bought me a series of gifts and items and made declarations that felt wildly serious (if not downright inappropriate) for a beginning relationship.

asked my (bewildered) father for permission to “court” me before he ever actually asked me out himself.

made me dinner at his house, then immediately had me leave afterward since it was too tempting for him to be alone with me without food or dinner-making involved.

planned a date with me in a laundromat so that we could reduce sexual temptation but also engage in a domestic chore together to test our compatibility and communication.(since I would have to put goals aside if he wanted to go to seminary during our marriage) told me that I would make a wonderful wife, aside from my academic aspiration to get a Ph.D.During the brief six months that we dated – a relationship I would have described as in the beginning stages and certainly not deeply serious, he: My own personal brush with godly courtship came in the persona of a Christian man I will simply call J., who essentially used Harris’ text as a guidebook to our dating life. Parental involvement and approval was encouraged. Physical intimacy of any sort was de-emphasized in the service of purity to the degree that many “godly courtship” participants refused to even kiss until their wedding day.

In godly courtship, believers embarked only on serious relationships with the intention of evaluating their partners as marriage candidates. True to the title, the book sought to differentiate “Christian courtship” from “dating” in many marked ways and offered guidelines accordingly. I was in college when the “godly courtship” movement was at its peak.įor those not in the know, godly courtship was a concept made most popular by Joshua’ Harris’ seminal book I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

I ve kissed dating goodbye