Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free
by Linda Kay Klein
View on GoodreadsKlein's hybrid memoir-and-journalism on evangelical "purity culture" of the 1990s and 2000s — True Love Waits, purity rings, modesty discourse — and the lasting psychological damage on the women who absorbed it.
Core ideas
- Purity culture taught women their value was their virginity and that female bodies were inherently dangerous to male spiritual life — the resulting shame outlasts the religious belief.
- Trauma is the right vocabulary, not just "regret" — many women interviewed meet clinical criteria for religious-trauma symptoms, including sexual dysfunction inside marriage.
- The patriarchal structure is the load-bearing element; "purity" was the cultural delivery mechanism but the deeper teaching was male authority over female bodies.
Published2018
Pages341
ISBN9781501124815
ReadFeb 2023
