The Conservative Christian world has been in alarm ever since the New York Times and The Atlantic ran their respective stories that detailed the hook-up culture on campus. Inevitably, Christians have received a great deal of criticism coming from many who argue that such changes are no big deal. Kids after all, will be kids.
However, many have argued that the Christian reaction is misplaced because the hook-up culture simply does not exist. Articles in Slate and The Atlantic have argued that, contrary to popular belief, the world is not going to hell in a hand basket and the sexual habits of young people today are no different than those of previous generations.
What is most surprising however is that some Christians seem to accept these numerical arguments as the final say on what does and does not constitute a culture. Jonathan Merritt, relying on a study by the American Sociological Association, recently blogged on the “Myth” of the hook-up culture and claimed “today’s young people are having no more sex than did their parents and they aren’t having sex with more partners, either.”
Even our traditionalist friends at First Things have reported on studies that claim the hook-up culture is exaggerated, and similarly the good folks at The Imaginative Conservative published a dialogue where one of the participants expressed qualified skepticism and claimed that the seeming prevalence of the hook-up culture may be attributed to the fact that “Undergraduates enjoy shocking their elders, and they also enjoy representing themselves as mature and streetwise.”
Some great arguments have been made that there is still cause for concern. A blogger at Patheos pointed out that even if sex amongst young people remains statistically the same it does not follow that it is qualitatively the same. The opposing view in the TIC dialogue also made an argument that holds regardless of statistics by saying “This is not the world of Jane Austen, whose amusing and elegant satires of relations between the sexes presupposed a standard of not just civility, but an abiding sense of the sacredness of sex. There is no standard here.”
The question the numerical arguments fail to answer, and one that the two previous points hint at, is what exactly does it take to make a culture? We know what hook-ups are, and we have plenty of statistics about how frequently they occur, but it is surprising that in a discussion about the hook-up culture so much attention is paid to hook-ups and so little attention is paid to culture.
Culture, T.S. Eliot said, “may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.” Understood in its proper sense, culture is an environment that is conducive to human flourishing. For the Christian it is then obvious that the very term “hook-up culture” is oxymoronic as the prevalence of such acts is a definite check on the potential flourishing for which we were created. The institutionalization and reverence for hook-up life can only properly be described as an anti-culture.
This leads us to another important point. The thrust of the “hook-up culture is a myth” argument is based on numbers. They argue that since there is hardly a majority of young people having hook-ups there cannot be a corresponding hook-up culture. The establishment of a culture, or anti-culture, however, does not require a majority. For instance, an aristocratic culture is not a culture where the majority of people are aristocrats. Aristocracy by its very nature is a minority in society, and often a small one. The same is also true when one speaks of an Agrarian culture, which is not necessarily a culture where the majority of people are farmers. In order for such a culture to exist it still requires doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, cities, and certain forms of industry. Indeed, in Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, Eliot said, “It is part of my thesis that the culture of the individual is dependent on the culture of a group or class.”
Culture requires only two things to be established. The first is institutionalization, and the second is widespread reverence or respect of the thing being institutionalized. Aristocratic culture exists only so long as the non-aristocrats continue to respect the aristocrats and what they stand for. Agrarian culture exists when those employed in non-farming occupations admire, respect, and work in their own industries to further the Agrarian way of life. The same is true of Christian culture. It is established in the Church, and it has accumulated centuries of respect and admiration.
This leads us to the ultimate question: has the hook-up anti-culture been institutionalized, and is it widely revered? Numbers that tell us how many people have had hook-ups are irrelevant, but there are other facts that may be helpful.
On college campuses the anti-culture is maintained and promoted through other existing institutions. Although it is certainly not always the case, the orientation ceremonies of fraternities and sorieties, which are notoriously hierarchical, often devolve into drunken debauchery. Furthermore, it is often the Universities themselves who are the promoters of a “liberated” lifestyle. Universities often supply dorm resident assistants with condoms and contraceptives so the students have immediate access, and at my own university, the student health center would often publish and display “sexual health and responsibility” guides that would be featured at prominent locations around the campus.
The only conclusion to be drawn from all this is that even if the hook-up anti-culture is not institutionalized of itself, it is so closely supported and maintained by other institutions to render such a distinction unintelligible.
As for the required reverence, the skeptical speaker from the TIC dialogue stated herself that numerical “exaggeration, however, can itself be revealing of noteworthy cultural trends. Even if a majority of students are not hooking up on a regular basis, they do seem to be familiar with the hookup ethos, and they enjoy presenting themselves as participants whether or not they really are. That suggests that there is something about hookup culture that attracts them and that does, at least in some of its aspects, represent a kind of ideal.”
Therein lies the danger. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the mission of the cultural conservative to set out on a crusade to eliminate all sinful acts. In fact, he thinks such a mission to be blasphemous, as there is only One who will accomplish that goal. It is his mission, however, to plant a few trees in the wasteland, and work to create an environment where man can flourish and live with a healthy soul. Such flourishing cannot take place where the idea of hooking-up exercises such a power over young minds.
T.S. Eliot went on to note about culture that, “It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe–until recently–have been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all of our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning.”
When debating whether the hook-up anti-culture exists, or whether it is even a problem, we should consider if it is in the anti-culture that certain arts have developed, if it is in the hook-up culture that young people’s rules about relationships have been rooted, and is it against the background of the anti-culture that the young have come to view relationships and society in general?
Casual observation of television, music, and the local theater should answer the first question. The rising preference of the less committal cohabitation over marriage should provide a clue to the second and the third. Ultimately, if the answer to any of these questions is yes, then the anti-culture most definitely exists, and the souls of my generation are in peril.
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