Pure
Page 29
I wrote this embodiment gratitude practice for those who have internalized body shame: Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit. Beginning with your feet, name why you are grateful for them. How do they enable you throughout the day? Move on to your legs. Move all the way to the top of your body, and include as many parts as you need to. It might help you to gently touch each part as you name your gratitude. If you are able, include your genitals. Re-membering is a process of integrating all of you and understanding that your bodies are here for you, not others. Gratitude helps us to reframe the stories we’ve been told about our bodies. (Rachael)
3. Trust yourself.
Don’t doubt yourself, thinking you’re a mess. Accept what’s uncomfortable and trust yourself. Trust your own instincts, your own feelings of what’s right and wrong, safe and unsafe, because they are not from nowhere. We have deep memories. (Jo)
You have to trust what’s in you, which has been really hard for me to learn. I want to say to people: “Trust yourself and believe in yourself.” And I just really want to affirm that they’re good: “You’re good.” I just want to say that over and over again: “You’re good; you’re good; you’re good.” (Meagan)
About the Interviewees
When I began writing this book—ten years after my first interview—my first task was to connect with the twenty or so individuals I had interviewed in the first three years of my journey. Though I’d had several hundred conversations with people raised as girls in the evangelical church in the years that followed, and drew heavily on those conversations when developing this book, it was the people with whom I’d had my first eye-opening conversations over days, weeks, and months that I knew I needed to talk with most.
And so, I wrote to all those I could find and did calls with as many as would let me. I invited people to be re-interviewed, to comment on what they had told me in the past and to update their story. All but four of my original interviewees who agreed to be featured in the book took me up on this offer, sitting down with me for second, third, and sometimes fourth interviews.
Among those I originally interviewed, the most difficult to connect with were those I originally spoke with who did not talk to me about suffering from sexual shame. Most of these individuals did not respond to my most recent outreach. Those who did respond declined being featured or shared so little of their stories that it was impossible to feature them. Though I would have liked to represent the voices of those who felt positively about their experience with the purity movement, perhaps the hesitancy these women had about speaking with me and/or having their stories in this book tells its own story.
While in the midst of re-interviewing people, a number of others contacted me asking if they could also be interviewed. Some I knew well; others I had never met. Trusting the process, I formally interviewed over eighty individuals for this book. Interviewees had either experienced evangelicalism’s adolescent sexuality education firsthand and/or are experts on this, or a closely related, topic. These interviews ranged from an hour to several days long. The stories of those I have chosen to include in this book represent themes I have heard from multiple people in interviews and/or conversations.
My interviewees who grew up in the evangelical purity movement ranged in age from their early twenties to their early forties. Unless otherwise identified, they are white. The majority grew up middle class. They were raised across the country and (in a few cases) the world. The communities they grew up in generally fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of religious extremity, though they were personally devout in their adolescent years.
I put a great deal of effort into upholding the integrity of each interviewee’s story, message, and spirit as it was told to me. I did, however, sometimes make interpretive changes to clarify content and improve narrative flow. For instance, in one chapter I might rearrange the order of a single conversation, whereas in another, I might adjust the timeline more dramatically (for instance, combining several conversations with the same person into one). I sometimes modify my interviewees’ and my language with careful attention to upholding the intended message. Scene descriptions, physical descriptions (i.e. interviewee mannerisms while speaking, such as when or how someone sighed or picked up their cup of coffee), and opening/closing/transitional dialogue were sometimes recreated after the interview based on memory. All interviewees were offered the opportunity to see their sections of the book in advance and asked to verify the content to ensure that none of these changes resulted in factual inaccuracies or altered their intended message in any way. The vast majority took me up on this offer, suggesting changes they deemed necessary, which I made.
None of my interviewee “characters” are composites. They are all real people and their stories are true as told to me; in other words, what I have written here is what they said to me. Most are using pseudonyms, and I sometimes change or omit personal and/or physical details to further hide people’s identity. Some, however, prefer to use their real names and personal descriptions. This is generally noted in the text.
Acknowledgments
In the twelve years that I spent exploring the purity movement’s impact on girls as they grow up, I was never alone. Holy warriors walked alongside me.
I am grateful to be able to acknowledge some of those warriors here, though the truth is that this project has been so much a part of me for so long that nearly every person in my life has in some way touched it. And so, to all of you—including the many unnamed—thank you.
To Mom and Dad, you raised me on a theology of kindness. You taught me to be on the lookout for those getting a raw deal, and when I found them, to love them up. I know you never thought that teaching would translate into my writing a book about sex and religion. Thank you for rolling with it when it did.
