SEX ON THE RELIGIOUS CAMPUS: Stanley Kurtz

Naomi Schaefer Riley's God on the Quad is one of the most interesting books about sex I've read in some time. God on the Quad appears to be a prim study of religious institutions of higher learning. In fact, it's a fascinating account of how the problem of sex gets resolved at colleges where "anything goes" doesn't go.

Take the contrast between a small conservative Catholic college, like Thomas Aquinas, and that Mormon giant, Brigham Young University. At Thomas Aquinas, public displays of affection are strictly forbidden. Yet ubiquitous pairs of Brigham Young lovers stroke and caress, even during Sunday religious lectures. Radical as this difference may seem, each school is channeling its students' desire for sex into the quest for marriage.

Thomas Aquinas is a very small school, where a shared great-books curriculum nurtures an intense community spirit. That spirit would be weakened by open displays of affection between couples. Yet the tight sense of community is responsible for the fact that most graduates of Thomas Aquinas end up marrying fellow students. In any case, if they don't find a spouse during their college years, Thomas Aquinas graduates know they will still be able to meet fellow Catholics after graduation.

Brigham Young, on the other hand, is not only a big school with a broad curriculum, it's the most concentrated collection of young, eligible co-religionists a young Mormon is ever likely to encounter. Mormons believe they will live on eternally in heaven with their families. In this and other ways, marriage is absolutely central to Mormonism. The years at BYU are the ideal time during which to meet and marry a fellow Mormon. So by graduation, about half of BYU students are married. Getting there means that BYU is a cauldron of romantic intensity, with whirlwind courtships and dramatic scenes of broken engagements the order of the day. Premarital sex may be forbidden at both BYU and Thomas Aquinas, but that doesn't stop these institutions from treating sex in radically different ways. ...

As Riley shows, the end result is not so much outright secularization as a complex accommodation between religious traditionalism and modern attitudes toward women. Many female graduates of religious schools may postpone marriage and go on to professional careers, yet they remain fairly traditional theologically. No doubt, Riley is right about that. But if even women from the growing number of religious colleges increasingly postpone marriage and child bearing, the effects on fertility rates will be real.

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posted by Eve at 3:44 PM | link

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