Unpure

Engagement Journalism and the Purity Culture Deconstruction Community

Introduction and Background

Before I became a journalist, I was a Catholic. I attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through college, and I spent the first 15 or so years of my life anxiously trying — and failing — to live up to the unrealistic behavioral and social standards set for my life by the Catholic Church. I won my parish’s pro-life essay contest three years in a row. I signed a pledge in my fifth grade sex education class to remain pure, or abstinent, until marriage. I was a dramatic and obsessive overachiever who wanted to be good at everything she did. And the ultimate goodness, I was told in school, in church, and at home, was to be as faithful, prayerful and pure as possible.

In short, purity culture controlled my childhood. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of purity culture, first, consider yourself lucky. Next, allow me to explain. Purity culture is a phenomenon that occurs in conservative religious institutions where abstinence is used as a form of control. As writer, speaker and author of Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation and How I Broke Free Linda Kay Klein writes on her website, purity culture requires strict adherence to abstinence before marriage and heteronormative values. Anything that strays outside these requirements — engaging in premarital sex or questioning one’s gender or sexuality, for example — is worthy of divine punishment.

But there is an entire community of people that have decided to reject and unlearn the harmful teachings of purity culture. This is the community of purity culture deconstructors. I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with them throughout my time at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

Who is the purity culture deconstruction community?

I first discovered the purity culture deconstruction community on TikTok in the fall of 2020 and quickly realized that social media is a gathering place for the entire community to share their deconstruction experiences with one another.

As of December 10, 2022, #purityculture has 327.8M views on TikTok and 37,791 posts on Instagram. The posts under the purity culture hashtag on TikTok and Instagram are a mix of sharing personal deconstruction stories in order to help others feel less shame around their own experiences, and discussing the dangers of religious trauma and harm that purity culture causes.

In order to understand how the community’s information needs, however, I needed to get to know them on a deeper level. I circulated a callout on Reddit asking community members about their experiences before, during and/or after deconstruction, the religions where they were taught purity culture, and any information gaps they see in the community or resources they wish they had. That first round of callouts gained about a dozen responses. I then spoke with a prevalent content creator who goes by Talk Purity to Me on Instagram and TikTok. She circulated my callout to her 29k followers on her Instagram story. My callout then received over 200 responses over the course of a few days. From there, I read through all of the responses. I color-coded each response by religious denomination to see if I could identify any patterns between denominations. I was able to collect the following data:

• Out of 203 callout respondents, 73 (36%) said that Evangelical Christianity introduced them to purity culture.
• 44.33 % of respondents are between the ages of 30 and 39
• 23.6% were between the ages of 18 and 29.

It was optional for participants to leave their contact information. 93 participants gave me their email addresses, which I compiled into an email list. I emailed them to thank them for participating in the callout and invited them to a listening post, which I hosted on Zoom at the beginning of May. The goal of the listening post was to introduce myself to the community and hear firsthand from them what information needs they have and resources they feel are lacking within the community or in their own individual deconstruction processes. About a dozen deconstructors attended the listening post, and here are some of the information gaps they shared:

• The intersection between white supremacy and purity culture. Community members shared that there isn’t enough of a discussion online about how purity culture is a tool for white supremacy.
• How purity culture affects people of all races, ethnicities, genders, and sexualities.
• Parenting after leaving purity culture — how to talk to your kids about consent, sex, and sexual health.
• How to plan a secular wedding after leaving religion
• How purity culture can suppress or discourage seeking medical help or resources for a number of conditions. One participant shared that they didn’t seek an ADHD diagnosis until later in adulthood because purity culture and religion told them to “turn to God for strength.”
• Where to find mental health professionals who specialize in purity culture and religious trauma.
• How American Evangelical Christianity has influenced sex education and purity culture abroad.
• Life after purity culture — Focusing not just on religious trauma but on life after deconstructing. Topics could include dating outside of religion, how to spend your weekends when you’re not spending time at church, etc.

A few days later, I sent an email to all participants who attended the listening post to thank them for attending. I also reached out personally to the few content creators who attended to better understand their experiences in creating content for deconstructors.

I received responses from Elizabeth, Instagram creator behind @releasethewomen, and Andrew Pledger, an Instagram creator and host of Speaking Up with Andrew Pledger, a podcast about religious trauma. I spoke with each of them individually about their experiences deconstructing and making content for the deconstruction community. I kept in touch with both over the summer, and Andrew invited me onto his podcast. In our podcast interview, I introduced myself to his listeners and we discussed how engagement journalism and journalists in general can better serve the purity culture deconstruction community. My episode aired on October 17.

Practicum Process

I originally planned for my practicum to be a newsletter about the complexities of purity culture and the intersection between right-wing politics and religion in the United States. After hosting my listening post, going through my callout responses, and conducting follow up interviews with deconstructors, however, I decided there was a better way to serve the deconstruction community.

