July 1, 2011

A few days after I moderated a recent event at the Center for Public Conversation with Kay Hymowitz, author of Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of Why There are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the Single Woman, I received this email:

"As hard as I try, I can't figure out why I'm single. And the older I get, the more I realize I want to be a wife and mom more than I want to have a career in journalism.
I feel so alone.

Sometimes it's all I can do to make it back to my apartment, curl into a ball on the floor, and just cry.

Sometimes, I listen to Canon in D on my iPod, on repeat. And I imagine my wedding day. I have this beautiful white dress, simple but elegant. And I look radiant, and happy, and the church is decorated, and the flower girls dance down the aisle…. And the groom… well, he is missing. But the song is so beautiful, I can't stop listening to it."

Girl Power Representative

Far from being an anomaly, this woman represents the modern young college-educated woman. She is climbing the career ladder at the headquarters of a large, New York City corporation. She has an apartment in Manhattan with IKEA shelves, framed posters of novelty wines, and vibrant red-orange curtains framing the view. She meets friends for brunch and mimosas at Sarabeth's on the weekends. She values education and frequently tosses around the idea of grad school. (As Hymowitz points out, women are more likely than men to take AP courses in high school, graduate from college, and aspire to continue their education. And in large cities, single, childless women now outearn their male counterparts.)  

Even her singleness is representative of most young adult women. According to Census data, 52 percent of American women ages 20-34 have never been married. And in cities, that proportion is even higher: for instance, in Boston 82 percent of all young adults ages 25-34 have never been married.

Where's Mr. Right?

But most young women—even successful, career-driven ones—want to marry. And though the stats show that most eventually will, in the meantime, the search is frustrating, and often heart-wrenching. Just last night at a cocktail party, I heard a medical professional in black gown and heels label herself "a hopeless cause."

As Whitehead explains, when women hit their late twenties, they find themselves asking, "‘How do I find a man who shares my ambition to marry?....They had worked so hard in school, hit every bench mark. They'd done AP classes, and there was no AP in getting married."

Whitehead, a social historian who grew up during the 1950s, notes that this is the reverse of what young women of her generation faced: "Marriage just sort of happened. College was a great place to meet a guy. You tended to pair off during those college years. It was work, finding professional work, that seemed to be the challenge." Today, young women have mastered "the world of professional internships, elite schools, and all the rest" but find themselves asking, "How in the world do you meet the right man to marry?" For the women that Whitehead interviewed in her book, "This was a great puzzle."

Courtship Script Upheaval

And it's no wonder, when one thinks of the social and economic changes since Whitehead met her husband: women's rights, the sexual revolution, globalization, the shift from an industrial to an information economy, the subsequent prolonging of adulthood and delayed age of first marriage. Both Hymowitz and Whitehead are quick to say that they do not want to "turn back the clock" to days bygone. But they also note that the changing young adult life script, particularly the changing courtship script, has left young adults with little direction and a panoply of choices. This is what Whitehead describes as the shift from the "marrying system" to the "relationships system." Whereas there used to be a clearly defined "ladder of commitment," today one can date or hook-up; get engaged, move in together, or both; and cohabit as a compatibility test for marriage or as an alternative to marriage. Most anything goes in this celebration of relationship diversity.

But because we are social creatures, for most of history we have not made up meaningful life scripts from scratch. Rather, humans look to social cues and norms that have been handed down to them. We take the best practices and build upon those traditions, refining those practices that don't work so well, or that violate human dignity.

As a friend of mine once pointed out, a social script is a technology: an invention is rarely entirely new, but is an adaptation on something that existed previously. It's a process of growth, of evolution, really. The telephone improved the telegraph, and the cell phone is an improvement on the landline. Similarly, our social institutions are improvements on past wisdom: marriage is built, among other things, to correct the chaos that occurs when children have no institution binding them to both biological parents, and a courtship script is created to help streamline the process of finding the right person to marry. 

But today young adults are encouraged to ignore the institutional memory of history, and instead splash brightly-colored blotches of self-expression on blank canvases. While it sounds freeing, many grow weary with the burden of figuring relationships out on their own. In the interviews that I did with young women for the Love and Marriage in Middle America Project, I was surprised to hear several participants say—usually in the context of describing a series of broken relationships or engagements—that they wished for arranged marriages. Others waxed nostalgic for the 1950s, when dating and marriage seemed so much more straightforward.   

