Summary: Exposes the myths and harms of purity culture and how to reclaim both healthy sexuality and faith.
We got married in the 1970’s, long before Purity Culture was a thing. On our own, we chose to abstain from sex before marriage. We did not want to say something with our bodies that we were unwilling to commit to before a community of family, friends, and God.
As a campus minister, I began hearing about things like Worth Waiting For, purity rings, and father-daughter dances. I affirmed the wisdom of refraining from sex before marriage. But it felt kind of cringey and cultish, and I wondered how kids would come out of it. For some, it worked out. These folks seemed to have internalized the positive values of Purity Culture without the harmful side effects. But others struggled mightily with shame, including body shaming. Some had distorted views of sexuality that made sex undesirable, even after marriage. Others failed, and believed they were damaged goods. When virginity is the most important thing, even an idol, and you fail to live up to the ideal, you think you have lost everything.
I later learned how purity culture links with patriarchy. Girls were the keepers of boys’ virtue. Boys couldn’t help themselves. And in marriage, instead of loving mutuality, women were expected to to provide sex as often as their husbands wanted it. It became part of an apparatus to control the lives of girls and women.
Often, purity culture has been one of the factors in the lives of those “deconstructing” their faith. If one’s sexuality is only a source of shame, guilt, and pain, and this arises from Christian teaching, then it makes sense to question the faith.
Camden Morgante is a licensed clinical psychologist who grew up in Purity Culture. Much of her healing came both from her own study of scripture and from her clinical training. Much of her work is treating those who have come out of this culture and experienced its harmful effects. Her book draws from her experience, research and clinical experience to help people deconstruct the myths, recover from the shame and other effects, and move forward to live healthy sexual lives and as it is possible “reconstruct” a healthy faith.
The book begins by describing the toxic character of much of purity Culture, as discussed above. She goes on to deconstruct five myths of purity culture, including the fairy-tale marriage, the flipped switch, and the girls as gatekeepers role.
Then the last part of the book turns to “reconstruction.” She discusses faith and doubt and doing one’s own work in reconstruction. She explores developing one’s own sexual ethics, with one’s own reasons. While preferring a traditional Christian ethic, she does not impose this. She deals with singleness, particularly later in life, sexuality in marriage and the difficulties that can arise, overcoming shame, and parenting after purity culture.
There is so much I appreciate about this book. Morgante offers “tools for the journey” from her clinical practice and encourages people to reach their own conclusions. Meanwhile, she quietly holds out a model of a redeemed sexuality for Christ-followers that offers joy, pleasure, and loving mutuality. She’s candid about problems. She names the falsehoods of Purity Culture in ways that help those who struggle to know that it is not them and they are not alone. Instead of myths of “great sex in marriage” Morgante helps us understand the goodness of our bodies and our sexuality. She moves the conversation about Purity Culture, #MeTwo, and #ChurchToo from grievance and pain to the possibility of healing and wholeness.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.
In honor of Women’s History Month, I thought it might be interesting to compile my reviews in recent years of Christian books on subjects related to women. I found everything from current issues to biblical studies. There are biographies and collections of writing by various Christian women in history. There is a discussion of a woman literary figure and one of women in literature. The books are ordered alphabetically by author. The list includes twenty-six reviews going back to January of 2018. This certainly doesn’t exhaust the good things that have been written (and there are reviews older than 2018 on this blog as well). If you are interested in reading some thoughtful books by and about women this offers some recent titles you might consider.
