Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA), Charlottesville, VA November 13, 2005 The Rev’d Skip Burzumato, Center for Christian Study From Courtship to Courtship & Dating * Allow me to make a few introductory comments as we get started. I have been ministering to young adults and families for 15 years, and as it pertains to theology lived out in our daily lives, there is no topic that I discuss more than dating and marriage preparation. It is an extremely important topic for teenagers as well as young adults as they try to figure out what to do with the “dating,” and more recently “hooking up”, culture that begins in Junior High and runs through adulthood. Additionally, it’s important for single adults as they think about such questions as whether to buy a house and set up a household, even though they would like to be married. Also, we have questions that plague Christian singles such as where do we meet single Christian men and women? Is it okay to consult Christian matchmaking organizations such as eharmony.com? How should we think about sex outside of marriage now that we are adults? Is it okay to date or marry nonChristians? Then, if you are a parent like I am, or, perhaps, a grandparent, you have all of these questions and more to ask about your children and grandchildren. Let me “lay my cards right on the table” so you will know some of my thoughts. If you disagree, you will have time to argue your case. We all know that Christians are called to be engaged in this world but are not to be “of” the world, as St. Paul tells us Romans 12 and St. John tells us in his 1 st Epistle. Sometimes Christians can fit very nicely into the same patterns that the secular culture conforms to and in these cases I would argue that it is because, in that particular instance, the secular culture has ordered itself in a way that God meant it to be ordered. However, sometimes Christians may try, with all of their might, to fit into an existing pattern of the world, but are unable to make it work. It is my opinion that most Christians, teens, adults of all ages, and parents, fit into this later category when it comes to our current system of men and women dating, preparing for marriage, going about evaluating potential mates, and then “closing the deal” with that potential mate. Again, it is my opinion that many Christians do not seem to have thought much about it, or, if they have, it was found to be too confusing on the surface to give it serious consideration. In this case they seem to be simply riding the cultural wave. Sometimes, especially after a traumatic or messy breakup, some Christians will call the whole “system” of dating & marriage preparation into question. But, since they feel powerless to do anything about it, they are soon simply swept back into the same cycle. This is not to say that most eventually do ‘make it.’ It is reported that eightynine percent of men and ninetytwo percent of women in American marry by the age of thirtyfive. *
The majority of this lecture is derived from two sources: From Front Porch to Back Seat by Beth Bailey (1988, Johns Hopkins U. Press), particularly the Introduction, and the chapters Calling Cards and Money, and The Economy of Dating, as well as from the essay, “Courtship”, by Leon Kass in Building a Healthy Culture: Strategies for an American Renaissance ed. Don Eberly (2001, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company).
However, for many of us who do end up getting married, we do so, first, not really knowing exactly how we got here; we truly, wandered toward the altar. We seem to have closed our eyes when we were around 17 or 18 and started wandering through the maze, and Wow!, eventually we find someone with whom we want to spend the rest of our lives. Secondly, and more seriously, many usually arrive at the marriage altar with much scar tissue with many deep emotional wounds that will take years to heal, if they ever do. So, what I would like to do this evening is to spend a few minutes doing some cultural history – examining our current system of courtship and dating, and then try to react through the lenses of our Christian faith. Let me begin with a couple of questions. By show of hands, How many of you have ever dated? How many of you have ever courted? What’s the difference? Courtship is an oldfashioned word. It summons visions of men wooing women with small tokens of affection and proposing on bended knee. Studies of courtship usually look at the process of mate selection; the proposal is what makes the act qualify as courtship. Prior to the early 20 th century, courtship involved one man and one woman spending intentional time together to get to know each other with the expressed purpose of evaluating the other as a potential husband or wife. The man and the woman usually were members of the same community, and the courting usually was done in the woman’s home in the presence (and under the watchful eye) of her family. In the 20 th century, the new system of “dating” added new stages to courtship and multiplied the number of partners (from serious to casual) an individual was likely to have before marriage. So, one general point I want to make right up front is that it is not necessarily the case that we moved from a courtship system to a dating system, but instead, we have added a dating system into a courtship system. Since most young adults will marry, the process employed in finding a mate is still considered courtship. However, an extra layer, what we call “dating,” has been added to the process of courting. If you are familiar with computer programming, a subroutine has been added to the system of courtship. So, how did this change occur? What cultural forces assisted in moving “mate selection” from the more predictable cultural script that existed for several centuries, as some argue, to the multilayered system – and, I think most would agree, the more ambiguous courtship system which includes “the date”? Allow me to quickly suggest five cultural changes or forces. 1. Shift from the Private world to the Public (Commercial) World Probably the most important change we find in courtship practices in the West occurred in the early 20 th century, when courtship moved from public acts conducted in private
