Marriage in The Second Watch: Finding Light Before Dawn

by David John Seel, Jr., Ph.D.

Commissioned by the Marriage Initiative

Marriage is in a cultural conundrum. It is viewed today as both important and irrelevant. This creates a tension. Out of this tension emerges an opportunity.

Socially this is marriage's darkest hour. It is a widely rejected social convention by the coming generation, who are either delaying marriage or forgoing it altogether. However, it is precisely in this moment of darkness that you can see a glimmer of light, which portends to an enduring hope. It is not naive optimism to believe that we are on the threshold of a marriage renaissance. While this is not the common narrative surrounding marriage, this is the thesis of this essay.

At its darkest hour, marriage is poised for a cultural renaissance. This is not simply a historical possibility, but a feature of social reality.

The Resurrection Point

Jesus told the story of a master returning from a wedding.1 The master's return is delayed. His men are waiting by door, dressed and ready for service. Waiting at first is easy. As the evening looms longer and the delay seems interminable, the servants are put to the test. "Will you be alert and ready even in the second and third watches of the night?" Jesus asks. In the spiritual realm, the second watch is when diabolical assignments and sabotage from the enemy are set in motion. This is a time fraught with spiritual challenges and warfare. It is also a time when humanly speaking patience and enthusiasm are naturally waning. The thrill of beginning has faded, while the prospect of dawn remains elusive. It is in this kind of darkness, at this time of darkness when the true measure of our faithfulness is revealed. The point of Jesus' story was to encourage his followers to patient obedience even during the darkest hours. "That servant who knows his master's will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows." But there is something more being said here. It is at this point of deep darkness, amid maximum spiritual conflict, and the waning capabilities of faith that the tension reveals the first glimmer of light. This is the moment of readiness.

This is the resurrection point.

The resurrection point is where the reality of God's created reality and the deepest longings of our humanity meet to create a deeper spiritual awareness, a renewed spiritual openness, and the potential breakthrough of transcendence. This point of tension is not found in intellectual argument but in lived experience. As such it is costly, messy, and takes time. But this inevitable point of tension is real. Francis Schaeffer states, "Carl Gustav Jung has correctly observed that two things cut across every man's will—the external world with its structures, and those things which well up from inside himself.... Every man is in a place of tension. Man cannot make his own universe and then live in it. [To attempt to do so,] would separate him not only from the real world, but from the real self that he is."2 What is true of individuals is also true of societies. There is a dialectic: we create society and society in turn creates us. Peter Berger writes, "Society is viewed in this perspective as a dialectic between objective givenness and subjective meanings.... All social reality has an essential component of consciousness. The consciousness of everyday life is the web of meanings that allow the individual to navigate his way through the ordinary events and encounters of his life with others."3 So as we make our life choices, the twin features of reality, its objective structures, and our subjective consciousness, push back on us. The point here is that societies, too, can reach their second watch resurrection point.

The reality of marriage in contemporary society is an illustration of this sociological/spiritual pattern. We are culturally at just such a moment as seen in the social experience of marriage under the conditions of advanced modernity.

Shadows in the Cave

The tensions surrounding marriage stem from three conflicting and overlapping realities.

1. The cultural narrative surrounding marriage is uniformly negative. Marriage is being widely abandoned.

2. The human longing for belonging and relational security is increasing. The need for something like marriage is increasing.

3. The social science data indicates that the cultural narrative is wrong and that the only solution for the need for belonging and the potential of human flourishing is something like a traditional marriage.

It is certainly true that these core premises can be debated. Moreover, as in all social reality there are other variables at play in the complexity of social life. I could add a discussion about the role of feminism on marriage, which tends to frame the relationship narrowly in terms of power, i.e., patrimony, misogyny, and misandry. These were the dynamics explored in the recent Barbie movie (2023). In this debate, questions of patriarchy and hierarchies loom large. It is a debate in which persons such as Jordan Peterson are major lightening rods. 4 I prefer not to get sucked into this framing or debate. If the relational debates over marriage are framed in terms of power dynamics, then this binary culture war-like debate will continue. At the conclusion of this essay, I suggest that an alternative framing for marriage is possible that moves beyond binary hierarchies. This alternative framing points to a new way forward for marriage.

Historical and economic realities do not allow us to simply go back. We cannot return to an older Victorianism but must move forward to a renewed and reframed understanding of marriage to address our longings for belonging. This is possible and points to a new opportunity. But this opportunity sits amid the current conundrum and tensions.

Second watch darkness is an inflection point culturally for marriage. This essay will explore the inevitable interplay and tensions between

• the cultural narrative

• the human longing, and the

• social science findings.

The cultural narrative suggests marriage is finished. The human longings suggest that something like marriage is needed. And the social science findings suggest that there is something metaphysical—something grounded in reality—about the contours of a traditional marriage. If the human longing and social science data are taken together what it points to is a potential renaissance in a reframed understanding of marriage. T.S. Eliot observed that humans cannot bear too much reality.5 There comes a moment when reality pushes back, calls for a decision, cuts through the distractions and demands an answer. Marriage is at such an inflection point.

There are shadows in this darkness. There are lessons to be learned from these shadows. Like Plato's cave, these shadows point to something more, toward light, which can be seen in a greying dawn. Such is the precursor to renaissance. The word "renaissance" comes from the Old French renaissance, literally "rebirth," usually in a spiritual sense, from renastre "grow anew" (of plants), "be reborn" (Modern French renaître), from Vulgar Latin renascere, from Latin renasci "be born again, rise again, reappear, be renewed," from re- "again" (see re- + nasci "be born" (Old Latin gnasci, from PIE root gene-"give birth, beget").6 The current cultural tensions surrounding marriage are giving birth to a new relational reality. There is hope amid the darkness. Let's explore the interplay between rejection, longing, and research.