One of the most common themes I heard from deconstructors was a desire for more opportunities to connect with other deconstructors in real life. For example, Andrew shared with me that attending an in-person deconstruction support group has helped him throughout his deconstruction and healing process:

“But I think what people really need and are looking for is to also find those groups and connections in real life. And that is something that has been so crucial for me, you know, after leaving religion, but just finding that that new group of friends and thankfully through Facebook, actually Facebook groups, I was able to find and a local deconstruction group are all grappling with the same issues and we’re all able to we get together weekly, and just, you know, get together like friends and talk about our different struggles with different areas of our life.”

This desire was also expressed by an anonymous deconstructor who responded to my callout. “It would be nice to have a community where I can chat to others about my trauma and work through it with likeminded people rather than through reels or memes,” they wrote.

Deconstructors also expressed the need for purity culture and religious trauma-informed therapists and mental health resources in their callout responses. For example, one anonymous callout response stated that, while social media posts on TikTok and Instagram are a great way for deconstructors to cope with their religious trauma, therapy is essential to the healing process. “Social media is a void and therapy needs to be the anchor not comedy sketches,” the anonymous deconstructor wrote. “Sure, humor can be great for coping but qualified therapy is imperative.”

And finally, the third most common theme I heard from deconstructors was how isolating life can be during and after deconstruction. For many deconstructors, they were born into the religions that introduced them to purity culture, so the decision to deconstruct often means straining on the personal relationships with family and friends. “I have been shamed by and become estranged from family members over rejecting purity culture (and other religious and political beliefs related to purity culture),” wrote another anonymous deconstructor.

Another anonymous deconstructor echoed these feelings of isolation: “I’m not able to talk to many people in person who understand my situation or purity culture. It’s not safe to talk to old church contacts, and most of my non-religious friends (and therapist) have very little idea about purity culture.”

I did notice that several of the callout responses skewed toward Judeo-Christian religions like Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism. Religious trauma and purity culture can occur in any religion, and can happen to anyone of any race, gender, ethnicity or age. One callout response said that journalists and informational resources need to address the harm that purity culture causes toward men: “Adding male perspective and aiming towards men, too. Females were hurt worse but the men need to know more about it to know the shit we went through.”

Elizabeth, the Instagram creator that I mentioned above, reiterated this need for more diverse voices in the deconstruction space: “I think there could be more diversity in who is represented from these communities,” she wrote in a callout response. “I think we often see the same people over and over again (mostly white ex-Christian folks to put it plainly). I would love to see more people from Muslim communities talk about their experiences as well as people from Black churches. I myself grew up around a Spanish speaking charismatic church. I think the space needs to be diversified.”

In future projects, I would make a more concerted effort to serve deconstructors of all genders and races. I would also expand my work beyond the Judeo-Christian religions. Although I wasn’t purposefully limiting my work to serve those who come from Christian and Catholic backgrounds, I believe serving deconstructors from more diverse backgrounds would be an area of opportunity for my future engagement work.

Callout #2

Once I decided to start a newsletter as my practicum, I sent out a newsletter callout to my existing email list of 93 deconstructors. I wanted to understand how they interacted with newsletters as a medium of information. I received 15 responses in 24 hours.

The responses I received on the newsletter callout further confirmed the information gaps I noticed in the first callout. 80% (12 out 15) of respondents said they want resources on where to find mental health professionals who specialize in purity culture. 60% (9 out of 12) of respondents said they want to know where they can find in-person deconstruction events and support groups.

The Decision to Pivot

I realized that for those who were raised in purity culture, they don’t need to read explainer articles about the dangers of purity culture because they’ve lived and experienced those dangers firsthand. Rather, deconstructors want ways to connect with other deconstructors. They also need access to religious trauma informed mental health resources. I decided to pivot my practicum into a newsletter of curated events, support groups, mental health resources and more, all specific to the deconstruction community. This was how my newsletter, Unpure, came to fruition.

Writing the First Article

I sent a call for submissions to my existing deconstructor email list. I also asked Andrew to share the call on his Instagram story. I personally emailed the content creators and mental health providers who attended my listening post in May to ask them if they wanted to be included in the first edition of Unpure.

I received five responses (six including one duplicate) from support group facilitators, event organizers, sex and relationships coaches and mental health professionals who wanted to be featured in the first edition of Unpure. They are as follows:

Stepping Forward Greenville Facebook Group for Residents in Greenville, SC: This group was submitted by Andrew Pledger. Andrew said that Stepping Forward is a place where deconstructors local to Greenville, South Carolina can share events and discuss their deconstruction experiences.

The Vashti Initiative, Virtual Non-profit Organization: This organization was submitted by Stephanie Canterbury-Climie, the Vashti Initiative Development Director. The Vashti Initiative hosts a monthly support group, a book club and runs a hotline for deconstructors.

