wives and the strong handshakes and the obedient children.
The idea here is very much cis-hetero marriage.
Cisgender people, heterosexual, who are married, okay?
So whenever I say marriage here, that's the framework we're talking about.
There is no space.
In this kind of religious construct for queer folk to exist, let alone to be married, to have families, and so forth, okay?
So the idea is men and women, typically in their 20s, maybe, maybe sometimes in their early 30s, who are married, and it's within the kind of conservative Christian framework, These people stand in contrast to others in the church.
They stand in contrast, on the one hand, to, say, high school and college students, who are, you know, high school is the youth group.
College students are usually referred to as the singles, even though they may be dating and so forth.
But then it goes young marriage.
Then after that, you get into, you know, people who are a little bit older who are married, people in their 40s, 50s, beyond.
And so that's what they're talking about, this specific demographic that they envision within the church.
And so this is telling us that if we visit this church, we're going to encounter a lot of young married couples, the young Marys.
It's a big part of this church, enough that we will see it and we will take note.
And you might be sitting and saying, okay, that's interesting.
It's a little bit weird to carve up the world that way, but whatever.
But why does this matter?
To understand why it matters, to understand why this church is telling us specifically that that's what we'll encounter, to understand why this church is taking that as one of these eight things that fit on this card.
We have to look into or open a window into the mindset of conservative American Christianity, and specifically Protestantism, because this piece of it, I think, is a very Protestant sort of thing.
And the reason it matters is because young married couples are absolutely central to the identity and ideology of conservative Protestant churches.
Especially if those churches aim to be youthful, if they aim to be energetic, if they want to position themselves as being vibrant.
And here I'll direct you to an episode I did a long time ago, you'll have to subscribe to hear it, called Cool Kid Church, about churches that sort of aim to do all of that, to seem cool, to attract younger people.
The younger people they want are those young married couples.
So young married couples are central to that model of the church.
And they are central to a core idea within conservative American Protestantism, which is the ideal of church growth.
Even those churches that don't actually increase in size, you can have a church that's been running, you know, the same size membership for decades, but they will have an ideal of growing.
Churches are supposed to grow.
That is part of the theology and ideology of conservative Protestantism in the U.S., And young married couples are the core target demographic for church growth.
For people who buy into this model, they're the core.
They're central. They are the central ingredient.
Every key resource on church growth focuses on attracting and holding on to young married couples.
And I cannot even guess, I wouldn't even be able to estimate how many meetings and trainings and strategy sessions I was a part of as a young evangelical minister.
I became one of these young married couples while I was serving the church.
I can't tell you how many of those sessions and trainings and things I was in focused specifically on how to attract young married couples to the church.
Oftentimes it was not even articulated as a strategy.
It was just so taken for granted that this is kind of the biggest, most central thing we need.
If you're gonna draw one demographic to your church, you're gonna draw one kind of person to your church, you want it to be young married people.
That's what you want. If you had to choose one, that's the one you choose.
Why? Because young married couples are viewed as the key to long-term sustainable growth.
Remember, church growth is an end goal of conservative Protestant churches.
It's a primary aim.
It's a core part of their mission is to grow.
And we'll talk about why that is here in just a second.
And so you have to have young married couples because they are viewed as the signs of a healthy church.
They are the primary means of growth.
They are the ones that are going to help you as a church get to where you want to go.
And the reason why is that there are two dimensions to church growth.
Okay, so first point, churches need to grow.
Second point, there are two ways churches do this.
And they view, within this Protestant conservative world, they view young married couples as central to both of these.
The first dimension of growth is evangelism, that's what it's called within the Christian world, or conversion, right?
It's essentially telling non-Christians the Christian message in such a way that they come to accept it and they convert to Christianity.
And evangelism is at the heart of conservative Christian identity, again, particularly within Protestant circles.
We've discussed this a lot on the podcast.
We've talked about this for years.
This just captures the idea that within that conservative Protestant framework, Christians in this world are called by God to convert non-Christians, to win them to the faith.
People who are not Christians are going to die, and when they die, they are going to go to hell and suffer eternally.
And the only way to prevent that is to convert them to Christianity.
So this is an existential calling, an existential mission for conservative Protestants to do this.
And so a church that is growing is a church that is creating new Christians.
The idea is people become Christians and they join your church.
They become a part of your church.
So church growth, the reason it's a goal is because it's an indicator and shows, ostensibly, that your church is winning people to the faith.
It's bringing in new Christians.
A church that is growing is a church that is creating new Christians.
It is expanding God's kingdom.
It is healthy because it is serving God and winning new Christians.
Okay? So that's one piece, is that you want to win young married couples.
It's evangelism. You want to win them to the faith.
And so there are strategies. And this strikes people as strange sometimes.
They may understand that conservative Christians and conservative Protestants in particular You know, run around trying to convert people.
Many of you have had the experience.
You've had somebody sidling up to you in some public space and starting to ask you weird questions about your faith.
They're trying to convert you.
They're proselytizing. I've had the experience lots of times myself, okay?