The Darkness

The darkness surrounding marriage has three features: a loss of trust, a loss of meaning, and a loss of social legitimacy. These lost beliefs have their rationale. Sociologist Brad Wilcox warns, "Our civilization is in the midst of an epochal shift, a shift away from marriage and all the fruits that follow from this most fundamental social institution: children, kin, financial stability, and innumerable opportunities to love and be loved by another."7

Loss of Trust

Nearly half of young people have experienced the breakup of their parent's marriage and have been personally wounded by divorce.

According to statistics from various sources, approximately 50% of all children in the US will witness their parents' divorce at some point during their childhoods. The rate of first marriages ending in divorce is estimated to be between 41-50%, while 43% of American children are living without their father present.8

Divorce, which once carried a severe social stigma, is now ubiquitous. In some minority settings, the unknown reality is an intact marriage, not divorce or single parenthood. While divorce is a painful psychological experience for all involved, it has lasting negative impacts on the lives of children. Their sense of relational stability is shattered. Their sources of personal identity formation are weakened. Their experience of poverty and dislocation are common. It is widely accepted today, that divorce is bad for children.

Most divorces affect younger children since 72 percent of divorces occur during the first 14 years of marriage. While the parents in those marriages often remarry and their life becomes whole again—for the children, their family is never whole again. Christmas and every other holiday will be held in two different homes. Moreover, they often spend their young lives being regularly shuttled from one home to another in a disruptive living arrangement few parents would ever except for themselves. Author Lauren Reitsema highlights the realities of those children in her book, In Their Shoes.9 Author Leila Miller addresses this reality in her book Primal Loss. Children of divorce either double-down on commitment to marriage or are haunted by rejection and abandonment. When asked whether divorce influenced their views of marriage, people told Leila Miller:

Marriage seems impossible. I desire it, but I fear it. On the other hand, my desire to avoid hurting my future children is exceptionally strong I do not want them to know the pain I have known.

Yes, it has. Until my conversion I simply did not believe marriage was sustainable. I was taught (and believed) that it was an old-fashioned institution that did not allow for people to develop into who they were supposed to be, and that it strangled their potential happiness. Overcoming that view was difficult.10

The result is a significant loss of trust in marriage among young people who see marriage as "fragile and unreliable." Today, there is less stigma in living together than in getting divorced. If divorce is an inevitability of marriage, then it is to be avoided in favor of other kinds of relational arrangements. So goes the common thinking.

Loss of Definition

Reinforcing this exploration of other kinds of relational arrangements, is the fact that the very definition of marriage has been blurred. Few agree on what marriage is or means. With the legal codification of same-sex marriages by the Supreme Court in the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, the definition of marriage has become very fluid in society. Rather than being a traditionally understood social institution grounded in the prospect of procreation, having a cosmological basis that serves the common good, marriage has become a matter of mutual consent between two individual adults losing its transcendent status and social purpose. Rod Dreher believes that "The struggle for the rights of a small sexual minority would not have succeeded if the old Christian cosmology had held: put bluntly, the gay-rights cause has succeeded precisely because the Christian cosmology has dissipated in the mind of the West."11 Today, only 20 percent of marriages are held in a church, down from 50 percent reflecting the loss of marriage being tied to the sacred. There has been a complete paradigm shift in marriage: what it is and what it means. The vertical has given way to the horizontal, the social to the individual, the cosmological to consent, the fixed to the fluid, the dyad to the poly.

We live atop shifting sands, at least as far as faith is concerned. Part of the change is that fewer Americans are Christians. Churches nowadays do not usually have bells, especially churches that meet in storefronts, rented school cafeterias or aluminumsided monstrosities in far-flung suburbs. And the percentage of weddings that take place in churches has plummeted, dropping by almost half in less than a decade.12

Marriage is no longer understood as something that is grounded in reality; having a cosmic design; and a sacred purpose. Today it is framed as an individual choice based on mutual consent. As such it is socially optional, psychologically individualistic, and morally without any binding address. Marriage is now whatever you make it to be as shaped by individual consent of subjective feelings. Its social basis is now built on a very ephemeral foundation.

Under these terms, it is not surprising that there is a growing interest in polyamory: the practice of having consensual romantic or sexual relationships with multiple people, known as "metamours." It is the natural outcome of a no-fault divorce society that institutionalized serial monogamy. It is the college "hook up culture" now geared up for working professional adults. While it is being widely discussed in the popular media, it is still practiced by far fewer people, probably less than four percent. But as Shadi Hamid warns in The Washington Post, "Polyamory might never reach genuine popularity, but it doesn't need to be popular to challenge who we are and what we believe about love."13 People who are in traditional marriages are now wondering whether they are behind the times, trapped in an anachronism. Davia Sills writes, "I often see monogamous couples who feel embarrassed by their relationship model. They worry that choosing to be a closed dyad means that they aren't sex-positive enough, that they're enmeshed in detrimental ways, or that they're simply not as 'woke' as their poly peers."14 Under these cultural conditions, it is reasonable to assume that marriage is having an identity crisis.

