Christian dating (and defining) in the digital age

Christian Mingle wants to help God help you. The dating site’s motto comes from Psalm 37: “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

Christian Mingle reflects a move from broad dating pools like Match.com to niche markets of personal preferences and identities. Christian Mingle’s goal is to help singles “make new friends or to find a life-partner that shares similar values, traditions and beliefs.” My guess is that more log in for the latter.

One way to consider Christian Mingle historically is to look at how American rationales for marriage have changed over time. There was an age when economic considerations dominated Christian marriage. Farms needed hard-working women who could bear lots of children. Then there was the rise of marriage for love. Alongside a rising middle class, Henry Ward Beecher preached that “the great doctrine of love … is declared to be the heart and substance of Christianity.” For many, love morphed into the defining feature of both marriage and faith. In the 20th century, those who switched from the King James to another Bible translation found that love had even replaced “charity” in 1 Corinthians 13, the now-called “love chapter.”