Journalist Terry Mattingly writes:

Church people have a name for what happens when young believers get romantically involved with unbelievers. They call it "missionary dating," usually with one eyebrow raised in skepticism. Most of these relationships involve a good girl who is convinced that, with time, she can help a bad boy see the error of his ways and learn to walk the straight and narrow path.

Times have changed. According to new research, a surprising number of females have graduated from "missionary dating" to "missionary cohabitating." Women who say they are deeply religious are just as likely to live with men before marriage as women who are not, write Scott Stanley, Sarah Whitton, and Howard Markman in "Maybe I Do: Interpersonal Commitment and Premarital or Non-Marital Cohabitation," written for the Journal of Family Issues.