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

by Linda Kay Klein

It was just 1948 when a group of largely conservative individuals calling themselves the new evangelicals branched away from various Protestant groupsIX to form the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE).6 And it wasn’t until the 1990s that evangelical Christianity became the political and cultural force we know it as today.

The evangelical subculture is diverse, decentralized, and constantly changing. After all, evangelical Christianity is the single largest religious grouping in the United States. More than a quarter of Americans belong to it, and more than a third of American adolescents do.

After the sexual revolution, Americans were scared. AIDS was killing people by the thousands, there were growing concerns about other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and many conservatives believed a return to traditional values, including chastity, was the only solution. Spurred by this perspective, federal money for abstinence-only-until-marriage education began to flow—first under Reagan,XIV then more under Clinton,XV then still more under Bush.XVI11 This influx of government money catalyzed the purity industry.

Every state but one (California) has at one time accepted Title V federal funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programming.13

Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in the honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.31 . . . Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.32

For Blue, art was ongoing. It was as much about the way the artist projected her voice when she yelled at her neighbor to turn down his music, or grumbled into her coffee in the morning, as it was about what she did onstage. Real art couldn’t stop and start any more than life could. So either I was that little girl apologizing on Blue’s answering machine, or I was the artist who knew how to sing from a place so low it made her gut shake. I could be either. But I couldn’t be both.

Either you get married or—” Eli searched for the right words. “You get a lot of cats.” He laughed. “I have one cat. I’m working on it.”