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

by Linda Kay Klein

evangelical Christianity’s sexual purity movement is traumatizing many girls and maturing women haunted by sexual and gender-based anxiety, fear, and physical experiences that sometimes mimic the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Based on our nightmares, panic attacks, and paranoia, one might think that my childhood friends and I had been to war. And in fact, we had. We went to war with ourselves, our own bodies, and our own sexual natures, all under the strict commandment of the church.

“It’s interesting,” I replied to Renee. “The emphasis on being devoured, right? This message that we should look at our sexuality as food—”

The purity message nestles neatly into the larger “us” versus “them” messaging I was raised with in the church.

The purity message is not about sex. Rather, it is about us: who we are, who we are expected to be, and who it is said we will become if we fail to meet those expectations. This is the language of shame.

Shame tends to make people feel powerless and even worthless. It creates a fear of abandonment that, ironically, makes us push others away. We want to hide those aspects of ourselves

we are ashamed of, so we may emotionally withdraw from those close to us, lash out at them to keep them at bay, or isolate ourselves in self-blame. Whatever it takes to keep the world (including ourselves) away from those parts of us that we have come to believe make us bad.

After studying Dr. Uram’s work, I believe it’s possible that many of our early shame experiences, especially with our parents and caregivers, were stored in our brains as traumas. This is why we often have such painful bodily reactions when we feel criticized, ridiculed, rejected, and shamed. Dr. Uram explains that the brain does not differentiate between overt or big trauma and covert or small, quiet trauma—it just registers the event as “a threat we can’t control.”5

Today when I go into a church, I can’t stop panicking. I feel like I am going into a place in which I was raped, though I wasn’t. It is light-years easier for me to talk about being sexually abused as a child—I could give a public lecture about that—than it is for me to talk about what that religious community did to me. Sexual abuse is something that happened to me, but this was at the core of my identity. I participated in the community’s messaging about who I was, and allowed it to define me for years. The fear, the obsessing, the anxiety. It’s torment. It is Hell. It felt like torture. (Nicoletta)

Shame can become like the smell of our own homes. The hum of an air conditioner. The feel of a wedding ring. It’s just . . . there. Which is when it is most dangerous. Because it is then that we are most likely to dismiss, rather than deal with, its dangerous effects.

To summarize, first, the researchers are finding that purity teachings do not meaningfully delay sex. Second, they are finding that they do increase shame, especially among females. And third, they report that this increased shame is leading to higher levels of sexual anxiety, lower levels of sexual pleasure, and the feeling among those experiencing shame that they are stuck feeling this way forever. Oh, and it doesn’t get better with time . . . it gets worse! Yep. Sounds about right.

within the larger context of the chapter, it seems to me that judgmentalism is the stumbling block Paul is most concerned with here, not modesty.

the whole time my childhood friends and I were being told that we were stumbling blocks, our accusers were, even then, placing the real stumbling blocks before us: purity-based shaming and judgmentalism that pushed many of us right out of the church.

In books, movies, and just about everywhere else, girls get the message that the more selflessly and painfully a woman suffers, the more we love her. But nowhere is this message quite so clear as it is in religion.

even while we suffered, especially while we suffered, we smiled.

Some of those I’ve spoken with said they eventually got so good at denying their feelings that they could no longer access them, even when they wanted to. They couldn’t touch their anger, their sadness, their pain; they couldn’t even feel happiness.

every decision was not only a matter of life or death, but a matter of eternal life or eternal death.

But in the church, not all emotions are equal. At certain times and concerning certain topics, admitting that you have feelings, particularly the “wrong” feelings, is tantamount to admitting the Devil has got a hold of you. Yet at another time and concerning another topic, you may be accused of not being godly enough if you don’t express emotions (by which I mean, of course, the “right” emotions for a Christian, for the particular moment, and for your gender).

So when our bodies are beaten and our hearts broken, it is sometimes thought we reflect the perfect life of Christ, whose pain and death is the hinge upon which God’s plan for the world turns. The more God allows us to suffer, the more opportunity he gives us to be like him and prove our unshakable devotion to him.

