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ABSTRACT
This paper theorizes how evangelicalism utilizes affect to convict adolescents to adhere to evangelical purity teachings, despite a proliferation of scholarship and lived experiences demonstrating disaffected outcomes. It contends that evangelicalism entices youth with captivating affect, promising a blissful marriage, meaningful participation in a divinely good movement, and assured salvation in exchange for obedience. Conversely, disobedience carries the explicit consequences of unhappiness, sin, and the threat of hell. Sara Ahmed's insights on collective emotions and the promise of happiness reveal that evangelicalism attaches positive affect to the social norms it aims to perpetuate, rather than those genuinely conducive to happiness. In the process of internalizing affective evangelical rhetoric claiming that evangelicalism is inherently good, adolescents learn not to see, or experiencing a lack of capacity to see, the negative outcomes that is inherent to evangelical beliefs and its projects.
Acknowledgements
This paper would not be possible without the exceptional support of my master’s supervisor, Dr. Carly-Daniel-Hughes who is so knowledgeable in the field of evangelicalism, gender, and sexuality. She made for an incredible discussion partner and guided me with care and encouragement. A grateful acknowledgement to Sara Moslener, Kathryn House, and Kent Britnall, individuals who coordinated this journal issue. A grateful acknowledgement to members of the PCRC who continually encouraged me and each other in this issue and beyond. A final acknowledgement to my family. In being shattered by the consciousness of evangelical harm enacted against us and others, my family has inspired and supported this work.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) defines an evangelical in a four-pronged approach: considering oneself a born-again believer, spreading the gospel, the belief that the Bible has ultimate authority, and that Christ is the only thing that can save humanity. See NAE, “What is an Evangelical.” Anthea Butler argues that within North America, evangelicalism is not simply a religious group defined in spreading the gospel, but ‘a nationalistic political movement whose purpose is to support the hegemony of White Christian men over and against the flourishing of others.’ See Butler, White Evangelical Racism, 149–50. This paper integrates both definitions into the understanding of evangelicalism and uses the term ‘evangelical’ broadly to encapsulate ‘White’ conservative Christian/evangelical belief in North America that upholds ‘traditional’ and ‘inerrant’ beliefs that have nationalistic and racist roots, that uphold heteropatriarchal personhood in the persecution of 2SLGBTQIA+ and BIPOC bodies.
Christian rhetoric claiming that Godly sex is only to occur in monogamous heteropatriarchal biblical marriage between a man and a woman trace back to the Protestant Reformation. See Moultrie, Passionate and Pious, 9. Sara Moslener demonstrates that historically, purity campaigns arise when traditional Christian ideals of marriage, gender, and sexuality begin to be threatened within North American society. Beginning in the 1800s, as Christians felt their weakening of political influence, they would invoke narratives linking sexual deviance to North American moral decline, which would position biblical ideals of marriage, family, and sexuality as the means to salvation. This would usher in various purity campaigns. See Moslener, Virgin Nation, 2-28. Though much contributed to the 1990s rebranding, Joshua Harris and his book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, is arguably one of the most significant. For more information, also see Griffith, “Introduction,” in Moral Combat; Moslener, Virgin Nation, 13–4; and Moultrie, Passionate and Pious, 16–7.
2 See DeRogatis, Saving Sex; Gardner, Making Chastity Sexy; and Moslener, Virgin Nation.
3 Ibid.
4 Allison, #ChurchToo; Anderson, Damaged Goods; Blyth, Purity Culture, Rape Culture; Gardener, Making Chastity Sexy; Gish, “Are You a ‘Trashable’ Styrofoam Cup?”; Griffith, Born Again Bodies; Harris, The Woman They Wanted; Klein, Pure; Moultrie, Passionate and Pious; Klement, The One Ring Model; Lomax, Jezebel Unhinged; Natarajan et al., “Decolonizing Purity Culture”; Johnson, Biblical Porn; Springs, Fearing the Black Body; Schultz, “Purity’s Racist Fruits”; and Valenti, The Purity Myth. As an emerging field of study, there is much more research about to be published from members of the purity culture research collective (such as this journal volume) regarding the harms and impacts of purity culture.
5 See Harris, The Woman They Wanted and Klein, Pure for examples of this.
6 Purity culture often refers to the culture created in adolescent evangelical circles after the1990s movement aimed at Millennials. Purity 2.0 refers to the contemporary movement that has a social media/Gen Z flavour. See Abraham, “It’s Back: Purity Culture 2.0.” See also Burke, Christians under Covers.
7 This paper recognizes that North American evangelicalism broadly upholds White cis gender heteropatriarchal supremacy. It is important to recognize that there are many iterations of evangelicalism and Christianity that do not preserve this type of personhood and are actively resisting it. There are White evangelicals who have been working to expose the harms of White evangelicalism, and there are numerous BIPOC evangelicalisms and queer evangelicalisms that seek to dismantle and decolonize cis gender heteropatriarchy and Whiteness within their faith. However, this paper uses evangelicalism to describe the loudest and most powerful voices in North American evangelicalisms that uphold purity, cis gender identities, and heteropatriarchal personhoods as biblical. See Butler, “Introduction” in White Evangelical Racism; du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne; Lomax, Jezebel Unhinged; Moslener, Virgin Nation; and Moultrie, Passionate and Pious, 4–10.
8 Sawyer, “I Stumbled/I Caused You to Stumble.”
9 Ibid., 33–4.
10 Schaefer, “What is Affect Theory?”
11 Schaefer, Religious Affects, 9.
12 Ahmed, “Collective Feelings”; “Creating Disturbance: Feminism, Happiness”; Living a Feminist Life; Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness; and Queer Phenomenology.
