Purity culture often resulted in a lot of guilt and shame, placing a heavy burden where there didn’t need to be one. Purity culture tried to promote a biblical sexual ethic, but ended up placing a lot of extra-biblical laws around sex and relationships and guaranteeing outcomes that weren’t within it’s power to guarantee. Things like singleness, abuse, infertility, and past sexual sin were not often addressed, and if they were, they were probably not addressed in a correct, loving way. Unfortunately, this movement was based on a lot of false teaching and promises, like placing the responsibility for sexual purity on women, promoting the idea that men have no control over their “animal instincts”, holding marriage up as the ultimate goal of life, and promising that saving sex for marriage would lead to great marriages, great sex, and a picture-perfect family. Purity culture is a movement that promotes abstinence and saving sex for marriage. I had a purity ring.Īnd even though I couldn’t quite place my finger on it at the time, something about all this purity talk seemed a little lacking. My youth group had gender-separated “purity talks”. My youth group Bible study went through Every Young Woman’s Battle by Shannon Ethridge and Stephen Arterburn. I was gifted I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. I am of the generation that caught the tail end of the height of purity culture.