In Defense of Purity Culture

I grew up during purity culture. I didn’t know it at the time, because purity culture was all I knew and a fish doesn’t know he’s in water. I have since learned that what I was surrounded with growing up was something called “purity culture,” and that it was apparently very, very bad. I didn’t think it was bad at the time, of course. But later the rumblings of the internet let me know the many problems that existed in purity culture. Some of them I didn’t know about, because I never saw them. At times I hear of the horrors of purity culture and it’s like looking at a memory in a funhouse mirror. You can make out the shape, but that’s not what you remember.

Other times I have heard criticisms that I thought were valid. No good deed that a culture or subculture sets out to perform will be without flaw. There were excesses in the movement, and those excesses resulted in real hurt to real people. But I think purity culture was a net good. I think it was on the right track, and I think that the best parts of purity culture should be and have been absorbed by the church as we hold up purity as an ideal for the next generation.

So despite the arrows being flung at the movement, despite the total collapse of its preeminent prophet, and despite the seeming success of the sexual revolution, I stand on the side of purity culture. Not because it was a perfect movement, but because it was a good movement. And because, like the sexual revolution, it never really went away. Instead, it became embedded in our Christian subculture, and I think that’s a good thing.

Defining Purity Culture

Saying exactly what purity culture was can be a challenge, because purity culture is a label used to cover a wide variety of conferences, books, teachings, and ideas. As the kids today might say, purity culture was a vibe. If we were to boil purity culture down to a simple sentence, we might describe it this way: “Purity culture was the belief that young people should be encouraged to save themselves for marriage because God’s plan was best.”

Now, to accomplish that singular goal a host of strategies were suggested and implemented. There was preaching and teaching on the dangers of immorality, and not just immorality, but lust. There were conferences and purity pledges and purity rings. Men were told they should be pure in their thinking. Women were told to be modest in what they wore. Dating was kissed goodbye in favor of courtship. The goal of dating in the world was just to have a good time. The goal of dating and courting within purity culture was marriage.

As I’ve already suggested, there were a lot of different groups in this movement that emphasized different things and implemented these ideas in different ways. Some grudgingly allowed dating so long as it was pointed toward marriage. Others thought courtship was the only way. Some pushed hard on purity rings and pledges. Others just preached Scripture and warned about the damage of premarital sex. For this reason, defending the movement is hard, because some parts of it I think were more defensible than others. Still, we will throw everything into a giant package and consider both the good and the bad. Let’s start with the bad.

The Accusations against Purity Culture

From the random things that The Algorithm™ has decided that I should see, I have come across several critiques of so-called “purity culture” over the years. I wish I had taken careful record of each post, tweet, and meme so that I could show first-hand examples of people actually saying this, but I didn’t. You’ll have to take my word for it, or do a little googling. Some of these critiques come from people who, from what I can tell, are genuine Bible-believing Christians. Others come from people who have long ago thrown off everything about Christianity, with a special place of contempt for purity culture. Others stand somewhere in between.

The main critique seems to be legalism. Purity culture, it is alleged, taught that the ultimate sign of moral perfection was to be a virgin upon marriage. In pursuit of this goal, Christian young people were given lots and lots of rules, many of which can be found nowhere in Scripture. What might have been helpful boundaries (no kissing, no dating alone) were made to be iron-clad commands with the weight of Scripture. Signing pledges and buying rings became the path to holiness. So much attention was given to the outside of the cup, or so it is argued, that the real heart problem was not addressed. Or if it was, it wasn’t the focus. “Do these things and God will bless you” was the contract.

At times purity culture did put up barriers that were extra-biblical. A large swath of purity culture insisted that dating itself was wrong and that the answer was courtship. While courtship itself isn’t wrong, Scripture itself doesn’t give us the “best way” for a couple to proceed from interest to marriage. At other times, advice was given and rules were developed that might have been wise, but certainly weren’t Scripture. There can be a fine line between wise counsel and legalism, but we slip past that line to our own peril. Purity culture at times slipped past that line.

A final way that this legalism could spread, and to me this is the most serious and legitimate critique of purity culture, is the lack of hope given for failure. When the goal set up is virginity on your wedding day, you have to think about who in the room might have already failed. If we only preach the commands of the New Testament but don’t give the hope of God’s grace and forgiveness, we will end up with teens who give up because they’ve already slipped up. One summer I worked at camp and noticed this important, glaring omission as speaker after speaker warned about the dangers of immorality but gave no hope for the teen who had already sinned. One week the preacher of the week, who was about as old school as you can get, began preaching his purity message. About halfway through his message he took a five-minute detour to explain that if you’ve messed up, it isn’t over for you. His outline was very simple, something like “Recognize, Repent, Return” and then he concluded that section with a brief story giving hope: “I know a young lady who got pregnant as a teen, had an abortion, and today she is a youth pastor’s wife and you would never know it. God can forgive any sin and you can have a fresh start with Him today.” I think the lack of such hope might be the biggest strike against purity culture.

The second critique seems to be idolatry. Purity culture has been accused of holding up a happy marriage and the joy of physical intimacy free from guilt as the main purpose of life. The message at time came through as “Be pure so that marriage will be awesome!” Now, there is truth to that statement. Purity before marriage will, all other things being equal, make marriage much more enjoyable and satisfying. But that should not be the only motivation; in fact, that should not even be the main motivation. Purity must be pursued first and foremost out of a love for God and a desire to glorify Him.