13 This paper would be in a similar family to the work that Jessica Johnson achieved in Biblical Porn, examining affect and biopower in Mark Driscoll’s megachurch. Her work is impactful to the understanding of affect and conviction in religious spaces.
14 See footnotes 1 and 6. Additionally, much more scholarship will be published from members of the PCRC that are interrogating the harms/outcomes of purity culture.
15 Masumi, Politics of Affect, ix; and Schaefer, “What is Affect Theory?”
16 Arel, Affect, Shame, and Christian Formation, 8; and Masumi, Politics of Affect; and Schaefer, “What is Affect Theory?”
17 Ibid.
18 Ahmed, “Collective Feelings,” 25–35.
19 National Association of Evangelicals, “What is an Evangelical?”
20 Christian Apologetics Ministry, “Dictionary: Conviction.”
21 Johnson, Biblical Porn, 11–2 (e-book version). See “Introduction” and “Coming under Conviction”.
22 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness.
23 Ahmed, “Collective Feelings,” 28; Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology, 3.
24 Ahmed, “Creating Disturbance,” 39.
25 National Association of Evangelicals, “What is an Evangelical?”
26 Ibid.; du Mez argues in Jesus and John Wayne that the Christian marketplace (media, books, teaching material) favours evangelical teachings, and thus, even if youth never come across that word, they are likely influenced by evangelicalism in formational ways.
27 National Association of Evangelicals, “What is an Evangelical?”
28 Ahmed, “Creating Disturbance: Feminism, Happiness,” 32.
29 Coekin, “Biblical Evangelism.”
30 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 37.
31 Ibid., 208.
32 Scholars Sara Moslener and Jason Bivins have referred to this as a religion of fear, where the fear of the demonic or damnation urges individuals to conform to certain religious behaviours. See Bivins, Religions of Fear; and Moslener, “It’s Like Playing with a Nuclear Bomb.”
33 Burk, “Hell as Endless Punishment.”
34 See Burke, Christians Under Covers; DeRogatis, Saving Sex; Gardner, Making Chastity Sexy; Moslener, Virgin Nation; and Moultrie, Passionate and Pious.
35 Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. A lot of responsibility of the evangelical purity movement is often put onto Harris. It is important to note that Harris was not creating new ideas, necessarily. As an adolescent who was also fed purity rhetoric, he was heavily influenced by the work of Elizabeth Elliot, Billy Graham, Eric and Leslie Ludy, and other Christian authors of that era. However, his book emerged as the exemplification of what youthful commitment to purity could resemble, introducing a novel perspective at that moment.
36 Ibid., 78.
37 Ibid., 79.
38 See Gardner, Making Chastity Sexy.
39 Moslener, Virgin Nation, 93.
40 Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
41 Desiring God, “Marriage to the Glory of God,” first paragraph.
42 See Moslener, Virgin Nation.
43 Joshua Harris, unpublished interview with author, July 2021.
44 Harris, The Woman They Wanted.
45 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 32.
46 Ibid., 11.
47 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 32.
48 Ibid., 95–9.
49 There are countless evangelicals who have had to conceal or transform their LGTBQ+ identity because they have been told that it is a product of sin and pursuing Christ’s way (heteronormativity) will bring goodness. For example, Jackie Hill Perry (someone who was a lesbian but now pursues heterosexuality) says in The Gospel Coalition that ‘pursuing holiness leads to human flourishing.’ In other words, pursuing heterosexuality leads to flourishing, and pursuing other identities do not. See Allberry, Butterfield, and Perry, “Why God’s Sexual Ethic.” See Anderson, Damaged Goods; Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church; Klein, Pure; DeRogatis, Saving Sex; Lomax, Jezebel Unhinged; Johnson, Biblical Porn; and Moultrie, Passionate and Pious.
50 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 96.
51 Ibid., 212; see also Blyth, Rape Culture, Purity Culture, and Coercive Control for more on the coercive control specifically involved in purity culture.
52 See Bivins, Religions of Fear; DeRogatis, Saving Sex; Johnson, Biblical Porn; and Moslener, “It’s Like Playing with a Nuclear Bomb.”
53 DeRogatis, “Demons, STDs, and God’s Healing Sperm,” in Saving Sex.
54 Walker, “Gender and Sexuality.”
55 Inspired from verses such as 1 Peter 5:8–9a, NIV.
56 Jessica Johnson describes how weaponizing demons as a form of fear and conformity in evangelical spaces acts an effective instrument of affective and biopolitical social control. See Johnson, Biblical Porn, 25.
57 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 83–4.
58 Ibid.
59 Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology, 6.
60 See Allison, #ChurchToo; Anderson, Damaged Goods; Harris, The Woman They Wanted; Klein, Pure; and Johnson, Biblical Porn.
61 Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 96; See also Allison, #ChurchToo.
62 Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, 164.
63 Ibid., 182.
64 Ibid., 168.
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Olivia J. Schultz
Olivia J. Schultz is an independent scholar living in Ottawa, Canada. Olivia completed her Master’s in Religions and Cultures at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) in 2021, focusing on purity culture, evangelical violence, affect, and Joshua Harris. Olivia co-founded the Purity Culture Research Collective (PCRC) with Tessi Muskrat, an online space where international scholars can support each other and talk about their purity culture research. As someone living with disability and chronic pain, since completing their Master’s, Olivia has been focusing on bodily sustainability, working, and research.