Shannon Harris says “goodbye” to the Evangelical purity culture
A new memoir is a backstage pass to a religious movement
In the 1990s, the Evangelical world made a big push to eliminate all premarital sex and dating. It was the era of the “Purity Culture.”
It was presented as so very divine, but after a few years, horror stories were being reported—like about the movement’s leader. In 2018, Joshua Harris, author of the 1997 bestselling book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, got a divorce, then left Evangelicalism.
Now Shannon Harris, his ex-wife, publishes a memoir. It’s a gruesome tale.
She thinks back wisfully on the woman she never became.
The Woman They Wanted tells the story of a girl with musical ability who thought she’d be on Broadway, or an act in Nashville. Instead she ended up at an Evangelical megachurch in Maryland. Like Alice in Wonderland, she writes, she “fell down a long and winding rabbit hole.”
If you want to forget who you really are, an Evangelical church will help. That became Shannon’s story: hiding from herself. She writes:
“People were telling me what I should think, do…