Loss of Legitimacy

As such marriage is being abandoned. It is no longer a personal necessity or a preferred life phase. It is no longer seen as a social good. It is a tarnished brand, with decreasing social capital, and evaporating cultural legitimacy. As we have seen, for some marriage is a social embarrassment. Brad Wilcox reports that "only 32 percent of young adults ages eighteen through forty think that marriage is essential to living a fulfilling life, compared to 64 percent who think education and 75 percent who think making a good living is crucial to fulfillment.15 Women don't need to be on the marriage track and men have largely abandoned two major life milestones: marriage and family. Sociologist Ryan Burge found "low income, college educated men that are opting out of getting married and starting a family.... Men are less likely to take the traditional steps into adulthood than women—they don't get married at nearly the same rate and they shirk parenthood, as well."16

These changes in attitudes have not only increased the personal and psychological tensions for young adults, but they are also creating deep societal tensions. Marriage has become a class phenomenon. Charles Murray in his book Coming Apart writes, "Over the last half century, marriage has become the fault line dividing American classes."17 Among the poor, divorce is not the biggest problem that children face. The problem is never-married mothers. "Higher-income neighborhoods are dominated by two-parent families—with about 80 percent of the families with children in these communities headed by such couples. Lower-income neighborhoods, by contrast, are places where almost 50 percent of families are headed by single parents."18 Marriage has become a class dichotomy and a source of societal tension. Most unmarried American men and women report that they would prefer to marry. Demographics suggest that an increasing number will not. This fosters resentment and social unrest. This is seen in the rise of a strident masculine atavistic narrative, fueled by incel resentment, and violent neo-pagan nihilism.19 Social divisions around something as deeply felt as belonging and marriage, make the darkness surrounding marriage something more than an individual experience. These trends have put social cohesion itself in the crosshairs.

Collectively, this is a bad time for marriage. It isn't trusted, because experience has taught us that the institution of marriage is the source of relational pain and psychological woundedness. Its very definition is in question and is hotly contested. It's a political football, widely rejected, especially by men. And what is left in the experience of marriage is further eroding social cohesion through a functional class warfare.

Marriage has historically been considered the foundational institution of society. It has been said, as goes marriage so goes civilization. If this analysis is correct, then this narrative is quite a bleak picture for civilization. It should be felt to be so... because it is. This is marriage in the second watch. However dark the second watch, it comes with the glimmer of dawn. The darkness portends a rebound moment, the push back of personhood and social reality.

The story does not end here.

You Want It Darker

Spiritually oriented musicians and existentialist poets are among those who know that you sometimes must go deeper into the darkness to find the light. Sometimes this is a pattern that God orchestrates. The late Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was such a person. His final solo album, "You Want It Darker," was released on his 82nd birthday, just weeks before his passing. Cohen's raspy voice and deep melancholy resonate with themes of surrender, sacrifice, and search for redemption. The opening stanza of the title track of "You Want It Darker" is as follows:

If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game

If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame

If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame

You want it darker

We kill the flame

Magnified, sanctified

Be the holy name

Vilified, crucified

In the human frame

A million candles burning

For the help that never came

You want it darker

Hineni, hineni

I'm ready, my Lord 20

Here is a song filled with pain and doubt, leaning into the darkness to respond "Hineni, hineni, I'm ready, my Lord." At a rational level these lyrics make no sense. At the existential level, this is how life commonly works. Light is found in the deepest darkness.

Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin explains, "'Hineni' is a response of sacred and undiluted presence, a response in which the self sheds all reservations, which expands the boundaries of the self, indicating a readiness to receive and respond to whatever experience is about to unfold. It is both brave and humble."21 It is in this deeper darkness and existential ambiguity that Cohen finds his readiness to respond, "Here I am." His doubts, like those of Job, do not lead to rational answers but to humble submission—worship in the key of "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." This is a universal spiritual pattern; a pattern I first learned at Swiss L'Abri from Francis Schaeffer.

When I was there in the mid-seventies, seeking students from all over Europe, Asia, Canada, and the United States made it a bucket-list destination to ask life's deepest questions. Lesbians, Marxist, Manson family members, Buddhist, and soldiers of fortune were among those in my home while I was there. The questions were intense and emotions often raw. More than once did plates get thrown and profanities uttered while the dishes were being done. The discussions were substantive and thoughtful, but the source of their force was not intellectual but existential. The rub was not in the argument, but in the living.

At times there would be a dishonest interloper who would ask questions without any personal interest or existential need to find answers. Francis Schaeffer had no patience for such pseudo-interlocutors. To them he would ask them to leave L'Abri and go live like hell for six months and then come back and report on how well that had worked out for them. His aim was to push them to the logic of their own presuppositions. In pushing them to a greater consistency, he was seeking to increase the existential tension in their lives. To push them to a hineni moment. He writes,

It is impossible for any non-Christian individual or group to be consistent to their system in logic or in practice. Thus, when you face twentieth-century man, whether he is brilliant or an ordinary man of the street, a man of the university or the docks, you are facing a man in tension; and it is this tension which works on your behalf as you speak to him.... This is not just an intellectual concept of tension; it is when is wrapped up in what he is as a man.... The person before you is not in a vacuum. He knows something of the external world, and he knows something of himself.... The individual will feel this tension in different ways—with some it will be beauty, with some it will be significance, with some it will be rationality, with some it will be the fear of non-being.... Therefore, the first consideration is to find the place where his tension exists. 22

There are three basic longings which are the source of our existential tension: significance, security, and story. We seek for meaning or personal significance—what is the reason for my life? We seek for belonging and security—who do I have to be to be loved? We seek for purpose—what larger story is my life a part? What constitutes the "good life"? Collectively these longings stir in us a sense that there must be something more to life. They make us aware of both a contraction and a call. They challenge the present by making us less than satisfied. They challenge the future by calling us to a spiritual exploration, what in older times was called a pilgrimage. They upset the status quo through restlessness. Philosopher Christopher Yates suggests that there is a distinction between longings and desires. Desires turn us inward. Longings turn us outward. He writes,

Desire is the particularizing and possessive agenda of self-creation—the self in the mode of a performance aesthetic. Longing is the self's yearning to be grounded in something irreducible to the object in front of it or the designs within it—the self in the mode of a storied aesthetic in which it is not the primary author and satisfaction is not its ultimate endgame. 23

Longings call us to a spiritual search. Desire calls us to a commodified purchase. In this way, "Desire has become longing's counterfeit." This essay is exploring the longing to belong and the ways it is being explored in contemporary society. Marriage has historically been one of the ways this longing is met. This is the psychological backstory of every Hallmark and Lifetime movie.

