I really appreciated your commentary on purity culture. What I think went wrong was a trust in the formula, but the truth is still the truth. Sex outside of marriage is wrong, no matter who that truth is communicated.
Did you read The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Trueman? It fits with your piece.
“ Or is it because they—like the rest of the world—are staring into a genderless, plastic abyss wherein women and men are not who God says they are, whereby they must, the cultural law says they must, enact their desires or they will not be whole and healthy?”
It is quite easy to look back and retroactively see all the problems with how things like "purity culture" panned out. But when you consider the backdrop of the once and ongoing Sexual Revolution, you can hardly fault orthodox Christians who, surrounded by such depravity and desiring to preserve their children from its evils, went too far in the other extreme.
That becomes all the more true when you realize that many of those involved in the "purity culture" movement were Boomers and Gen X-ers who actually lived pretty lascivious lives before coming to Christ. I grew up in and toward the tail end of the purity culture world, and the number of parents in our circles who had testimonies that started with, "I was sleeping around and doing drugs when the Lord got ahold of me," would surprise most people. They saw the devastation those choices wreaked in their own lives and they wanted to spare their children that, however imperfectly so.
Most anyone who thinks "I am so traumatized by the purity culture and I would have handled things so much better than my parents did" is just deluding themselves. By and large, their parents (mine included) did the best they knew how given unfavorable circumstances, and most of what they did was fine. But the Freudian out of just blaming your parents is just too appealing in the social media age.
I only recently started seeing your work on social media platforms, but I've been wanting to commend you on your identification and analysis of two competing narratives about Christians in the United States. I grew up in some versions of the Christian Right. Certainly those movements had flaws, as all movements throughout all history do, but the narrative that Kristen Du Mez, Beth Allison Barr, and others tell about American evangelicals in the late 20th century frequently misreads both the flaws and the reasons behind them. I also strongly believe that the methods utilized by Du Mez and Barr, among others, are and will be used to criticize Christianity itself. Many seem to believe such thinkers are primarily correcting errors of American evangelicals. But they are not. They are making fundamental assumptions about the nature of humanity that fly in the face of virtually all major branches of Christianity throughout all history, including but not limited to verses found directly in the Bible.
I really appreciated your commentary on purity culture. What I think went wrong was a trust in the formula, but the truth is still the truth. Sex outside of marriage is wrong, no matter who that truth is communicated.
Did you read The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Trueman? It fits with your piece.
Spot on, as always, Anne!
“ Or is it because they—like the rest of the world—are staring into a genderless, plastic abyss wherein women and men are not who God says they are, whereby they must, the cultural law says they must, enact their desires or they will not be whole and healthy?”
BAM
It is quite easy to look back and retroactively see all the problems with how things like "purity culture" panned out. But when you consider the backdrop of the once and ongoing Sexual Revolution, you can hardly fault orthodox Christians who, surrounded by such depravity and desiring to preserve their children from its evils, went too far in the other extreme.
That becomes all the more true when you realize that many of those involved in the "purity culture" movement were Boomers and Gen X-ers who actually lived pretty lascivious lives before coming to Christ. I grew up in and toward the tail end of the purity culture world, and the number of parents in our circles who had testimonies that started with, "I was sleeping around and doing drugs when the Lord got ahold of me," would surprise most people. They saw the devastation those choices wreaked in their own lives and they wanted to spare their children that, however imperfectly so.
Most anyone who thinks "I am so traumatized by the purity culture and I would have handled things so much better than my parents did" is just deluding themselves. By and large, their parents (mine included) did the best they knew how given unfavorable circumstances, and most of what they did was fine. But the Freudian out of just blaming your parents is just too appealing in the social media age.
I only recently started seeing your work on social media platforms, but I've been wanting to commend you on your identification and analysis of two competing narratives about Christians in the United States. I grew up in some versions of the Christian Right. Certainly those movements had flaws, as all movements throughout all history do, but the narrative that Kristen Du Mez, Beth Allison Barr, and others tell about American evangelicals in the late 20th century frequently misreads both the flaws and the reasons behind them. I also strongly believe that the methods utilized by Du Mez and Barr, among others, are and will be used to criticize Christianity itself. Many seem to believe such thinkers are primarily correcting errors of American evangelicals. But they are not. They are making fundamental assumptions about the nature of humanity that fly in the face of virtually all major branches of Christianity throughout all history, including but not limited to verses found directly in the Bible.