To Jimmie, you once bought me a cherrywood desk crafted out of an organ. “This is where you will write your book,” you told me. It is the greatest gift I have ever received. These pages were written on the solidity of your belief in me, and in the importance of my voice in the world. Thank you.
To Mariela, you model what it means to be mighty. I wish I could have known you when I was your age. If I had, I think I would have moved through some of the challenges I write about here a whole lot faster. Thank you.
To my talented literary agent, Jane von Mehren, and the entire team at Aevitas Creative Management, including Jacob Moore who has since gone west, your wisdom, insight, and guidance on this book was nothing short of catalytic. Thank you.
To my expert editor Trish Todd, and the team at Touchstone and Simon & Schuster, your trust in and tremendous support of me—an unknown writer with an aversion to social media—has floored me from the very beginning. Thank you.
To my mentors and friends who have offered me insights on early drafts, writing retreats at their homes, and countless other forms of support for this book, thank you. I am especially grateful to Cameron Kane; JB; Dev Aujla; Kelly Sheahen Gerner; Owen Campbell; Brian McLaren; Jamia Wilson; Patricia de Jong; Alice Hunt; Carolyn Custis James; Pamela Rossi-Keen; Amy Johnson; Philip Church; Valarie Kaur; Teresa Vazquez; Bonnie Friel; Scott Sherman; De-Andrea Blaylock-Johnson; Kaji Dousa; Madhu Ramachandran; Kate Scelsa; Emma Zyriek; Isabella Johnson; Karen Beale; Michael Kimmel; Curt Thompson; Tama Lane; Rebecca Krauss; Thomas Jay Oord; Karen Strand Winslow; Sarah Derck; Cassandra Farrin; Gabriel B. Grant; Chitra Panjabi; Martha Kempner; Sam Clover; Fiona Maazel; Gary Matthews; Andrew Keltz; Fozzie Nelson; Kevin Childress; Kent M. K. Haina Jr.; Cheryl Klein Bowman; Gary Klein; my writing professors at NYU, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of Montana-Missoula; The Righting Klub; The Red Ladies Writing Collective; Carol, Kathy, and Jonathan’s writing group; Simone Sneed and Mimi McGurl, founders of the UUAX Woodswoman Residency; NYU Reynolds; The Sister Fund; Echoing Green; the Forum for Theological Exploration; and the Marble Collegiate Church Community Gospel Choir.
Most importantly, thank you to my interviewees. I am humbled by your courage and your trust. My hea
ling was made possible by your healing, my strength by seeing you so strong. I will never be able to say thank you enough for that.
About the Author
© JAMI SAUNDERS PHOTOGRAPHY
Linda Kay Klein is the founder of Break Free Together. She has spent over a decade working at the intersection of faith, gender, sexuality, and social change, and earned an interdisciplinary master’s degree from New York University focusing on American evangelical Christian gender and sexuality messaging for girls. Linda lives in New York City with her family.
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Notes
Introduction
1 Matthew 5:27–29 New American Standard Bible (NAS).
2 Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics, trans. A. A. Brill (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1918).
3 Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 48.
4 Thompson, The Soul of Shame, 66.
5 Brené Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t): Making the Journey from “What Will People Think” to “I Am Enough” (New York: Gotham Books, 2007), 89.
6 Frances Fitzgerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 5.
7 Barbara G. Wheeler, “You Who Were Far Off: Religious Divisions and the Role of Religious Research,” Review of Religious Research 37, no. 4 (1996): 289–301, doi:10.2307/3512010.
8 “Religious Landscape Study,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, May 11, 2015, http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/; Christian Smith and Lisa Pearce, National Study of Youth and Religion, 2002–2003 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003), quoted in Mark Regnerus, Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 12.
9 Donna Freitas, Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 80.
10 Rachel Hooker (@tangleknits), “Pastor to husband: ‘May I give her a hug?,’ ” Twitter, April 20, 2017, https://twitter.com/tangleknits/status/855114214742020096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fentry%2Fchristian-women-on-twitter-unload-about-misogyny-in-the-church_us_58f8f71ce4b018a9ce592e05, quoted in Antonia Blumberg, “Christian Women on Twitter Unload About Misogyny in the Church.” The Huffington Post, April 20, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/christian-women-on-twitter-unload-about-misogyny-in-the-church_us_58f8f71ce4b018a9ce592e05?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000050.
11 Reagan: “Dedicated Federal Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs,” Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, May 2017, accessed August 5, 2017, http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=document.viewDocument&documentid=663&documentFormatId=772&vDocLinkOrigin=1&CFID=12509806&CFTOKEN=4418cba96dc27fc-FE7F5F9E-1C23-C8EB-80A628AD05F95DE2; Clinton: “A History of Federal Funding for Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Funding FY 10,” Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, accessed August 5, 2017, http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewpage&pageid=1340&nodeid=1; Bush: “Dedicated Federal Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs,” Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, May 2017 (as above).