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spaces (viz., the family parlor) to individual acts conducted in public spaces located primarily in the entertainment world. By the 30’s and 40’s, with the advent of the “date” (which we will look at in a minute) courtship increasingly took place in public places removed, by distance and by anonymity, from the sheltering and controlling contexts of home and local community. Keeping company in the family parlor was replaced by dining and dancing, movies, and “parking.” This was brought about largely by the rise of the entertainment culture – especially movie houses. Most of my material today comes from the best book on this subject, in my opinion, From Front Porch to Back Seat, by the cultural historian, Beth Bailey, who teaches at Barnard College. The title of the book says it all, as it pertains to my first point. 2. The Rise of the Advice Literature & “Expert” Class So, the first cultural force that aided in moving us away from the traditional courting system was the shift from the private world to the public/commercial world. The second cultural force is the rise of “public advice” literature as well as the rise of an “expert” class. At the same time that the public entertainment culture was on the rise in the early 20 th century, a proliferation of public sources provided a new framework for understanding private acts and decisions. These sources took the form of magazines and books offering advice about courtship, marriage, and the relationship between the sexes. This advice literature, which played a crucial role in shifting courtship into the public world, was filled with the writings of a new group of experts – psychologists, sociologists, statisticians. From the late 1930s on, young people knew, down to the percentage point, what their peers throughout the country thought and did. They knew what was “normal.” Prior to the 20 th century, norms for behavior (what was normal) was determined within families and by local communities. 3. Change in Gender Roles Thirdly, about this same time (early 20 th century) we get a drastic change in gender roles. American courtship was greatly affected by the change in the relationship between men and women in the larger society, as women took on new roles in the public world. Ideas about what was appropriate behavior for men and women shifted gradually, or were sometimes jolted into new configurations. The rules and rituals governing dating (and, for that matter, marriage) had been based on the concept of “manasprovider.” He paid; she didn’t, which assumed that he worked and she didn’t. But as more and more women entered the job market, earning their own money and achieving the autonomy that comes with economic independence, conventions based on the “manasprovider” clashed more and more with the realities of men’s and women’s lives.
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4. Change in Sexual Norms Fourthly, and related to this change in gender roles, is the change in sexual norms in the West. With the onset of the sexual revolution the question arose, Why would a man court and woo a woman when he could gain a chief benefit of marriage, namely sexual gratification, for free with no commitment? (Friendship “with benefits” is a contemporary example). Closely related to this is the invention of birth control. There is a lot that could be said here, but let me simply say that with the onset of the widespread use of chemical and other means of birth control, the language of procreation – of having children – was separated from the language of marriage. As U. of Chicago ethicist, Leon Kass argues, Mutual pleasure and mutual admiration and esteem are certainly part of the sexual story of men and women . . . But it is precisely the common project of procreation that holds together what sexual differentiation sometimes threatens to drive apart. Through children. . .the two become one through sharing generous love for this third being. . . The earlier forms of courtship, leading men and women to the altar, understood these deeper truths about human sexuality, marriage, and the higher possibilities for human life... (“Courtship,” Building a Healthy Culture: Strategies for an American Renaissance, ed. Don Eberly, 377 378)
5. Changes in the Models and Metaphors for Relationships Fifthly, we find a change in the models and metaphors used to describe the home and family. Prior to the 20 th century, public discussions of courtship commonly drew on metaphors of home and family. The new system of courtship that played itself out in the public square largely was understood and described by the advice and expert class in models and metaphors of modern industrial capitalism. The new courtship system privileged competition (and worried about how to control it); it valued consumption; it presented an economic model of scarcity and abundance as a guide to personal affairs. The new language of courtship had great symbolic importance. More on this in a few moments. So, these are five cultural forces in the early part of the twentieth century that assisted in moving our culture from the older courtship system to a courtship & dating system, which I will argue in a minute, is much more ambiguous and confusing. 1) We shifted courtship from the private world centered in the home to public world centered on the entertainment culture; 2) along came the advice literature and the “expert” class; 3) we had a change in gender roles; 4) and related, a change in sexual norms; and 5), we found a change in the models and metaphors for relationships, this last I will illustrate in a minute.
