Single People Often Feel Alienated in Churches

The great Christian blog The Wartburg Watch has had a series recently about how single Christians often feel alienated and rejected by conservative churches. Whether they were divorced, widowed or simply hadn’t married by the time they were in their late 20’s on up, many people have been sending in their stories to The Wartburg Watch.

People have talked about feeling pressured into poorly run singles groups organized seemingly for the purpose of trying to set up singles in relationships so they will get married, (some called them “meat markets”), people trying to set them up with other church members, when they clearly weren’t ready for a relationship yet.

Other issues have been people questioning whether they were gay because they chose to remain single (which would be scandalous in conservative/anti-gay churches), pastors constantly giving sermons on marriage, but not sermons of advice or encouragement to single people, and single people being made to feel that they are inferior to married couples (implications that get married and having children is god’s “perfect plan” for people).

Here are some quotes from the series:

From an e-mail titled “Singlness: SGM Style”:

I will provide background in my email below, but what strikes me most about how singles are treated in the church is that they seem to want to treat our "condition" as temporary. Little focus is given to singles because the goal is to get you married so you can become a couple and really be part of the vision of the church. So why invest too much time in ministry to singles when the goal is to get you out of singlehood as soon as possible. 

  I am stunned to believe that churches invest so much in children's ministry, college ministry, and family centered ministries and then if you don't get your MRS or MR in college (Bible college that is) you fall into a black hole. Singles are treated like they are in the waiting room of God's Will. We really don't matter until we get married and start having all those babies and homeschooling our kids. I also want to stress that by and large I believe most of my encounters within these churches were with earnest believers who truly want to serve God and were interacting with me in love - they are just misguided.