So, I think it\u2019s time for a public service announcement: Not all courtships look the same<\/em>. It seems that the high-profile Duggar courtships have so shaped public perception of what a courtship within this subculture looks like that some readers have concluded that college and courtship are incompatible. Not so!<\/p>\n Actually, there\u2019s a huge variation of practices and ideas within courtship circles, and the way\u00a0Josh Harris of I Kissed Dating Goodbye fame described\u00a0courtship is vastly different from the form of courtship\u00a0the Duggars practice. There are also even more conservative forms of courtship, with some practicing outright betrothal. What courtship looks like (or means) in one family or one community may be different from what it looks like (or means) in another family or another community.<\/p>\n While I Kissed Dating Goodbye spread beyond the Christian homeschooling world, influencing evangelical young people more generally, those\u00a0communities and families that have explicitly used the term \u201ccourtship\u201d tend to be Christian homeschooling communities and families. These ideas are spread through homeschool conferences, homeschooling magazines, and homeschool speakers and leaders. Within this cultural milieu there is\u00a0a great deal of variation in courtship practices.<\/p>\n Courtship the Josh Harris Way Joshua Harris wrote I Kissed Dating Goodbye<\/a> in 1997, and followed it up with Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship<\/a> several years later. These books took the Christian homeschool world by storm. In his second book, in which he explicitly endorses courtship and describes his own courtship process, Josh writes\u00a0this:<\/p>\n But before we go any further, I want to make sure that you\u2019re clear on what I\u2019m not<\/em> saying. First, I\u2019m not<\/em> saying that you should sacrifice all privacy in your relationship. Having time alone as a couple is very important. Second, I\u2019m not saying that you should have someone else (your parents or pastor) make the decision about whom you marry. Only you can make that final choice.<\/p>\n Our problem today is that we\u2019ve allowed the importance of privacy and personal choice to cause us to neglect what the Bible teaches us about our need for fellow Christians in the local church. While it\u2019s true that no one else should decide whom we marry, how arrogant it is to think that we can make this important decision on our own without counsel and advice from others! And while a couple needs time alone, how shortsighted and foolish it is to cut ourselves off from the wisdom and support of the people who know us best.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s important to note that essentially every example Josh uses in both of his books involve couples who are in college or have attended college. In most of his examples, both individuals in a courtship\u00a0live outside of their parents\u2019 home. Josh gives the courting couple agency and puts them in the driving seat. At the same time, he contends\u00a0that a\u00a0couple would be unwise to ignore the counsel and advice of others, and that young adults should honor their parents.<\/p>\n If the girl you\u2019re interested in has a Christian father, he should be the first person you schedule a meeting with. Getting his permission to pursue a relationship with his daughter will honor him and help protect her. Gratefully acknowledge his authority\u00a0and leadership in her life. Make your case for a courtship and trust that God will work through him for your good. Don\u2019t try to undermine his leadership\u2014honor it even if it means waiting longer or doing things differently than you had planned.<\/p>\n . . .<\/p>\n Just as no courtship should be disconnected from the involvement of others, neither should it be controlled or manipulated by other people. A biblical attitude is one that humbly seeks the help of others. But this doesn\u2019t mean that we should rely on others to make the final decision about whom\u00a0and when we marry. The very serious and binding commitment of marriage is something that only we can live out and stand by in the years to come. And for this reason no one\u2014not parents, pastors, or friends\u2014can make it for us. While their counsel should inform us, we are the ones who must hear from God and have faith to get married.<\/p>\n While many singles lack Christian parents, others have them but are confused about how much say they should have in courtship and marriage. I\u2019ve come across some very sad stories of parents who manipulated and tried to control their children in courtship. This is wrong and unbiblical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Josh walks a line that can be precarious. He says young adults are not bound to \u201cobey\u201d their parents, but that they are still bound to \u201chonor\u201d them. He says young adults should not let their parents make the big decisions for them or control their courtship, but that young adults should be willing to wait or do things differently\u00a0in accordance with parental wishes. I\u2019m honestly not sure whether even Josh himself can properly parse this all out.<\/p>\n But the point I want to make here is that the courtship process Josh lays out looks vastly different from\u00a0the one we\u2019re familiar with from 19 Kids and Counting. There is much less parental control, and there is privacy. Josh would likely have been horrified by Jim Bob\u2019s insistence on reading all texts that passed between his daughters and their beaus until their wedding day. He would likely have said that couples couldn\u2019t actually\u00a0get to know each other, soul to soul, under those circumstances.