Not all these longings will hit us with the same force at the same time in our lives. But it is commonly the case that the young adult years, between 20 and 30, are a time when these longings tend to push their way relentlessly into our consciousness and life's circumstances demanding a personal choice regarding them. It is during these years, when you have left the insulation and protection of college life and the consistent embrace of college friends that you find yourself alone trying to navigate the reality questions of vocation, relationships, and worldview. Few young people are equipped to navigate these turbulent waters in their current cultural form. The gig economy offers little financial stability. School debt drags as a financial sea anchor. The ambiguity of gender adds confusion. The hook-up culture adds danger in a #metoo world. The prospect of cancel culture adds caution, so that the longings are often bottled up and buried. This felt anxiety is more than psychological, its metaphysical—the sense of being lost and alone in a world without a horizon, a sea without a shore. There is a logic to the suicides that plagues this generation—particularly among social media influencers.

Many take the easy course and follow the culturally given narrative that celebrates perpetual distraction even when it doesn't seem to be working to counter existential despair. Avoid contemplation at all costs, numb the pain, because the contractions in life will eventually be undeniable and intolerable. Inevitably, the tensions will become articulate in our lives. "Do you want it darker?" Cohen asks, "Then kill the flame."

You try to live like hell for six months and find hell. If not hell, then confusion, heartache, and loneliness. There may even come a point when suicide seems like a reasonable choice under these terms. This existential experience of hell can also become the source of a new awareness, a turning point, a second watch resurrection epiphany, a hineni moment.

These longings are real and cannot be bottled up forever. In time, they will out. They will not stay hidden long. Few things metastasize with more pain than loneliness and the loss of belonging. Ralph Waldo Emerson is attributed to have said, "The gods we worship write their names on our faces; be sure of that. And a man will worship something—have no doubt about that, either. He may think that his tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of his heart—but it will be found out. That which dominates will determine his life and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming." These longings, as they are individually expressed, are in the life of the individual and society a potential resurrection point. It is my cultural assessment that on the issue of belonging, as reflected around the issue of marriage, historical circumstances are pushing society to this point.

The Tension: Covid + Social Media

Two realities have collided to make this happen: Covid-19 and social media. In the hyper-connected world of social media, we long for connection and perhaps are even addicted to the ersatz experience of online connection. We need our X and Facebook likes dopamine fix. When virtual connection was augmented by real presence the contradiction was not as existentially apparent. But then the pandemic of Covid hit. Virtual presence only made the loss of actual presence more acute. Hyper-loneliness prevailed—and this loneliness has continued even in a post-pandemic world. The new normal kept the shadow of Covid.

Young people were left with the addiction of connection, the reduction to virtual connection, and a globally enforced social isolation. This experience was historically unprecedented. Babies die from the lack of physical touch. So too did many adults under these abnormally isolating global conditions.

We talk openly about the loss of learning that occurred among young people when zoom replaced the classroom and masks covered facial expressions. We talk less about what this same experience of isolation did to our longings for belonging, to the dynamics of relationship, and to our commitment to physical presence. Covid heightened the tensions of belonging creating a new health crisis, the crisis of loneliness. In 2023, the United States Surgeon General released a report "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation."24 What was an existential personal reality morphed into a societal crisis. This is especially apparent in young men—who ironically isolated even further.

The lack of social connection poses a significant risk for individual health and longevity. Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29% respectively. More broadly, lacking social connection can increase the risk for premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. In addition, poor or insufficient social connection is associated with increased risk of disease, including a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke. Furthermore, it is associated with increased risk for anxiety, depression, and dementia. Additionally, the lack of social connection may increase susceptibility to viruses and respiratory illness. 25

Covid created physical isolation between people at a time when the addiction, expectation, and need for personal connection is at an all-time high. The Surgeon General's Report even went so far as to define belonging as a fundamental human need on par with water, air, and food: "A fundamental human need—the feeling of deep connection with social groups, physical places, and individual and collective experiences." In the social reality of supply and demand in a post-Covid world, finding new ways to express belonging is in high demand. Covid made the longing for belonging a national crisis, just as thousands of Covid patients lay dying gasping for air, even more average people were left gasping for belonging. More than ever, we are aware that our intrinsic sociality is in our bones and is essential for any sense of human flourishing. Covid pushed us to a belonging breaking point. The irony is that we were promised "a new normal," and the new normal never came. Instead, we were changed by the pandemic and are now more lost in terms of relational connection than ever before. The isolation restrictions have been removed, yet the longing remains, and the relational confusion persists. This is where we are culturally—smack in the middle of the darkness of the second watch. Do you want it darker?

However bad things might seem—and they are bad—this darkness also suggests that we are that much closer to a societal rebound moment. The premise of this essay is that Jung's two realities—the created reality and our human longings—push back against us creating existential tension when we deviate too far from what supports human flourishing. I have suggested that the crisis of marriage is approaching a rebound moment where society begins to come to its senses. Even in the darkness of the second and third watch, we can begin to see a greying sky on the horizon.

The Greying Sky

There is evidence that we are at a cultural rebound moment. This is not simply a sociological pendulum swing with some kind of deterministic inevitability. There is nothing inevitable about this moment. It is instead a moment of decision, a moment fraught with existential possibility. The Greeks might call this a kairos moment. In the New Testament, kairos means "the appointed time in the purpose of God," the time when God acts (Mark 1:15). When coupled with the admonition of the second watch, this points to the moment of greatest testing and greatest faithfulness. What is also true from the second watch passage is that the exact time of the master's return is unknown. Historically, changes in social direction are vaguely perceptible, but are slow in their ultimate realization.