Reason to Return, Ericka Andersen. Colorado Springs: NavPress. Forthcoming, 2023. A book directed to believing women who have left the church looking at the reasons why they have left and reasons why they should consider returning, both for what they may gain and what they may give. Review
The Making of Biblical Womanhood, Beth Allison Barr. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021. A study of women in church history and the construction of the idea of “biblical womanhood which underwent a series of developments from the Reformation to the present. Review
A Week in the Life of a Greco-Roman Woman (A Week in the Life series), Holly Beers. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019. A creative rendering of what life was like for a woman from the lower free classes in Ephesus during the period when Paul was preaching in the city. Review
The Gospel According to Eve, Amanda W. Benckhuysen. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019. A history of women who have written on Genesis 1-3 since the fourth century, treating their worth, education, their roles as wives and mothers, whether they may teach and preach, and as advocates of social reforms. Review
A SubversiveGospel (Studies in Theology and the Arts),Michael Mears Bruner. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Academic, 2017. Proposes that the grotesque and violent character of Flannery O’Connor’s work reflects her understanding of the subversive character of the gospel and the challenge of awakening people in the Christ-haunted South to the beauty, goodness, and truth of the gospel. Review
That Way and No Other, Amy Carmichael (Introduction by Katelyn Beaty). Walden, NY: Plough Publishing, 2020. A curated collection of writings of Amy Carmichael, the missionary to India who became house mother to girls saved from sex trafficking. Review
The Reckless Way of Love, Dorothy Day, edited by Carolyn Kurtz, Introduction by D. L. Mayfield. Walden, NY: Plough Publishing, 2017. A collection of Dorothy Day’s writings on following Jesus in the ways of faith, love, prayer, life, and community. Review
Together in Ministry, Rob Dixon (Foreword by Ruth Haley Barton). Downers Grove: IVP Academic/Missio Alliance, 2021. A field research-based approach to mixed-gender ministry collaboration identifying ten attributes for healthy partnerships. Review
The #MeToo Reckoning, Ruth Everhart. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020. A discussion of sexual harassment and assault in the church, the impact on victims and the response of many churches more focused on institutional reputation than protecting victims and justice for the perpetrators. Review
Resisting the Marriage Plot(Studies in Theology and the Arts), Dalene Joy Fisher. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. Contrary to prevailing ideas of Christianity being an oppressive force in women’s lives in Victorian literature, looks at four instances in this literature where women resist cultural expectations around marriage due to the liberating and empowering quality of their faith. Review
Blessed Are The Nones, Stina Kielsmeier-Cook. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020. A memoir of a Christian woman coming to terms, with the help of some Catholic nuns, with her husband’s de-conversion. Review
Women in God’s Mission, Mary T. Lederleitner. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018. An account of research into the many ways women are leading in God’s mission around the world, the distinctive traits in their service and leadership, the challenges they experience around gender discrimination, and the conditions under which they do their best work. Review
Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears, Arlin C. Migliazzo, Foreword by Kristen Kobes Du Mez. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2020. The first comprehensive biography on Henrietta Mears that focuses on her early life, her Christian Education ministry at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, and her national impact on a nascent evangelical network of leaders, on Christian publishing and retreat ministry. Review
The Samaritan Woman’s Story, Caryn A. Reeder. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022. Challenges the view of the Samaritan woman as a sexual sinner, considering how this has been read in the church, and the realities of the life of women and marriage that points to a very different reading. Review
The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy L. Sayers with an Appreciation by C. S. Lewis, edited by Carole Vanderhoof. Walden, NY: Plough Publishing, 2018. An anthology of Sayers’ work organized by theological topics, drawing on her detective fiction, plays, and essays. Review
Husband, Wife, Father, Child, Master, Slave, Kurt C Schaefer. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2018. In contrast to many biblical scholars who argue that the “household codes” of scripture do indeed, for various reasons, affirm cultural role expectations, this work argues that Peter’s version is actually a subtle satire that opposes the cultural norms of Greco-Roman culture. Review
Partners in Christ, John G. Stackhouse, Jr. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015. Acase by a convert to egalitarianism for why both complementarians and egalitarians find scriptural foundations for their views with a proposal for what can make the best sense of the diverse testimony of scripture. (Review)
Women Rising, Meghan Tschanz, Foreword by Carolyn Custis James. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021. A global mission trip awakens the author both to the injustices women face throughout the world and the patterns of subjection she learned in childhood that held her back and which she learned to name and use her voice to speak against. Review
The Way of Julian Norwich: A Prayer Journey Through Lent, Sheila Upjohn. London: SPCK, 2020. Six meditations on the writings of Julian of Norwich that redirect our focus from sin and judgement to the greatness of God’s love revealed in Christ’s incarnation and death. Review
Sex and the City of God, Carolyn Weber. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020. I wrote about this book: “This skillfully written narrative, punctuated with poetry and Augustine, invites us into the the aching wonder of human love shaped by the growing pursuit of the City of God. We are left wondering if God has something better on offer, even when it comes to human sexuality.” Review
With Fresh Eyes, Karen Wingate. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2021. Sixty reflections of a woman born legally blind, who gains significant sight in one eye, seeing not only the world, but also the world’s Creator with new eyes. Review
Priscilla, Ben Witherington III. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019. An imaginative rendering of the story of Priscilla, a companion of Paul, as a dictated narrative recorded by her adopted daughter Julia, as she faces possible trial before a Roman tribunal. Review
Power Women, Edited by Nancy Wang Yuen and Deshonna Collier-Goubil, Foreword by Shirley Hoogstra. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. Fourteen women who are both mothers and academics write about how they navigate these callings as women of faith. Review
For other titles reviewed here on the blog, you can use “The Month in Reviews” and skim titles from 2017 and earlier or if you are looking for a particular title, enter it into the search box on this blog, which works very well with titles or topic searches.
