![]() ![]() ![]() If you peruse materials written to teens in the heyday of purity culture, they say remarkably little about prayer discipleship seeking God’s will evangelism loving one’s neighbour learning to be generous being kind to those around you. While waiting for marriage for sex had always been a part of the western evangelical church (and other iterations of the church), under purity culture it became really the only thing that mattered. Purity culture reduced one’s faith to one’s sexual back story This emphasis created all or nothing thinking–if you had had sex, you were “damaged goods.” We taught girls to protect their purity, but we didn’t teach them how to protect themselves. This has nothing to do with 2 Corinthians 5:17–“if anyone is in Christ, she is a new creation”, or 1 John 1:9–“if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” You can believe in Jesus all you want, and still not be pure, because you made a mistake in the past (or worse). If your purity, or your spiritual state, is based on something that you did in the past or, even worse, something that was done to you (since virginity can be taken by force), then it’s no longer about your belief in Jesus. This changes the very nature of the gospel. In the books to girls that we reviewed for She Deserves Better, over and over again purity was made synonymous with virginity. Someone can be a virgin and not be pure (because of their heart), and someone can have a sexual past and be very pure (because of their faith). Our purity is about the state of hearts and whether or not we are following wholeheartedly after Jesus. Let’s be clear–biblically, our purity is not based on what we have done with our bodies, but on what Jesus has done with His. Purity culture redefined purity to mean virginity So let’s look at the 10 components of purity culture: 1. When we critique purity culture, we’re critiquing these trappings, and asking people to go back to talking about sex in a healthy way. Purity culture took it up exponentially, and ended up creating a whole new gospel around sex. That is what was done in my generation (Gen X). You can tell people that saving sex for marriage is the safest for one’s heart and one’s body. You can tell people that sex is sacred and God wants it for marriage. There are a number of ways, though, that one can talk about saving sex for marriage. The Christian church, in its modern iteration, has always stressed sex saved for marriage (and really has throughout history, though the definition of when someone is actually married may change over time). This shows a lack of understanding of what purity culture was. The pushback that we get, though, often goes: “But God does want us to wait for marriage for sex!” Our recent book She Deserves Better spends about half of its pages addressing many aspects of purity culture, that was so common in youth groups between 1995-2015, and shows how it deviated from the gospel and from what we know is healthy advice. What exactly does “purity culture” refer to?
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