Heretic: A Memoir

by Jeanna Kadlec

we should find it unsurprising to realize that the evangelical marketing push for purity culture emerged and consolidated itself specifically in response to the women’s, civil rights, and gay liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Collectively, these events were seen as an assault on white men and white women’s inherent “God-given” gender roles, on women’s role in the home, and on the absolute necessity of women’s sexual purity. Controlling white women’s bodies and reproductive capabilities is central to the project of white supremacy, but that developed as a secondary, more politically acceptable concern in the aftermath of evangelicals’ initial obsession, segregation. Bible studies, women’s ministries, publications, and conferences emerged to affirm and perpetuate evangelicals’ rigid patriarchal practices around gender and sexuality—while simultaneously marketing the evangelical lifestyle as “countercultural” to the sinful, lustful ways of the world.