What is the evidence that the tide is turning? How can we speak of a potential renaissance in marriage? This is a question asked recently by Mariya Manzhos in the Boston-based The Deseret News, "Are We on the Verge of a 'Marriage Renaissance'?" 26 While a seemingly countercultural argument, there are four factors that point to this shift. First is the greater awareness of our intrinsic sociality. Second, is the mounting data from the social sciences. Third, is an awareness that marriage points to a larger story. And fourth, is the confidence that this does not mean going back but forward to a new kind of future. In her book On Marriage, British literature professor Devorah Baum observes, "Marriage is a kind of approach to life—it has to do with saying 'yes' to things, taking risks, leaps of faith, and the idea of conjugating yourself to others in various ways. I think it's an attitude, a way of doing life that understands one's need for others that is prepared to be not independent, but dependent—to let one's dependence be not something to deny, but to embrace." 27 This is not the kind of tone about marriage that we expect from academics. Something is changing.

The Personhood of Belonging

If there was ever any doubt, Covid reinforced for everyone our intrinsic sociality. We are born with the need for people and relationships. For 300 years we have played out the premises of the Enlightenment with its latent individualism. At its extremes, expressive individualism society has further atomized society to the contours of the individual subjective self. Historian Carl Truman writes, "Modern American society is fragmenting because the imagined communities to which people choose to belong lack any shared narrative."28 While this may be true in the world of ideas, it has proved untenable in actual living. Covid served to remind people existentially of their need for other people. State enforced isolation proved to be both unsettling and untenable. We were reminded of the social basis of our personhood. We must build our world with others if we are to know ourselves. Sociologist Peter Berger explains,

The 'unfinished' character of the human organism at birth is closely related to the relatively unspecialized character of its instinctual structure.... Man's instinctual structure at birth is both underspecialized and undirected toward a species-specific environment.... Man must make a world for himself. The world-building activity of man, therefore, is not a biologically extraneous phenomenon, but the direct consequence of man's biological constitution.... In other words, man not only produces a world, but he also produces himself. More precisely, he produces himself in a world. 29

Our basic constitution as persons demands other people. Our intrinsic sociality is seen when we are very young and very old. We are dependent beings. Berger's point is that our very identity is dependent on the social interaction with others: "the world-building activity of man is always and inevitably a collective enterprise."30 "To belong" is to be social, not as an ideological option, but as a constitutional necessity. We are social beings, relationally dependent, in need of touch, and not happily isolated. This we learned in spades from the unique experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. While is it not fully realized or understood, we are moving into a post-Enlightenment world, where physical connection beyond ideological individualism is seen as a necessity.

Consider this as a thought experiment. If we were to have another global pandemic, and it is almost inevitable that this will happen, do you believe that people will accept a state-mandated human isolation again? From what we've learned and experienced from Covid, this is highly unlikely. The need to belong is now seen as a recognized right like air, water, and food. Historically, marriage has been the main social expression of human belonging. There will certainly be alternatives to traditional marriage, but this much is certain the need to belong is now considered a high social value. We've experienced the alternative and it did not work. Our personhood has pushed back reminding us of our need to belong.

The Social Science Data

Social reality is also pushing back. In the past decades social science research has shifted its orientation from the study of pathologies to the study of health and flourishing. Whether the University of Pennsylvania's positive psychology or Harvard University's study on human flourishing, there has been a host of studies on the social and psychological benefits of marriage. The data all points in the same direction: marriage is the key to human and societal flourishing.

Social science tells us that your marital status—whether you are married or not—is a crucial predictor of a whole host of important economic, emotional, and health outcomes for men and women throughout their adult lives. The odds that men and women are "very happy" with their lives are 151 percent higher for those who are married, compared to those who are unmarried, according to the General Social Survey.31

Consistent social science research shows, despite the public narrative about marriage, that marriage is a much higher predictor of happiness than work and money. Because it addresses our constitutional need for sociality and belongingness, this is hardly surprising. Harvard's Tyler VanderWeele concludes, "The effects of marriage on health, happiness, and life satisfaction, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close social relationships, and financial stability are profound."32

The tension here is not in the data, but in the public narrative. It is not even in the example of social elites as they consistently have intact marriages. The tension is in the stories they tell about marriage. Wilcox advises, "Listen not to what our elites say about marriage, family, and gender. Instead of 'Do as they say, not as they do,' it's 'Do what they're doing, but ignore what they say."33 The phenomenological narrative differs from the ideological one. The ideology lies. Lived life does not. The story of lived life tells a consistent story that points to marriage and beyond marriage itself.

A Signal of Transcendence

As Christopher Yates indicated, longing points beyond itself. It calls us to a larger story. In his words, it puts the self "in the mode of a storied aesthetic in which it is not the primary author and satisfaction is not its ultimate endgame." This is what marriage teaches. The purpose of marriage is not marriage. The purpose of marriage is to teach us that love is at the root of all reality. Bestselling author Christopher West writes, "The ultimate purpose of the sexual difference and the call to union is to signify the difference and call to union of the Creator and the creature."34 Namely, God wants to marry us. The purpose of marriage is to point to this deeper and enduring reality of belongingness. Marriage is an icon of ultimate spiritual union. Consequently, there is no marriage in heaven for in heaven the purpose of marriage is revealed. The signal of transcendence finds its spiritual signifier. Here the story finds its marital conclusion in a cosmic wedding. It is not uncommon even among nonbelievers for marriage and sexuality to have a sacred, spiritual, and transcendent dimension. It was designed to call forth these sensibilities, to embed itself in a larger sacred story. Our bodies tell a story, sexuality points to the stars, and marriage points to union with God. You cannot ramp up longing without also ramping up its iconographic beacon. Guinness writes, "We somehow know we are made of more, and we are made for more, so again and again we are restless because we long for something more. Life and the universe therefore refuse to remain silent, and they trigger a thousand questions in us."35 Marriage is a signal of transcendence, a spiritual burning bush. Like Moses, it calls us to account. "Hineni?"

