As a pastor, the trends that interest me most involve the sharp decline of marriage in the USA and the rise in non-clergy-officiated weddings.
These are the changes that matter, rather than the modern substitution of cupcakes for a wedding cake. The dropping number of marriages and changing face of officiants will shape the lives of American couples ”” and their children ”” for decades to come. These shifts merit some thought as we wrap up this year’s wedding season, which runs May through October and typically covers 70% of all ceremonies.
Fifty years ago, about three-quarters of American adults 18 and older were married. Today, about half are. Nearly 40% of respondents to a Pew Research Center survey last year said marriage is becoming obsolete.
These are symptoms of problems, not problems themselves. IMHO.
Agreed. The lawyers who argued for “palimony” and the laws which forbade using marital status as a consideration in a heterosexual couple as a reason not to sell or offer a mortgage, and the tendency for courts to treat cohabitation as a parallel to marriage have borne bitter fruit. (And these are only a few of the things by which our culture is committing suicide as an orderly society.)