Southern Baptist Leaders To Millennials: Get Married Already

As the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention has continued to resist societal trends like gay marriage and cohabitation, church leaders have decided it’s time to also promote what they consider Biblical marriage. They’re lightly nudging parishioners to stop putting it off.

The
average age for getting hitched has pushed into the late-20s. Pam Blume was considered average back in 1972 when she walked down the aisle in a small Baptist church in Newport News, Va. 

“Looking back, I can see a 20-year-old, you’re pretty naïve,” she said. “You want the fairy tale and all that. But at the same time, you’re not set in your ways. There’s pro and con.”

Pam and Allan Blume spent their honeymoon on the highway, heading to Texas where Allan would start seminary and become a pastor.

They had no jobs and no money. They started from scratch together. And 43 years later, they have no regrets.

“There’s this thinking of, ‘You’ve got to have these things all lined up financially before you can get married and before you can have children and before you can do this,’ ” he said. “But financial stability is not the main issue of life.”

The Blumes aren’t leading the charge, but they’ve endorsed what is a soft push to get Baptists marrying younger. Andrew Walker is the one out front. He works for the denomination’s public policy arm.

The Reality Of Abstinence

Walker married at 21 and sees a potentially sinful side to waiting too long to tie the knot. Marrying in your 30s makes the church’s expectation of virginity “impractical.”

“The reality is, starting at the age of 12 or 13, boys and men, growing up into maturity, are hardwired for something that God gave us a desire for and an outlet for,” Walker said. “So to suppress that becomes more difficult the older you get.”

Walker hasn’t pursued a formal declaration or campaign. He’s just
written articles and led
panel discussions over recent months, all the while insisting there is no perfect age to marry.

Still, there have been awkward moments along the way. During a conference held at Opryland in late October, Walker introduced his colleague — Lindsay Swartz — as “the single woman.”

“That was low,” Swartz said on stage with a laugh.

Swartz, who handles social media for the denomination, says she would love to get married and start a family. But the 30-something — perhaps more than the wedded pastors leading the church — sees more of the drawbacks. She pointed out that key figures in the New Testament never married.

“I don’t necessarily think it’s better to be single,” she said in an interview. “But I do think we run the risk — including myself — of idolizing marriage and children.”

Swartz also said it would be a shame to encourage couples to marry younger, only to see a corresponding rise in divorces. According to multiple surveys, evangelical Christians break up at roughly the
same rate as society as a whole. 

The View From Outside

It’s the prevalence of divorce that has outsiders questioning why Baptists would want to go against the grain.

“I don’t think you can say people need to get married at a younger age today. I think it’s much more complicated than that,” said Cindy Novinska of Wisconsin.

Cindy and Kenneth Novinska just happened to be passing by as Southern Baptist held a public discussion on marrying young. She and her husband are Catholic. Both have been divorced.

“The lady I married was way too young,” he said. “She was 18 years old when I married her.”

One of his daughters also married right out of high school, only to split up soon after.

Novinska’s son, on the other hand, waited until his late 30s.

“They were mature. They were working. They had jobs,” he said. “They knew exactly they wanted to have children. You can just see their marriage is very strong. It just is.”

Novinska said he’s convinced it pays to wait.

Even Baptist pastors acknowledge the case-by-case nature of marriage. Take the Blumes, for example.

“We have a son who has not gotten married yet,” said Allan Blume. “He’s a professional, very successful, stays busy.”

Asked if they would ever prod their son to marry, Pam Blume chuckled at the thought.

“Oh no. I would not ever,” she said.

The Baptist “marry young” mantra gets complicated as it hits closer to home. But generally church leaders say marriage should be considered a foundation for adult life. And right now, it’s more often seen as a capstone.