But there are strategies within that.
Who do we prioritize for our evangelistic message?
What kind of people should we be spending the most time trying to win to the faith?
Young married couples are a core there, okay?
And that brings in the second element of church growth, which is what within church growth circles is called biological growth.
It's basically the idea that the church growth happens as Christians within the church have kids.
The idea being that they raise them up in the faith and so forth, and churches grow biologically through birth.
And so it includes not just those who come into the church through conversion, but those who are essentially born into the faith.
So within conservative Protestantism, young married couples are the linchpin of both of these kinds of church growth.
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I'm Leah Payne, a historian and expert in Pentecostal and charismatic movements in the United States and beyond.
Welcome to Spirit and Power, a limited series podcast where we do deep dives into how charismatic and Pentecostal movements are shaping the American political and social landscape.
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In terms of evangelism and the targeting of young married people, they represent the newest adult generation of Christians.
They are young enough that they have a lot of years ahead of them to serve the church and to make it vibrant.
They're young enough that they're still cool.
They're young enough that they still, like, I don't know, can talk about pop culture.
They're young enough they still go out to movies.
They're young enough that they will draw in.
They will be a draw to others coming into the church.
As opposed to those of us who are older, the middle-aged folks who are more settled, they're more out of touch, they're not as likely to go out and hang out somewhere in a restaurant or a pub or something on a Friday night.
Young married couples are young enough that they're cool, they're attractive, they're vibrant.
But they're old enough that they're actually out in the world as opposed to, say, high schoolers.
So they're beyond that.
They're more independent than that.
They've entered adulthood, but they're young enough that they're still cool, they're still vibrant, and they are still malleable and moldable in their worldview.
From the perspective of churches, these are people who can still be taught new things.
They can be brought to the faith in a way that the idea basically is that if you get people who are much older than that, they're just more set in their ways.
Or they're more set in their convictions.
They're harder to win over.
So young married couples are the means or an important means of this evangelistic growth, growing the church because they become a draw to others.
They're energetic. We can mold what they believe and so forth.
They are also the means by which the church grows biologically.
They're the ones who will give birth to yet a next generation of Christians.
They're on the cusp of parenthood.
Some of them have young children, but they are the key to biological growth.
And they are the ones that, you know, they hope when you win them, you bring them in as young adults.
And yes, they develop into middle-aged adults, and they develop into older adults, and they spend the rest of their life in that church.
Their kids grow up in that church.
Their kids become members of that church.
Sort of on and on and on and on, but you want to start with the young married couples.
And young married couples also bring other resources to the church.
So those are the two reasons I'm talking about evangelism and birth.
Those are the kind of things that, you know, we would talk about the most when we would strategize how to reach young married couples.
How are we going to draw them in?
The church that I was part of was small, but had a lot of young married couples.
That was really the core membership.
But more behind the closed doors, there are other pragmatic elements of this, other reasons why this is a key demographic to target.
On the one hand, again, they're young enough that they're still energetic, enthusiastic, they're still idealistic.
They are motivated then to donate their time and energy to the church.
These are the people who are going to be the powerhouse doing things for the church.
Older demographics of church members certainly have resources.
They have more experience.
Sometimes they have professional skills.
Maybe you've got somebody who's a professional bookkeeper and they donate their time to help keep the books at the church.
You know, they donate their skills.
Maybe you've got somebody who's a contractor who, you know, I don't know, you've got those leaky pipes in the basement bathroom.
That person donates their time and fixes those.
That's key. But they lack the energy and the fervor of the young marrieds.
The young marrieds are the kind of idealistic, energetic crowd.
But again, they're the Goldilocks thing.
They're young enough to be that, but they're old enough that they can also begin to contribute financially to the church.
Now you say, well, yeah, but the middle-aged folks, the older folks, they're the ones with more money.
That's true.
But people are less likely within this perspective, and I think the facts bear this out, people are less likely to convert and to enter into the church in middle age or older age.
You have to get them while they are young married couples.
You get them, you bring them in, they're entering the professional world, they're starting to have their first stable jobs, and this goes back to them being multiple.
You build into them the sense that part of service to the church includes financial contributions, So that as they develop financially, as they become middle-aged, as they become older, as the kids move out, college is paid for, the house is paid for, they've got more discretionary income, maybe some people in retirement have invested well and have some funds to spend.
That's when you sort of cash in on those, but it starts with young married couples.
Really, really key idea for a lot of reasons.
And we also had explicit discussions about these issues.
So not just the evangelistic side, the kind of spiritual side, but the more pragmatic side of how are we going to keep the lights on?
How are we going to make the repairs we need to make to the church building?
We can't be the church if we don't have this space that we use and so forth and how important this is.
So young married couples are understood as a barometer of the health and the vitality of a conservative Protestant church.
A church without young married couples is a church that is aging.
It's a church that has potentially no long-term future prospects.
That's the idea.
It's also a church, you get the chicken-egg thing here, if you have young married couples, it's easier to draw new or young married couples.
If you don't, it's not.
