This is really good. I think your point about lifting marriage is key here. I was raised in the peak of purity culture and had several friends in late HS/early college who would have liked to get married but couldn't because the adults in their life highly discouraged it so they wouldn't throw away their future.
A new purity or chastity culture needs parents to and Christian institutions to buy into marriage. Parents should be ok with kids getting married younger and make spaces in their home for their married kids to live and get on their feet. They should also be more open to continuing to pay for college while (if they are choosing to) their kids are married for a few years. Christian universities should have more than just married housing, but find ways for married couples to flourish while they are students there. We shouldn't live like we're worried that marriage is going to make the process of being a professional harder, but instead see it as adding a great good to someone's life (not an ultimate good!).
Good news is that I've seen parents do this and I've seen churches and parents generally do a good job of teaching about sex and lifting up marriage.
New idea for me. It meets the problem I see of holding out ridiculously late for marriage and starting a family. Meshes with the suggestion that empty nesters open their large homes to house the young who can't afford or find housing, a critical problem here in Vermont.
I'm a mother is six who raised kids during this time. I wanted for my children a better experience than I had - - to come into marriage without the shame and heartbreak of sexual relationships I had before I was mature. These adult children are more or less critical of our parenting in this regard, and we were by no means extreme in it. We never made purity the most important thing. Your thoughts remind me of the context of that 'movement' and the sound grounding of the Word. I feel like I don't need to be ashamed any more for 'putting my kids through' the gentle teaching that God cares about our sexual well-being. Thank you for this.
Could I submit for consideration that what we need is not a new “purity culture” but perhaps a recommitment to “chastity culture”? ISTM the latter speaks more directly and consistently to the active stewarding of our bodies in love of God and others within the life of discipleship. The telos being gospel compelled faithfulness rather than purity in and of itself. It also applies equally to all Christians whether young or old, single or married, male or female in a way that “purity culture” struggles too (perhaps especially because of its history).
I’m open to this argument, but I am skeptical that a change in terminology really means a change in mindset for most people. Can you lay out more specifically how “chastity” might cover ground that “purity” misses?
Chastitiy is also something important inside marriage. When my husband deploys for a year, we are both expecting the other to be chaste. This isn't a muscle we are done exercising just because we're married. Agree a rebrand is valuable. But good thoughts all around!
Yep. It's been used for ages. I wonder if the hangup with the term chastity, in many evangelical minds, is that is is highly connected to Catholic teaching and sexual restraint, even in marriage. Which is not anything purity culture ever endorsed or even hinted at.
But seriously, I take the point. It’s not so much the specific term chastity that appeals to me, but the fact that (properly understood) it refers to a proactive expression of discipleship lived in response to the gospel (rather than veering into legalism which I think is a danger with the term “purity”). Ultimately I think what we want to advocate for is the faithful stewarding our sexual natures . So whatever term refers to that 🙂
Good thoughts and a helpful starting point. For a robust critique of purity culture that’s grounded in both the gospel and a high view of marriage, you should dig in to @sheilawraygregoire’s work
Great read! As someone whose parents met during the “I kissed dating goodbye” era and never actually “dated” until they were engaged, it is very interesting to see the cultural shift now that I am navigating these things for myself.
One thing that stuck out to me was your use of shame- referencing both productive and counterproductive causes. To my understanding and what I have been taught, shame is usually unproductive, leading to shame and isolation, while Godly repentance (or sometimes even more plainly: guilt or regret) drives believers back towards God and making productive changes. Would you be able to share more about the intention of using this word?
This is an amazing, well-balanced article, thank you.
I had one clarification question. When you wrote, “Several writers who grew up in purity culture have testified that their marriages were burdened by either shame over libido,” did you mean that these were people who struggled with too much or too little libido in their marriages? I’ve read of people who have struggled with marital sex because of how they were taught to blanket-associate sexuality with shame from extreme purity culture.
I am, I confess, probably not rightly part of this conversation, what with being a secular-liberal-turned-agnostic-Quaker. So if you think my comments are simply based upon a misguided starting point then I’ll accept that. But my attention was caught by this wording:
“Shame is legitimate when it is just. Men who cheat on their wives and abandon their children should be shamed. Women who use their sexuality to entice men should likewise feel shame.”