Summary: An argument connecting sexual abuse and other sexually dysfunctional teaching to the purity teaching upholding an ideal of abstinence until marriage between a man and a woman.
Emily Joy Allison went to a non-denominational evangelical church. Her father gave he a purity ring and was told she shouldn’t even kiss a boy until marriage. She eventually went to Moody Bible Institute. But before that, she was a survivor of sexual abuse from a youth leader in her church who “groomed” her and then came on to her. She’d never been taught about her body or about consent or what constituted abuse. Her father figured out what was going on, the leader was removed from the youth group, and the church swept the incident under the carpet. Emily’s last contact was a forced call him to apologize for her role. He never apologized. In her parents’ eyes, she was just as much to blame as he was. The day would come years later when she was no longer welcome home. At this writing, she still is not.
She buried this incident for many years. Only when the #MeToo movement arose did she summon the courage to create a new hashtag, #ChurchToo, and told her story and outed her abuser. Her story serves both as prologue and example of her thesis: that purity culture emphasizing abstinence, or else, creates the environment for abuse to thrive in church contexts. Women bear a disproportionate responsibility to dress and live “modestly” so as not to cause men to be aroused. It creates a rape culture, where the assumption is that the abused bears as much responsibility as the abuser. Sexual shame is used to create social control at the cost of both women and men hating their bodies and their sexuality–even while many are sexually active, up to 80 percent in a statistic cited in the book. Allison uses her stories, those of others, and research to deconstruct purity culture and its underlying theology.
Allison, a self-professed lesbian, goes further. She argues that the abstinence ideal underlying purity culture is homophobic, doing violence to LGBTQ persons. She advocates for a fully affirming position as the only alternative to abusive purity culture, with no middle ground.
In response, first of all, I’m convinced that her account of purity culture and its use of shame and social control to try to enforce an ideal of abstinence until marriage between a man and a woman is both credible and chilling. Her own story of her church’s inadequate and manipulative instruction about sexuality and coverup of her abuse is heartbreaking. I believe her. Her account, sometimes laced with profanity and justifiably angry is one I’m sure many churches will shun, likely the very churches that need to hear her.
What I miss in her attack on abstinence and advocacy for a fully affirming stance is a theology of human sexuality, particularly of the meaning of our sexuality. She rejects the “clobber verses” of scripture without addressing either the underlying theology that is part of the fabric in which these verses have been understood nor the theological premises, if such exist, for her own alternative of “ethical nonmonogamy.”
Likewise, while exposing the scandalous character of abuse in the church, which needs to be brought to the light of day, she offers no discussion of the rape culture I’ve witnessed as a collegiate minister in public universities where student have no lack of sexual education and instruction on consent. Donna Freitas, in Consent on Campus, notes what a complicated idea “consent” is and the reality that at least one in four report sexual abuse. Students nod knowingly when they hear the phrase, “the walk of shame.” This is not a purity culture context.
So, while I disagree with her broad brush indictment of abstinence and am committed to a different sexual ethic, her challenge to the patriarchal structures of the church, and her analysis of the purity culture a generation of youth were raised on, is deserving of attention. The dysfunctional sexuality of these churches is matched by the dysfunctional sexuality of the wider culture. There is a trail of abuse arising from both. Allison challenges us to something better than #MeToo and #ChurchToo.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
I read two books this months defending the reading of the old books, particularly those associated with the western canon, which has come in for much scorn. Of the two, Alan Jacobs’ Breaking Bread with the Dead had the advantage for me of an irenic approach that took the critics seriously while celebrating what is worthy in these works. Both spoke of the “strangeness” of these works and, in Jacobs’ words, their capacity to increase our “personal density.” Books on three different books of scripture (Jeremiah, Romans, and 2 Corinthians) were another part of my reading this month as well as Ben Witherington III’s Torah Old and New. I’ve come to appreciate those who write with great skill with their words and reveled both in the poetry of Mary Oliver and the Lenten devotionals of Marilyn McEntyre, each on a word or phrase. Zuboff’s book on surveillance capitalism raises important questions but in an overly repetitious fashion that I felt “showed all her work.” A couple other books that were an absolute delight were Michael Kibbe’s From Research to Teaching, which sparkled with practical insights, and Alister McGrath’s theological biography of one of my heroes, recently passed, J. I. Packer. A delightful new author for me was Liuan Huska, whose book Hurting Yet Whole offered one of the best explorations of how one lives with chronic pain. So here is the list with links to publishers in the title and a link to the full review at the end of each summary.