A New Courtship Script

Not that these women would want to be June Cleaver exactly—they want to go to college and to find meaningful work both in and out of the home. And while vintage fashion may be in, it's not for the pearls and belted day dresses that many young women are drawn to that era—it's more that they long for order to their love lives and a clear path of progressive commitment from singleness to matrimony.

So how can we do this? A new courtship script that outlines these clear steps of commitment cannot be ordered overnight or enacted through legislation, but this does not mean that it's impossible. While Whitehead and Hymowitz's books are more descriptive than prescriptive, they do suggest that it may be the task of this generation—the one living with the confusion spawned by a script's unraveling—to forge a new script that draws from time-tested traditions and values marital commitment, and yet is suited to current economic and social realities.

What might this look like? College students, like those in the Love and Fidelity Network, talking on campus about chastity, dating, and the meaning of commitment. Friends and neighbors hosting dinner parties in which single young adults can meet. Married couples mentoring younger couples and sharing in community with one another: hosting game nights, breaking bread, sharing struggles and solutions.

Does creating this new courtship script really matter? Just ask the woman listening to Canon in D on her iPod, struggling with loneliness, and waiting for Mr. Right.

Response to Faith from Science

There is no problem with these two! The problem is understanding Geneses 1:1 and 1:2. I am attaching a short paper that I developed and I don't understand why our bible scholars don't see it and reveal it. This article trying to mix faith and science always makes God unable to create without a lot of help from science. If He didn't create Adam on one 24 hour day, then how can he possibly do what he says in 1 Cor. 15:50 - 55 where He says that all Christians who have ever died and turned to dust will be resurrected in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. You can see that if you don't believe the Geneses account then it undermines everything God says and promises. Please tell some Bible scholars to do their homework and get us out of all this nonsense called science that is just pure speculation based on unbelievers who want to compromise what God has said and did. God bless you and your work. - Rev. J. H.

There can be no conflict between true science and true faith. The purpose of science is to attempt to understand the workings of the universe. As St. Paul said, "The Universe is but a thought of God." And in understanding the mechanisms of his workings, we come to, however slightly, understand Him. The affair between Galileo and the Catholic Church showed just how easy it is to allow human hubris and pride to warp our interpretation of God's Word. I constantly hear people trying to overturn Darwin's ideas on evolution, in a misguided attempt to shore up their faith. But, based on the scientific evidence, not just in biology, but in physics, astrophysics and cosmology, God is infinitely more creative than people give Him credit for. Who but God could create a universe (or perhaps multiverse?) that could contain within its essence the roots of all that came after...particles, atoms, molecules, stars, heavy elements, planets, and life itself. As A. Powell Davies once wrote, "Your God is too small". Give Him more credit. - H. M.

Dear Dr. Benjamin Wiker, I just read your article “Language of Science and Faith” and I must say that I am concerned by your apparent compromise on the issue of evolution. You state:

“As we have stated many times, evolution is not the problem, Darwinism is the problem. That life developed over millions of years is not a difficulty for faith” “So we have no problem, in the abstract, with much of what Collins and Giberson propose, and some of it is quite excellent. They embrace a kind of theistic evolution, but not one that makes God redundant. God can, and He actually does, do miracles. He could, and perhaps did, directly influence the course of evolution. He works through the laws of nature, but He can just as well suspend them.”

For the last 9 years I have been studying this subject as it relates to our faith and what the Bible teaches and I can’t see how you can be so accommodating To evolution. Please provide for me any article that clearly explain why you accept evolution as a means by which God made life to function. I would greatly appreciate any biblical references that you feel supports evolution. Finally I would like to know if you have attempted to talk with any credible Creationist Scientist who reject evolution like Dr. Terry Mortenson, Dr. Jerry Bergman Dr. Jason Lisle or any of the Creationist at Creation Ministries International or ICR? While I love and respect you as a brother in Christ I am very concerned about the conflicting view you hold with the Bible and actual scientific data. Please help me to understand why you teach that evolution is true. Thanks so very much - D. M.

