Evangelical Courtship Culture Normalizes Men Dating Teen Girls?
When I was first introduced to courtship as a young teen, it felt like it was a continuation of the True Love Waits message of my Southern Baptist youth group.
It didn’t seem weird that courtship speakers were telling teenage girls to pledge their virginities to their fathers until their fathers gave it over to their future husbands, sealed with a ring or a heart and key locket, because True Love Waits already had tens of thousands of evangelical teens signing purity pledges and wearing purity rings.
If courtship advocates had stated up front in the introduction that they believed in young courtship and were OK with child marriage, my family and many others would not have gotten on board.
Instead, courtship was presented as an extension of the early-1990s abstinence movement and a way to ensure that teens would be able to keep the pledges they made....