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The “Date” Let’s turn our attention now to “dating” and the “date” itself. Where did it come from? How did it become such an important part of our courtship system? And how has it changed over time? The word “date” was probably originally used as a lowerclass slang word for booking an appointment with a prostitute – to make a “date.” However, by the turn of the century we find it being used to describe lowerclass men and women going out socially to public dances, or other meeting places. The “date” began among the lowerclass in urban centers where not all respectable women had parlors in their homes to invite men to call, but were instead sharing small tenement apartments with several other women. Some women who were living in urban centers but wanted to hold on to the former calling system would sometimes borrow the front parlor of the homes of workmates in order to entertain gentlemen callers. With the rise of the entertainment culture such as movie houses and dance halls, as well as easier access to transportation, dating quickly moved up the socioeconomic ladder to include middle and upper class men and women.
PreWar & PostWar Dating The courtship experience and ideals of those who grew up before World War II were profoundly different from those of teenagers in the postwar years, and the differences created much intergenerational conflict. Yet, for all their disagreement, both groups understood dating in the same terms: competition, scarcity, and abundance. Before World War II, American youth prized a promiscuous popularity, demonstrating competitive success through the number and variety of dates they commanded, sometimes on the same night. Shortly after World War II, in 1949, Margaret Mead gave a series of lectures on American courtship rituals and summarized her thoughts in her book, Male & Female. Although the system she described was already disappearing, she captured the essence of what dating meant in the interwar years. She argued that dating was not about sex or adulthood or marriage. Instead, it was a “competitive game,” a way for girls and boys to “demonstrate their popularity.” In 1937, sociologist Willard Waller published a study in the American Sociology Review in which he gives this competitive dating system a name, which had been in place since the early 1920s: The Campus Rating Complex. His study of Penn State detailed a “dating and rating” system based on very clear standards of popularity. Men’s popularity needed outward material signs: automobile, clothing, fraternity membership, money, etc. Women’s popularity depended on building and maintaining a reputation for popularity: be seen with popular men in the “right” places; turn down requests for dates made at the last minute, which could be weeks ahead; and cultivate the impression that you are greatly in demand. One example: In a 1938 article in Mademoiselle magazine, a Smith College senior advised incoming freshmen that they must cultivate an “image of popularity.” She goes TPC Courtship/Dating Lecture – p. 5
on to explain how to do this. She wrote, “During your first term, get home talent to ply you with letters, telegrams, and invitations. College men will think, “She must be attractive if she can rate all that attention.” She also suggested that you get your mom back home to send you flowers from time to time. The article went on to say that if, for some reason, you did not have a date on a particular night, to keep the lights off in your dorm room so no one would know you’re home. Popularity was clearly the key – and popularity defined in a very specific way. It was not earned directly through talent, looks, personality, or importance and involvement in organizations, but by the way these attributes translated into dates. These dates had to be highly visible, and with many different people, or they didn’t count. Rating, dating, popularity, and competition: catchwords hammered home, reinforced from all sides until they became the natural vocabulary. You had to rate in order to date, to date in order to rate. By successfully maintaining this cycle, you became popular. To stay popular, you competed. There was no end: popularity was a deceptive goal. Competition was the key term in the formula – remove it and there was no rating, dating, or popularity as Beth Bailey says. In the 1930’s and 1940’s this competition was enacted, most visibly, on the dance floor. A 1936 etiquette book for college girls told ladies to strive to be “oncearounders,” to never be left with the same partner for more than one turn around the dance floor. If no one cut in on you, it was called “getting stuck.” A 1933 advice book told the story of a man waving dollar bills behind a woman’s back in order to entice other men to come and set him free. Woman were told that if no other man cuts in on your partner after a turn or two, you should give the excuse that you needed to go home, and to leave the dance floor and the dance immediately. So, that’s the system in place prior to World War II: Now, after World War II the norms within the dating system began to change. By the late 1940s and early 1950s demographic realities began to sink in – There began to be a shortage of men. After World War II, for the first time, women outnumbered men in the United States. The dating system that had valued popularity above all else was unsettled by women’s concerns about the “new” scarcity of men. Even before the war, as early as the 1930’s, social scientists were beginning to predict this scarcity of men being brought on by lower birth rates among male babies, by higher mortality rates among adult men due to dangerous working conditions in the new industrial society, as well as by a rise in violent crimes in the new industrial urban centers. World War II also exasperated the situation. By early 1943, 16,354,000 fit males between the ages of eighteen and twentysix had shown up for military service, and 250,000 of them never came home. In June of 1945, New York Times Magazine predicted 750,000 women who wanted to marry would have to live alone. Around the same time Good Housekeeping captioned a photo of a bride and groom descending church steps with: “She got a man, but 6 to 8 million women TPC Courtship/Dating Lecture – p. 6
won’t. We’re short 1 million bachelors!” A halfserious article was published in Esquire magazine discussing the possibility of instituting a polygamous marriage system in the United States. Due primarily to this scarcity of men, two things happened as it pertained to marriage in the U.S. after WW II: 1) Marriage rates climbed, and 2) The average age of those marrying went down. However, the most striking change in postwar courtship and dating was the everearlier age at which children and teenagers entered the courtship and dating system. If girls were beginning to marry at around eighteen and boys at twenty, the preparation for marriage – the shopping around, if you will – had to begin earlier than before. Experts told parents to help their children become “datable”, they must put their children in situations where they will begin to date. One sociologist said in a July 1953 New York Times Magazine article, each boy and girl ideally should date twentyfive to fifty eligible marriage partners before making his or her final decision. At the center of this 1950’s youth dating culture was the act of “going steady.” (Here’s where many of us in this room enter the “hamster wheel”). Going steady was not a new custom, but an old custom with a new meaning. Beth Bailey says that, [I]n earlier days going steady had been more like the oldfashioned “keeping steady company.” It was a step along the path to marriage, even if many steady couples parted company before they reached the altar. By the early 1950’s, going steady had acquired a totally different meaning. It was no longer the way a marriageable couple signaled their deepening intentions. Instead, going steady was something twelveyearolds could do, and something most fifteenyearolds did do. Few steady couples expected to marry each other, but for the duration of the relationship, acted as if they were married. Going steady had become a sort of playmarriage, a mimicry of actual marriage. (49). It’s important to note that during the 1950s going steady had completely supplanted the datingrating complex as the criteria for popularity among youth. In 1955, sociologist, Robert Herman, of the U. of Wisconsin had conferred a parallel title on the new system to the old “ratingdating complex” – he called it the “going steady complex.” This new protocol of going steady was every bit as strict as the old protocol of rating and dating, and the form of going steady in many ways mirrored teenagers’ concepts of young marriage: 1. There had to be some visible token (class ring, letterman’s sweater or jacket) 2. The boy had to call and take out the girl a certain number of times a week 3. Neither boy nor girl could date or pay much attention to anyone of the opposite sex. 4. Going steady meant a guaranteed date for special events, and it also meant that the girl had to be willing to help her boyfriend save up for the event by budgeting “their” money, even if it meant sitting home together. 5. The couple engaged in sexual intimacy in the form of “necking.”