Prodigal Son (Frankenstein Book One), Dean Koontz. New York: Bantam Books, 2009. A serial murderer is loose in New Orleans, and something far worse that two detectives begin to unravel, helped by a mysterious, tattooed figure by the name of Deucalion. Review
J. I. Packer: His Life and Thought, Alister McGrath. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020. An account of the theologian’s faith, life, and theological engagement. Review
Breaking Bread with the Dead, Alan Jacobs. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. A case for reading old books as a means of increasing our “personal density” to expand our temporal bandwidth. Review
Where the Eye Alights, Marilyn McEntyre. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2021. A collection of forty Lenten meditations drawn from words or phrases from scripture and poetry, inviting us to pause and attend. Review
Torah Old and New, Ben Witherington III. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018. A study of the texts from the Pentateuch quoted or alluded to in the New Testament and how they were understood both in their original context and as used in the New Testament context. Review
Hurting Yet Whole, Liuan Huska. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020. When a vibrant young writer descends into a season of chronic pain, she discovers the disembodied character of much Christian theology, that she could be whole as a person yet hurting, and that pain and physical vulnerability can be a place where we are met by God. Review
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff. New York: Public Affairs, 2019. An extended treatise on the idea of surveillance capitalism, in which we are the “raw materials” for others economic gain and the object of instrumentarian control. Review
The Theology of Jeremiah, John Goldingay. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. A survey of the life of Jeremiah, the composition of the book, and the theological themes running through it. Review
Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy, Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B. Willson (Foreword by Nicholas Wolterstorff). Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020. Proposes that a theology of work is not enough. In scripture, people were formed in their work through worship rather than simply an intellectual engagement. Review
A Trick of the Light(Chief Inspector Gamache #7), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur, 2012. The vernissage for Clara’s art show is a stunning success with glowing reviews only to be spoiled when the body of her estranged childhood friend is found in her flowerbed. Review
The Western Canon, Harold Bloom. New York: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Publishing, 1994, this edition 2014. A spirited defense of the traditional Western Canon of literature against what Bloom calls the “School of Resentment” and a discussion of 26 representative works Bloom would include. Review
Strength in Weakness: An Introduction to 2 Corinthians, Jonathan Lamb. Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: Langham Preaching Resources, 2020. A concise exposition of 2 Corinthians designed as a resource for pastors, and for personal and small group study. Review
The Battle of Hastings, Jim Bradbury. New York: Pegasus Books, 2021. A historical account of Anglo-Saxon England, the rise of Normandy and the precipitating events leading up to the Norman invasion and the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the aftermath. Review
Best Book of the Month: Work and Worship by Kaemingk and Willson gets the nod. They address a crucial missing link in the “theology of work” discussion in making the connection between our worship on Sunday and our work through the week, and do so with theological clarity and practical examples.
Quote of the Month: I appreciated the insight of Marilyn McEntyre into the connection between repentance and rest. I’ve never thought of repentance as very restful. She persuaded me otherwise:
“And repentance, to return to Isaiah [30:15], allows you to rest. I think of the many times I’ve heard–and said–some version of ‘I’m wrestling with…” “I’m struggling with…” “I’m working on…” changing a habit, coming to terms with self defeating patterns, releasing resentments or guilt or old confusions. Repentance allows us to rest in forgiveness, regroup, and rather than wrestling, float for a while, upheld while we learn to swim in the current, or walk unburdened, or do a dance of deliverance, day by day releasing the past and entering fully, with an open heart, into the present where an open heart is waiting to receive us.” (p.11).
What I’m Reading: At present, I’m soaking in Tish Harrison Warren’s Prayer in the Night, a reflection upon one of my favorite compline prayers. I’ve just finished Justin Ariel Bailey’s Reimagining Apologetics which argues for an apologetics of beauty using the works of George MacDonald and Marilynne Robinson. I came across Mary Wells Lawrence in my Youngstown blog (she also grew up there), and learned she had written a memoir, A Big Life. She was the first women to head a Madison Avenue ad agency and she offers an insider look at this whirlwind life. Purity culture and abuse in the church has been much in the news and #ChurchToo is an exploration of this theme by one of the originators of the #ChurchToo hashtag. Sergeant Salinger is a biographical fiction account of J.D. Salinger’s World War 2 service. Pretty interesting read! Finally The Black Coast is the first installment of a fantasy series replete with dragons, raiding clans, demonic figures and a kingdom in danger from without and within. Still trying to figure out if I like this, which is probably a bad sign.
Much good reading and more on the review pile including Winn Collier’s new biography of Eugene Peterson that just came in and I can’t wait to get to read! Hope you have some books like that on your “to read” pile as summer approaches.
Go to “The Month in Reviews” on my blog to skim all my reviews going back to 2014 or use the “Search” box to see if I’ve reviewed something you are interested in.
