Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. For the past few decades now, marriage rates have plummeted. Those who are getting married are doing so much later in life. The entire Western world, including the United States, is facing an unprecedented birth dearth. And yet, many Christians and churches, including those who believe marriage is a created gift of God and pillar of civilization, are doing nothing different to elevate marriage and family in the hearts and minds of young people. It’s an example of what Einstein called “insanity.”

Perhaps we might learn from a group of Chinese retirees recently covered in The Wall Street Journal. Each weekend, in an ongoing effort to play matchmakers for their older children, these parents meet at a park, known as “the marriage market,” with photos and achievement stats of their kids. The goal is to help them find a spouse.

The kids do not seem as concerned as their parents. As a 33-year-old single said, “My parents are more anxious than I am.” But they should be. According to the article, in this country of over one billion people, only six million couples registered their marriages in 2024. The record low number, down 21% from the previous year, is another consequence of the one-child policy that China enforced for decades.

America is likely not ready for arranged marriages. Most will not find marrying to save the economy a romantic enough notion. However, our young adults need help in the relationship department, too.

First and foremost, they need help understanding what marriage is. The Bible describes it as a cornerstone of adulthood and society, but many young adults view it as more of a “capstone,” a personal thing to be tended to once everything else is accomplished. Christ calls the Church His bride, portraying marriage as a metaphor of eternal truth, but Hollywood and lifestyle magazines often portray it as a burden, an obstacle to true personal fulfillment. God created us for family, but young women have been widely told that unencumbered sexual freedom is the true path to fulfillment.

Another challenge is that young adults who are considering marriage often do not turn to parents or pastors for guidance. Rather, they rely on apps. According to a 2023 Pew Research study, 30% of adults said they had used a dating app. Fifty-three percent of those adults were aged 18 to 29, and 50% of college students said they have used an app to find a date. That’s in college … a place where young adults are face-to-face with more like-minded, similar-aged peers than at any other time in their lives. And, at least according to one article covering dating trends on campuses, dating apps are ruining romance.

Though there is hopeful potential for marriage in the much-celebrated return of young people to church, it seems that guys and girls aren’t returning to the same ones. An X user recently posted,

One of the toughest things about the Christian dating scene is that the women are all over at the baptist/nondenom mega church and the men are all at the most trad[itional] place they can find.

With all of these obstacles in place, can Christians make dating for marriage great again?

At the 2012 Wilberforce Weekend, Maggie Gallagher challenged us all to take seriously the task of matchmaking, turning our homes and churches into places where young Christian men and women can meet each other. This could be the Church’s moment to save marriage. But it will require us to break dramatically from social norms, to embrace the awkwardness inherent in such things, reject the narrative of self-centeredness, and well, be “weird.”

Many young adults lack the worldview categories to grasp what it means that marriage is “good.” Inundated at every turn to look within, concepts such as “sacrificial love” or statements like “a central purpose of marriage is to have babies” sound bizarre. We must make them normal again. Guys also need to know it is ok to romance a girl, and girls need to know they are not a let-down to womankind if they allow a man to do such.

While young men should be encouraged to go for the girl, they also need to hear, especially from older men, that this requires he is willing to lay down his life for her. Young women should be challenged to consider how the sexual revolution has lied to them. And they should be encouraged to say yes to the guy now, not later.

In short, young adults need to hear, from someone other than Charlie Kirk, that marriage and babies are good gifts of God! The Church is in the best position to come alongside parents and make marriage and family plausible to them again. We may have to figure out how to get the “trad” men and “non denom” women in the same places, but if we can, we may find young adults more receptive to being set up with each other than we think.

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