In trying to reach out to millennials, Brendan Clarey has instead shown just how wide the chasm is between church and culture.
Clarey, 22, newlywed and a Hillsdale College graduate (the school you may or may not have heard advertised on conservative talk radio) who somehow is also an “Editorial Fellow at USA Today”, penned a column appearing in Gannett outlets around the country Saturday morning. You can read it here.
Or you can read it here, where I first happened upon it, or elsewhere on social media, where poor Mssr. Clarey is generally getting beaten up for asking, in Gannett’s social media words, “Why are so many millennials forgoing domestic bliss?”
It didn’t take me more than a second to recognize the familiar dog whistles of a young, white Evangelical, and that was before I even read Clarey’s piece.
Lest I be accused of poisoning the well, I should mention here that my bona fides speak for themselves. Readers familiar with this site know that I, too, am a white male Evangelical (for lack of better term) with a meandering experience at a laughable Christian university in Minnesota, a graduate education from one of the better Evangelical seminaries in the nation and a brief, ill-fated foray into vocational ministry and campus missions.
For the sake of this response, I set most of that to the side. To Brendan Clarey, I am simply an American Evangelical Christian who has been married for almost 12 years.
Now, with all that prologue out of the way:
The sex is great, isn’t it, Brendan?
That’s the, ahem, upshot here: a 22-year-old young man just realized that consensual intercourse between two people who have committed to one another feels great and is a powerful sort of illocutionary act.
But, I might suggest that Clarey is too demure to bring this up. So it’s couched within the economy of human relationship: Those in my generation strive to pour themselves into something that defines them. . . . Except we seem unable to commit to the same level in our relationships: Only a quarter of my generation is married, while 86 percent of single people near millennial age say they want to be at some point.
There are two and only two places where people speak in terms of generations anymore: the church and in sociology classes. At least three generations of youth were told that they were a ‘chosen generation’, anointed by God to change the world (presumably with concomitant subtext that there would be one last great revival before either the big-r Rapture or something akin to the apocalypse.) The neo-pentecostal revivals around the turn of the 20th century were thought to be the last big ones. (For this reason, those Pentecostals were avowed and explicit conscientious objectors to military service.)
Even setting that to the side, Clarey demonstrates an ability to paint with the broadest of strokes: committing to a relationship is not the same as committing to a marital relationship. Millennials are remarkably adept at remaining committed to meaningful relationships in their workplaces and with their friends. Their friends are their family.
Further, the timelines of where these generations begin and end are remarkably vague. Clarey uses Pew data from 2014, gauging then-25-34-year-olds–people born from 1980-89–irrespective of local contexts. Few sociologists would consider anything before 1981 as ‘millennial’, recent studies find that there is a middle ground sub-generation from roughly 1979-1982: the ‘xennial’. I find most of this to be senseless anyway: I was born in 1981 and I don’t recognize myself in either the angst of the Generation X crowd or in with the millennials everyone likes to dog for little reason more than that they are coming of age right now and it’s fashionable for older people to crap all over the kids when it’s expeditious to do so. The ‘xennial’, to me, seems more a concession that sociologists don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to generations. I’ve met plenty of entitled baby boomers and more than a few angsty, anti-authoritarian millennials and people-pleasing Gen-Xers.
At best, generational generalizations are straw.
For Clarey to use the linked data and then pronounce that he’s arrived years ahead of the rest of his generation is exactly the kind of provocation exactly a heady, angsty BA-holding male newlywed Evangelical would think particularly provocative. Of course, that’s not being entirely fair, but that’s not how others see it:
Fairness has nothing to do with it. But, as someone who was once a young, idealistic, crusading Evangelical burdened with the mantle of being a ‘child of promise’, I see exactly where this came from, and while he may not feel the hubris fueling such a piece, I can assure you it is most certainly there, because I said more than a few things 15 years ago that were pretty clearly ego-driven; I just didn’t see it until years later.
Clarey then uses information from a Dr. Jennifer Murff to flesh out his proposition. Murff, the president of an organization subtly named ‘Millennials for Marriage’, holds a doctorate in strategic leadership, a graduate degree in organization leadership (both from Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson; despite its roots, it is a solid liberal arts school, squishy degree programs notwithstanding), a comm degree from Dallas Baptist University and an AA from the unaccredited Christ for the Nations. There is no public CV of her work and I could not find anything online in the way of academic work or published research aside from blog posts on sympathetic Christian websites.
