The Negative Impact of Purity Culture

dayhiker

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I'm not quite sure what "purity culture" is, but I'm tempted to dismiss anything with "culture" in the title as modern blather and nonsense. Do you intend to demean the idea of purity while you are dismantling this so called culture?

This has been replied to in the negative many times in this thread!
 
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Tetra

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Strictly speaking, yes, but the same applies to men. Also, the Orthodox Church will not ordain remarried men or men married to remarried women.
I was waiting to reply to this because I was thinking how to respond. May I ask what makes them less "good" in your opinion? Does committing sins in other areas make a person equally less "good"?
 
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dayhiker

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I th9ink the reason the Orthodox church as well as others wouldn't ordain men who have remarried is because of Paul's comment about elders being the husband of one wife. Some churches are very strict with this and some not so much. My personal belief is that Paul says this because Rome had a law that a man can only have one wife. So Paul was saying this to keep the church from going afoul of Roman law. Only the Jews had an exception to this law and were allowed to have more than one wife. Of course we will only know Paul's reason when we get to ask him.
 
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S.O.J.I.A.

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For me it was the opposite. I waited till I got married, just to desire to do the very thing I was taught was wrong.

if you were taught that sex in and of itself is wrong, then that's an unfortunate error.

if you were taught that sex is a beautiful gift from the LORD that is reserved for a man and a woman in marriage, then you were taught what is right, proper and...well...pure!

certain distinctions need to be made.
 
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2PhiloVoid

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I suppose my agenda is to dismantle purity cultures negative effects. You didn't gather that from my OP?

There is nothing wrong with being a virgin, my wife and I both waited till we got married.

Hi Tetra,

Interesting that you and I seem to be on separate sides of the same parallel ethics rail (since one of my agendas is to dismantle the Playboy Philosophy, as much as is possible). I'm also raising my son, and I try to impress upon him--with sagely advice--the virtues of virginity and a firm commitment to the Lord, especially since there is nothing wrong with being a virgin. I suppose you need to impress upon your daughter that there's also nothing right when a woman is a "floozy" or a male is a "loose-cannon."

Why do I impress this upon my son? Because when I was 7, I began to be impacted by "impurity culture." And, because of that, I'm not a happy camper. :mad:

2PhiloVoid
 
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AlexDTX

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Purity Culture Definition:
Purity culture has an obsessive focus on virginity before marriage and on maintaining emotional purity that pervades fundamentalism and evangelicalism, made visible in purity balls, purity rings, purity pledges, and modesty teachings.

It ties your worth as a person to your virginity, not who you are in Christ.

NOTE: Remember, there is nothing wrong with being a virgin, but there is something wrong about making virginity an idol, and that's what purity culture does.


As a millennial, the church was obsessed with purity culture during my childhood, you might remember books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris, who now himself admits it was a mistake.

In a recent article by Ruth Graham:


I just picked up a new book titled Damaged Goods by Dianna Anderson... looking forward to reading it.

Purity Culture had a negative impact on my life, on my marriage, and I'm a male. I can't even image the imagine the negative impact on women. :( Purity balls, rings and the like, in my opinion are super weird and sometimes gross.

I am interested in responses from women on this one, and how purity culture impacted them?

I know you want women to answer, but as an elderly man who lived a wanton sexual life before becoming a follower of Jesus in my middle age I can attest to consequences of sexual sin.

For men, fornication outside of marriage and love, turns women into sex objects. It took me decades to experience love making with my wife without her being a sexual object. She always knew it and resented my subconscious attitude.

Also, the two become one flesh in sex, of which Paul cries out that the body of Christ should not be joined to a harlot. This has been called soul ties and all those sexual encounters become baggage that impacts one's marriage. I destroyed every letter and photograph of women prior to my marriage and renounced my connections to them in prayer to try and free me from their influence in my marriage.

On the negative side, though, any time you make something a law, you increase the probability of breaking those laws. The law magnifies sin. Years ago Promise Keepers was a national event that countless denominations supported. And yet, when they were over many of those men who made those promises broke those promises and suffered guilt and shame.

