The Price of Purity Culture

I do not know of anyone who grew up in the Anabaptist culture of the 1990s and hasn’t heard of purity culture. Purity culture swept through the churches, and today in the early 2020s we are reaping the seeds that were sown back then. The Anabaptist churches kissed dating goodbye right along with Josh Harris’s book, and suddenly young adults were being told that physical attraction and casual dating was wrong. The purity movement came along and took romance right off the table and offered purity rings and purity balls instead, because, you know, what teenage daughter doesn’t want to talk to their father about the intactness of her virginity? It’s so much more fascinating than talking to your girlfriends at the mall about your romantic interest the boy down the road. Right? Wrong.

The price of purity culture is being paid today, by those of us who were the sacrificial lambs on the altars of purity culture. And if you did not realize yet, the girls were the ones who were offered up on the altars of embarrassment and long talks about virginity and how they should never allow anyone to soil their worth by giving up their virginity before the night of their wedding. Sure, the boys were definitely talked to about personal purity and the dangers of putting their hands down their pants, but the girls were sacrificed openly on altars of beautiful dresses and rings.

Depending on which evangelical, conservative, Anabaptist cult you were raised in, you were subjected to a more mainstreamed evangelical purity culture that involved the things mentioned above. Josh Harris’ book was heralded as the bible of evangelical purity culture. The balls were a pledging of your purity to your father, and it was a warping of your sense of identity. The idea of abstinence was so engrained into that culture that even the thought of kissing someone before your wedding day was incomprehensible.

I was raised conservative Nationwide Fellowship Mennonite. In our circles we did not use Josh Harris’ book as our Bible for courtship. Oh no. What we had was much worse, if that is even possible. We had books like “Dear Princess” and “Young Man, Be Strong”. We had books like “What About Boy-Girl Friendships?” and “Courtship That Glorifies God”. And these books told us a lot of really weird things about what boys and girls think about boys and girls, and all the strange ways we were to keep ourselves pure.

However, with all these books and all the sermons and discussions we had that were based on purity, there was one little three letter word that never got mentioned: SEX. God forbid that anyone ever talk to us about sex and what it is. And that means that a lot of Mennonite girls got married and had absolutely no idea what sex was or how babies were conceived. Most Mennonite girls had never been kissed, had never been hugged by their boyfriend/fiancé (or any other boy or man, including their father since they were probably six or seven years old), and had never even held hands.

So what price is being paid because of purity culture?

The price is being paid when that young girl gets married and on her wedding night she is so completely and utterly traumatized by the very thing she’s been kept so whitewashed pure from. She never knows that she has a choice. She has no idea that trauma is clouding what should be the most beautiful thing in her marriage.

The price is being paid when the teenage couple is hiding their relationship, and they are getting “handsy” and one thing leads to another. The next thing you know, the couple is having sex (like other teenage couples across the world), and then suddenly, the girl is no longer a virgin. And just like that, according to our culture, she is no longer worth as much as she was an hour ago. Then, the stick turns blue and her life as a Nationwide Fellowship Mennonite is basically over. She is forced to carry the baby, all while being ostracized by everyone around her, and the boy may or may not be held responsible. It really doesn’t matter, because he won’t share the responsibility. That girl will then, most likely, be forced to give that same child away. If she doesn’t give the child away, she will not find the help and resources inside that church group that other mothers would. Because…purity culture has a cost, and her life, her child, her heart, her mental health, her whole being is the price.

The price was being paid this past week when I sat in a wedding service for a young man and woman and I heard words that I had not heard in years. I sat there and heard a Nationwide Fellowship minister read Isaiah 62:5, “For as a young man marrieth a virgin…” and then proceeded to tell them that coming to the marriage altar as a virgin is an important part of a successful marriage. That’s the price of purity culture. You can’t have a successful marriage without your virginity being intact.

The price was being paid at that same wedding when that same minister quoted an old saying in connection with this same topic, “Your life lies before you like a field of driven snow. Be careful how you tread on it, for every step will show.” That’s how the purity culture is being paid for today. By telling our young brides that their life after marriage somehow is dependent on whether they have retained their virginity and making them feel like they are not worth as much as a person if they haven’t.

The price is being paid when twenty years down the road those girls raised in purity culture are checking into therapy appointments and psychiatric visits to get help for their mental health. The price is being paid when suicide rates skyrocket among women who feel they have no worth. The price is being paid when women come to me and say, “I didn’t know that not being a virgin didn’t matter, because no one ever told me that I mattered outside of the fact that I needed to save myself for marriage. And I didn’t. So, I thought that I didn’t matter.”

That wedding told me this week that purity culture is still very much alive in the Mennonite culture, and it makes me want to vomit. I listened to a young girl who is very dear to my heart get told that her worth is based on something that she knows very little about, and I cried when I thought of how horribly that might end up for her. The price of purity culture is too high. The cost is too high, and the ones who are paying the price cannot afford it.

So, if you are paying the price of purity culture, you can stop now. You’re allowed. You can set down the burden you are carrying. The price of purity culture is way too high for it to continue to be perpetuated. There is no price on your virginity. You are not less of a person if you have not waited until marriage. You are not less of a person if you have had sex with multiple people. And not sleeping with multiple people, or being a virgin, does not make you better than anyone else. Purity culture is wrong. The cost is too high. We cannot afford it.

Rebecca Martin

03/20/2023