Purity Reading: How Books Brought Me Into and Out of Purity Culture

I’ve always been a bibliophile. Books can be transformative, and reading could be a turning point in your life. But as much as they can change lives for the better, one can undeniably lead you astray. When I was eleven years old, I was introduced to one of these harmful books. My older cousin (who I will name Anne) gave me the book Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ’s Control. Anne was older than me and very influenced by Evangelical Christianity. She was the type of woman to get excited over going to the Billy Graham Library. Anne was so on fire for God that she eventually obtained a master’s degree at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

At that age, no one had ever given me the sex talk. I didn’t fully understand where babies came from and was more or less a blank slate. Passion and Purity was my entry point into dating, purity culture, and sex. The book was originally published in 1984 and written by Elisabeth Elliot, who was married to Jim Elliot, a missionary. It was a guide told through Elliot’s love story to finding and keeping love while remaining sexually pure in obedience and devotion to Jesus Christ–the polar opposite of hookup culture. To give you a snapshot of what the book is about, here’s a quote from the end of the first chapter:

I am convinced that the human heart hungers for constancy. In forfeiting the sanctity of sex by casual, nondiscriminatory “making out “ and “sleeping around,” we forfeit something we cannot well do without. There is dullness, monotony, sheer boredom in all of life when virginity and purity are no longer protected and prized. By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere.

In fact, after reading that book I went on to read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which was another classic in Christian purity culture written by Joshua Harris. Of course, sermons, bible studies, retreats, and other Christians in my circle reinforced these messages. I recall a conversation with Anne years ago while in high school where we talked about sex. We discussed premarital sex, and she equated it to “throwing a dirty rag” at a future husband. I have had discussions with other ex-Christians, and other horrific images were used to describe those who had premarital sex: a beautiful flower with its petals torn off, a used piece of tape, or chewed-up gum. If you engaged in sexual activity, you were no longer as valuable and pristine as if you had remained a virgin. You were nothing but a piece of trash. Who would want you? Your value depended on what happened or did not happen between your legs. These ideas intended to shame anyone from having sex and condemn those who did. You had to preserve your virginity at all costs. It was an anvil tied to your wrists.

I want to say that I rebelled in high school and college against church teachings, but I was a goody-two-shoes. It wasn’t until I was working at one of my first jobs at a bookstore that I met an attractive man. We dated for a while in the summertime, and I made the mistake of telling my very religious cousin Anne about it. She was shocked I was doing what many typically young, horny kids do and having sex. She demanded that I break up with him because it was sexually immoral. And I did just that. To this day, I regret that I had no backbone to stand up to her even though this was twenty years ago and that I had hurt someone in the process.

Unfortunately, I continued to attend church and returned to being a squeaky-clean Christian. In my early thirties, I started openly and actively questioning the Bible and my faith, which led to my full deconversion, but once I left I realized that I had no idea how to function outside the Christian bubble. I had no clue how to handle any relationship with the opposite sex, when to have sex when dating someone, what safe sex was, how to talk about such sensitive subjects, etc. I was filled with rage over what I learned in church. I asked my Christian friend recently about what impact purity culture had on her, and she said the following: “I probably have mostly internalized things so much that I’m unable to parse it from who I’ve become.” And so it was with me. I left the church, but church teachings and sexual guilt had become a part of who I was. It was hard for me to move on.

It’s been about seven years since I left the church, and I cannot claim that I am over it and have conquered Christian guilt. I am still working on my issues and mulling over the destructive lessons I learned in religion. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had not grown up in purity culture. Perhaps I will be unpacking these ideas forever. However, what helped me immensely was to read more books that were counterarguments against purity culture. I read Beyond Shame: Creating a Healthy Sex Life on Your Own Terms by the psychotherapist Matthias Roberts, which details how to free yourself from sexual shame to create your own sexual ethic. I also read Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Kay Klein, which is an exploration of how purity culture harmed women across America. I also started following such people as Erica Smith, who runs a sex education program for those who grew up in purity culture. Finally, I started learning more about compassion, especially self-compassion. It’s too bad these books and experts were not around twenty years ago when I struggled with these issues, but maybe I was not ready for the message back then. I am also in therapy with a queer therapist who also grew up in a conservative Christian bubble and broke free.

I have also been discussing these issues with my friends. A year ago, I was talking to someone, and I mentioned the notion that having sex before marriage was like throwing a dirty rag at your future partner. I told her that that image was lodged in my brain, and I could not get it out. Without missing a beat, she turned to me and asked if I could imagine that idea differently, so now I am doing just that. What if I make my own decisions about my sex life and bring my various experiences into whatever relationship I end up in? What if these experiences are like patches on a vibrant, colorful quilt? A quilt that my partner and I can lie under together in comfort. Ultimately, it’s up to me to imagine things differently.