Meg Cowan, Sex and Relationships Coach: Meg attended my listening post in May, tuning in all the way from New Zeland. Meg is a sex and relationships coach who specializes in helping helping anyone and everyone — deconstructors, the ex-religious, and even those who are still of practicing faith — deconstruct and unlearn purity culture.

Kate Vance, Licensed Therapist at HopePoint Therapy Group, LLC in Wichita, KN: Kate is a religious trauma-informed family therapist who specializes in working with LGBTQIA+ individuals, children aged 13 and up, and adults. She is experienced in purity culture and helping others navigate the complexities of deconstruction. On her callout response, she shared that she feels understanding how to work with deconstructors can be an information gap for therapists. “I think therapists who have not had personal experience with deconstruction often struggle to realize the magnitude of this decision and the way it impacts every single area of the life of the person who is deconstructing,” she wrote in her submission. “I understand that. I understand navigating romantic and even platonic relationships after coming out of purity culture.”

Faye Williams, All Aces/Your Body is Good Group Chat: Faye Williams is a somatic trauma coach and marriage and family therapy intern. Faye worked and studied under Dr. Laura Anderson, PhD, who co-founded the Religious Trauma Institute. Faye’s group chat, All Aces/Your Body is Good, offers community through ongoing discussions about healing from purity culture. I first spoke with Faye after she filled out my callout form last spring and she and I had a wonderful discussion about deconstruction.

In addition to the Vashti Initiative and the Stepping Forward Greenville Facebook group, I wanted to make sure I included support group offerings for deconstructors around the world. I found Recovering from Religion on the Vashti Initiative resources page. I noticed they host several support groups every month. I reached out to the email address on their Meetup page, telling them I wanted to include their support groups in the first edition of Unpure and asking if they had a quote or testimonial from a participant they could send to me to include. Rachel, the director of RFR’s support group program, responded and said she would ask around for a quote. She didn’t hear back in time for me to include a quote in the first article of Unpure, but I still included RFR’s offerings in the newsletter.

I reached out to each submitter to thank them for taking the time to fill out my form and to ask them any relevant questions I had about their event or the services they provide. I also sent them the copy I was planning on publishing about them in Unpure, in order to make sure I portrayed everything they sent to me accurately.

The first article of Unpure was published here on December 8, 2022.

Metrics, Outcomes, and Impact

Given that the process of publishing Unpure involved months of building relationships and meeting the deconstruction community, I find that the impact of my work could be broken down into three groups: before Unpure’s publication, during publication and after publication.

Before Publication

I consider the enormous response to my first callout to be the first major sign of impact. Within 24 hours of Talk Purity to Me posting the callout link to her Instagram story, I received about 180 responses. Since then, the number of responses has grown to 216. It speaks volumes that the purity culture deconstruction community was so willing to share their experiences with me, an engagement journalist they hadn’t quite met yet, because they wanted to be heard.

As I mentioned above, I sent out a callout this fall to understand how deconstructors interact with newsletters, and what content or topics they would find helpful in a deconstruction newsletter. I received 15 responses in 24 hours, which tells me that the deconstruction community is eager to have more informational resources at their disposal to help meet their information needs. In response to the callout, Val, a deconstructor who attended my listening post in May, emailed to thank me for hosting the listening post. “I wanted to tell you how important that conversation was to me,” she wrote. “Thank you so much for organizing it and including me. I look forward to reading your Newsletter and seeing what direction this takes you and those who will benefit from your work!”

Receiving this feedback from Val made me realize how important it is to provide a space for deconstructors to feel heard and seen. Val’s email validated that my work with the deconstruction community had been valuable and helpful, and it proved to me the importance of having face time with one’s community.

As I was drafting the first post, Meg Cowan responded to one of my emails with the following: “Thanks so much for including me. Please let me know if I can support you as I think you’re doing great work creating space for these conversations.”

When I reached out to Kate Vance to let her know I was going to include her in the first edition of Unpure, she responded with gratitude, saying she was “honored to be included.”

Receiving qualitative feedback from Meg and Kate helped validate that meeting the information needs of deconstructors doesn’t just help those who are deconstructing, but it also helps the providers who are working to help them deconstruct.

During Publication

Once I decided to turn Unpure into a curated newsletter of deconstruction events and resources, I published the Unpure’s intro post. The goal of the intro post was to welcome deconstructors, event organizers, support group facilitators and mental health professionals to Unpure, and to give them an idea of what to expect if they were to subscribe and/or submit their own information to be included in an edition of Unpure. This intro article received 86 total views, according to Substack’s analytics.

Unpure also received the most traffic it has ever received on the day the intro post was published, with 92 visits to its Substack page.