I’m not suggesting her perspective is flawed because of her academic background, but Clarey’s article at this point reaches for grounding from authority and latches onto someone who is not schooled in psychology or sociology, but someone who appears to be a political flack running an organization whose website isn’t even fully developed, but can find time to be prominently featured through one of the largest media outlets in North America.
She might be right on the money with her perspective and insight, but the route taken to get to her conclusions is deceptive at best. That’s not her problem, that’s Clarey’s.
What does Murff say? [M]illennials don’t know how to date anymore, and I think she’s right. Based on what criteria? What has changed? Clarey doesn’t mention any of that, he just happens to agree with his expert witness and that is that. Some exposition here is desperately needed, because in having abandoned the parochial life for earnest work in the private sector, I can pretty clearly confirm that life for single people younger than me isn’t some Huxleyan orgy-porgy. Romantic/serious relationships exist out here. Actual, caring, devoted couples, some of whom have stronger, healthier relationships and marriages than I’ve seen from some full-time ministers.
Shortly before I got married I was in a golfing event where I happened to be in a foursome with an acquaintance, a minister fairly well-known within Evangelical and Charismatic circles. Some of his video clips have gone viral through social media (and in some of them, it’s not obvious that he is a minister and actually offering a homily. That is by design.) If I mentioned who he was, there is a good chance an Evangelical reader would know who he is. He knew I was about to take the plunge and, as we were walking the fairway, he asked if I was excited. I, of course, answered yes, to which he snickered and replied, ‘You’ll like sex.’
The rest of that walk to our balls was pretty awkward.
I admit, it wasn’t easy for me to ask my crush (and future wife) on an actual date junior year of college. There was so much riding on it — namely my pride — and she could say no to another date if we ever got past the first one.
No, Brendan, millennials don’t have a problem meeting other people. You do. To wit, you’re trying to reach millennials through a newspaper.
The rest of the piece ranges from explaining how dating works(!!!) to marital advice including a shocking plot twist: nobody’s perfect. He meanders around fear of commitment and mentions the falsity of the 50% divorce rate, but the big takeaway from Brendan Clarey’s USA Today debut is that he comes from a world wholly detached from the realm of the real and deigns to lecture an audience primarily anchored in the latter on the joys and virtues of being married only months after he got there. Moreover, he has, as so many ministers and pundits are wont to do, splayed himself and his own flaws out for the world to see. His assumptions about the world are ill-informed, the data he uses to underwrite his premise are outdated, the authority he seeks is hardly a vetted expert on millennials and marriage, and he’s still brand new to all of this.
While I’m happy for his happiness, what is he doing? Millennials are postponing marriage for any number of reasons, not the least of which has nothing to do with romance or sexual profligacy or fear of failure: IT’S FRICKING EXPENSIVE TO LIVE. Many are just struggling to keep afloat, while others are pursuing further education and waiting to start a family until after they’ve passed the boards or the bar or are ABD or simply trying to pay down student debt.
Others recognize something Christians don’t: there is a lot more life to live than finishing school, starting a job and a family. I got married at 25, but I look back now and think about everything we’ve endured and I can’t help but think that the decisions we made–including to get married when we did–put us in a detrimental position from which we are still in some ways trying to recover even now. Marriage is not an achievement to be unlocked, it is a choice people make.
And we haven’t even touched on sexual mores or ethics, but that’s kind of the point: sex has little if anything to do with it. Unless you’re a Christian, for whom sex is a bugaboo and more or less an idol.
You’re going to get exiled to the couch at some point, Brendan.
Perhaps after a few bitter arguments, while you’re getting that throw pillow to work with your neck and the afghan to fit around you just enough to be both warm and breathable, you might begin to understand why younger people are more interested in swiping right than exchanging rings. Marriage can be beautiful, but it can also be very messy because relationships are messy because people are messy. It can also be a complete tire fire. People ebb and flow and adapt and evolve: marriage is not excluded. Some people might be at that arrival point in their early 20s; my brother was that way and he and his wife are well over 20 years in. Others still have things to figure out, and they recognize that it’s better they figure it out on their own rather than rush into a major life event and then spend the rest of one’s life compromised and compromising.
If anything, millennials deserve the benefit of the doubt this way. Instead, you’ve harangued them into not only dismissing what you have to say, but the social context from which you say it.
Apparently, you can’t see this, and that tells us you still have a lot of life to live before earning the privilege to tell others how to live theirs.
L’chaim.
sailerb 