In his new book Cheap Sex, sociologist Mark Regnerus examines changing mores around mating and marriage, especially in the Internet age. He finds that the church is declining as a haven from the profound disruption of long-settled patterns. While religious Americans are more inclined to favor marriage than others, and are generally more conservative than others on pre- and extramarital sexual behavior, “there are clear cracks beginning to show in the foundation.”
Regnerus says the data show that
secularization and sexual permissiveness go hand in hand. It is not just that religiously proscribed sexual activity promotes religious guilt. (I am sure it does.) Rather, it is often an expression of religious distancing. Cheap sex has a way of deadening religious impulses. We overestimate how effective scientific arguments are at secularizing people. Narratives about science don’t secularize. Technology secularizes. And sex-related technology does so particularly efficiently.
Regnerus reproduces a graph from one study showing that weekly church attenders in the 24-to-35 age group are much more likely to hold conservative opinions about things like marriage, cohabitation, casual sex, porn, extramarital sex, and polyamory. What’s telling, he says, is how far from 100 percent regular churchgoers in that age bracket are on agreeing that these things are morally wrong. The only one of these categories that at least 80 percent of the most religious Americans agree is wrong is extramarital sex (that is, cheating on your spouse).
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