![]() If you buy a purity ring, you can wear it on your finger every day. If you sign a purity pledge card, you can put it on your bulletin board at home or inside a journal. We can touch them, recommend them, and dog-ear their pages. The most common question I get is “What book can I give my teenager?” Books are tangible. If not the tenets of ’90s purity culture, what should we teach our children about sexuality? Teaching discernment Her hope is that popular Christians authors who have promoted what she deems false, harmful messages about sex and marriage, including Emerson Eggerichs ( Love & Respect) and Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker ( Every Man’s Battle), will do the same.Įven as our eyes open to the shortcomings and mistakes of past teachings, it hasn’t been easy to articulate what we should be teaching instead. I want to be sure the information I’m giving is actually healthy.” “I have spent the last year taking down old blog posts and asking for my oldest books to be taken out of print,” she told me. Sheila Wray Gregoire, blogger and author of The Great Sex Rescue, has seen her own perspective change as she learned more about women’s experiences in Christian marriages, including through a massive survey on marital satisfaction, faith, and beliefs about sex. We have seen harmful and unbiblical teachings perpetuated for far too long, and a needful reckoning is taking place. ![]() There is a growing movement of conversative Christians who feel a holy discontent with the way the evangelical movement has approached the topics of sex, marriage, and gender. And one time, I threw a book across the room. I couldn’t believe some of the lies I saw sandwiched in between Bible verses or the tactics that were used and the carrots that were dangled. These books made it clear to me that the responsibility for sexual sin and temptation-even assault-fell squarely on the shoulders of women. Rice report that “teenage guys are conflicted by their powerful physical urges” and “many guys don’t feel the ability or responsibility to stop the sexual progression.” Their conclusion for women? “Guys need your help to protect both of you.”ĭespite Jesus’ words to the contrary, I remember believing that men truly couldn’t control their lust if women didn’t take on the responsibility of dressing and acting in ways that squelched it. In their book, For Young Women Only, Shaunti Feldhahn and Lisa A. ![]() But it was, perhaps, the overarching message that women were responsible for the sexual purity of both genders that burdened me the most as a teenager growing up in the church. In the introduction to Every Young Woman’s Battle, Stephen Arterburn warns female readers that every time a man has sex with a woman, he takes “a piece of her soul.”Īlongside these unbiblical messages about human worth that fly squarely in the face of the theology of the imago Dei were the false promises of marriage, great sex, and children for anyone who practiced premarital celibacy. If someone eats a piece before the party (i.e., marriage), the cake, and consequently her relational worth, is no longer whole. I felt embarrassed realizing that so much of what I had accepted as true had nothing to do with biblical sexuality or the grace of God.īefore You Meet Prince Charming by Sarah Mally depicts a woman’s heart as a chocolate cake. ![]() As I revisited the words that had so shaped me and my peers, I felt the glass cracking under the weight of my internalized beliefs. While writing Talking Back to Purity Culture, I reread fresh copies of those books. I’m sure there is a list somewhere in my handwriting titled “What I Want in a Future Husband” (though, to be honest, it was probably pretty short: Jonathan Taylor Thomas). I wish I still had my copies of the popular sexuality and dating books from my youth so I could see which quotes I highlighted as a 15-year-old.
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