Articles by Paul Elam:

– Arranged Marriages and the Rise of Romantic Love (2016)
– For Real Love to Emerge, Romantic Love Must Die – Part 1 (2017)
– For Real Love to Emerge, Romantic Love Must Die – Part 2 (2017)
– For Real Love to Emerge, Romantic Love Must Die – Part 3 (2017)

Articles on Christian vs. Romantic love by Paul Elam:

– How We Conflated the Love of Christ With the Love of Women (2024)
– How Jesus Rejected the Worship of Women (2024)
– The Great Conflation: Romantic vs Christian Love (2024)
– Harlequin Jesus (2024)

Articles by Peter Wright:

– Sexualized Romantic Love, and Pairbonding (2013)
– Romantic Love Vs. Friendship (2013)
– Down The Aisle Again On The Marriage Question: Is It Relevant? (2015)
– A Short Word on Love Terminology (2023)
– Love in the Song of Songs (2024)
– Don’t confuse Eros (sexual desire) with Amor (romantic love) (2024)
– Christian Churches Conflate Romantic Love with Agape (2024)
– Romantic Love versus Family Love: Amore vs Storge (2024)
– Ancient Greek Kinds of Love (2025)

Other authors on the topic of family love (storge):

– Storge: Audio-recording of C.S. Lewis: Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation (1958)
– Storge: an essay on affectionate love by C. S. Lewis (1960)
– A Storgic Love Paradigm, by Yuko Minowa & Russell W. Belk (2018)
– AI tells which Greek love is synonymous with pairbonding (2024)
– English language qualities associated with the Greek Storge (2024)
– Which features do storge and agape have in common? (2024)
– Family in Asia, versus family in the West (2024)
– The Root Meaning of Storge (family love) (2025)
– Storge Love as Pairbonding Love – Open AI (2025)

 

The Western model of romantic love prioritizes the romantic couple – mother and father (or mom and new romantic boyfriend) over the family unit. Family becomes secondary and subordinate to the romantic couple. This is one of the leading causes for why Western families have collapsed,  with romantic love acting as primary agent for disintegration.

Ironically, some conservatives feel they can address the decay by adding a few romantic date nights into the marriage and thereby increase the health of the family. This remedy sounds more like drinking poison to remove the very same poison already causing the sickness.

By way of contrast we can see that in traditional cultures the parental couple were subsumed within the family nexus, taking their identity and pride from the family, and serving its needs as their own. Everyone was important: mother, father, children, relatives, and especially grandparents. Today, family is subsumed within the romantic model, if indeed the wider family is considered at all.

This situation was well described by the Twitter/X contributor below who shares his first-hand experience of Chinese and Western cultures:

Another person commented about “the ongoing fallacy of setting up ones familial foundations upon Romantic Love (of the young couple starting a family) versus the classic (now mainly Eastern world view) of having the newly weds become part of the greater familial tapestry, involving extended family.”

The above observations can be summarised by the following graphic contrasting Eastern and Western priorities, which will serve as summary to this article:

Many Christian Churches have become temples to romantic love, which began as a worship of women in medieval times by poets and singers who celebrated romantic chivalry, a practice which elevated women to a quasi-divine status. This non-Christian tradition has gained a stranglehold over modern Church culture, to the extent that traditional Christian teachings are becoming obscured in its wake. The following illustrate some of the phenomena that have resulted:

Church and clergy often champion values of romantic love

Which encourages women to conflate Jesus’ love with romantic chivalry

And pressures men to conflate God’s love with romantic chivalry

We are seeing women go on romantic dates with Jesus.

And a growth in the genre of “Christian” romance novels

Also the rise of Christian wives requesting romantic “date nights” from husbands

And finally congregations are singing romantic love songs to God, making evangelical Church worship sound like a Justin Bieber concert encouraging people to “fall in love with, have a love affair with, or become passionate or intimate with Jesus,” while characterizing God as a romantic ravisher of our souls.

Romantic chivalry is a love that’s woman-centered, whereas agape is neighbor centered; Love thy neighbour as thyself. The battle between these two different loves is the crux of a war within the modern Church, because it ultimately confuses and conflates these two contrary motives. To put the problem simply: romantic gynocentrism is not agape.

Does any of this tell us why intelligent men are leaving the Church, and why new men are not coming into it? As always, I invite you be the judge.

The following quotes are from the chapter ‘The Henpecked Male,’ in Woman: The Dominant Sex — by Hendrick de Leeuw (1957). In this volume deLeeuw joins the legions of early observers who rate America as the most gynocentric nation on earth, and in all of history, resulting in the proverbial henpecked man – PW

The following are excerpts from Courtly Love as Religious Dissent – by Jeffrey B. Russell (1965).

In the lead up to Valentine’s Day when Christian (and other) women look forward to receiving romantic love overtures from men. So I thought I would ask AI to clarify what is the nature of love as portrayed in the most famous lovers book in the Bible.

Question: “What is the Hebrew word used for the kind of love portrayed in the Song Of Solomon?”

ANSWER: The primary Hebrew word for love in the context of the Song of Solomon is ‘ahabah’. Although it does not explicitly refer to romantic love or sexual desire, within the context of this love song, it conveys deep affection, longing, and desire.

Even in the Septuagint, which includes a Greek translation of the Song of Songs, the word used is agape, though clearly the term eros is also applicable to the descriptions of longing and desire that take place between the two lovers.

Ahabah, agape and eros described in Songs are examples of reciprocal love, unlike the unidirectional, medieval practice of romantic love which requires sycophantic male love service toward pedestalised women. With these distinctions in mind, we can say that Christians who wish to celebrate romantic love, whether on Valentine’s or any other day, can be justifiably be charged with practicing heretical versions of love.

As a second note of clarification, St. Valentine had nothing to do with the concept of romantic love during his life, nor did romantic love play a part in the early legends that surrounded him. His namesake only later became associated with courtly & romantic love through a fanciful revisionism in the Middle Ages via poets like Chaucer who fabricated a link between the saint and romantic love. That conflation was continued by William Shakespeare, John Donne and many other poets, leading to the popular conception of romantic chivalry we inherit in today’s Valentine’s celebration.