The other week I heard about this article by Deborrah Cooper on the Tom Joyner Morning Show. In it she discusses her views on the church’s impact on relationships, particularly the Black church’s impact on how Black women date. So, I asked two friends–both of them single and Black–to post a response to Ms. Cooper’s words. In the next two posts you read their responses. Whether or not you’re Black or single, I’d love for you to weigh in, considering any of these questions as you read their posts:
- What impact has a faith community had on your experience dating?
- Does faith make a difference when it comes to dating? If so, what? If not, why?
- How can the church be a supportive place for individuals looking for partners?
- In what ways has dating been easier or harder for you if and when you’ve been intentional about integrating your faith in the process?
- Do you think religious communities have interests in promoting marriage or singleness? How have you seen those communities served by both marrieds and singles?
Michael Washington 
Sound instruction on the meaning of commitment and the complete understanding of marriage is largely missing in the Church. Dating does not fit in the Christine discipline. Courtship does fit.
Remember, marriage symbolizes the commitment between Jesus and the Church. Tom Joyner can discuss dating as he represents the world. Hence, his well-known “playa” emphasis serves the world. Committed Christians must be serious about relationships, as they are sacred-especially marriage. I could write a book, I suppose I will.
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Dr. Hodge, that’s a book worth writing AND reading. Should I say, “Get to work”? Thanks for the comment.
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Marriage is not exclusively the domain of Christianity, so it cannot represent the union of Jesus and The Church. Marriage is between a man and a woman, period. Jews marry, Muslims marry, Buddhists marry and so do Agnostics and Atheists. Yet these religions are not marrying Jesus nor a Church.
Faith makes no difference when it comes to dating or marriage. I can say that factually due to the statistics on divorce which show that Bible belt Christians divorce at a rate 2x that of Atheists. How is that proving that “faith” does anything positive for marriage?
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Deborrah, I’m glad you commented. Marriage is not exclusively Christian. It’s largely a social institution. I think that’s true sociologically and historically. I will disagree on a couple points though. When the New Testament and Christian Tradition talks about the mystical union, they are making a distinction inside the Tradition itself, renaming or refreshing, if you will, what marriage is for the Christian community. The language isn’t meant to suggest that marriage–successful or otherwise–is unique to Christianity. But it is meant to state an ideal, an expectation, or an assumption about marriage and Christ. The language is also metaphorical, which is a critical literary point to make.
Second, I think there are two types of faith. One that is the doctrine or teaching of a church. Another that is the often subjective embodied belief, the trust that sits in a person’s body. You make a point about the doctrinal faith (Christians do divorce too much…and that gets at whatever the relation is between teaching and practice, theology and ethics), but it’s a bit presumptuous to say that a person’s trust in God (the second type of faith) makes no difference to something as personal as marriage. Your experience, research, and consulting work may lead you there. Mine doesn’t. I think faith is connected to dating and marriage. I’m interested in what other readers of the blog would say.
Last, faith never attempts to prove anything, particularly if proof is restricted to a scientific method we developed a couple centuries ago. Faith, in my tradition, is about seeing what’s there but may be invisible. Present even if unacknowledged. That has been shown by scientists and statisticians not to be there comfort zones, which is why we have theologians.
Tell me more about what you think, if you like. I’m interested to hear more about what you mean by proving faith and its role as positive or negative for marriage.
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“Mine doesn’t. I think faith is connected to dating and marriage. I’m interested in what other readers of the blog would say.”
It seems that today we have to “Christianize” everything or have a Christian version of it. This is true in sports and music, for example. I’m not surprised that the theologians have also” Christianized” marriage.
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MRD, I also have very little patience for “Christianizing” certain things, or perhaps I should say over-Christianizing. For example, there is definitely a way to practice Christian principles when playing a sport (patience, forgiveness, self-control), but that doesn’t mean that you need a Christian sports league, etc.
However, in the case of marriage, there is no such thing as over-Christianizing, at least not for a Christian. Christian theology simply has too much to say about the place of marriage in God’s community and how it connects to an individual’s relationship with God. It is also just a practical truth that if you adhere to the teachings of Christ in your life, it will be pretty hard to do life with a person who is not trying to do the same in their life. It is doubly hard when it comes to making those decisions that steer your combined life in a very particular direction.
What Pastor Michael says is true: Marriage is a social institution practiced by many different people in many different ways. But if you believe that Christianity should have any authority over one’s life (and really, followers of Christ believe he has *all* authority), well, marriage would definitely not be an exception to the rule.
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I find it difficult as a Christian to seek God for discernment in everything I do especially major decisions like asking people out and dating. I want there to be as great a sense of confirmation for who I date as I have for my faith. I struggle with the fact that the process of dating is contradictory to this as a transient and temporary state. Dating is an arduous period between being single and being married. I did not have to ask God for confirmation to be single when I was born. It was the default condition. However, stepping into a dating world built on trial and error seems incredibly dangerous to my desire to always do right with God. There is pressure as a man to sort these tensions out and come across to a woman as confident and strong from the beginning. And there is even more pressure to do so in the community of a church when other people are watching.
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