A Critique of Purity Culture (part 1)
[PREFACE]
I apologize for delay in getting this post up. I was out of town two weeks ago and last week, I was finishing up another blog project of mine.
Basically, this other site is a place where I link to articles/images/videos on the internet that interest me. I tag everything I post which means that you can find links to webpages about sex, dating, the church, and a number of other topics.
(You can read more about why this reboot took so long here.)
One last bit. Be sure to check the footnotes – lots of interesting extra info there.
[END PREFACE]
Defining Purity
I guess the first step in critiquing purity culture is to define our terms and get clear about what we’re talking about. Unfortunately, pinning down the precise definition of purity used by writers and educators perpetuating this culture is difficult to do. For one thing, there’s no clear definition of what constitutes purity.1 One might assume that losing one’s virginity would constitute a loss of purity in this culture, but upon closer examination, even virginity is not so easy to define.2 Not that anyone is quibbling over that, because in this culture, acts that contribute to a loss of purity come well before actual sex – merely thinking sexual thoughts can be enough to endanger one’s purity. When it comes right down to it, it’s difficult to come up with a positive definition of what purity is because it’s defined primarily by what people (especially women) don’t do.3
That said, coming up with a working definition of purity isn’t just an abstract, academic exercise – people are already working and reworking their definitions out in the real world. Donna Freitas interviewed students across a wide variety of college campuses about their sexual experiences. She tells the story of a nineteen-year-old Catholic college student who had committed herself to purity during high school (which at the time she understood to mean not dating until she met her spouse). By the time of her interview, while she had engaged in oral sex with a number of boyfriends, she still considered herself to be a virgin. In terms of her purity, however, she saw herself as “partially damaged goods.”4
Without a positive, practical definition of purity, the students that Freitas interviewed exhibited a wide range of purity standards ranging from “waiting till the wedding ceremony for the first kiss” and “trying to avoid all lustful thoughts or feelings of sexual desire prior to marriage” to “engaging in ‘everything but’ intercourse, including oral and anal sex.”5
While both ends of this spectrum are problematic, I think for people unfamiliar with purity culture, it’s the no dating end of the spectrum that people are confused about – how and why do they hold such an extreme view?
Moving The Goalposts
On the conservative end of the purity spectrum, the one overarching message can be summed up in a single word: “don’t.” Don’t lose your virginity. Don’t kiss, don’t touch anything, don’t feel your feelings, and don’t date until you’re ready to get married. While these may seem like extreme measures to take, without a positive, working definition of purity, the only alternative seems to be to run as far away from any and all things that could even potentially lead to someone losing their status as pure.6 And that’s why authors writing from this perspective often talk about dating in the worst light possible:
Dating creates more problems than it solves: broken hearts, illegitimate children, abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, and feelings of guilt or shame that can last a lifetime… The difference between a kingdom courtship and destructive dating in your life could mean the difference between reaping a harvest of broken hearts and the harvest of a loving relationship and lasting commitment.7
We can only attain righteousness by doing two things — destroying sin in its embryonic stage and fleeing temptation… For me and many other people I know, it has meant rejecting typical dating. I go out with groups of friends; I avoid one-on-one dating because it encourages physical intimacy and places me in an isolated setting with a girl… Maybe you think I’m taking this idea too far. Maybe you’re saying, ‘You’ve got to be joking. one little kiss won’t have me hurtling toward certain sin.’ Let me encourage you to give this idea a little more thought. For just a moment, consider the possibility that even the most innocent form of sexual expression outside of marriage could be dangerous.8
It’s important to note that in purity culture, “destroying sin in its embryonic stage and fleeing temptation,” is another way of telling single people to deny all aspects of their sexuality. They do this by lumping all levels of sexual desire under the broad category of lust. Purity culture teaches (usually based on a literalist reading of Matthew 5:27-30 — “…anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”) that thought equals action (or at best, thought inevitably leads to action) and so they teach people to suppress and deny any and all feelings of a sexual nature. Even worse, they often shame people for having them.9
[POSTSCRIPT]
In this post, I merely set up the problem. In the next post, I’ll get into the critique from a biblical and psychological perspective. Stay tuned!
Shamed and Shunned – A Case Study
(I’ve shared a version of this story before.)
Many, many years ago, I knew a couple. They had been dating for several months and they were great together. They were both heavily involved in ministry, their goals and their callings both lined up well, and they were crazy in love. Everyone could see that they were headed towards marriage.