Especially if you're in suburban areas, if you're in some urban areas, if you're in areas with a lot of population turnover.
The area I was, I lived in Seattle, had a lot of people who would move there as young adults who would come there.
And so you have this population, a relatively transient population, that they're looking for community, they're looking for ways to connect.
This is the time of life when they're doing that.
You target them, you bring them in, you have a healthy, vibrant church.
So that's one side of the reason why this card is going to say, hey, you come here, you're going to see young marriages.
That's what it's talking about.
There's also another dimension to this, and that is within the gender essentialism and what we call the gender complementarianism that govern conservative Christianity.
And we talked about that in the episodes on smiling wives and strong handshakes and obedient children.
Within that framework, young married couples embody the goal and purpose of gender and sexuality.
So there's the church growth side of this, but there is also a side where this very much reflects the gender ideology at the heart of conservative Protestantism.
So, within that model, divinely ordered masculinity includes the desire for women.
Being heterosexual is part of God's design.
Being a divinely ordered feminine person, being a woman, means that you desire men.
Straight sexual desire is a part of what it means to be both a man and a woman as God has ordained it within evangelical Protestantism.
And this is a central core.
There's a lot of time spent to preaching and teaching on this.
Most churches, including this church, again, I had a listener who figured out how this is, you go to their websites and you troll around for long, they'll have a section that says, here's what we believe, and they will almost always have a section on gender and sexuality where they tell you what they think about marriage and one man and one woman for life and so forth.
So the only, again, valid context for the expression of sexuality is lifelong monogamous marriage.
Which means, if you put all this together, that marriage becomes a central feature of what it means to be both a man and a woman.
Now, most of these churches are not going to technically say that God requires that you be married.
They're not going to say you're quote-unquote sinful necessarily if you don't.
But the reality is that men and women in particular, both men and women, but it's more intense for women, men and women of marriageable age are viewed with suspicion if they are not married.
And again, this is reflected in the ministries of this kind of church.
A typical ministry breakdown is you've got children's ministry, then you've got youth group, which is like middle school, high school.
If it's a big church, you'll split those up.
Then you'll have something that's like, depending where you are, maybe you have the college ministry or you have the singles ministry, which is like college and like young adults who are maybe out of college or went into the trades or something like that.
But then you get into the young marriage ministries.
The idea is that there's a pretty linear progression.
You grow up, maybe you go to college, you start your career, whatever, but then you get married.
It's built in.
And then after that, all the ministries typically presuppose that somebody is married.
There is very little space conceptually for people who remain single within these churches.
And that's why you're going to encounter smiling wives.
That's why you're going to encounter obedient children.
You're not going to encounter a bunch of happy single people.
You're going to encounter people who are happy because they're married, because they've entered into this.
So marriage is an expected institution for men and women within conservative Christianity, and child-rearing is the result of marriage.
Just as those who could be married but aren't are viewed with suspicion, couples who could have children but choose not to are also viewed with suspicion.
They're accused of being selfish.
They're accused of not caring about the future of America or Christianity.
We have seen this when J.D. Vance and his ilk are doing all this talking about single cat ladies and people not having kids and not having a stake in America and all of this stuff.
That discourse grows directly out of American Protestantism like this.
I didn't hear that specific language back when I was there because the Christian nationalism was more subterranean than it is now.
But that's what people thought.
There were informal conversations like that.
So when I hear somebody like J.D. Vance, a conservative Christian, Catholic in this case, who views with extreme suspicion anybody who doesn't have children who could...
Yeah, I see it. It's right there.
It's right below the surface within this kind of conservative Christian model.
So all of this is wrapped up in this little statement on this card when it says, if you come to this church, you'll find young marriages.
That's what it's claiming.
This is a claim and an assurance that this is a healthy, vibrant, and growing church.
This is an assurance that this church has the right priorities.
We understand as a church who men and women are designed by God to be, and we help them sort of live that out.
And this is an assurance that this church understands the proper bounds of gender and sexuality and family life.
All of that is encoded in this phrase, young marriages.
It's a claim, in other words, young marriages, this notion that if you come here you'll encounter young marriages, that this church has the right Christian priorities.
This is a church that you, if you come and visit or if you join, this is a church that you can be assured gets things right.
That's what's at work there.
Got to wrap this up.
We're out of time. Thank you for listening, as always.
As always, keep the ideas coming.
I promise we're not going to spend forever going over this one little card, and we're winding this down, so keep the ideas coming.
DanielMillerSwag, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
As always, I'm behind on the emails, behind on the messages, behind on the Discord, behind on everything, having been out of time for the memorial service, excuse me, out of town for the memorial service.
But I'm getting my feet back under me, getting caught up on those.
Point is, I always value your feedback, your ideas, your comments.
This whole little mini-series came out of a photo that somebody sent in of this little card.
Any of those things you find, send them my way.
This is what keeps this going.
As always, if you are not yet a subscriber and that's something that you would consider doing, something in your position to do, would ask you to do so, we work really hard at this, try to do a lot, want to do more, that helps us to do it.
