Promise rings? Purity pledges? Turns out, those outward abstinence vows may not work quite as well as we’d hope. According to a story by Relevant magazine, many Christians lose their virginity far before their wedding night. According to a study cited in the story, about 80 percent of young adult evangelical Christians (ages 18 to 29) have sex before marriage. While that’s less than the 88 percent of the young adult population overall, it’s not a lot less. Many wind up like “Maria,” who lost her virginity with her boyfriend when she was 20. “It seemed everyone in my life, older and younger, had done it,” she says. “In fact, I waited longer than most people I knew and longer than both of my sisters, even though we were all Christians and came from a good home.” Experts point the finger of blame to our increasingly sexualized culture and the normalization of pornography; but they also say that as the time between adolescence and marriage stretches out longer and longer—most folks don’t get married until their late 20s or 30s these days—there’s far more time to make a misstep. “Sociologically speaking, the one big difference—and it’s monstrous—between the biblical teaching and our culture is the arranged marriages of very young people,” says author Scot McKnight. “If you get married when you’re 13, you don’t have 15 years of temptation.” (CNN)