14: Unpacking Purity Culture Christian Rightcast

It’s easy to mistake “Purity Culture” — Evangelical Fundamentalism’s distinctive take on sexuality and social mores — for prudishness. It’s much more than a simple “don’t have sex” campaign: the movement combines several related ideological threads in ways that can torment insiders and baffle outsiders. In this episode, Jeff and Kristin explore Purity Culture’s history, its manifestations in popular culture and Christian media, and its impact on the teens and adults who’ve grown up in it.
Purity Culture’s building blocks
We’ve broken Purity Culture down into four specific pillars, each of which contributes to the culture’s dangerous toxicity.
You don’t own yourself
The idea that people have the right to control their own bodies, and choose what kinds of things they’re comfortable with both sexually and socially, is acknowledged to a limited degree — but tempered by the belief that God is the ultimate “owner” of every person’s body, and that we have no right to choose things that He doesn’t approve of.
Nancy DeMoss’s 2007 article, “Free To Be Modest,” published on the conservative Christian web site The Rebelution, articulates the idea directly: “My body is not my own. It’s not mine; it doesn’t belong to me (1 Cor. 6:19)… An immodestly dressed woman is giving away something that doesn’t belong to her. This principle of ownership means that you and I are not free to dress in any way we please.”
This foundation means that while Purity Culture may arrive at some of the same conclusions about sexual ethics and cultural mores, it does so via a very different path and proposes very different solutions to societal problems. In Purity Culture, for example, the fundamental moral transgression of rape is not the violation of another person’s autonomy but the act of extramarital sex.
A totalizing definition of purity
It’s easy to assume the culture’s idiosyncratic definition of “purity” is just shorthand for sexual abstinence outside of heterosexual marriage. Its definition of “Impurity” isn’t just about specific acts, though: it includes any thought, feeling, action, or motivation that would produce pleasure outside of “God’s Plan for sex.”
Having dreams about sex, lingering over the swimsuit ads in the Sunday paper, being gay, making out after prom, looking too long at a passing jogger’s abs, sex with a co-worker, and grooming children for abuse all exist under the broad umbrella of “impurity.” They’re evil not because they affect others or have specific consequences, but because they violate Purity Culture’s specific definition of sexuality that’s acceptable to God. Members are encouraged and trained to be on constant alert, wary of any idle thought or passing glimpse of the opposite sex that might lure them into lustful fantasies, rendering them impure.
As a corollary, blame for nearly every emotional or relational challenge faced by young teens, single twenty-somethings, and married couples is laid at the feed of “impurity.” After a lifetime of exposure to these totalizing messages, guilt is inevitable — and that guilt is treated as evidence from God that Purity Culture’s strict guidelines are true.
Gender essentialism and patriarchy
The third component of purity culture ideology is the assumption of deep and fundamental differences between mens’ and womens’ sexual drives and desires. Old tropes are codified as God’s Design: men are frequently described as “visual creatures” easily inflamed by desire, while women are “love-seekers” whose bodies tempt men.
This idea is closely related to the concept of Christian patriarchy — the idea that men have been put in charge of their families by God, and women are meant to function as helpers in the task of raising a Godly family. Although modern purity culture proponents often emphasize the importance of “mutual submission” before God, the idea of a divinely ordained