Understanding Purity Culture Part 1: What is Purity Culture and Why is it Important to Understand?
This blog post is #1 in a series of 5 posts on Understanding Purity Culture.
The young females who came of age under the teachings of the Evangelical Purity Movement (Purity Culture) are now in their thirties to forties. Some are now wives and mothers, having achieved all the goals set out for them by purity culture, yet the messages they received as teenagers can still be found in their struggling mental health, almost non-existent sex drives and the inability to stay present in their own bodies. Others made it to their wedding day but discovered that purity culture could not hold true to its promises as their marriages fell apart or their bodies would not allow them to be a mother. And still, others have waited and waited for a promise of marriage that has never arrived. This series is an invitation to join on a journey; visiting the places in Scripture that speak of purity and God’s presence, discovering the messages of purity culture and how that has impacted the church, and finally arriving at what call to action this information means for the Church.
The Evangelical Purity Movement, more commonly referred to as Purity Culture, began in 1993 with the True Love Waits campaign. One of the goals of the purity movement was to teach purity and abstinence-only sex education to counteract the public sex education that was beginning to be presented in schools. This movement resulted in pointed messages to teenage girls from the Church about dating, sex, the female body, and a female's worth.
The True Love Waits campaign card, which teens were encouraged to sign, stated,
"Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, my future mate, and my future children to be sexually pure until the day I enter a covenant marriage relationship"[1].
During the first True Love Waits campaign, 10,000 Southern Baptist Churches requested information about the campaign as well as 14 other denominations[2]. The True Love Waits campaign has since spread to more than 100 organizations and denominations worldwide [3]. This large interest produced a wave of books, studies, and other media geared toward teenage Christians on the topic of purity. Purity culture unfolded like a really bad result of the telephone game (a game where the person is given a message that they whisper to the person next to them, and it continues to get passed around a circle until the last person says out loud what they think the message is). The positive message of promoting abstinence until marriage became less about teaching and more about condemnation —but still presented as gospel truth. The most common messages of Purity Culture can be summed up in the following statements:
Your sexual purity defines your worth; If you have sex, you are worthless, like a torn-up Styrofoam cup, chewed-up gum, or a flower without petals.
The female body is a dangerous weapon; Girls must cover their bodies so that they do not cause a boy to sin.
Marriage is the ultimate Christian goal; If you wait to have sex until you are married, you will be blessed with a great marriage and sex life.
The body is sinful and cannot be trusted; You must learn to ignore the desires and feelings in your body because they will only lead to sin.
Many of the women who grew up in the evangelical church during the height of the purity culture movement are still, thirty years later, trying to heal from the damage caused by the messages they were taught about purity, sex, and their own bodies. They are ashamed, angry, and confused over their sexual and relational struggles[4]. Many of these women were a success in terms of statistics, and the goal of purity culture, because they did what they were told and “stayed pure” until marriage, but their view of themselves and their sexuality suffered for it. Understanding and expressing our sexuality reveals our core beliefs about who we are and who God is[5]. If the part of our being that is meant to show us who we are is damaged by shame, that casts a shadow on every area of our lives. When Christians are plagued with sexual shame, they are unable to love themselves, their partners, and God in the healthy capacity that they are meant to.
In this blog series, my goal is to:
· share the research on how purity culture has affected women who were teenagers during the height of purity culture teaching
· show where the teachings of purity culture line up with scripture and where it does not
· and help church leaders and parents understand the impacts of purity culture so that they can be equipped to help heal those impacted and learn how to avoid similar harmful teachings in the future.
The accounts of women who experienced the effects of the purity movement and the research on this topic reveal that purity culture has had a lasting negative impact. There is a need for resources to help guide the church in what it looks like to teach about sexuality and the female body in a positive and biblical way. I believe change can only happen in the Church if leaders and church members are guided in identifying harm done by the Church, how to help each other heal, and building a healthier way forward. This series aims to help the church teach about purity, sexuality and the body in a way that brings Christians closer to God and who He created them to be.
In Part 2 of this series, we will look at the goal of purity in the Old Testament.
I hope you continue along with me on this journey,
~Nadine
References:
[1] New York Times. (1993). “True Love Waits” for Some Teen-Agers - The New York Times. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/21/us/true-love-waits-for-some-teen-agers.html
[2] Ibid
[3] Baptist Press. (2019). True Love Waits pioneer defends sexual purity movement. https://www.baptiststandard.com/news/baptists/true-love-waits-pioneer-defends-sexual-purity-movement-2/
[4] McBride, H.L. (2021) p. 194, The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living.
[5] West, C. (2009), Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II's Sexual Revolution, Revised Edition.