This seems to set up an equivalence. On the one hand, we have the breaking of an important promise and the betrayal of vulnerable people who you have a duty to love and care for. On the other hand, we have an oddly vague category that could encompass everything from smiling at a boy you like in the hopes of catching his eye to deliberately trying to induce a man to, say, break an important promise, or develop a bad habit.
Perhaps, if I had grown up in a different cultural milieu, the category “using sexuality to entice men” would make more sense to me. But with my own cultural background, I find it hard to imagine any woman having that as her ultimate goal. Instrumental goal, sure. You could want to entice a man to have sex, or to convince him to enter a serious relationship with you, or to extract money from him. But those are such different behaviours that it’s weird to me to think of them as a single thing.
I feel like this is, in itself, a category that would make more sense to men than to women. Its focus is not on the woman, her real goals, and the morality thereof. Its focus is on the effect she has on men, with her state of mind relevant only insofar as it pertains to her effect on men. Is it healthy for men to evaluate women in such a narrow and self-focused way? Is it healthy to ask women to evaluate themselves in such a narrow and male-focused way?
The thing is, I think it ought to be possible to have a chaste sexual ethics that evaluates a woman’s character—even in a sexual context—in ways that don’t foreground her effect on men to the exclusion of everything else. But there might not, currently, be communities that can properly develop such an understanding, because chaste sexual ethics is almost always rooted in tradition, and those traditions are shaped more by the male perspective even when the subject is the character of women.
If there’s a *true* chaste sexual ethics, though, then it isn’t male-focused in this way. So there might be something to be learned from an approach to chastity that can see women from their own perspective.
Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thanks for hearing me out. And I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m simply too far from the perspective you are talking from to be able to say anything useful.
Well, I suppose I could imagine wanting to entice men for a reason like “to feel good about yourself,” which is sufficiently enmeshed with the enticement itself that it might come close to being a single, main goal, instead of an instrumental goal. But even there, I think I would still hesitate to use an interpretation that starts and ends with the effect on men, if you see what I mean. It’s the narrow focus, in particular, that strikes me as an odd way to look at it.
This is really good. I think your point about lifting marriage is key here. I was raised in the peak of purity culture and had several friends in late HS/early college who would have liked to get married but couldn't because the adults in their life highly discouraged it so they wouldn't throw away their future.
A new purity or chastity culture needs parents to and Christian institutions to buy into marriage. Parents should be ok with kids getting married younger and make spaces in their home for their married kids to live and get on their feet. They should also be more open to continuing to pay for college while (if they are choosing to) their kids are married for a few years. Christian universities should have more than just married housing, but find ways for married couples to flourish while they are students there. We shouldn't live like we're worried that marriage is going to make the process of being a professional harder, but instead see it as adding a great good to someone's life (not an ultimate good!).
Good news is that I've seen parents do this and I've seen churches and parents generally do a good job of teaching about sex and lifting up marriage.
New idea for me. It meets the problem I see of holding out ridiculously late for marriage and starting a family. Meshes with the suggestion that empty nesters open their large homes to house the young who can't afford or find housing, a critical problem here in Vermont.
I'm a mother is six who raised kids during this time. I wanted for my children a better experience than I had - - to come into marriage without the shame and heartbreak of sexual relationships I had before I was mature. These adult children are more or less critical of our parenting in this regard, and we were by no means extreme in it. We never made purity the most important thing. Your thoughts remind me of the context of that 'movement' and the sound grounding of the Word. I feel like I don't need to be ashamed any more for 'putting my kids through' the gentle teaching that God cares about our sexual well-being. Thank you for this.
Could I submit for consideration that what we need is not a new “purity culture” but perhaps a recommitment to “chastity culture”? ISTM the latter speaks more directly and consistently to the active stewarding of our bodies in love of God and others within the life of discipleship. The telos being gospel compelled faithfulness rather than purity in and of itself. It also applies equally to all Christians whether young or old, single or married, male or female in a way that “purity culture” struggles too (perhaps especially because of its history).
I’m open to this argument, but I am skeptical that a change in terminology really means a change in mindset for most people. Can you lay out more specifically how “chastity” might cover ground that “purity” misses?
Chastitiy is also something important inside marriage. When my husband deploys for a year, we are both expecting the other to be chaste. This isn't a muscle we are done exercising just because we're married. Agree a rebrand is valuable. But good thoughts all around!