I linked the call for submissions at the bottom of the intro article. Once I published the intro article, I emailed my existing email list to introduce them to Unpure and send them the call for submissions. In future callouts, I would ask where participants found the call for submissions so that I would know if they found it on Twitter, through my emails, or directly on Substack.

I posted a thread on Twitter about the inception of Unpure, my process so far and how to subscribe or submit one’s own information to be included in a newsletter. According to Twitter’s Tweet Analytics, the first tweet of this thread received 807 impressions and 22 engagements.

I linked the call for submissions in this thread as well because I wanted to reach as many deconstructors and providers as possible. My call for submissions received 6 responses within a week of publishing the intro post and reaching out to my deconstructor email list. Upon cross-referencing the emails submitted on the call for submissions and my deconstructor email list, I learned that most of the event submissions came from those on my email list, not from Twitter or Substack.

I have to wonder if I had more success gathering submissions from my existing email list because I had a previously established relationship with the deconstructors on the list. I have been emailing them since last spring to update them on my engagement work and check in about their information needs. I had met three of the five submitters at my listening post in May or through informational interviews last spring. Perhaps they felt they could trust me enough to share their information with me.

Within 24 hours of publishing the intro article to Unpure, tweeting about it on Twitter and emailing my existing deconstructor email list with an invitation to subscribe, Unpure’s subscriber increased from 4 subscribers to 11.

After Publication

I published the first edition of Unpure on December 8, 2022. By December 11, 2022, the first edition received 70 views and a 73% open rate. Within four days of publishing this first article, sending the link to my email list, and sharing the article in a Twitter thread, Unpure’s subscriber count increased from 13 to 17 subscribers.

I made sure to tag the contributors I could find on Twitter in my Twitter thread. These contributors included Recovering from Religion and Andrew Pledger. Both contributors retweeted all or part of my thread. I received two new Twitter followers after the thread was posted, and as of December 13, 2022, 7 people visited Unpure from Twitter.

I have yet to receive qualitative feedback from my community about this first edition of Unpure. It is promising, however, that, based on the intro post and the first edition posted on December 8, Unpure’s follower count and views steadily increase with each new article that’s posted. This trend tells me that readers are finding the content in Unpure compelling or helpful enough to subscribe. The fact that my contributors also retweeted the first edition of Unpure to share with their followers tells me that they trust Unpure enough to share it with their own networks.

Engagement Journalism Takeaways

The entire process of developing and launching Unpure has taught me so much about engagement journalism and how to serve an underserved community that has experienced trauma.

Listening to Form Relationships

I believe that active listening is our most effective tool as engagement journalists. Because I had lived experience with purity culture, I could have easily allowed my own lived experiences and personal assumptions about the community’s needs to drive my entire practicum. Giving myself plenty of time to listen to my community, ask for their feedback and put their feedback into action allowed me to serve them in a more impactful way. I could have pursued my original practicum idea to write explainer pieces on the effects of purity culture. But the final product would not have been as effective if I hadn’t listened to my community.

Forming relationships with your community is also so incredibly important in engagement journalism. As engagement journalists, we are often working with underserved communities, or communities who have experienced a trauma, like the purity culture deconstruction community. We can’t effectively serve them if we first don’t earn their trust. Earning trust involves taking the time to build relationships with community members, and to allow those relationships to form on the community’s terms.

Don’t Be Afraid to Pivot

We need to be flexible if we’re going to be impactful engagement journalists. As I’ve mentioned, the concept of Unpure evolved drastically based on my community’s feedback and information needs. I had to be willing to pivot to give them the news service that would best serve them.

Treat Your Community as Collaborators

Unpure wouldn’t exist without my community’s willingness to collaborate with me on its first edition. While I could have researched events and organizations to include like I did with Recovering from Religion, asking the community for their own submissions helped establish a firmer sense of trust between the community and me. Collaboration is a key tenet of engagement journalism, and finding ways to involve your community throughout your process is vital to producing effective engagement work.

Reflecting and Moving Forward

I am most proud of my ability to listen and form relationships with my community. The process of deconstructing can feel incredibly personal and vulnerable, and earning my community’s trust required time and consistent communication. I also had to learn how to adjust to my community’s individual communication styles. While I was comfortable with an email or phone call, not every community member I met wanted to communicate in those manners.

My biggest challenge was separating my own personal experiences from the work I was trying to do. As someone who has also deconstructed, I was hesitant about working with this community because I was worried about triggering myself or upsetting the people in my life who haven’t deconstructed. I had to learn how to keep a safe distance from the work by practicing self care and setting healthy boundaries.

I hope to continue my work with Unpure and the deconstruction community even after graduation. I’ve already circulated a second call for events on Twitter, Substack and to my existing email list. I hope to have the second edition published by the middle of January. Until then, I will continue to listen to my community and approach our relationship with a spirit of collaboration.