Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free

by Linda Kay Klein

In time, Laura began to see religious purity teachings as distinctly cultural, and to recognize how the white American evangelical church had exported these teachings across the country and the world.

each of us are created in the image of God, each of us brings some part of that image that only we can carry. So we’re not done until we’ve opened this thing up to everyone.”

research continuously shows that external rewards and punishments (like “I do this because my parents will be proud of me” or “I don’t do this because my peers will judge me”) are less likely to support lasting healthy decision-making than internalized motivations (like “I do this because it’s important to me” or “I don’t do this because it makes me feel bad”).

Here is the church; here is the steeple; open the doors, and see all the people? I’ve come to believe that this is just how it is. The church is made up of us. Our hands. We are the church. We are the steeple. We are the doors and we are the people.