![]() ![]() Harris has since denounced his own teachings, much like a number of people who grew up at the height of the purity culture craze but now realize that what they were taught caused lasting damage. In the book, Harris, then 21, argued that even casual dating carried too great a risk of temptation, as it was no different from an alcoholic going to a bar. And nobody’s so much as smooching a Duggar kid until they’re legally wed.ĭuggar circus aside, the courtship concept also had a very mainstream proponent in Joshua Harris, whose 1997 book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, sold over 1 million copies. If you want to hold the hand of one of Jim Bob and Michelle’s 19 kids, you’d better put a ring on it first. The reality television stars are strong proponents of supervised courtship with the children of families who hold their hyper-fundamentalist views. This idea is all too familiar to anyone who gawked at America’s most infamous babymakers, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. Rather, they are supposed to “court” under the supervision of the girl’s father, and with only one goal: marriage. For this reason, in a number of these circles, Christians aren’t supposed to date. The purity movement-which was kept alive in more recent years by then-child stars like Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and the Jonas Brothers, who all rocked the ring at some point in their Disney-soaked teens-also calls for women to avoid lustful thoughts, even going as far as to hold them responsible for ensuring that they don’t act in a way that could potentially “tempt” boys and men to sin. Mixed company is usually avoided except under the close supervision of parents. The New York Times noted that the purity movement also preached that virginity was “the greatest gift” that a couple could give each other-above all other things central to a healthy relationship, even “the simple virtues of kindness and understanding.” Julie Ingersoll, a religious studies professor at the University of North Florida, recalled that for a number of evangelical heavyweights, purity culture also requires women to adopt very submissive roles in public, and to avoid seeking leadership roles in any venue, whether secular or religious. ![]() ![]() While abstinence-only education has been proven to be both ineffective and harmful, the evangelical world has twisted it in a way that has done even more harm. This backward and degrading thinking, it turned out, was the byproduct of a movement to push teenagers to not have sex until they are married. According to a Mother Jones report published soon after #ChurchToo’s launch, a number of evangelical churches taught women and girls that if they were sexually assaulted, they’d brought it on themselves. Its goal was to turn the spotlight on sexual abuse in the evangelical world. In 2018, Emily Joy Allison and Hannah Paasch launched the #ChurchToo movement as a companion to the wider #MeToo movement. We’ve seen time and again that victims of sexual assault don’t come forward for years, if they do so at all. In recent years, this country has begun to face a long-overdue reckoning when it comes to how we respond to sexual assault and domestic violence. Content warning: discussions of sexual assault ![]()
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