Purity culture reasserted patriarchal headship through rituals and consumer goods

Evidence

The purity movement received strong support from evangelical institutions and organizations. The Christian homeschool community helped fuel its popularity, and the Southern Baptist Convention was home to True Love Waits, one of the most influential purity organizations. (Three years before Promise Keepers rallied at the National Mall, 20,000 evangelical teenagers showed up to pledge their sexual purity as part of the True Love Waits campaign.) Countless local churches promoted purity teachings, and purity culture found expression in an array of consumer products. Families purchased silver “purity rings” to provide girls with a constant reminder of the value of their virginity, and of their obligation to guard it vigilantly. “Purity balls” started popping up across the country, offering families opportunities to enact their commitment to sexual purity through public ceremony. At these events, fathers provided a model of masculine headship by “dating” their daughters, and girls pledged their sexual purity before their families and communities. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 393

Categorization

• XREF: The sentence explicitly links purity movement to ‘servant leadership’ and complementarian theology — key threads from earlier chapters on Promise Keepers and headship. — connects to: Patriarchal religions purify woman of her stained nature through male-defined submission — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 170
• SHARE: The detail that fathers ‘dated’ their daughters at purity balls to model masculine headship is a specific, unsettling image a friend following gender politics would appreciate.