Beyond Traditionalism

This call is not to go back, but to go forward. We cannot go back to a failed and abandoned Victorianism, to a 1950s American suburban traditionalism. Neither Victorianism nor 1950s traditionalism were that great. We need a reframed marriage for the twenty-first century.

Those who attempt to do so as in the Trad Wife and Stay-at-Home Girlfriend social trend strike one as simply another social media fashion statement of expressive individualism. This is a form of play-acting traditionalism without having any of its necessary convictions. Yet even the seeming spoof on traditionalism is a backhanded acknowledgement that we need something like it going forward but can't exactly go back to the Edwardian world of Downton Abbey or Victorianism of Jane Austen.

Our moment calls for something new, something that is both modern and old, contemporary, and traditional, secular and sacred. This awareness calls for more than a reactive moralism, a disembodied Gnosticism, or politicized traditionalism. It must take into consideration the changing nature of work, the significance of feminism, the crisis of masculinity, and the rise of anti-natalism. Unpacking what this might mean fully is beyond the scope of this essay, but I will provide here a suggestive illustration in how this conversation might go forward in the future.

This much is clear, the future approaches to marriage must take into consideration the economic and technological changes in the workplace, the growing complexities and invasiveness of reproductive medicine, the confusion over gender and identity, and the rampant anti-natalism. Christian responses must be more than Puritan moralism that dictates prohibitions without a meaningful metaphysical rationale. 36 Christian responses must sufficiently celebrate embodiment and sexuality. 37 And finally, Christian responses must go beyond culture war battles over abortion and the like. Moralism, Gnosticism, and politicization are effective nonstarters in a new way forward. So too are affirmations of 1950s stereotypical roles for husbands and wives. We need instead a theologically deeper and sociologically nuanced approach to marriage. At the outset, we must reframe marriage cosmologically and reframe sexuality within that larger purpose. There is much work to be done here. My point is that this involves far more than a superficial going back in a manner that does not take into consideration the changes facing women, men, children, and work.

In many discussions about marriage the contrasting positions are between a family-first marriage and a career-first marriage. The tensions between them are about what constitutes the good life with the changing character of work and the changing technology of procreation looming as contributing factors in the analysis. Posited in this binary manner, these discussions are easily politicized between conservative and progressive values. This is unfortunate.

There are certainly issues regarding the changing nature of work that impact this discussion with the rise of the gig economy and the acceptance of post-pandemic hybrid work environments.38 Technology is enabling, AI is perhaps demanding, a work environment that allows for a work reality not unlike the domestic economic system that existed prior to the rise of industrialism in the 19th century. The decline of the domestic system was a consequence of the industrial revolution. Growth in mass markets, combined with the development of textile machines, gave dominance to factory production. This is no longer the case in many fields and has changed the nature of work, a change which was highlighted by the pandemic. This is now going to change the way work and family balance is maintained in the future. A whole new range of possibilities have emerged for men and women as they contemplate balancing marriage and vocation.

The same is true for reproductive technologies. The relationship between marriage and contraception is largely a taken-for-granted acceptance since the 1930s. There are now ethical questions that are forcing a reassessment of this uncritical acceptance both in terms of what it means for your understanding of marriage as well as the good of society. Whatever form a new understanding of marriage has in the twenty-first century, it must consider both the changing economic dynamics in society as well as the expansion of reproductive technologies. Designer babies through gene-editing technologies coupled with transhumanism mean that we can no longer accept these technologies without careful reflection. Under these conditions, a naive return to Victorianism is clearly impossible. A new understanding of marriage will have to be developed.

To avoid the latent idolatries of the family-first marriage and the career-first marriage, I propose consideration of a cause-first marriage. 39 Here the aim would be to integrate your sense of personhood and identity with shared vocational calling and a collective family commitment. The emphasis here is "relational connectivity" not relational satisfaction. 40 Researchers suggest that "Relational connectivity focuses on indicators of the strength of a couple's relationship, rather than simply an individual's sense of personal satisfaction from the relationship." This new analysis explicitly challenges the assumptions of expressive individualism—and by extension the soulmate model of marriage. "These new models emphasize how a shared history and the couple's identity make a marriage relationship an entity itself." Marriage here is not about itself but about something else that is shared together by the couple. The aim is to bridge the dualisms that pull on an individual life between the public and private, secular and sacred, and work and family. The aim is an integrated holism. These considerations should shape how you consider the person you marry. Love and chemistry are less a factor than identity and calling. "Flourishing marriages are true partnerships in which spouses are devoted to creating a shared life together that is deeper than the emotional payoff of the marriage. This view of marriage gives us more than feelings of happiness; it helps make our lives rich and meaningful."41 Consider blending these two observations one by Parker Palmer on calling and the other by Richard Foster on the choice of a marriage partner.

