Purity culture

Review: Recovering from Purity Culture

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Cover image of "Recovering from purity Culture" by Camden Morgante

Recovering from Purity Culture, Camden Morgante. Baker Books (ISBN: 9781540904263) 2024.

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.

Review: Non-Toxic Masculinity

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Non-Toxic Masculinity, Zachary Wagner. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023.

Summary: Focusing on the distortions of male sexuality coming out of the purity culture movement, charts what a healthy male sexuality might look like that is responsible, selfless, and loving.

“IT’S A CONFUSING TIME TO BE A MAN.”

These are the opening words in Zachary Wagner’s new book, Non-Toxic Masculinity. The book focuses particularly on the brand of male sexuality that has emerged out of the evangelical church’s purity movement culture that has been marked by scandals of sexual abuse and harassment in the church and unhealthy patterns of sexuality in many marriages. This also has resulted in male shame and body hatred. Wagner writes for men, reflecting on his own experiences growing up in purity culture, calling for men to be accountable both in owning the problem they have had and seeking the healing and vision of positive masculine sexuality that he believes may be found within the scriptures.

Wagner focuses the first part of the book on the Purity Movement of the 1990’s and early 2000’s, defining it as “the theological assumptions, discipleship materials, events, and rhetorical strategies used to promote traditional Christian sexual ethics in response to the sexual revolution.” He contends that the messaging of the movement led people to believe:

  1. Bodies are evil and sex is bad
  2. Abstinence will result in great sex later
  3. In sexual certainty in an uncertain world
  4. Sexual sin always had clear consequences
  5. Sex is at the center, it is a big deal
  6. Singleness is subhuman (and only temporary)
  7. Boys are dangerous (and so are girls)

These messages inculcated shame rather than a recognition of the gift of our sexuality and bodies, that men were out of control animals (and that women bore the burden of not arousing their desires), and also led to attitudes of male sexual entitlement in marriage. It also created ideals of masculinity that many men struggled to identify with, whether they were straight or gay. Wagner shows how these messages were dehumanizing for both men and women.

In the second part of the book, he seeks to articulate a vision for renewed male sexuality. He begins with the assumption that men are victims of their own desires that may result in shame, self-hatred, and may be the root of compulsive pornography use. He speaks of his own breakthrough of recognizing the wonder and beauty of being male and that desire, curiosity, and attraction reveal our longing for this deepest of human connections for which God made us. He also deal with biblical misconceptions, challenging expectations of marital sexuality, male desire being greater than female, that sexual frustration is a good reason to marry, and that wives owe husbands sex. Finally, he focuses on the male sexuality of Jesus, that as truly male and not androgynous, Jesus had a penis, modeled healthy relationships with both men and women, and the dignity of singleness. He rehumanized women who had been ill-treated.

In the last part of the book, Wagner explores what “grown up” male sexuality is like. He begins with the role of parents and significant adults in shaping the male sexuality of boys and protecting them from abuse, teaching them of the dignity of both boys and girls bodies. He challenges the “every man’s battle” narrative while offering a helpful critique of pornography use. He offers healthy alternatives for young men and their parents to the “I kissed dating good-bye” narrative. He discusses how we cultivate cultures of dignity, accountability, and friendship between men and women in the church, recognizing the failings of both complementarians and egalitarians. He punctures the overblown expectations of marital sexuality, talking honestly (with his wife’s explicit permission at the beginning of the book) about their own sexual struggles, and how marriage is a process of learning to love in all of life and in the bedroom.

Wagner also goes to a place I haven’t seen many books go. He talks about the connection between male sexuality and fatherhood, that this is one of the central purposes of men’s sexuality. He contends that this capacity teaches us that male sexuality is relational, cooperative, life-giving, responsible, nurturing, and self-sacrificial. What I so appreciate here is that Wagner frames male sexuality and fatherhood in broader issues of Christ-like character that extend far beyond our intimate relations.

I found this an important book to read to understand the fallout to the Purity Movement that I’ve encountered both in other books and in the experience of those raised within it. I appreciate both the analysis of the impact of that culture on young men (so much more has been written from female perspectives) and the effort to articulate healthy male sexuality within a traditional Christian sexual ethic without the messaging of purity culture. The frank discussions of pornography use and the underlying issues is an important aspect of this book. Wagner also manages, I think, to convey respect for LGBTQ+ persons while adhering to a traditional Christian sexual ethic, as well as to reflect upon the negative ways purity culture impacted LGBTQ+ persons.

There is only so much one book can cover. The book deals only tangentially with the sexual ethics of the wider culture. While speaking trenchantly against male sexual entitlement and patriarchy, there is an opposite extreme of male passivity that I have discussed with Christian leaders, both male and female. It is a confusing time for men, and declining male college enrollments and other measures suggest that as women advance in many areas, men are not advancing with them. Some of the qualities of healthy masculinity addressed in this book seem to bear on such questions and I hope Wagner will write more about this.

What Wagner has done is articulate a vision of masculinity that is humanizing for both men and women, that articulates the goodness of male sexuality and bodies within a biblical sexual ethic, and that is positive, life-affirming, and attractive. The church has been losing young men and women for lack of this, even while the culture offers nothing better. What I hope is that this will be a book that starts a conversation among Christian men that has been sorely lacking.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: #ChurchToo

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#ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing, Emily Joy Allison. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2021.

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.