<\/p>\n Josh also emphasizes getting to know a person you\u2019re potentially interested as friends before instigating anything. He talks about the importance of forming deep friendships before pushing for anything more. He emphasizes the importance of getting to know a wide range of young people, and participating in group settings with other young people, and without adults around refereeing. The parent does not play a role, here, in pushing couples together, and courtships are not supposed to begin if there is not already a deep underlying friendship.<\/p>\n I have sometimes heard this style of courtship referred to as \u201cdating with a purpose,\u201d but it\u2019s important to remember that Josh very intentionally and emphatically does use the term \u201ccourtship.\u201d This is not some sort of \u201cfake\u201d style of courtship while what the Duggars practice is the real deal. This is simply one end of a courtship continuum that goes from \u201cdating with a purpose\u201d to straight-up betrothal.<\/p>\n Courting the Duggar Way<\/strong><\/p>\n In some sense, Duggar-style courtship starts out in the same way as does the style of courtship promoted by Josh Harris. In each case, the young man is to ask the young woman\u2019s parents before starting anything. But even here there are subtle differences. Josh specifies that young adults are no longer bound to \u201cobey\u201d their parents, and that involving parents is about \u201chonoring\u201d them rather than about \u201cobeying\u201d them. In Duggar-style courtship, the father literally owns his daughter, and a \u201cno\u201d is always and completely final.<\/p>\n Josh notes that there are times when asking a girl\u2019s father first won\u2019t make sense, and he even asks that he didn\u2019t ask his now-wife father before speaking with her\u00a0about pursuing a relationship. But in Duggar-style courtship, if a young man speaks with a young woman about the possibility of a relationship before<\/em> approaching her father, that is seen as a strike against him. The father<\/em> is the one in the driver seat, not<\/em> the courting couple. Indeed, Josh emphasizes involving the entire church community in your courtship, but Duggar-style courtship is wholly family-centered.\u00a0This is significant because there are times when a couple courting the Josh Harris way might be given unfair treatment by the girl\u2019s parents but then find solace with a wise older couple from the church who could function as proxy-parents. This is not true for Duggar-style courtship, with its heavy emphasis on parental control.<\/p>\n In Duggar-style courtship, a father may even\u00a0approach a young man about his daughter, or otherwise seek\u00a0to set up a relationship. In some sense, it is considered the father\u2019s responsibility to see his daughter wed, and that may mean going out and seeking a young man. In some cases, families will even talk about the importance of the father \u201cdating\u201d a prospective young man first, to feel him out and ascertain where he is with God.<\/p>\n It is considered appropriate and acceptable, in Duggar-style courtship, for a couple to embark on a courtship without the benefit of a strong underlying friendship. Duggar-style courtship is sometimes discussed as a time for growing<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0creating<\/em> that underlying friendship. What matters is primarily whether the couple is compatible<\/em>, which generally means sharing the same religious beliefs and ideas about the family. Indeed, strong friendships between boys and girls outside of the\u00a0courtship process are frequently\u00a0discouraged. This runs very much contrary to Josh\u2019s insistence that courtship should only be pursued when there is already deep friendship, and that young people should first focus on getting to know\u00a0peers of both sexes as a way of feeling people out and locating\u00a0a prospective partner.<\/p>\n There is also a significant difference in the amount of privacy a courting couple is afforded. While Josh Harris argued that privacy was important and that courting couples should be given leeway in making their\u00a0own decisions, Duggar-style courtship mandates constant chaperoning and surveillance. Not only are courting Duggar couples never left alone without a chaperone, they are also not allowed to text each other privately, and instead must do so as part of a group chat with their parents. The Duggars hold that privacy is a problem for courting couples, and is dangerous. In contrast, Harris argues that having privacy and space is an important part of\u00a0developing a relationship.<\/p>\n Josh warns his readers against any physical intimacy at all, including kissing, arguing that once you get started it\u2019s difficult to stop, and that purity should be paramount. On this front, his views would seem similar to those of the Duggars, who allow only hand-holding and side hugs before marriage. But I would argue\u00a0there\u2019s a subtle\u00a0difference nonetheless. The Duggars\u2019 rules for physical intimacy in a courtship are set and policed by their parents. Josh does believe the community should play a role in holding a courting couple accountable, but focuses primarily on courting couples setting their own physical boundaries, as they are the ones who will live with the consequences.<\/p>\n![\"screenshot](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2015\/06\/screenshot-courtship.png\")
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