The purity culture movement of the 1990s was kind of a mess. I was never in church circles where it was popular (I graduated high school in ‘91 right before it became a thing anyway) and by the time I had kids of my own, it had kind of died out in evangelicalism – and again, I wasn’t in church circles where it was adopted anyway, since it Reformed churches tend to be too serious for these sorts of gimmicks. Purity culture was a kind of clumsy, cringy way to teach kids a biblical sex ethic — a worthy goal poorly executed. I’m sure purity culture has been critiqued adequately elsewhere and I don’t really know enough about it to offer an intelligent critique anyway (though a lot of critiques I’ve seen over the years came from people who did not actually practice it but then blamed it for their guilt – I find those kinds of critiques very dubious and disingenuous).
But if you want to understand why Christian parents jumped on the purity culture bandwagon, all you have to do is look back at how raunchy and unhinged 1980s pop culture was – the movies, music, sit-coms, and everything else was out of control. It was peak sexual revolution for heterosexuals, before things turned…queer….which, of course, was always going to be the inevitable outcome of the downward slide into immorality.
The one thing I do remember being taught as part of purity culture was the “sticky tape” illustration. Sex is supposed to be “sticky” — it’s supposed to bond you with your spouse. If you “stick” yourself to too many people before marriage, you will lose your “stickiness” and won’t be able to pair bond with your spouse. Sex won’t be as special and baggage from past relationships will make a happy marriage not impossible but considerably more difficult. The “sticky tape” illustration always got mocked, but it’s also clear it was exactly right. Studies that correlate the number of pre-marital sexual partners to chances of divorce prove it. Hopefully, the church is doing a better job teaching young people about the beauty of God’s design for sex and marriage today, but at least on this point, the sociologists have vindicated purity culture, along with the parents and youth pastors who taught it.
If you want a better, more eloquent case for saving sex until marriage, C. S. Lewis provides it in the chapter on chastity in Mere Christianity. There’s no denying it: a virgin marrying another virgin is not only God’s design, it’s God’s command for your good. God’s way is always the best way.
See also: https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-link-between-premarital-sex-and-marital-stability/
TPC Pastor's Page 