Why We’re Weird for Thinking That Tim Scott Is Weird

The politician’s public commitment to abstinence has made him an outlier in a sex-obsessed culture. But is the church any friendlier to older single men?

Tim Scott entered politics decades ago as a proud 30-year-old virgin. Campaigning at the height of 1990s evangelical “purity culture,” he proclaimed that sex should be reserved for marriage. Years later, chastity was still one of his talking points—even as he seemed to admit that his own commitment to abstinence had faltered.

Now, the South Carolina senator and vice-presidential hopeful is getting married to a “lovely Christian girl,” Mindy Noce. They’re set to tie the knot in early August, between the Republican National Convention and Election Day.

The current status of Tim Scott’s v-card is, of course, none of our business. The fact that it was ever a campaign talking point, in retrospect, is more than a little bizarre.

But the senator’s apologia for both his abstinence and his singleness also makes sense. It’s indicative of our collective suspicion toward older single people, present in both secular and church culture—our tendency to regard those who’ve never been married with pity, concern, and unease. This in spite of trends toward later and fewer marriages, and more writing on singleness in the church.

It’s easy to understand why our sex-obsessed culture regards a 30-year-old virgin (and especially an almost-60-year-old virgin!) with revulsion and confusion. But that same virgin is a pariah in the church for different reasons.

Evangelicals tend to marry young, relatively speaking. I was no exception. Five of the six siblings in my family had married by age 25—one of us at 19. In the church context I grew up in, getting married at 23 made sense . Implicit in the purity culture ideal of “saving yourself for marriage” was the reassurance ...

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