12 “Dedicated Federal Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs,” Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.
13 “A History of Federal Funding for Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Funding FY10,” Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.
14 Interview with Doug Pagitt, June 21, 2016.
15 Sara Moslener, Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 126, 149.
16 Moslener, Virgin Nation, 112.
17 Sara Moslener, “Don’t Act Now! Selling Christian Abstinence in the Religion Marketplace,” in God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture, Second Edition, ed. Eric Michael Mazur and Kate McCarthy (London: Routledge, 2011), 200–201.
18 Interview with Sara Moslener, August 25, 2017.
19 “Silver Ring Thing,” Silver Ring Thing, accessed August 4, 2017, https://www.silverringthing.com.
20 “Choosing the Best,” Choosing the Best, accessed August 5, 2017, http://www.choosingthebest.com.
21 US Census Bureau, Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Selected Age Groups by Sex for the United States, States, Counties, and Puerto Rico Commonwealth and Municipios: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2015, retrieved October 26, 2017, factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/PEP/2015/PEPAGESEX?slice=GEO~0100000US.
22 Christopher Trenholm, Impacts of Four Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education Programs: Final Report (Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, 2007).
23 “Dedicated Federal Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs,” Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.
24 Interview with Doug Pagitt, June 21, 2016.
25 Thompson, The Soul of Shame, 92–93.
26 Mark Regnerus, Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 104–105.
27 Regnerus, Forbidden Fruit, 106.
28 Regnerus, Forbidden Fruit, 107.
29 K. S. Beale, E. Maynard, and M. O. Bigler, “The Intersection of Religion and Sex: Sex Guilt Resiliency among Baptists, Catholics, and Latter-day Saints” (Presentation at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality: Phoenix, AZ, November 2016).
30 Romans 14:19–22 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
31 Romans 14:3–6 NRSV.
32 Romans 14:10 NRSV.
33 Romans 14:12–13 NRSV.
34 Zahara Hill, “A Black Woman Created the ‘Me Too’ Campaign Against Sexual Assault 10 Years Ago,” Ebony, October 18, 2017, http://www.ebony.com/news-views/black-woman-me-too-movement-tarana-burke-alyssa-milano#axzz53R5Ng574; Stephanie Zacharek, Eliana Dockterman, and Haley Sweetland Edwards, “2017 Person of the Year: The Silence Breakers,” Time Magazine, December 18, 2017, http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers/.
35 Hayley Gleeson, “#ChurchToo: Christian Victims of Abuse Join Social Media Outpouring,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation News, November 23, 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-24/church-too-christian-victims-of-abuse-join-social-media-twitter/9188666?pfmredir=sm.
Chapter 1
1 Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012), 179.
2 “Youth Minister Charged with Child Enticement,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 10, 1997; John Lee, “Minister Allegedly Enticed Child, 12,” Post Crescent, June 9, 1997.
3 David Chidester, Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2005).
4 Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), 23–24, quoted in David Chidester, Authentic Fakes, 78.
5 Rebecca Ann Parker, “Prelude,” in Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suf
fering, and the Search for What Saves Us, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001), 3.
Chapter 2
1 Choosing the Best, Choosing the Best SOUL MATE: Leader Guide (Atlanta, GA: Choosing the Best Publishing, 2008), 51, quoted in “Curriculum Review: Choosing the Best SOUL MATE,” Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, 2008, http://www.communityactionkit.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&PageID=1184&stopRedirect=1.
2 N. Giesbrecht and I. Sevcik, “The Process of Recovery and Rebuilding among Abused Women in the Conservative Evangelical Subculture,” Journal of Family Violence 15, no. 3 (2000): 234–235, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007549401830.
3 Giesbrecht and Sevcik, “The Process of Recovery and Rebuilding among Abused Women in the Conservative Evangelical Subculture,” 236.
4 Giesbrecht and Sevcik, “The Process of Recovery and Rebuilding among Abused Women in the Conservative Evangelical Subculture,” 241.
5 Giesbrecht and Sevcik, “The Process of Recovery and Rebuilding among Abused Women in the Conservative Evangelical Subculture,” 229.
Chapter 3
1 Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2009), 10.
2 Valenti, The Purity Myth, 14, 9.
3 Donna Freitas, Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 84.
4 Mark Regnerus, Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 57.
5 “About,” Add Health: The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, accessed October 29, 2017, http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/about.