Dear tothesource, I enjoy your articles immensely and learn a lot from them. However, I must ask you, as I have done before, why you are so uncritical of the proposed evidence for 'particles to people' evolution? It really comes as surprise to me that you can be so sharp and discerning about many things and yet take the standard position with respect to evolution as though it were beyond question, let alone critique. I studied biology at Sussex University in the 1960s and was taught evolution theory directly by the great evolutionary biologist Professor John Maynard Smith. I had entered the University as an evolutionist; I left with a good degree having become a creationist. The main reason was to do with the evidence - or rather the lack of it. That speciation happens and that creatures have much inbuilt variability within definite limits is not in dispute; there is however no support whatever in any part of the evidence for the idea that the variation is unlimited and that major new groups have arisen in this way. Can you point me to any? On the other hand, there is much evidence to support the view that this does not and indeed could not happen. I simply ask that you begin to question the supposed evidence and cease to take it as a given. If it is beyond question, surely it has ceased to be within the realm of observational science and has become an unchallengeable ideology. - Dr. S. B.

I am very disappointed by this article of Dr. Wiker on the Language of Science and Faith. Yet ironically he has the article of C. J. Collins on “Adam and Eve as Historical People…” in his same publication. The very reasons Collins give as to why we can never abandon the literal creation account of Genesis are the ones that Wiker has so consciously dismissed in his defence of some sort of support for creation by evolution. First of all, rational science and reason speak more heavily in favour of biblical creation than do rational secular science and reason. Somehow it fails to register with Wiker that to support evolution in any form or fashion as a believer in God immediately reduces Christianity to a jumble of myths, fables, and deception. Secondly, The Idea of an immanent and transcendent God that makes the creation his way according to Genesis is thrown out, and man’s substitution of his own account of creation is in vogue. Finally, and where does that leave us as Bible believing Christians? It leaves us swimming in a backwater of myths and fancies trying to connect the pieces in order to demonstrate the truth of biblical creation. Wiker has reversed the secular account with the biblical account. I guess that is what the people before the flood did, but, oh, I suppose that would be just a myth for Wiker if he should really believe in his account of the Language of Science and Faith. Friends, let us not be daunted by the sayings and postulates of secular scientists, they are just hot air. The world in its history has gone down this road before; and what’s more, Jesus said that we will once more go this road before his second coming: “As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the coming of the son of man.” Back then the whole world was taken captive by the leaders of society who convinced the people that Noah had it wrong. Today we are hard on the heels of that generation. It is sad, though, when godly men let the banner slip out of their position. - R. H.

Quote:.. "We at tothesource find this, in one sense laudatory. As we have stated many times, evolution is not the problem, Darwinism is the problem. That life developed over millions of years is not a difficulty for faith..." Beg to disagree. Very difficult... Evolution is in contrasting opposition to the scriptures, not only the book of Genesis but New Testament scriptures such as: Matthew 10: 6 - But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. Matthew 19: 4 - And he [Jesus] answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female. These and other scriptures imply that Jesus himself had no evolutionary worldview, Darwinian or other, and He must know since He was there from the beginning... "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the word was God... and Word was made flesh, and and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. [John 1:1 and 14] Now, I know it is not very intellectual to quote scriptures, Dr. Benjamin, but if you talk about Faith, in God, not something else, you have to consider the scriptures. Death, came into the world through Adam's sin... "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned [Romans 5:12]. Evolution implies that death was there from the beginning... therefore is completely, absolutely, against Faith. I Corinthians 15:22 : "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive". [Paul, also, did not care for evolutionary worldview, Darwinian or other] It presumptuous and arrogant to assume that we know better than Jesus [and Paul] just because we read a few more books written by mere carnal men, who try to explain the world with desperate ignorance of spiritual realities. I hope and pray that you can dedicate your excellent gift for reasoning and writing towards defending and promoting the Truth. I appreciate most of tothesource articles as incisive and relevant, including many of your articles Dr. Benjamin, but this one, I must say, you are stepping out of line with true Christian Faith. - J. S.