Pure Nonsense: Evangelicals and the Obsession with Sexual Purity

Have you heard of the father-daughter purity ball? In it, according to this New York Times article, the father pledges to protect his daughter(s) from the perverse “hook-up culture” she meets at school and at work, and leads her through a series of rituals to signify the rigidity of his commitment. (By the way, as a blogger pointed out, notice in the photo the father and daughter stand together under two raised swords. As she said: “Paging Dr Freud.”

I have a daughter. I intend to do all I can to help her become the kind of woman she should be. But this ritualized obsession with purity disturbs and, frankly, disgusts me. For one thing, this obsession with young girls’ purity arises because we evangelicals, following James Dobson, et. al., have made a fetish of the nuclear family and sexuality. I find it telling that while Jesus had much more to say about people’s use of money than he did about their sexual habits, evangelicals, by and large, have the ratio reversed. 

For another, this purity-obsession plays into perverse ideals of masculinity and femininity, misleadingly called “traditional” by evangelical preachers and public figures. “Femininity” is about passivity and sexual naivete (think the Stepford wives); “masculinity” is about strength and aggression and sexual virility (think James Bond and John Wayne – or just read John Eldridge).

Third, and perhaps most importantly, it is all false! It is simulacra and pastiche. But this, unfortunately, is true of much (if not most) evangelical piety and rhetoric. In the end, this kind of pretension creates an uncross-able divide between private life and public positioning (think, for instance, of Ted Haggard). For my daughter’s sake, I intend to have nothing to do with it.