The Damage From Purity Culture
Joshua Harris steps into The Confessional
Opening essay:
In 2019 I published a book titled Shameless: a Sexual Reformation, in which I explore the connection between sexual shame and the teachings of the church. In it I tell my own stories as well as those of others like a woman who even in middle age, still cannot make herself wear a v neck because she was taught it was immodest, and a gay man who never reported their sexual abuse because they were told that being gay was a sin, and some married folks who still cannot manage to be fully present during sex because the shame of it all has just never gone away.
The sexual shame that comes from religious teaching has a particular acuteness to it …which is why I am convinced that messages delivered to us in God’s name embed inside of us, far below the surface and stay with us longer than anything the media or society alone can dole out.
For decades, what is known as the Evangelical purity movement in America has told those wild, beautiful, ever-changing, hormone-soaked beings we call “teenagers” that, in order to be good, in order to be pleasing to God they must disconnect from their bodies. They must repress any sexual thoughts, desires or feelings until they can punch the golden ticket of heterosexual marriage. Which I guess might have made a lot more sense when there was no access to reliable birth control and marriage took place about 45 minutes after puberty but I digress.
A lot of us who were raised with these teachings have tried to dig ourselves out from heavy layers of shame about our bodies and desires and are left later in life, trying to reconnect the frayed wires of our sexual responses systems.
In the opening chapter of Shameless I mention that in 1997, 21 year old Joshua Harris wrote the wildly influential book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye in which he made the case that not going all the way before marriage was not going far enough, Harris took the teachings of the purity movement and moved the goal posts even farther away claiming that in order to be truly pure and earn God’s approval, young people should not ever kiss each other or touch each other or even go on dates with each other.
I Kissed Dating Goodbye sold over 1.2 million copies.
My guest today is Joshua Harris.
Joshua Harris is a storyteller and owner of the marketing company Clear and Loud. He is a former pastor and author of the now unpublished, but widely circulated book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.” He told his story in the DOCSology film I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
Join me and Josh for a short follow-up chat on my Instagram Live this Monday 5p PST/8p EST
(Just go to my Instagram page and when I go live, the circle on the upper left of your screen will change and say “live” - just click on that circle and you’re in!)
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Nadia, Just wanted you to know that your blessing at the end of this episode had me ugly crying. Being a gay man raised in conservative evangelical churches, the religious trauma, shame, and guilt I felt and that was placed upon me was overwhelming, and it led to a long journey of self destruction and an even longer journey toward self love and the truth of Gods love. Thank you for being a voice of love and Grace. Please keep doing what you’re doing, we need more people like you in the world.
I was given Harris’ book as a teenager & I literally dented my bedroom wall I threw it so hard. (Somehow rejecting the book while becoming an actual poster child for purity culture itself. Well, it was less a poster & more my picture in the local paper as the town virgin... but I digress...)
Fast forward years to find me weeping my way through Shameless in my 30s as I finally began to process the harm caused by all those years. It brought a long overdue reckoning with all of the shame & toxicity I had normalized until then.
I’ve been deeply skeptical of stories regarding Harris’ alleged apology tour & avoided reading any of it. Nadia, you’re the only person I would trust to interview him in a way that would not just bring more trauma. Thank you for your direct honesty in this conversation & for holding space for the harm done without either absolving or convicting him. Thank you for holding so many of our stories near to your heart in the process.