But in the years to come, I would encounter some version of this scenario again and again. My friends and I were told in one breath we were loved unconditionally, accepted just as we were, and

headed for Heaven, and in the next we were warned of the evils of feminists, homosexuals, women who had sex outside of marriage, and other Hell-bound individuals. It didn’t even occur to me then that some people in youth group might already see themselves as fitting into some of these categories that I wouldn’t see myself in for years, and how that must have felt to them then, but what did occur to me was this: That unconditional love that I had fallen for in my early days in the church? It was conditional.

they didn’t want to give up their intelligence so they shut off their sexuality,

“Lucy’s version of The Lie was almost the exact opposite of mine,” she continued. “Mine was ‘no one will want you if you’re smart and opinionated,’ and hers was ‘I have to put up with everything in my relationship because my opinions don’t matter and what I want doesn’t matter.’ ” “I don’t know that those are opposites,” I suggested. “You were both reacting to the same gender-based lie: Be submissive and be loved, or be a leader and be alone forever. It’s the same story, the same lie. You just made different choices within it. Lucy chose submission for the sake of having a relationship; you chose being alone forever so you didn’t have to submit.”

But there have been times where I have not fully allowed myself to experience everything with Michael because I just . . . it’s a pinch-yourself moment. It’s like, ‘This can’t be real.’ He would say, ‘I love you,’ and I would say, ‘I know.’ And then I would try to make myself know. It’s ridiculous to even hear myself say it. I’m a smart girl. I have fancy degrees. But the circuits still don’t fire for me on this.” “On feeling loved?” I asked. “On feeling romantically loved,” she answered. “We’ve had several conversations in which I’ve said, ‘I think you should break up with me because I think I’m going to ruin your life.’ He is always so steady, saying I don’t get to make that choice for him. I get to make that choice for myself in terms of whether or not I wanted to be with him, but I can’t decide for him whether or not he wants to be with me.” “How do you fear you might ruin his life?” I asked. “It’s a vague notion. I was taught smart, strong women destroy men. So it’s like, ‘Someday, somewhere you’ll regret that you were with me. You’re probably not going to want me. One of these days you’re going to wake up and realize you don’t want me. So let me save you from that experience.’ There was a time when I was like, ‘I have to be as horrible to him as possible, to make sure that he knows the absolute worst of me.’ Every once in a while, I just need

to punch him in the face,” she said metaphorically. “I’ve never framed it in those terms, but that’s a lot what it’s like.

The cornerstone of the purity myth is the expectation that girls and women, in particular, will be utterly and absolutely nonsexual until the day they marry a man, at which point they will naturally and easily become his sexual satisfier, ensuring the couple will have children and never divorce: one man, one woman, in marriage, forever.

pride may well be a sin for many men who hold power in our patriarchal society, making men’s choice to check their pride in service of others very virtuous indeed. Yet women, not being in this position of power, are more likely to think too little of themselves than too much, suffering from an “underdevelopment or negation of the self”4—something Blue Jones saw in me from a mile away. And so, perhaps, for such women, pride is not a sin, but a virtue.

So I was feeling frustrated. And after graduating from school, I had four or five avenues that I thought about as a vocation for myself, but I was just really looking for guidance from God: ‘Where would you want me to be, God?’ ” “What if God was asking you the same question?” I asked. “What if he was waiting for you to tell him what you wanted?” Katie laughed under her breath. “It’s funny because it really never occurred to me that maybe he was letting me choose. It never even occurred to me that he would be saying, ‘And here’s your life; do what you want.’ ”

It seems to me that the family the purity movement seeks to protect is conceptual, not actual. So-called family values are about preserving the idea of what a family should look like, not preserving actual familial relationships.

Were we girls taught that God had amazing plans for us—married or not, with kids or not, that we had our own purpose? No. We were taught to support somebody

else’s purpose, and given biblical reflections on ‘partner and submit.’ Were we girls taught to be warriors? To gird ourselves and be as prepared for life as possible? No. We were trained to be supportive, nice, and caring to a warrior man.

I believe that the merger of sex and shame that I experienced is just such a brain trap. Even if we eventually come to understand that our sexual nature is natural, normal, and healthy, we may find that our upbringing in purity culture, which has dedifferentiated shame and sex over years of messaging, observation, and experience, ensures that our brains fire those shame neurons when the subject of our sexuality arises, with or without our permission, trapping us in a shame spiral.

As I mentioned in the opening, evangelical young people are the most likely religious grouping to expect that having sex will upset their mother and cause their partner to lose respect for them. Evangelicals are also among the least likely to expect sex to be pleasurable, and among the most likely to anticipate having sex will make them feel guilty.2 And yet evangelical young people are basically just as likely to have sex as their peers are.3 In other words, most evangelical youth are a lot like I was in the years after I left the church—sexual, and ashamed of it.

“People will do almost anything to escape this combination of condemned isolation and powerlessness.” Shame can make us feel desperate. Reactions to this desperate need to escape from isolation and fear can run the gamut from behavioral issues and acting out to depression, self-injury, eating disorders, addiction, violence, and suicide.1

“I don’t like to talk about him, or any of the guys or girls that I’ve even had anything with. Even those I’ve had nothing with. Just mentioning them, I cringe. I start fidgeting. I get really, really hot. I start laughing because it makes me nervous. I feel repulsed and I feel really nauseous.”

It’s weird because on one hand I’m very liberal socially. I totally believe that people should be as sexual as they want. But at the same time, I can’t be like that. It’s like, physically my body won’t allow it, and I’ve never been able to figure out how I can think one way and feel another way.

“I feel like my body even controls the way I think. So not only would I not ask somebody out, but I wouldn’t even allow myself to think about it. If I ever have a thought, ‘I like that person,’ immediately, my body will shut that down: ‘Don’t think about that. Don’t even do that.’ Whether that takes just not thinking for a while, or physically removing myself, or going over and talking to someone else about something else, I don’t allow myself to think, so action cannot happen. “For a long time, it’s been easiest for me to use the ‘I’m a strong independent woman and so I can’t’ excuse when I’ve really always known that that’s not true,” she continued. “I’ve always known that I wanted it. I wish I didn’t, because then I wouldn’t really have to deal with this. But I have a deep aching for a relationship. And at the same time, I can’t touch it.”

Generally speaking, purity culture excuses male sexuality and amplifies female sexuality, and it shames consensual sexual activity and silences nonconsensual sexual activity.

“women are taught their bodies are evil; men are taught their minds are.”

I am still a Christian, but I don’t go to church much anymore. Maybe if I lived in Denver or Indianapolis, I would. But I can’t bring myself to attend a church that teaches purity culture and other things that I know hurt people as deeply as they do, and when I attend progressive churches I sometimes find myself thinking I may as well be at home watching a TED Talk. It’s just not my kind of church. When I go to church, I want to throw my hands up in the air! I want to sing at the top of my lungs! I suppose in some ways I am still an evangelical after all. And so, these days I mostly do “church” at home: Praying, meditating, journaling, reading, and sometimes throwing my hands up and singing praises or laments to God at the top of my lungs in the privacy of my apartment where only my neighbors—who can undoubtedly hear me through my thin New York City walls—are invited to join in. I know my teenage self, rulebook in hand, would have certainly been wary of my salvation. My faith looks very

different than what I was taught it must. More private. More quiet (if you’re not my neighbor, that is). More my own. The closest I’ve ever come to finding a church home as an adult wasn’t a church at all; it was a choir. We sang gospel music together. And at the end of every rehearsal, we stood in a circle and shared the most painful and beautiful things happening in our lives, and then, we prayed for one another. That was it. And it was everything. Enough to inspire us to visit one another in the hospital; to sing at one another’s weddings and funerals; to attend each other’s celebrations; to help one another move or paint our living rooms; and much more. There was no sermon; there were no teachings; but we had church.

I’ll never forget seeing them receive what I had needed growing up—the promise that God loved them, and that some in God’s community would stand by them and their sisters no matter what they had been told by others.

Remember the old nursery rhyme? The one that you would always do with your hands? 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. No company, no institution, no pastor can tell us whether we’re in or out because it is us. You can choose the church or not—that’s up to you—but no one can choose for you. Because if you choose it, it already is you.