Understanding Purity Culture Part 4: The Three Most Harmful Teachings of Purity Culture
There are three teachings of purity culture that have had the most detrimental impact on women. These messages may or may not have been what the authors, preachers or youth leaders wanted to come across, but these are the messages that have stayed with Evangelical women into adulthood.
1. Sex Ruin’s the Purity and Worth of Females Forever
The commonly held definition of purity is for something to be free of something else that would contaminate it; teaching girls to stay pure in this way causes them to view sex as something that will corrupt them. In purity culture teaching, metaphors were regularly used in books, youth groups and churches to give a lasting impression of the consequence of not staying “pure” until marriage. Some of the common metaphors used in purity culture teaching for girls who become sexually active before marriage are half eaten chocolate bars, chewed gum, a rose without petals or a trashable foam cup.[1] Through these metaphors, sex is taught in purity culture as a sin that changes your purity, and therefore worth, forever. There is no redeeming message in these metaphors and that is very clear to the youth that these are presented to. By teaching that purity is about sex instead of teaching that purity can only come from God, purity culture appears to disregard Jesus and his teachings.
2. Virginity Until Marriage as the Highest Christian Calling
One of the key motivators in purity culture for teen girls to stay sexually pure is the promise of finding their true love, getting married and living happily ever after. In the perspective of the evangelical church, marriage is second only to salvation when it comes to the most important priorities for women.[2] And in Purity Culture, virginity is taught as the only way to achieve the godly marriage girls dream of. Purity culture’s marker for a good Christian girl is not based on her relationship with Jesus or the love she has for others, but to what extent she is sexually pure.[3] Virginity and marriage are both highlighted in purity culture as the most godly pursuits for young evangelical girls, but when they achieve this, their “reward” is the very thing they have been taught will make them less godly. The promise of great sex in marriage is used as a motivator for Christian teens to stay pure until their wedding night, but research has shown that for most women this promise has not been fulfilled. Conservative religious women report experiencing pain in sex more than non-religious women.[4] Instead of the “happily ever after” these young women were promised after marriage for denying their sexuality, they continue to carry the burden, pain and shame of sex in their marriage.
3. The Female Body is Dangerous and Sinful
Purity culture has a heavy focus on teaching females to be modest in their clothing to make sure the males around them are not caused to stumble. It was believed by conservative evangelicals that emphasizing this purity of dressing for women would be the way to reduce sexual temptation for men.[5] Brio taught teen girls the message that, “If a guy sees a girl walking around in tight clothes, a miniskirt or short shorts, you might as well hang a noose around the neck of his spiritual life”.[6] Women are set up for a lifelong struggle with their body when they are taught from a young age that their body is a weapon they must protect men from.
The modesty doctrine preached in church, at youth groups and at Bible Camp can often appear harmless, but when the responsibility is put on females to dress a certain way so that they do not tempt the opposite sex, it easily translates to victim-blaming in cases of rape and abuse.[7] According to the modesty doctrine, if a man lusts after a woman it means that she failed to protect him, and if he acts on it in an inappropriate or harmful way the first question is often about what she was wearing.[8] When this teaching is emphasized over and over again, at some point, modesty becomes less about making wise decisions to honour God and turns into a deep-seated belief that the female body is sinful and shameful.[9] When females believe that they cannot trust or listen to their bodies, it encourages them to fragment off the parts of themselves that are deemed unacceptable.
The Detrimental Impact
When the female body is seen as the problem, it makes it very difficult for girls or women to trust or listen to their own bodies. The messages of purity culture lead directly to shame because they fail to differentiate between the feelings that can not be controlled and the thoughts and actions that can be controlled.[10] When teaching about sex is all based on what not to think, feel and do, it teaches youth to fear sex and gives them zero knowledge or tools. These teachings encourage youth to condemn themselves for their desires and hide what they feel from the people around them. Purity Culture teaches youth that they must silence their sexual desire, instead of teaching that their desires are natural and godly, and help them to stay connected to both God and themselves.
Without the ability to be fully present in our own bodies, we are cut off from our own desires and we lose the ability to know when something is safe or not. When females are taught to not listen to their bodies, they lose the ability to connect with the God-given desire that is meant to drive them to intimacy, and that also means they will not be able to distinguish whether someone else’s desire for them is harmful or safe.
The messages from the church about sexuality and the body have hindered the healthy development of women in the church, and when the health of women suffers, the whole community suffers. So how can women heal from the impacts of purity culture? And how can the church teach about sex in a way that is both God-honouring and educational? The next and last post of this blog series will look at those questions.
~Nadine
References:[1] Gish, E. (2018). Are you a “trashable” styrofoam cup?: Harm and damage rhetoric in the contemporary American sexual purity movement. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 34(2), 5–22. 3[2] Barr, B. A. (2021b). The making of Biblical womanhood: How the subjugationof women became Gospel truth. BrazosPress.[3] Anderson, D. E. (2015). Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity. Jericho Books.[4] Gregoire, S. W., Lindenbach, R. G., & Sawatsky, J. (2021). The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended. Baker Books.[5] Barr, B. A. (2021b). The making of Biblical womanhood: How the subjugation of women became Gospel truth. Brazos Press.[6] Dannah Gresh, November 2002, as cited in Gregoire et al., 2021, p. 94 [7] Klein, L. K. (2018). Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free. Touchstone.[8] Welcher, R. J. (2020). Talking Back to Purity Culture: Rediscovering Faithful Christian Sexuality. InterVarsity Press.[9] Ibid.[10] Schermer Sellers, T. (2017). Sex, God and the Conservative Church: Erasing Shame from Sexual Intimacy. Routledge. 