Early in 2013, there was a buzz around the blogosphere regarding the Christian Purity Culture or Abstinence Movement. The authors of these blogs, mostly women in their mid-20s to mid-30s, are seeing in hindsight that the purity pledges they took as teens had far greater consequences that just retaining their virginity.
The abstinence movement began in 1992 when True Love Waits was established. This program encouraged teens to commit to retaining their virginity by signing a pledge card. A Purity Culture evolved where adolescent girls (and some boys) would wear purity rings to symbolize their commitment to virginity and attend purity balls.
The problem is not with the idea of retaining virginity for the marriage.
The problem is with some of the tactics to instill this desire.
In blogs and their comments, I’ve read young men were told they were sinning if they had an erection outside of marriage.
At one function, all the young people attending spit in a glass. Then the youth pastor said if you marry someone who has had prior sexual relationships, it’s like you are marrying someone as polluted as the water in this glass. How did this affect the girls and boys in the audience who had already been sexually active or sexually violated through abuse? They felt they were being told that their only value was through their virginity.
Are young women being held more accountable for sexual sin than young men? It would seem, among some, there is a disparity.
In the most extreme cases, young women were told that experiencing romantic feelings for a boy who was not in a courtship approved by her father was defiling her future marriage relationship. This emotional purity argument was fueled by Joshua Harris’ book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.” The consequence of this was repression to the point of emotional shut-down. These young women now have a very hard time being emotionally intimate in their marriages.
To be fair, I’ve also read blogs where the purity pledge was a positive factor. It boils down to the type of environment teens are nurtured in. Every youth leader and home life is different.
I believe Purity Culture extremism is a knee jerk reaction to the last two decades of increased societal sex saturation. It’s parental fear that has tried to control these teens through extreme behavior modification. We need to navigate these sexual waters with love not fear.
The Christian sex and marriage blogger popularly known as “Pearl” of Pearl's Oyster Bed, Bonny Logsdon Burns will guide WilmingtonFAVS readers through the murky waters of marriage, sex and parenting.
