The Stain of Purity Culture at Fox

By: Zoditu Schwind

Illustrated by: Carla Cieza Espinoza

Joshua Harris’s book, "I Kissed Dating Goodbye," was the herald of purity culture. Nobody anticipated the maelstrom it would create within the evangelical church.

Harris’s book critiqued mainstream dating culture and sought to provide an alternative approach for young Christians. He advocated for sexual abstinence and marriage-focused courtships. His desire to pursue purity in this way was not inherently wrong. However, it became detrimental when evangelical churches hyper-focused on sexual abstinence as the sole measure of purity. This standard set Christians up for either pharisaic self-righteousness or shame in their failure.

The curiosity about one’s own sexuality is natural in the evolution from adolescence into adulthood. Yet, as George Fox University (GFU) pastor, Jamie Johnson stated, “Purity culture is founded on the idea that God is most pleased with his followers when they abstain from sexual impurity until marriage.” In the interim of singleness, purity culture has condemned even the acknowledgement of those natural urges. Only in a perfect marriage can the Pandora’s Box of sexuality be opened. The irony of this is that like society, purity culture also iconizes sex; Johnson noted, “Purity culture has turned sex into a holy grail” and “elevated sexual activity to be a higher ordered desire.”

Purity culture has also placed an imbalance of responsibility on women as vessels of virginity. Many young women have internalized the message that they must remain sexually pure out of an obligation to their future spouse. If they do not maintain their virginity, they are tainted. Though Christian men aren’t encouraged to have premarital sex either, it’s more excusable if they do. Purity culture has created a warped image of men as the only sexual beings. For that reason, women must be careful about what they wear and how they carry their bodies lest they become stumbling blocks for men. “This lack of responsibility that [purity culture] has put on men has made relationships more dangerous for women,” stated Johnson.

One GFU student commented that since purity culture hinges on virginity, once it is lost “a person is now a sexually active being and so anything that happens after [the loss of virginity] must be consensual.” In this way, purity culture has diminished the severity of rape by placing it on the same scale as casual sex. As a victim of on-campus sexual assault herself, this student stated that purity culture says that what a girl may term as “rape” could just be her “regretting having had sex.” For a man, purity culture promotes the notion that he couldn’t have been raped because “he had to have wanted it, because he’s a man.” Whether a man or a woman, virgin or not, this underlying narrative denies the harm of sexual assault.

This toxicity of purity culture, especially on the GFU campus, needs to be addressed. Whether purity culture makes it taboo or not, students still think about sex, watch TV shows centralized around it, watch porn, and have sex. The issue, Johnson noted, is that amidst all this exposure, “people don’t want to sit down and talk about the implications of healthy versus unhealthy relationships with sex.” Though God created human bodies to enjoy both the pleasure and procreational elements of sex, self-control is an important element of the Christian life. When it comes to sex, neither pop culture’s message of indulgence nor purity culture’s fetishization of sex promote self-control. At a Christian university, spaces need to exist where we can have guilt free conversations that admit the reality of these struggles.

For any young Christian, pursuing a life of purity isn’t about meeting man-made standards. “Living in purity, or rather living in right relationship with God,” Johnson concluded, “is simply recognizing that we all are broken people who sin and that wholeness is about being transformed by the spirit into the person God has created you to be.” Defining purity in this way does not create a “holy” against “unholy” mentality, but removes shame and ultimately humanizes both young men and women.