JULY 29, 1994 | 210,000 True Love Waits pledge cards are displayed on the National Mall
SPOTLIGHT: PURITY CULTURE
“Purity culture,” a subculture of evangelical Christianity that peaked in the 1990s — with young girls pledging to their fathers to abstain from sex until marriage by wearing “purity rings”.
While purity culture set out to protect teenagers, it also resulted in unintended consequences, primarily the destruction of sexual intimacy by instilling a deep sexual shame.
Touch Podcast examines the purity fallout as a micro study to a macro issue — EVANGELICAL AMERICA’S LEGACY OF SHAME.
A LEGACY OF SHAME
TRUE LOVE WAITS was a program founded by the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 1990’s that grew into a multi-million teen movement, the most popular of the “purity” programs around the country promoted by Evangelical leaders and denominations.
Anxious about HIV-AIDS, rising teen pregnancy rates, and the perceived secularization of America, church leaders sought to protect young people by heavily marketing Bible studies, videos, and conferences that pressured teens into signing pledge cards promising to abstain from sex until marriage. fg Those religious leaders did not anticipate the harmful consequences that would impact so many people later: traumatic, internalized shame.
Touch Podcast dramatically chronicles hows the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful religious organizations in the U.S. strategized to take back America by protecting the virginity of young women, focusing on the family, and pushing this fight into the political spotlight; and how this ties into today’s DECONSTRUCTION OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY.
This podcast-Youtube campaign shows how so-called “purity” programs pressured young teens to avoid sexual contact, and how teen daughters were “promised” to their fathers in purity balls and adorned rings to signify their covenant with their earthly and heavenly Fathers.
Pledge card carrying teens stream down isles during Christian rock concerts to publicly declare their commitment to stay celibate until marriage while religious leaders of the Christian Right make significant strides to federally fund abstinence-only education in public schools. Therapists, Biblical scholars, and pastors all weigh in on how pressuring teens into “saving” sex for marriage results to EVANGELICAL AMERICA’S LEGACY OF SHAME.
Former abstinence educators, therapists, professors and pop-stars articulate the intricacies of the machine that commercialized virginity. Former teen members of the movement with diverse starting points explain the crippling internalized shame they experienced and the unexpected paths they found to reconcile God with sexuality.
Ryan and Nate take viewers on a dark journey into ecclesial control, and back into the light with inspiring stories of healing. For the estimated 25 million American households privately paralyzed by purity culture, THIS IS MORE THAN A SERIES,
THIS IS HOPE.
YOUTUBE SERIES
PURITY | Evangelical America’s Legacy of Shame
Touch Podcast’s Youtube series PURITY examines purity culture for purity victims to be posted, shared, and commented on; a social media conversation that creates space, encourages perspective, and invites healing. Featured guests include authors, ethicists, Gospel stars, insider voices of the True Love Waits campaign, purity survivors taking inspirational paths to heal.
TOUCH PODCAST is partnered with Original Productions (Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers) to develop PURITY into a three-episode documentary series.
Live podcast recording at Glendale Baptist Church, Nashville TN.
“These are our stories, true accounts of conviction, disillusionment, and homecoming.”