Talking Back to Purity Culture by Rachel Joy Welcher

Author:Rachel Joy Welcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: purity;sexual purity;purity culture;Christian purity culture;evangelical purity culture;marriage;singleness;sex;sexuality;Christian marriage;Christian sexuality;Christian sexual ethic;Christian purity;modesty;dating;courtship;purity ring;true love waits;purity rally;saving yourself for marriage;purity movement;sex in the bible;sexuality in the bible;biblical perspective on purity;biblical perspective on sex;purity in the Bible;I kissed dating goodbye;abstinence;legalism;sex ed;sex education
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2020-08-28T10:35:07+00:00

Purity as Wholeness Neglects the Abused

“I was abused at the age of twelve,” Amber told me, “by someone in authority over me. That’s right about the time I was being introduced to purity culture. We watched a video of a woman holding up a paper heart then tearing it in half. Then she took a hammer to a beautiful vase.”

“How did these teachings affect you, having suffered sexual abuse?” I asked her.

“Because of the timing and what I was being taught, for all of my teen years I believed I was unworthy. Unworthy of God’s love, of my future husband’s love, of my father’s love. When things finally came to light at age sixteen, the reaction caused me to resent the church. I resented the leaders and my parents. They acted as if my abuse caused them more damage than me.”

Amber is an adult now, and a Christian, with a baby she treasures and a husband she loves. I ache, listening to her story. I ache, imagining how small she must have felt. What does it feel like to be met with annoyance instead of compassion when you feel broken? To be made to feel like a burden, instead of receiving the help you need?

“The things I was told while being abused made me believe he was doing what I wanted and that it was out of love. There was also fear and threats. I saw him as someone who I should respect and listen to. Eventually I ‘fell in-love’ with him. I used to think, ‘Now we have to get married!’ I believed that I could only ever be intimate with my husband so of course marriage was the answer. I was twelve. I didn’t realize that what was happening was not intimacy. I didn’t know anything.”

She didn’t know anything except what she was told. And she was told that sexual impurity breaks a person, like a glass vase left in shards on the floor. I want to tell you that Amber’s story is rare, but you know that it is not. I want to tell you that I have never heard about the church pressing in on the wound of sexual abuse, making it deeper, leaving an even bigger scar. But you know that isn’t true either.

Sexual abuse is common, a word I hate to use about something that should never be normalized, expected, or overlooked. The Holcombs point out that, according to national statistics, “every two minutes, someone in the United States is sexually assaulted.”2 If it is happening this often in America, it is happening to individuals in our churches. And beloved, those who have been sexually abused are listening to the way we talk about purity.

At a Silver Ring Thing event, speaker Matt Webster destroyed the symbolic wooden heart of a male volunteer with a chainsaw and gave a piece to three female volunteers, explaining that sexual immorality leaves parts of your heart with different people.3 The sexually promiscuous are left splintered, with just a jagged piece of their own heart to give to their future spouse.

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