And then late one night, they had sex. And then within a matter of days, their relationship was over.
Just like that.
Now I didn’t know this couple super well so I don’t know the details of their split, but I can well imagine what went down. When they shared what they had done with the leadership team of the parachurch organization they worked with, they were told to step down. They were also told that they should take a break from their relationship with each other both for their own good and for the good of the organization.
On top of that, word got out. Fast. Again, I didn’t know this couple very well and I wasn’t seeking the information out, but somehow the story got out on the grapevine and made its way to me. Despite the leadership’s attempts to hide what had happened, it seemed like people at all levels of this ministry were talking about it (albeit in hushed, coded terms – winks, nods, and other stupid, subtle gestures). Intentionally or not, the couple was shamed.
I don’t know if they were instructed by leadership to stay completely away from the organization’s events, but I know that I never saw them around after this all went down. Intentionally or not, they were shunned.
All together, I think that’s a really stupid and sad outcome all around.
Who knows what amazing things this couple could have done together. They were on track to getting married, why should the fact that they had sex derail their life together? If the Bible is indeed about love and relationship then I think the fact that the couple broke up because of the way this ministry handled this situation AND the fact that this ministry ostracized them from community is far more sinful than anything the couple may have done.
Sad and stupid. I’m sure that incident led to years of feelings of guilt and shame, longing and regret.
And intentionally or not, for people like me who learned about what had happened through the grapevine, we were being taught something. We learned, in no uncertain terms, that sex before marriage was one of the worst things anyone could do. It’s so wrong and horrible that it’ll get you kicked out of fellowship, community, grace, and forgiveness. It’ll also break up your relationship with the person you’re in love with. In short, having sex outside of marriage will rob you of any and all things that are good in life and in Christianity.
…and that’s quite a lesson to learn.
And to unlearn.
[POSTSCRIPT]
Next week, I’ll begin a series of posts critiquing purity culture. I hope to show how this highly problematic way of (not) talking about singleness and sexuality can lead to just the kind of mishandling of relationship that I shared above.
1. An Introduction
For two years now, I’ve been working on a series of posts about how really poor church teachings in the area of singleness, sexuality, and dating have brought me to a place in life where I just turned 41 and I’m still a virgin who’s never been in a serious romantic relationship. Ever. And to be frank, it’s been a really awful ride.
Over the past two years, I’ve been working on a series of posts on my personal blog about shortcomings in the way the church talks about singleness, sexuality, and dating, and how these shortcomings have impacted my own life. Throughout this series, I tried to both critique and to think through how the church can do better in these areas and on this second bit, I have to say that it hasn’t been easy. I’ve tried and jettisoned a number of proposals (see here and here) as friends have questioned and commented on them.
And now.
And now I’m finally at a place where I think I have something workable – a more helpful way of thinking and talking about singlenes and sexuality in the church that encourages healthy relationships – and here I mean intra-personal relationships (a healthy relationship within one’s self), interpersonal relationships (healthy relationships with others, more specifically, romantic interests), and our relationship with God.
But first I want to clarify a few things.
Intended Audience
These posts are meant primarily for post-high school, non-married adults in the Christian church who are wanting to know more about how to navigate their sexuality and their dating life. Now I like to think that what I’m proposing will work with any couples, whether they align themselves with the Christian faith or not, but I will be speaking from and to a Christian framework. That is to say, I will be writing with the assumption that my audience shares in the belief that, to some degree or another, the Bible is the revealed word of God and serves as a kind of centering document in the life of the church.
Preliminary Terms and Definitions
Singleness
Here I mean any unmarried person who may or may not be involved in a romantic relationship. Simple as that.
Sex
Sex is a biologically-based need which is oriented not only toward procreation but, indeed, toward pleasure and tension release. It aims at genital activity culminating in orgasm.1
Basically, when I use the word, “sex,” I mean the sex act, the bump and grind, making whoopee, the wild thing.
Sexuality
Sexuality… is a much more comprehensive term associated with more diffuse and symbolic meanings, psychological and cultural orientations. While it includes sex and relates to biological organ systems, sexuality goes beyond this… Sexuality is our self-understanding and way of being in the world as male and female… It involves our affectional orientation toward those of the opposite and/or the same sex.2
In other words, our sexuality is a much larger category than sex. It includes the sex act, but it also contains things like the way we think and feel about sex. It includes how and why we act (or choose not to act) on our sexual desires and whether we embrace them or shame and repress them. It also has to do with an awareness of how the culture we live and grow up in shapes how we think, feel, and act on our sexuality.