Parker Palmer: Vocation does not come from a voice 'out there' calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice 'in here' calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God. It is a strange gift, this birthright of self. Accepting it turns out to be even more demanding than attempting to become someone else! I have sometimes responded to that demand by ignoring the gift, or hiding it, or fleeing from it, or squandering it....42

Richard Foster: The basis for getting married that conforms to the way of Christ is a regard for the wellbeing of others and ourselves and a regard for the advancement of the kingdom of God upon the earth…. Christian marriage is far more than a private undertaking or a way to personal fulfillment. Christians contemplating marriage must consider the larger question of vocation and calling, the good of others, and the wellbeing of the community of faith, and most of all, how their marriage would advance or hinder the work of the kingdom of God. 43

If our marriage is understood as a partnership in kingdom purposes, a cause larger than the marriage, then the marriage serves something larger, and is fueled by spiritual resources outside of itself. God's collective work through the marriage is an externalization of the identity of the husband and wife together and the cause context of the family. The marriage is a partnership in purpose which in turn defines the family. Marriage was once defined in political terms or later in economic terms. Of late marriage has been defined based on emotion, the feelings of being in love, or the prospect of finding one's soulmate. This is a failed strategy. Marriages following a soulmate model are twice as likely to divorce as other approaches. 44 Feelings are an inadequate basis for marriage.

Marriages based on a shared cause, which is in turn an externalization of the core identity of both the husband and the wife, are built on far stronger stuff. How else do you understand the example of Hudson Taylor who left a wife and two children buried in China or Alexandre Solzhenitsyn who wrote of the danger his family faced while he was writing about the Gulag. His commitment to tell the story of the millions who were killed in the Soviet gulags bordered on the fanatical. He overcame imprisonment, cancer, and the ever-present threat of the KGB. He writes, "I could have enjoyed myself so much, breathing the fresh air, resting, stretching my cramped limbs, but my duty permitted no such self-indulgence. They are dead. You are alive. Do your duty. The world must know all about it. 45

Writing the Gulag was a family enterprise, as the entire family was in constant risk of torture, imprisonment, or death. He writes, "They could have taken my children hostage—posing as 'gangsters,' of course. They did not know that we had thought of this and made the superhuman decision: our children were no dearer to us than the memory of the millions done to death, and nothing could make us stop that book."46 The key here is his use of the word "we."

We don't have these kinds of marriages or these kinds of families today where a collective kingdom mission is the defining identity of all who belong. Perhaps the closest we get is the British Royal family. Here too modernity is playing havoc with the needed traditional marital mores.

Ideally, the love between spouses is colored by an even larger passion—a kingdom passion fueled by kingdom resources. These are the kinds of marriages that we need, the kind of marriages that will endure amid the deathwork dynamics of the twentieth-first century. This is a far cry from an anemic 1950s quasi-Victorian marriage. This is a marriage of a different caliber, of tougher stuff, and not for the faint hearted or those used to follow the crowd.

If the darkness of our moment calls forth marriages of this kind, then the future generations will be in far better stead than the acceptance of "personal peace and affluence" that marks the idolatry of family in contemporary religious circles. 47 The point of marriage is not love or the family, but a shared kingdom influence catalyzed and galvanized by the combination of personal callings invested as husband and wife and experienced as family.

Collectively, this portends to a potential shift. We have a renewed priority for belonging, new social science data celebrating marriage, a new story that emerges from our longing, and new options toward a reframed experience of a cause-oriented, identity-informed marriage. While there are still strong headwinds against marriage, you can sense that the tide is turning, the darkness is greying. Society is now pregnant with the potential for a renaissance in marriage. We may have well reached the cultural rebound moment. While only time will tell, there are clear signs now on the horizon.

The Sunrise

This is not the first time that marriage has been cast into the second watch darkness. So, it was in the early days of the church in the Roman Empire. Sexuality and marriage in the Roman world were debauched even by contemporary standards. It was a world where violence, lust, and the inhumane treatment of people, particularly women and young boys, was common. Against this cultural reality, the admonitions of Paul in the New Testament were seen as light, liberation, and justice. This is what Professor Sarah Ruden in Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time argues. She writes, "Christianity offered anyone, no matter how poor and powerless, an alternative inheritance—another kind of home, a new way to belong. In this light, Paul's message is strongly positive.... No wonder Christianity grew like mad."48 When the culture was at its darkest, Christianity with its affirmation of personhood, sexual boundaries, and traditional marriage was a welcome light in the darkness. We are at such an inflection point once again.

How will we respond to this inflection point?

More than anything we need courage to stand against the ideological narrative that is anti-marriage. This narrative is both untrue and inhumane. Instead, we need to listen to our own heart's longings and to reality's reasons based in social science. Scientist can tell us with 90 percent accuracy the behaviors that ensure marital success. 49 The research is not all doom and gloom. In fact, it is quite the opposite—human flourishing, a stable sense of belonging, and a deep sense of happiness are achievable for all. This is a message needing to be told.

The cultural changes envisioned here under the concept of "renaissance" are not something that happens instantly. These dynamics may take a decade or two to unfold. But it is not too early to notice the greying skies on the horizon. Moreover, it does not mean to suggest that in the short-term things could get worse. Postmodernism + expressive individualism + artificial intelligence + transhumanism truly could make things worse. Everything is not fine. So, the prospect of a marriage renaissance as in Jesus's call to his disciples is a call to further alertness, further resilience, further obedience despite the darkness. Nonetheless, there are glimmers of hope. Today Isabel Brown a Gen Z social influencer released her book The End of the Alphabet: How Gen Z Can Save America. "She fervently believes that Gen Z has the power, the potential, and the opportunity to define the cultural direction of America. The End of the Alphabet is a rallying cry for Gen Z to embrace traditional values in a new-age way and step up to make our voices heard."50 There are counter voices emerging among the coming generation that counter the elite false narrative. Earlier this month, Suzanne Venker published How to Build a Better Life: A New Roadmap for Women Who Want to Prioritize Love and Family. 51 These are book written in a different key. There is a trickle in search of relational authenticity. You can sense that the tide is turning.