Purity is probably something that should be taught from the point of view of wisdom and folly. Not as a rule not to be broken. We live in a fallen world with encouragement to have casual sex on TV and other media. We overcome evil with good, not with more evil. Boys and girls need a constant example and encouragement in the good.
 
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Rajni

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The purity promoted by purity culture is not the sort of purity that you'ld find as an ideal in the greatest examples of Christian saints. Some of the early Church fathers said that one can be a virgin, and not be a virgin inwardly.
I think I can relate to that. I may have been a virgin till marriage physically, but that didn't mean I wasn't already ... um ... aware? ... of a few things.
ashamed0001.gif



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Tetra

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if you were taught that sex in and of itself is wrong, then that's an unfortunate error.

if you were taught that sex is a beautiful gift from the LORD that is reserved for a man and a woman in marriage, then you were taught what is right, proper and...well...pure!

certain distinctions need to be made.
You're absolutely correct, those distinctions do need to be made. The church tends to not focus on making those distinctions though... it liked in purity culture to focus mainly on the negative. I heard far more about what someone shouldn't do, and less about when they can do it.
 
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Shane R

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It is my observation that the Protestant culture in which purity culture originated has, as with so many issues, an inadequate black and white view of intimacy. They put out the message that fornication, adultery, and homosexual behavior are wrong. The only suitable forum for sex is a monogamous heterosexual marriage. They forget a third option: celibacy. There were at least two respondents earlier in this thread that probably would have been well served to hear of that before entangling themselves in marriage. I think this is probably because celibacy is viewed as some kind of weird Catholic ascetic practice. However, I am sure I have met people who were genuinely suited to be celibate.
 
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2PhiloVoid

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You're absolutely correct, those distinctions do need to be made. The church tends to not focus on making those distinctions though... it liked in purity culture to focus mainly on the negative. I heard far more about what someone shouldn't do, and less about when they can do it.

It also might be good to make the historical distinction as to the when, where, what and how the Church has taken an over-wrought approach to purity. Shall I drop the name of St. Augustine into the mix, here? My intention in dropping names is not to discredit Augustine so much as to give us a historical point of reference. We could compare his approach to 'human sexuality' with that expressed in, say, the Song of Solomon and/or the book of Proverbs.

However, even though we should critique Augustine's overbearing sexual prudence, bringing some Enlightenment sensibility to sexuality within the Church would be, dare I say, insensible.
 
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Tetra

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It also might be good to make the historical distinction as to the when, where, what and where the Church has taken an over-wrought approach to purity. Shall I drop the name of St. Augustine into the mix, here? My intention in dropping names is not to discredit Augustine so much as to give us a historical point of reference. We could compare his approach to 'human sexuality' with that expressed in, say, the Song of Solomon and/or the book of Proverbs.

However, even though we should critique Augustine's overbearing sexual prudence, bringing some Enlightenment sensibility to sexuality within the Church would be, dare I say, insensible.
I don't know the exact point, some date purity culture back to the late 1800's when slavery ended. I recall when studying that some thought, by father's controlling their daughters sexuality, it would help prevent having interracial relationships. So some do belive purity culture is tied to racism in its history.

You're probably right regarding Agustine, but I just don't know enough about the history.
 
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FireDragon76

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I think I can relate to that. I may have been a virgin till marriage physically, but that didn't mean I wasn't already ... um ... aware? ... of a few things.
ashamed0001.gif

-

No, that's not really what I meant. If anything, your response points to the problem. If you have lived your whole life in evangelical or charismatic religious culture, it would probably be hard to grasp, because it is filled with so many contradictory and absurd messages about sexuality, and a general immaturity when dealing with matters of the flesh. There is no realistic respect for the power of eros. As a result, it's not surprising that there's so many sexual p

Some of the ancient and medieval theologians, like Augustine, for instance, viewed prostitution as necessary for a society. Sort of like how we need sewers, even if they aren't pretty. It might not fit the Christian ideal, but they recognized it was unrealistic to expect everybody to live as they did. And they knew about the weaknesses of the flesh. So in non-Protestant cultures, they tend to have a more mature approach to sexuality, realizing that expecting everybody to live up to a monastic ideal is not realistic (whereas your average evangelical imposes it on everybody until they get married, then it magically disappears). People have sex before marriage, that's reality- just like people routinely tell little lies or drive over the speed limit. In the grand scheme of things, premarital sex is a peccadillo hardly worth the enormous weight given to it by some Christians.

Augustine gets a bad rap by modern, (relatively) liberal Protestants. But his ethic towards sexuality was relatively fair and even enlightened, by the standards of the time, as compared to some Eastern fathers that sanctioned a wife leaving her husband to take on religious vows. His harsh views on sexuality was to point to the depravity and self-centeredness inherent in the human condition and our need for redemption.
 
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2PhiloVoid

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I don't know the exact point, some date purity culture back to the late 1800's when slavery ended. I recall when studying that some thought, by father's controlling their daughters sexuality, it would help prevent having interracial relationships. So some do belive purity culture is tied to racism in its history.

You're probably right regarding Agustine, but I just don't know enough about the history.

I'll just say it all goes much further back, Tetra. This kind of "ownership" language of fathers over daughters can be seen in the New Testament when Paul gives indication about his awareness of the purity mores of his his own time (as seen in 1 Corinthians 7), which in turn reflects older traditions. So this whole issue is 'bigger' than just that some smug white dudes in the 1800s began to attempt to prevent their modern white daughters from becoming involved with men of a different ethnicity.
 
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~Anastasia~

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I was waiting to reply to this because I was thinking how to respond. May I ask what makes them less "good" in your opinion? Does committing sins in other areas make a person equally less "good"?

The reason the Orthodox Church does not ordain remarried priests is indeed because of Paul's instructions.

But before one assumes this makes a person "damaged goods" or somehow lesser, please allow me to point out that this is not the whole story, and it's not a simple black-and-white view.

One of our most prominent Saints is St. Mary of Egypt. She lived for 17 years as a wanton woman - "worse" even in a sense than a prostitute - she didn't act in this way because she had to support herself, but simply because she liked it. As a result of an encounter with the Divine which she had pursued out of curiosity, she deeply repented of her previous lifestyle, and fought spiritual battles with sexual desire, desire for wine, and immoral acts for many years. She eventually became greatly sanctified. She is a favorite Saint of MANY because she reminds us that, through repentance, God forgives. She has a Sunday devoted to her as part of the Lenten cycle, which helps us focus on repentance each year.

As I said, sanity is needed.

When I was growing up, it was the opposite of "purity culture". Young girls were made to think that there wasn't even the option of remaining pure, and to try on one's own was very difficult and isolationist. We need to allow that chastity IS the expectation, is possible, is valued, and give young people tools to succeed in this. We also need them to understand that whatever failures we experience in life (we all have them, of one kind or many), that God will receive us back and forgive us. And as Shanethetheologian said, I think we need to let young people know that there are more options, including celibacy. ALL of this needs to be known, and applied to real life in sane and helpful ways.

There is much more to the question of marriage and being ordained in the Orthodox Church, which shows a wider perspective and much wisdom on such matters, but I don't think it is necessarily relevant to this thread. I just don't like to see misunderstandings about Orthodoxy.
 
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Root of Jesse

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Purity Culture Definition:
Purity culture has an obsessive focus on virginity before marriage and on maintaining emotional purity that pervades fundamentalism and evangelicalism, made visible in purity balls, purity rings, purity pledges, and modesty teachings.

It ties your worth as a person to your virginity, not who you are in Christ.

NOTE: Remember, there is nothing wrong with being a virgin, but there is something wrong about making virginity an idol, and that's what purity culture does.


As a millennial, the church was obsessed with purity culture during my childhood, you might remember books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris, who now himself admits it was a mistake.

In a recent article by Ruth Graham:


I just picked up a new book titled Damaged Goods by Dianna Anderson... looking forward to reading it.

Purity Culture had a negative impact on my life, on my marriage, and I'm a male. I can't even image the imagine the negative impact on women. :( Purity balls, rings and the like, in my opinion are super weird and sometimes gross.

I am interested in responses from women on this one, and how purity culture impacted them?

I wonder where you got your definition. It would be wrong to attach some sort of idolatry to remaining a virgin. Rather, I believe it is right to show why virginity is right and why un-chastity before marriage is wrong. Show the reason why it is best to wait until marriage.

I realize that some, maybe most, of our American culture that reveres virginity makes it sort of an idol, but that doesn't really work. By the way, for any such discipline to work, the individual has to understand the value of it. Take, for instance, the discipline required to play sports. If the kid doesn't want to play sports, or sees no value in it, he's not going to succeed. Likewise, if someone is taking piano lessons because his parents want him to be a virtuoso (and not doing it of his own free will), he will not succeed. I remember that I smoked for 40+ years, and thought I would/could never quit, but when I did it because I wanted to, I didn't even need a stick of nicotine gum. Same way with chastity. When one is brought up with the understanding of the value of chastity as a discipline, one will more than likely succeed.
 
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Root of Jesse

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I think a measure of sanity is needed, and that can be difficult to achieve in a culture that is shifting under our very feet. As a result of culture, we don't have a solid example of how things ought to be done.

Was purity culture damaging? Well, I won't argue - perhaps it was. Contrast it with the culture of growing up thinking that "everybody does it" and being ashamed to admit you're a virgin, and where virginity is thus a kind of black mark on a person, and generally people desire to rid themselves of it as quickly as possible. Without even understanding that a person has a RIGHT to say no to casual sex, and can value that choice in themselves and someone else. That there might be anyone else out there, or that it's even possible to remain a virgin? That mindset causes a lot of damage too, and I've seen many more come from that kind of thinking.

Where IS the sane understanding that we have rights over our own bodies, that we have choices to make, that choices have consequences, that forgiveness is possible, that purity is possible? I'm sure I'm leaving out many important considerations, but those are just a few from those two perspectives.

I wonder how small a percentage of people would even appreciate what I'm proposing - I suspect most are too far from what I envision to even appreciate or desire all aspects of it.
To answer your question at the bottom, I do. With gusto.
 
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Root of Jesse

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I'm a father myself, and it's not easy trying to teach a young girl how to navigate in the world.

Purity Culture for men I think looked a bit different. I remember it being very sex negative... almost like the worst thing I could do was have sex with someone. Even looking at a girl was instantly thought of as lusting after her. So we had men's meetings, accountability partners, etc. Everything about sex was shameful and discouraged. I was a virgin when I got married at 20, and I suppose I'm not afraid to write this, the first time we did have sex, I actually felt bad, like I did something wrong.
I can agree that this would be the wrong way to look at it. Show the positive aspect, rather than the negative.
 
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Root of Jesse

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Sexual pleasures are reserved for one man with one woman who are united in staying together forever, raising up their children accordingly. I'm still struggling with the idea that a governmental license is necessary. I think not.
No, it's funny how the government tries to (generally succeeds, too) usurp what is the Church's domain. Vowing before God that you will love each other is the key. And having God in your life as long as you live.
 
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Root of Jesse

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Yes, after the eleventh century. It could legitimately be argued that this was another layer in church control of every aspect of society. In the centuries following it got to the point that even the couples sex lives were strictly controlled through the confessional.
Bishop Ignatius of Antioch, writing around 110 to Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna said, "t becomes both men and women who marry, to form their union with the approval of the bishop, that their marriage may be according to God, and not after their own lust."
 
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One thing I forgot to mention in my original post, is that purity culture also is about the oppression of women, or the promotion that woman are property.

In a purity ball, it's a pact to her father she will be "pure" until her wedding night, where the father will then pass ownership of the daughter over to another man.
I know of specific case where a daughter requested that her dad get her a chastity ring and asked him to do a ceremonial vow of chastity in front of the Blessed Sacrament.
 
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