Purity Culture
This way of talking about singleness and sexuality goes under different names – the purity movement is a common one, abstinence-only education is another. Basically it is a way of talking about sexuality where almost all the focus is on not having sex until one is married. In addition, a common idea in this culture is that all sexual thoughts, feelings, and desires are wrong and/or damaging outside the context of marriage. Because of this, some of these programs go as far as counseling people not to date at all until they have found someone they intend to marry.
(I’ll have much more to say about purity culture in a future post.)
Goals and Method
My goal is to outline a new framework for thinking about singleness and sexuality in the church. Much of the popular Christian literature around the topic of singleness and dating are highly problematic and while there are books that I’ve found to be tremendously helpful in laying out healthier, more life-affirming ways for singles to steward their sexuality, they tend to be written for a more academic audience. My hope is to take these academic works and restate their ideas in ways that are more accessible, relatable, and applicable.
Conversation Partners
Although I will be referencing a number of difference texts, most of my work centers around these three books:
- Embodiment by James Nelson
- Just Love by Margaret Farley
- Yes Means Yes! edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti
Tentative Outline
- An Introduction (this post)
- A Case Study
- A Critique of Purity Culture
- Embodiment – Knowing One’s Self
- Justice – Stewarding the Self in Relation to Others
- A Culture of Communication and Consent
Best Practices
In the computer programming world, best practices refer to a series of guidelines that, when followed, tend to lead to successful outcomes. Following best practices is especially important on projects where different people are working together on the same project.
See, there can be a number of different ways to write a segment of computer code that will produce the same results. Think about this blog post that you’re reading right now. Underlying everything you’re reading here are invisible lines of code that tell your computer browser where to put the text and the images, how to set up the columns that divide different parts of the page, and what color everything should be. Now there are lots of different ways to write those lines of code, but here’s the thing. Those same lines of code should create web pages that look the same regardless of whether you’re using Chrome or Firefox or Safari on a Mac or a PC. In order to make sure web pages look the same across these different platforms, web designers work under a set of best practices that tend to bring about that consistency.
But here’s the thing.
A more inexperienced web designer may write sloppy code that leads to a webpage that looks fine across different platforms. And sometimes even the most seasoned coder, operating well within best practices, will wind up with pages that don’t work as planned.
All that to say, what I propose to do with this series of blog posts is to offer some best practices when it comes to singleness and sexuality in the church. Following them will not necessarily guarantee success and not following them does not necessarily mean that your relationships will end in failure. People are unique. Couples are unique. Because of that, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to dating. Navigating one’s sexuality in relation to/with another’s is something that takes practice.
One Last Thing
There are a lot of books about singleness, sexuality, and dating in the church. They generally tend to fall into two categories.
- Books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye or Choosing God’s Best have a very negative view of sexuality for single people. The basic message is, sexual arousal outside of marriage is dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.
- Though in the minority, there are books like Rescuing Sex From the Christians that make the case that the Bible never prohibits unmarried couples from having sex.3
I am unsatisfied with both extremes and am hoping to reframe this conversation in a way that does not lead to a wanton abandonment of all sexual norms on the one hand, nor a strict, life-sucking, shame-inducing, sexual asceticism, on the other.
The problem with abandoning rules altogether is that relationships can become self-seeking and exploitative. The problem with the rules-based approach is that the rules often get in the way of a couple’s relationship with one another. To give you a preview of where I hope to land, I want to replace the culture of purity (and the culture of complete license) with a culture of communication and consent – a culture where couples are committed to caring for themselves and the other (in that order) through open dialogue, a culture where couples are surrounded by a church community that helps people in relationship live into the fullness of what God has for them as well as living up to the boundaries that the couple decide upon together.
_______________
References:
1.James B. Nelson, Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburh Publishing House, 1978), 17.
2.Ibid., 17-18. I should state here that while I’ll be speaking primarily from a heterosexual perspective, I believe the principles and practices I outline will be applicable across the Hetero-LGBTQ spectrum. I will not take on the issue of biblical justifications for LGBTQ orientation, but I do operate from the viewpoint that God affirms (and I would even say, celebrates) sexuality in many (though not necessarily all) forms. My hope is that one need not agree with my theological stance to benefit from the practices I will be proposing, but I do want to be open and up front about where I am coming from and what I believe.
3.Clayton L. Sullivan, Rescuing Sex From the Christians (New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 87-90.
Try Best Practices 