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In spite of the intense monogamy of these steady relationships, teens didn’t intend to stay with their steadies forever. A 1950 study of 565 seniors in an eastern suburban high school found that 80 percent had gone steady or were going steady. Out of that number, only 11 said they expected to marry their steadies. This going steady system flew in the face of parental understanding of the dating system they had known, and, therefore, caused an intense generational battle. Parental disapproval of “going steady” boiled down to one essential issue – sex. Adults believed that the practice of going steady led to increased premarital sex. Parents thought it was easier for girls to say “no” to a rapid succession of boys who were, for the most part, markers of popularity, and that it would be harder to say “no” to a steady boyfriend. (Remember, these parents were operating under the dating/rating system they had known where the goal was the quantity of dates they had). So, the question is: Where are we now? Do we have a dating/rating system that values the number of dates and has popularity as its goal, or do we have a “going steady” that values what is called “serial monogamy” – a succession of serious relationships? Or do we have a combination of the two. What do you think?
Toward a Christian Response Now, how should we as Christians respond? I’m not going to give you a prescription or a recipe for “Christian Dating” or “Christian Courtship.” There are a few people who have tried to write “the book” on Christian dating, and as a parent and a minister I’m not entirely happy with any of them. Joshua Harris’ I Kissed Dating Goodbye, or Douglas Wilson’s Her Hand in Marriage, Biblical Courtship in the Modern World, I think make some good points, but I do not endorse them wholeheartedly. There is no boilerplate for wise living. It requires daytoday decisions that are not necessarily the same for everyone. However, I do have a few suggestions where families and churches can start the conversation. First, we need to reshape our imaginations when it comes to gender roles and what it means for men and women to relate to each other romantically. I believe this cultural experiment of trying to make us androgynous “humans”, has reached its end. We were not created human beings; we were created male and female, and we ought not to shy away from that. I believe we should start by talking about the moral similarities between men and women, and then move to our different, and complementary, natures instilled in us by our Creator. Obviously, we start with a careful reading and discussion of Genesis chapters 13, but I would then back up our creation story with examples from literature and film. Besides what it means to be a man or woman, we also need to reshape our imagination as it pertains to relationships themselves. There was a time when our cultural authorities – TPC Courtship/Dating Lecture – p. 8
authors, poets, and songwriters – encouraged young people to imagine marriage as a source of happiness and fulfillment. This is no longer the case. Television, for example, usually depicts marriage as (a) a repressive and burdensome institution, (b) a warm, fuzzy, dreamlike state, or (c) a total joke. Too often, women are portrayed as the only adult in the family and men are nothing more than big boys in men’s bodies. Secondly, we need to reexamine and scrutinize our culture’s view of sex and sexuality. There is so much to say here, I won’t say anything. Thirdly, we should discuss what traits young people are to look for in the opposite sex. When young people are asked about what they’re looking for in someone they go out with the most popular answers are “goodlooking,” “good sense of humor,” and “likes to have fun.” There is limited interest in the questions about the other person’s character. Many single folks are more likely to talk about finding someone with a “good personality,” which has more to do with selfpresentation than with virtue or character. Fourthly, we need to set our standards for dating & courtship early, asking questions like: a. Are we going to “serial date” – having one steady boyfriend or girlfriend in rapid succession? It seems that serial dating (or serial monogamy as it’s called) has led to higher divorce rate because every time a couple breaks up, it’s like a small divorce. b. If you are going to allow for going steady, how involved is your family and church going to be? c. How much time are the boyfriend and girlfriend going to spend alone? Conclusion There is no way for us to jump in the ol’ “wayback” machine and go back to the way it was. I don’t think this is possible, nor do I think it would be good. One of the tasks of Christian obedience is learning to live obediently within your own time and place. However, at the same time, I think it would be good and helpful to find principles that have worked in the past, and then see if these principles can be culturally contextualized in our contemporary setting. This time was meant to be a conversation starter in families and churches. It is a conversation that should take place between parents, grandparents, children, teenagers, church pastors and program staff. The secular culture at large has neither the standards nor the vocabulary to give Christians much guidance when it comes to preparing our young brothers and sisters in Christ for marriage, so perhaps it is time that we invent our own system, our own culture, rather than to simply attempt to baptize or redeem the existing system.
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