Premarital Sex More Taboo for Today’s Devout Christians

Religious worldviews and attitudes may be a key motivation for abstaining from pornography, viewing premarital sex as wrong, and refraining from sex until marriage. So does religious behavior correlate with sexual abstinence? The answer is yes. While there has perhaps been a modest increase in sexual abstinence among religious nonattenders or occasional attenders, the lion's share of the increase in sexlessness has been among the relatively religiously devout. Since 2008, among never-married individuals under age 35 who attend religious services more than monthly, the rate of sexlessness has risen from about 20% to nearly 60% in 2021. Among their less-religious peers, sexlessness has risen from around 10% in 2008 to 20% in 2021.