But what if someone never gets married? Will 60-year-old men and women still be wearing their purity rings and writing letters to their future spouses? It’s not wrong to preach the blessings of obedience, but the orientation needs to start from the right place. Obedience to God out of fear and love of God was often preached right alongside the promise of future blessings for obedience to God. But when the focus becomes writing a letter to my future spouse, or wearing a ring I can give my future spouse, the focus can quickly be on that which should be peripheral.

The final critique seems to be misogyny. This critique goes something like this: “Women were made to feel that their bodies were somehow bad. That if a teenage boy lusted after them because they were dressed immodestly, then it was the fault of the woman. Women were therefore taught to be embarrassed and ashamed of their bodies.” Some of this critique comes from those who have left the faith or who still claim to be Christians but think either that premarital sex isn’t a bad thing or that women dressing however they want is empowering. But that doesn’t describe everyone with this frustration. Among those who continue following God, many look back and think that what they were told about modesty was untrue, unhelpful, and demeaning.

I can’t speak to everyone’s experience. Often the men and the women would be split for these sessions, so I don’t know what the women were told. I sat through purity sessions with the guys, and all I can say is I never came out feeling like, “Well, I will do the best I can but if someone wears something immodest, there’s nothing I can do about it.” My experience coming out of those sessions was always a sense that I was responsible for my thoughts, not the women around me. In fact, I can remember sitting through one of those sessions as a teenager at a very conservative camp and hearing the speaker say point blank, “Guys it doesn’t matter what she is wearing, if you lust you are responsible for that.” I’ve never forgotten that.

But what were the women told? Well, as best as I can gather, they were told to be careful what they wore because men are visual and Jesus told us not to lust. The principle used here comes from 1 Corinthians 8-10, which says you shouldn’t do something that causes a brother to stumble. This means that you should not make it easier for another Christian to sin by your actions. That doesn’t mean you are responsible for someone else’s sin, but you are responsible for making it easier for them to sin.

How well was all this communicated? Again, I don’t know because I wasn’t there. I agree with the principle, but I could see a lot of ways that could go wrong. Was it always clearly explained that a woman’s sexuality is not bad, but rather that it is private? Therefore, a woman’s body is not wrong, but is sacred and to be saved for someone willing to pay full price (a lifetime of marriage)? Is it helpful to explain all of that to a 14-year-old girl who has no clue of what a teenage boy’s sex drive is like that some of her guy friends might think sexual thoughts about her if she wears a bikini? Ultimately, was all this put in the context the New Testament puts women’s dress in – that dress is supposed to point back to the Creator and not to oneself – or was it kept merely in the realm of “Don’t accidentally make your brother in Christ stumble?” I can’t say, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was case by case. Sometimes the proper context might have been kept, and sometimes there was likely unhelpful and careless teaching on this front.

 

The Good of Purity Culture

So, sometimes purity culture was legalistic, idolatrous, and misogynistic. Other than that, it was great! Maybe reading through the previous section you have begun wondering if you read the title of this article right. Why would anyone defend something that had so many flaws, and some of them quite serious? I defend purity culture because I believe, at its core, purity culture was right. Purity culture was seeking to push back on the rampant growth in sexual immorality by pointing to Scripture. It held forward the Bible’s clear commands – do not commit sexual immorality and do not lust in your heart – and it did so with great energy and with a lot of practical application.

Purity culture was a noble attempt to meet a growing disaster. As American culture increasingly revolted against God’s clear design for sexual intimacy, Christians revolted against American culture. In a sense, they built a counter-culture. They countered the lie of the world that cheap, easy sex was the way to true happiness by arguing intensely that true happiness came in following God, not in living for the capricious whims of one’s libido. On its best days, purity modelled itself after Scripture. Like Proverbs, it held forth the promise of God’s blessings for obeying God’s instruction. At times purity culture blew it. At times it was unbalanced and people were hurt. But the core driving principle—sexual abstinence in thought and deed before marriage—was biblical.

We hear a lot from people who reject purity culture. Some of them reject the excesses that I think we all should reject. Some of them reject the Bible’s teaching on sex and marriage completely. But we don’t hear about the people who benefitted from purity culture. We don’t hear from the people who were prepared to head off to a world saturated in sexuality ready for a fight. We don’t hear about the situations where it did work out, where there was a happy marriage spared from the pain of previous sexual partners. We don’t hear about the teens that didn’t get pregnant because they were warned about God’s commands concerning marriage and immorality. We may not hear about them, but I’m guessing there are a lot of them out there. People are more willing to bash on something they don’t like than to stand up and say thank you for something that helped them. So this is me saying thank you to the adults who cared about me enough when I was a teen to try and prepare me to follow God’s plan for sex and marriage in a world that had rejected it.

In the end, purity culture didn’t go away. Not really. The pledges, the rings, and letters to my future spouse might have faded, but those were never really the core of purity culture. The core of purity culture is teaching young people to take God’s commands for personal purity seriously—no lust and no premarital sex. Christians who follow God’s Word will continue to preach and teach this. They will continue to rebel against a rebellious culture that is bent on ignoring God’s Word. It may not be called purity culture, but it will have this same animating drive. And it, too, will no doubt be imperfect and make mistakes. But more importantly, it, too, will hopefully be used by God to set forth a biblical standard and encourage the next generation to follow God, even in something as intensely personal and private as sex.

 

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Ben Hicks is the Associate Pastor at Colonial Hills Baptist Church in Indianapolis. This article originally appeared on his Substack.

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Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash