02/05/2025 – Sara Moslener and Evangelical Purity Culture
Today we're having a conversation with Sara Moslener about Evangelical purity culture. Check this out. This is TenOnReligion.
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Sara Moslener wrote an interesting book titled, Virgin Nation: sexual purity and American adolescence. Her research area is Evangelical purity culture, and if you don't know what that is, here's our conversation.
Dr. B.: Hello we are here with Sara Moslener from Central Michigan. How are you doing today Sara?
Sara: I'm doing all right. It's, you know it's been a rough two, three weeks. Lots to process. Lots to think about. Lots of lots of concern especially for what's going on in Southern California with the fires and you know and all of you who live there and just the devastation of it and you know. And then this is a this is a hard semester to teach and I teach about religious discrimination and racism in the US and so I just… it's a little overwhelming right now.
Dr. B.: Yeah it's, we're going to be talking about Evangelical purity culture here for a while and I, just to let you let everybody know, I have a slight of a bandage here. I just whacked myself on my head when I was trying to plug something into my computer a few minutes ago but we're rolling with it anyways. So I, the reason why I have Sarah, that I asked her to have a discussion with us today because she wrote a very fascinating book a while ago called Virgin Nation: sexual purity and American adolescence. And it's more of a descriptive book on the history of this movement and so we want to talk about this for a little while here. For those that don't know, the Purity movement was kind of a 1990s development, although maybe a little bit in the ‘80s as well, largely in Evangelical churches in the United States. So you did a whole history behind this in this book leading up to that time period. So tell us a little bit more about this movement. What are some of the causes or contributing factors to its emergence? And I guess, basically what I'm asking is, if Purity culture was the answer to something, then then what was the question or what was the problem that it was addressing?
Sara: Right yeah. So yes, as you said, I do, I am trained as a US religious historian and so for me the answer goes all the way back to the 19th century ideologies about white womanhood and there were several, but one of them was purity, sexual purity, and of course they didn't in the 19 the Victorians didn't say the word “sexual” they said “social” purity and yes but this time period, it became a trait associated with white womanhood that had that did a variety of things. One, it, by the way if you see a tail behind me that is my dog Gibson who's trying to snuggle in right now for a nap, but and so but white womanhood became kind of this national symbol of sexual purity. One that is going to have significant implications for how we continue to think about race in the United States. And what was really mindboggling to me when I started you know because I started out looking at Evangelical movements what I called you know when I wrote my dissertation and even in my book I think I called them faith-based abstinence movements because this was before the term Evangelical Purity culture was coined. [Dr. B.: right.] And that's the one that has very much caught on and so it's you know to see it sort of grow has been, has been really kind of wild but yeah. So the problems in the 80s and 90s right there was there were sort of multiple sex panics happening, as sociologists would call them. A lot of anxiety about teen sex and looking at the rates of uh teen pregnancies that appeared to be on the rise. In fact, they and…
Dr. B.: What time frame was this?
So this would have been the late 80s early 90s. [Dr. B.: Okay 1980s, 1990s, okay yep.] Yeah so and in fact the it was the rise of teen pregnancies among white people and that that caused alarm which is interesting to think about. The rise wasn't among people of color. It was among white people and there were observers and pundits who sort of noted that as well. This is a sign of our decline kind of thing so that was the first right so teen pregnancy but also HIV, AIDS, and right so you have these two kind of sex panics that really detracted from actually dealing with the issues at hand. And in fact, it was so when one of the main groups that I study from the Southern Baptist Convention, True Love Waits, when they first got started it was my youth minister in Tennessee and the youth of his church and they had a conversation about all the LGBT folks who were coming out and sort of the status that gave them and their youth pastor who founded True Love Waits said, “Well why don't you come out?” And so that's what they did. So it was very much formed around the gay, the gay rights movement, and which is an, in you know something that Evangelical Christians do is they will co-opt the language if not the behavior of minoritized groups in order to claim themselves as a minority and it's really yeah and so to sort of see the way that this is you know rooted very much in homophobia and also racism from the very beginning I think is really important to understand. But what is mindboggling is that none of these groups really knew what had happened in the 19th century where they were doing similar things with a different kind of focus even having people recite and sign pledges as was a big part of Evangelical Purity culture and so that's so yeah so that's one there are many different ways to frame it historically but that's probably where I would start.
Dr. B.: I, so, what are some of the negative effects this movement has caused? I mean are there like intended or unended consequences? Are we still seeing the influence today?
Sara: Yeah absolutely. So I mean we can certainly talk about the more systemic right, because of Purity culture we got abstinence-only education and which has become an impediment to teaching real sex education and so that is a battle that continues to be fought in school districts and so we have so there's that level of it. But there's also the individual level. For my current project, I started by interviewing people who grew up and out of Purity culture most of whom I would say it reached its height in the you know in our in our moment in our lifetime in the early 2000s and so most of the people I interviewed were teenagers at that time and I interviewed them and you know every story was one of different kinds of struggle. Like there is a spectrum of harm. Even people I interviewed who said you know for me this was okay but I saw what it did to my friends you know. So even for people who got out unscathed it was, they were very aware but a lot of, a lot of anxiety around sexuality, around spirituality. Certainly no place for anyone who is queer. Right, right. So how you know and so you know no support there so for people you know I interviewed someone who said you know I was out to myself when I was 12 and I knew I just had to keep it to myself until I graduated high school and could leave. You know so that so that kind of stuff also along with it the kind of seeing elements of spiritual abuse right because this is a way of connecting sexuality with spirituality in a way that says you know if you don't, if you don't do this right your relationship with God is going to be destroyed. There's going to be no hope for a good marriage relationship. And so I just I talked to so many people and I should say overwhelmingly women, white women, who were taught to not have a sense of embodiment that even being taught that sex was not something that they would ever enjoy.
Dr. B.: Yeah it seems like there's a lot of, I mean just listening to you here for the last few minutes, there's a lot of power and control issues going on. A lot of objectification. I mean it and I I'm not sure if that was all again intended or unintended but that's it's clearly one of the yeah one of the ramifications of this.
Dr. B.: That's a very stereotypical view, okay.
Sara: Yeah yeah yeah, it's hard to know I mean I think the people who endorse it very much believe that it is good but of course it is very much about controlling women's bodies is what I see overwhelmingly and although I've talked to some men who say like yes for women it was about their you know their bodies but for men it was about controlling their minds and their thoughts and so the kind of struggles that young men would have you know because the foundation of Purity teachings is that boys are naturally sexually aggressive and girls are naturally sexually passive.Sara: Exactly right. These are gender stereotypes and that are deeply harmful because when you internalize them what you're doing is you're making monsters out of all boys and so I mean imagine then being a boy who's internalized this and then you know you start having normal sexual urges and thoughts and everything and you just you learn to hate those things about yourself and then with women with women and girls it's much more about your body and being responsible for your body and how it dresses particularly so that you're not causing men and boys to stumble right. So and this is and there is research now that directly that identifies this and directly connects it to what we call rape culture right these right the normalization of these gender roles normalizes rape and says, “Well this is how women and girls are.” “This is how men and boys are.” And that's you know it's a rape scenario as opposed to people feeling a sense of having sexual literacy and also having a sense of embodiment you know and all this is start is the starting point is that sex is bad. That sex is something that threatens your relationship to God and will harm you in any number of ways and so it was a very powerful message because it's certainly not new but it was coupled with this idea of this is how you be a faithful Christian and this is and it was very effective.
Dr. B.: Yeah, I was going to ask you how men have been negatively affected by this move but you just already answered that question. So let me ask you this. So one of the principles that you and others in what you call post-purity culture have advocated for is the idea that to effectively dismantle the purity culture there must be this focus on embodied healing. So tell us a little bit more about what that means because that seems a little unclear for some people.
Sara: Sure, so in my interviews the overwhelming theme I heard from women was of disembodiment of women who really didn't understand their bodies until they gave birth. [Dr. B.: Wow.] Yeah and so you know so all of these teachings that like you know your sexual pleasure is not is non-existent. It doesn't matter and just being completely cut off from the possibilities of sexual pleasure and that that's right that that's part of who we are as human beings and the way and sort of you know coming to realize that is yeah it's one thing so people who will make the realization so and say yeah that is this is not good I don't agree with this anymore I don't want to you know I want to make different choices find that even if they can intellectually say that their bodies are still very much shaped you know by you know by these restrictions around you know so it is right these are embodied lessons. You can't think your way out of them. And so, and so there are a lot of people sort of in the post-purity world who work as embodiment coaches and trying to help people kind of reconnect and this is you know in white evangelicalism in particular right there is a real embrace of the idea that our bodies are suspect and of course this is in many ways right this is a traditional Christian theology and you know this idea that that you know going all the way back to the Greeks that matter is evil the spirit is good and so they really kind of revived that in a way that that gave it that a renewed sacred significance and so the idea of being able to abstain being able to control your appetites you know I think about the desert fathers and mothers you know and you know the early Christians who associated like eating meat with something that was you know you shouldn't do that because it will arouse the passions right so right so this really strict asceticism that you see pieces of you know in the Christian historical tradition and theological traditions but what that looks like in the lives of teenage girls is increased eating disorders [Dr. B.: Yeah.] that you know this idea that hey if I control these desires right and eating disorders and I interviewed a couple people about this and there is someone who has written a dissertation on the topic and has published on it. Her name is she is now Dr. Rebecca Wolfe. So check out her work. But what I learned from her and also other people I interviewed is that you know eating disorders are a way to practice disembodiment and in a way to feel pious in the same way that practicing abstinence from sex helps you feel pious. So there was and you know if you depending on your body type if you know your body becomes less right and you lose sort of you know feminine features and this sort of thing and so the connection between you know the expectations of sexual purity and of eating disorders really goes hand in hand and again it's all about making sure the body is under control and so that and so that right so that is sort of one of the more extreme examples of what I mean by disembodiment.
Dr. B.: Wow I, so let's flip the script for a second. So if Purity culture is the problem. Like if it's not an appropriate way to understand and socialize people about sexual health and all of its aspects like physically, socially, emotionally, etc. Then how should we be teaching you know kids and parents? I mean what does a healthier or more appropriate model look like?
Sara: Yeah, what I always recommend I think and this is this is in fact a faith-based sex education. One of the best I think that we have in this country comes from the Unitarian Universalists. It's called Our Whole Lives. O-W-L. If you have a UU Church in your area they may provide trainings and I believe it's open to everyone. They're not you know they're not sort of this members-only kind of group but it is right it's holistic. It's comprehensive and is very much you know kind of doing the kinds of things that we need in sex education to give young people a sense of who they are in their bodies and to, and to be able to know you know differences between sort of good touch and bad touch right when you're talking to younger people but also like you know consensual practices versus non-consensual. This is something that Purity culture really gets wrong because they label any sex before marriage as a problem, as a sin, as dangerous, as something that's going to impact your mental health, possibly your physical health and everything. And so in that there's no distinction between consensual and non-consensual sex and that to me is really troubling and so you know a good sex-ed plan program needs to prioritize consent. Needs to prioritize our relationships to our bodies as things that are good and not things that we need to be afraid of.
Dr. B.: So I this is kind of part of a larger discussion just about religion and sexual abuse in general but you know even though you know this is more of a subset of that I mean healing from the effects of purity culture for some people might seem like kind of like a niche thing to recover from. So for people who might be listening to this that feel like they need more information or help, what types of resources are available that you can point us to?
Sara: Yeah, yeah well since you mentioned sexual abuse right this was when I first started studying this. You know this was my dissertation topic. So I started this in 2006 and for many years the idea of connecting this to sexual abuse was never on my radar. Years later I met and have been working with a survivor advocate and she said when she first read my book her thought was the next thing she's going to be studying is sexual abuse. And so we now have evidence of the connections and especially of the way that religious communities respond to survivors. That it is very much rooted in all these myths about rape and so that is right the survivor’s experience in church communities is one that isn't is you know first about the initial experience but then about what happens when the community just sort of closes ranks and protects leadership and you know protects and we see this over and over again. But back to your question. Yes, there are many sources. If anyone is listening who, or watching, has experienced sexual abuse in a church environment, there is a wonderful organization. There are many wonderful organizations. The one I work closely with is called Into Account you can find them they have been doing really incredible work. This stuff gets litigious really fast and that's another hurdle that survivors have to deal with you know and it's just a whole set of experiences that retraumatize the survivor so a group like Into Account they know how to do the work. They will do all your homework for you. And or you know another thing I have found is that you know if people experience trauma…trauma really scrambles your brain and your memory. And what happens to many survivors is they immediately participate in self-blame. And so part of the healing work that needs to happen is for survivors to be able to tell their own stories and to tell the story of what happened to them in a way that's true, meaning that it's not about “Oh this is what I did, this is what I was wrong,” but is able to say this is what happened to me, this is who's responsible, and that takes so much work to do and I've… And so you know another recommendation I have is you know to find, if you are a writer, to find writing groups that you can work with and be and work on writing your story. Right. But not, you don't have to share it with other people. You just need to be able to tell it to yourself in a way that's true.
Dr. B.: Yeah. And when you get it down, I guess when you when you put it something like physically like that. When you actually are writing something then to some extent it's out of you. It's expressed. It almost seems like it's more real at that point.
Sara: Yeah exactly. And right, and you're creating a narrative, right? You're taking everything that's scrambled in your brain and the thing is a lot of people can't do it. And some and we know like in some cases people don't know 20, 30, 40 years later, that that's what the that was the experience they had and because they don't name it right? You know they were 15 years old and being in a relationship with a youth minister you know. This is was is Krista Brown’s story and she was convinced that she was having an affair at 15 with an adult church worker and it wasn't until she was her own daughter was 16 that it occurred to her, “Wait, that was not an affair.” That right? So the language right? The gaslighting that happens where survivors don't have even the language to explain to themselves what happened. Yeah so other you know Linda Kay Klein, if people have not read Linda's book I think one of the most important on, in, the post-Purity genre of books, and she also works will work with clients who are working on sort of recovery kinds of stuff. She herself has her own story of… and takes a deep dive into you know PTSD, people who experience PTSD around sex, even talking about sex. I interviewed someone who said, “You know I couldn't talk about sex without breaking out into hives.” Right? So people having these very visceral responses to and their bodies being so traumatized that their bodies are going into self-protection mode and so yeah. So there's a lot of, so that you know there are a lot of different ways that you can find and everyone finds different ways to sort of reconnect to their body and I know you know for me it was of course I was I realize now one of the reasons I really liked you know school was because you know my head is my safe place and just being able to think about things. And so this has really kind of shifted the way I think about doing, about doing my scholarship about you know talking about what I research and even teaching that we are so trained to not be in our bodies and in the number of harms that that really promotes…
Dr. B.: Yeah, so let's get into your teaching for a few minutes because I because I'm interested in how these ideas get integrated into a classroom setting. You teach courses on Religion, Race and Discrimination; Religion and Sexuality, and others. And for those of you that are not professional educators, college education is about like content delivery, you know classroom activities, assessment. That's kind of oversimplifying it a little bit, but so I let's leave aside the assessment piece for now. But what types of things do you do to help students sort of understand and appropriate these issues? I mean are there things that you've discovered that that works best? How do the students respond to all of this?
Sara: Yeah, so to just tell you a little bit more about my context. Central Michigan University is you know one of the directional Michigans. So it's large but not as large as our you know flagship schools here in Michigan. [Dr. B.: And a public a public university.] A public university. Yeah, so I haven't taught Religion and Sexuality for quite some time. My job became teaching Religion, Race and Discrimination because it's a general education course and so it is it fulfills a requirement about studying the history of racism in the United States and so it's a very so yeah and I teach 160 students a semester in four different sections right so there's lots of challenges you know both institutional and just content-wise. But I have been, I taught for a while courses in our Center for Intergroup Dialogue and so those are and so I've developed some of those practices to get students to think about having difficult conversations and so that's what I have I now teach my course as a like we're learning to have difficult conversations about very hard topics. Our topics are religious discrimination and racism and so this is how I'm able to kind of get students on board in terms of doing things a little differently and getting them to think about you know how they are showing up to these conversations. So my thing this semester is you know what's your vibe? You know before you get into a discussion about a heavy topic check in with yourself right? What is your body telling you? Are you feeling anxious? Are you feeling tired, right? And so getting students to really kind of be able to check in with themselves. And again right, our educational systems encourage students to only go in head first and because ultimately, and this is the argument I make in my book, both when it comes to Purity culture and when it comes to race, like disembodiment is seen as a virtue right? You know color blindness says like “Oh I don't see race?” And that's still the predominant form of racism in the United States is people claiming that you know they don't see race. They don't think about it. And of course that doesn't do any good. And so getting people to think about you know who they are in the world. How they are perceived. Thinking about their social identities. We just did this last week you know what does it you know getting my students to think about being at a predominantly white institution. What does that mean? And so one of the topics I teach about and have been for quite some time is white racial identity. You know which is what the racial identity that is completely disembodied. That it's the one we can't talk about and so that's how I bring in kind of this the embodiment piece to my classes is really trying to get students to get students to be in the classroom as whole people. Not just a brain and to start you know engaging one another in that way.
Dr. B.: Yeah, that's interesting. I… you know, and often when I taught, when I was in, I taught in Atlanta at a community college for about seven years, and I during that time, I had students from more than a 100 different countries you know and so I would have this a very you know ethnically and culturally diverse area and I'd always ask students you know what languages that they spoke and I think that they appreciated that you know because then we identified their you know countries or cultures of origin, and we celebrated them, and we respected them, and had some conversations about it and so on and so forth and it was, I think it helped people open up in in the classroom to each other you know and to some extent maybe to me as the instructor as well and so the whole idea of identifying and connecting with our identity and who we are but again you know with these sorts of issues, it goes a lot deeper than what language you speak.
Sara: Right, but that's really I think, that's really great. I'm you know and you know being able to help people feel like they are they feel known in the classroom and seen I think that is really really important and but yeah I love that and I you know when you can get students when I hear students talking openly about sort of their unique experiences that's because I I've been teaching this long enough to know like what the party lines are you know like you hear same things over and over again but when a student really talks about experiences of who they are that's when I know I've created the right kind of learning environment and yeah it's just yeah man there's so many challenges to teaching these days and yeah I mean the pandemic was hard yeah you know and thing you know and making changes but now I feel like we're now we're like okay well where do we go? Do we completely change back? Like that doesn't seem right. Like how do we you know and how do we kind of get out of the you know I feel like there's sort of a rote expectation increased rote expectations for being students anymore you…
Dr. B.: Yeah, it uh, to sort of wrap things up I mean let me just sort of give you one more last statement, but I mean what I it seems like this whole discussion is centered around this idea of you know what does it mean to be human, and the human experience. What does it mean to be human, and who gets to decide, and how are those decisions made? Is that a, how would you respond to that?
Sara: I think that's absolutely right you know, and of course right now that question is being asked around issues of citizenship and it's not, and the thing is when we talk about citizenship we talk about it in a way that is about like you know are people human beings or not? And you know the same with the anti-trans stuff is just it's really yeah it's disorienting and it's destabilizing and those mean the same thing but I but yeah I mean the dehumanization that's happening right now and yes right and so there are groups that are being targeted who you know are really afraid right now but it dehumanizes all of us. And I think that's our real work right now is how do we stay connected to our humanity.
Dr. B.: Yeah, yeah. Because I mean as soon as we turn people into objects or people into things we can label them. We can victimize them. We can say they're the reason that you're having problems. I mean all this sort of nonsense and so and so that when we're like halfway through our talk where I say you know sort of what's the more appropriate model so the re-embodiment and the rehumanizing is really kind of the answer.
Sara: Absolutely I yeah and that means you know and that could mean all sorts of things but yeah I'm at the point of you know at least in teaching you know I've been in my current job this is my 11th year so of just really wanting to radicalize the classroom. I think and in ways that I never had confidence to do before right because we are trained in our graduate programs and our students are trained that like if you're a professor right you’re the most important thing in the classroom right? Your knowledge is the most important thing in the classroom. And that's simply not true. It's the learning that's the most important thing in the classroom. And so and that's hard you know. And that's how students are trained too so that's what they want you know they want the brain on the podium and you know tell me what I need to know to get a good grade and so this is all you know what our educational system is and what we're fighting against and so to sort of re-embody that is really pushing against a lot of ingrained habits. But that's yeah but at least I feel like that's the work that I'm supposed to be doing right now and unfortunately people have been writing about it and doing it for a very very long time and so it's not like I have to reinvent anything but it's but it's still it's still work it's a lot of work.
Dr. B.: All right. And I now you sent me a few links which I'll put down in the description below and maybe a few other things we talked about I'll try to look up or you can send me later so I can put it in the description in case people want to reference things or look them up. So I appreciate this conversation. Thanks Sarah so much for being with here and talking with us today.
Dr. B.: Yeah thanks for branching out from your usual PRT topics.
Dr. B.: Yeah sounds good.
Sara: It was great.
Dr. B.: Thank you so much.
Sara: You're welcome.
So what did you think about our convo? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Coming up next is a great episode on Feuerbach revolving around the question “Did we create God?” We're also going to have some more great interviews with religion scholars doing some fantastic work. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this support the channel in the link below. Give me a Super Thanks. Also please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion