![]() The methodology to achieve this centered on outward displays of commitment - like purity rings or True Love Waits pledges - which carried with it a threat of shame if broken. It was also bound by a strict set of rules, reinforced by biblical messaging: Dress modestly (so as not to be a stumbling block), avoid one-on-one interactions with someone of the opposite sex (to avoid sexual temptation), and keep your thoughts “pure” (because you can be unfaithful even in your mind). ![]() How that looked amid the heightened fears of the Cold War, it turns out, is not all that different from our 1990s version, except this time, it was imbued with a message of self-fulfillment: Save sex until marriage to achieve the best possible life. “Regardless of historical context, the ideological connections drawn between sexual immorality and national security include several cooperating impulses: evangelical political activism, deep anxiety over gender roles and changing sexual mores, fear of moral decay, apocalyptic anticipation, and American nationalism,” Moslener writes. ![]() purity campaigns that have typically been prompted by white Protestant fear of national decline that presented the (white, heterosexual) American family as a stabilizing force. In the book Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence, Sara Moslener argues that the latest resurgence of purity culture was not just a reaction to the sexual revolution of the 1960s-‘80s, which many analyses point to as its impetus, but rather the latest in a series of U.S. It’s that combination of shaming while promising self-fulfillment that distinguishes the 1990s-2000s movement - but the driving cultural forces find root far earlier in American history. Since those teachings are formalized in adolescence, they become a virtually intractable part of a person’s identity. They were going to be safe, they were going to be healthy, and they're going to have awesome sex in their marriage.” Shame, Klein argues, is baked into the latest round of purity teachings. “This theory that if we taught people about purity - which really is not an accurate way to frame it, it's more if we shamed people into remaining pure … then they were going to have a fantastic, blissful life. “I think there’s a growing cognizance that this didn't work, that this is all based on theory, right?” posited Klein. But a handful of pastors, writers, and activists have been finding their way forward - through shared storytelling, interpreting a more inclusive biblical sexual ethic, and offering new models for the church to talk about sexuality in a holistic, faithful way. As they have entered adulthood, become parents themselves, and have perhaps long since rejected a purity culture that they experienced as harmful to body and spirit, many find themselves left without anything to replace it. Some credit the negative reactions to purity culture as fueling the exodus of young adults from the evangelical church - in 2006, white evangelicals comprised 23 percent of Americans, and that dropped to 17 percent by 2016. ![]() “Now those same people, when I talk to them today, have been saying things to me like ‘thank you for allowing me to be part of this movement.’” “ were really afraid that their story, though it was true and though it was important to them, was ultimately going to turn people away from the church,” said Linda Kay Klein, author of Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Women and How I Broke Free. And while conversations about the harmful, sometimes PTSD-like consequences of adopting a purity ethic have been happening for well over a decade, the rise of the #MeToo movement in 2017, and the #ChurchToo movement soon after, offered many the impetus to speak out. The context in each story varies, but the common theme identified is how a shame-based introduction to adolescence has left scars through adulthood. A swell of voices within - and for some, now outside - the church have come to similar conclusions about the effects of purity teachings that permeated 1990s-2000s white evangelical churches.
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