Now is the time to create a new reframed and robust understanding of marriage based on the opportunities of a hybrid economy, the desire to make the world a better place, and the consistent lessons from the social sciences on what behaviors contributes to a lasting marriage and a deep sense of belonging. The old reductionistic binaries of family-first or career-first marriages no longer apply. There are new opportunities before us. More and more people are beginning to sense these possibilities. What is now a trickle, can soon become a torrent. What is now a dim grey sky on the horizon can become a brilliant sunrise. A new day is dawning out of the darkness of the second watch for marriage. We are on the cusp of a marriage renaissance. It is this new narrative that must be told far and wide. Now more than ever is a time for resilience.

1 Luke 12:35-48.

2 Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Hodder and Stoughton, 1968), p. 122.

3 Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (Vintage, 1974), p. 12.

4 Nellie Bowles, "Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy," The New York Times, May 18, 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html/.

5 Os Guinness, Signals of Transcendence (InterVarsity, 2024), p. 9.

6 https://www.etymonline.com/word/Renaissance/.

7 Brad Wilcox, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization (Broadside Books, 2024), p. 9.

8 https://gitnux.org/divorced-parents-statistics/.

9 Lauren Reitsema, In Their Shoes: Helping Parents Better Understand and Connect with Children of Divorce (Bethany House, 2019).

10 Leila Miller, Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak (LCB Publishing, 2017), p. 110, 121.

11 Rod Dreher, "Sex After Christianity," American Conservative, April 11, 2013: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/sex-after-christianity/.

12 Jacob Lupifer, "Fewer Couples Are Marrying in Church. Does It Matter?" Religious News Service, June 7, 2018: https://religionnews.com/2018/06/07/fewer-couples-are-marrying-in-churches-does-is-matter/.

13 Shadi Hamid, "Is Polyamory the Future?" The Washington Post, February 14, 2024: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/14/polyamory-trend-conversation-love/. See also Rebecca Jennings, "Romantic Norms are in Flux. No Wonder Everyone's Obsessed with Polyamory," Vox, February 21, 2024; and Elisabeth Sheff, "Why Many Young People See Polyamory as a Reasonable Strategy," Psychology Today, December 28, 2022: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the- polyamorists-next-door/202212/polyamory-as-an-adaptive-strategy-in-an-unstable-world/.

14 Stephani Goerlich, "The Scandal of Monogamy," Psychology Today, March 22, 2021: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/bound-together/202103/the-scandal-monogamy/.

15 Wilcox, p. 2.

16 Ryan Burge, "Men Have Abandoned Marriage and Parenthood," February 19, 2024: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/men-have-abandoned-marriage-and-parenthood/.

17 Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (Crown Forum, 2013), p. 153.

18 Wilcox, p. 22.

19 See Tara Isabella Burton, "Twilight of the Chads," Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World (PublicAffairs, 2020).

20 Leonard Cohen, "You Want It Darker," https://genius.com/Leonard-cohen-you-want-it-darker-lyrics/.

21 Nina Beth Cardin, "The Deepest Meanings of Hineni," 929: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/318568?lang=bi/.

22 Schaeffer, p. 122, 123, 124, 125.

23 Christopher Yates, "The Loss of Longing in the Age of Curated Reality: Desire Has Become Longing's Counterfeit," The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2019: https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/reality-and-its-alternatives/articles/the-loss-of-longing-in-the-age-of-curated-reality/.

24 https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf/.

25 "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation 2023: The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf/, p. 8.

26 Mariya Manzhos, "Are We on the Verge of a 'Marriage Renaissance'?" The Deseret News, February 25, 2024: https://www.deseret.com/2024/2/25/24079984/marriage-renaissance-devorah-baum-brad- wilcox/.

27 Devorah Baum, On Marriage (Yale University Press, 2023).

28 Carl Truman, Strange New World (Crossway, 2022), p. 125.

29 Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Anchor, 1990), p. 5-6.

30 Ibid., p. 7.

31 Wilcox, p. 3.

32 Ibid., p. 54.

33 Ibid., p. 225.

34 Christopher West, Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing (Image, 2012), p. 92.

35 Guinness, p. 13.

36 West, Fill These Hearts.

37 Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality (Baker Books, 2018); Matthew Lee Anderson, Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to Faith (Bethany House, 2011); Christopher West, Our Bodies Tell God's Story: Discovering the Divine Plan for Love, Sex, and Gender (Brazos Press, 2020).

38 Jessica Grose, "Does Everyone Want to be on the 'Mommy Track'?" The New York Times, March 16, 2024: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/16/opinion/remote-work-mommy-track.html/.

39 Within Christian circles this might be better described as a "kingdom-first" marriage. That is a marriage for and dependent on the resources of the kingdom of heaven (Mark 2:15).

40 Adam M. Galovan, Jason S. Carroll, and David G. Schramm, "Flourishing Marriages are Made, Not Found," Institute of Family Studies, February 21, 2024: https://ifstudies.org/blog/flourishing-marriages-are-made-not-found/.

41 Ibid.

42 Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Josey-Bass, 1999), p. 22.

43 Foster, Richard. The Challenge of the Disciplined Life: Christian Reflections on Money, Sex, and Power (HarperOne, 1989), p. 134.

44 Wilcox, p. 84.

45 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf (HarperCollins 1980), p. 218.

46 Ibid., p. 360.

47 Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Crossway, 2022).

48 Sarah Ruden, Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time (Image Books, 2010), p. 37.

49 Wilcox, p. 17.

50 Isabel Brown, The End of the Alphabet: How Gen Z Can Save America (Center Street, 2024): https://www.amazon.com/End-Alphabet-How-Save-America/.

51 Suzanne Venker, How to Build a Better Life: A New Roadmap for Women Who Want to Prioritize Love and Family (Post Hill Press, 2024).