Yes, indeed!
Yep. It's been used for ages. I wonder if the hangup with the term chastity, in many evangelical minds, is that is is highly connected to Catholic teaching and sexual restraint, even in marriage. Which is not anything purity culture ever endorsed or even hinted at.
Make chastity great again? 😉
But seriously, I take the point. It’s not so much the specific term chastity that appeals to me, but the fact that (properly understood) it refers to a proactive expression of discipleship lived in response to the gospel (rather than veering into legalism which I think is a danger with the term “purity”). Ultimately I think what we want to advocate for is the faithful stewarding our sexual natures . So whatever term refers to that 🙂
Agree, it is the basis of much of my substack. :)
Good thoughts and a helpful starting point. For a robust critique of purity culture that’s grounded in both the gospel and a high view of marriage, you should dig in to @sheilawraygregoire’s work
@baremarriage is her publication
Great read! As someone whose parents met during the “I kissed dating goodbye” era and never actually “dated” until they were engaged, it is very interesting to see the cultural shift now that I am navigating these things for myself.
One thing that stuck out to me was your use of shame- referencing both productive and counterproductive causes. To my understanding and what I have been taught, shame is usually unproductive, leading to shame and isolation, while Godly repentance (or sometimes even more plainly: guilt or regret) drives believers back towards God and making productive changes. Would you be able to share more about the intention of using this word?
This is an amazing, well-balanced article, thank you.
I had one clarification question. When you wrote, “Several writers who grew up in purity culture have testified that their marriages were burdened by either shame over libido,” did you mean that these were people who struggled with too much or too little libido in their marriages? I’ve read of people who have struggled with marital sex because of how they were taught to blanket-associate sexuality with shame from extreme purity culture.
I am, I confess, probably not rightly part of this conversation, what with being a secular-liberal-turned-agnostic-Quaker. So if you think my comments are simply based upon a misguided starting point then I’ll accept that. But my attention was caught by this wording:
“Shame is legitimate when it is just. Men who cheat on their wives and abandon their children should be shamed. Women who use their sexuality to entice men should likewise feel shame.”
This seems to set up an equivalence. On the one hand, we have the breaking of an important promise and the betrayal of vulnerable people who you have a duty to love and care for. On the other hand, we have an oddly vague category that could encompass everything from smiling at a boy you like in the hopes of catching his eye to deliberately trying to induce a man to, say, break an important promise, or develop a bad habit.
Perhaps, if I had grown up in a different cultural milieu, the category “using sexuality to entice men” would make more sense to me. But with my own cultural background, I find it hard to imagine any woman having that as her ultimate goal. Instrumental goal, sure. You could want to entice a man to have sex, or to convince him to enter a serious relationship with you, or to extract money from him. But those are such different behaviours that it’s weird to me to think of them as a single thing.
I feel like this is, in itself, a category that would make more sense to men than to women. Its focus is not on the woman, her real goals, and the morality thereof. Its focus is on the effect she has on men, with her state of mind relevant only insofar as it pertains to her effect on men. Is it healthy for men to evaluate women in such a narrow and self-focused way? Is it healthy to ask women to evaluate themselves in such a narrow and male-focused way?
The thing is, I think it ought to be possible to have a chaste sexual ethics that evaluates a woman’s character—even in a sexual context—in ways that don’t foreground her effect on men to the exclusion of everything else. But there might not, currently, be communities that can properly develop such an understanding, because chaste sexual ethics is almost always rooted in tradition, and those traditions are shaped more by the male perspective even when the subject is the character of women.
If there’s a *true* chaste sexual ethics, though, then it isn’t male-focused in this way. So there might be something to be learned from an approach to chastity that can see women from their own perspective.
Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thanks for hearing me out. And I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m simply too far from the perspective you are talking from to be able to say anything useful.
"But with my own cultural background, I find it hard to imagine any woman having that as her ultimate goal"
Why? Women are people, after all, with all of the flaws and foibles and failings that implies.
Well, I suppose I could imagine wanting to entice men for a reason like “to feel good about yourself,” which is sufficiently enmeshed with the enticement itself that it might come close to being a single, main goal, instead of an instrumental goal. But even there, I think I would still hesitate to use an interpretation that starts and ends with the effect on men, if you see what I mean. It’s the narrow focus, in particular, that strikes me as an odd way to look at it.