CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION
The complexities of religious teaching, loaded with existential questions about the divine and humanity’s purpose, are compounded by the limitations and shame leftover from conservative Evangelical purity culture. For many people, the paradoxical life between their church teaching and their own sexuality produces pain and trauma. As people exit the pews and enter therapy offices seeking healing and understanding, it is crucial for social workers and clinicians alike to understand the underlying limiting beliefs and sources of shame that many ex-Evangelical former congregants are dealing with. Gatekeeping young congregants’ education on sex and relationships, limiting and attempting to control the sexualities of members, and maintaining strict, hierarchical gender roles are the core themes that stood out when speaking to former Evangelical congregants on the impact that purity culture has had on their lives.
Power and Control
In reviewing the themes above, there are clear elements that stand out. The Evangelical complementarian belief that women are created to submit to male headship, who are also created to submit to god, sets up a hierarchy that places the binary sexes of male and female in a direct patriarchal hierarchy. As I look at the gendered power dynamics in Evangelical purity culture, I am reminded of the ways that power and control are the linchpin of the ways that perpetrators engage in interpersonal violence.
In the 1990s, Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs created a model that would shape the how clinicians conceive of the ways that different behaviors and tactics interplay to exert power and control over someone in a relationship. The figure below serves the same role, tailored to the themes in purity culture that serve the same purpose of power and control.
Figure 2
Dr. Toni Lawrimore, 2023
Owens (2021) draws distinct parallels between domestic violence myth acceptance and purity culture, pointing out important connections between the purity culture beliefs that sex outside of marriage makes a woman damaged goods and the power purity culture awards to men simply for being born male. The graphic above reflects the similarities between domestic violence trauma and purity culture trauma: at the center of both is power and control in the aggressor’s hands. When a woman is viewed as inherently lesser than a man, they are viewed as less human and less credible when they point out injustices or push back against male leadership. This gendered dynamic, that places men over women, creates a power hierarchy that relegates both men and women to distinct, divinely prescribed gender roles that do not allow deviation.
This gendered separation begins at an early age through distinct messaging regarding abstinence and sexuality. Men are raised to be confident and dynamic leaders and are looked upon with a more permissive view regarding sexual exploration. As the participant, Samson, pointed out, there is a view that “boys will be boys,” and young girls will be shamed for the same activities or temptations. This permissive attitude does not come without cost, though. Young men are encouraged to confess every “sinful” desire, policing their own thoughts for fear of stumbling into sexual sin for finding someone attractive. My female participants pointed out the difference in how they were treated as young women growing up in the church. Young women, meanwhile, are taught that they are worth less if they engage in any sexual behavior, viewing women as damaged goods should they explore their own sexuality. When they are married, young women are told that their bodies “belong” to their husbands, reinforcing the idea that they are not fully human and do not have bodily autonomy outside of their marriage. These beliefs, cloaked in the guise of purity and holiness, are measures used to control congregants through shame.
In addition to the very thought of sex and sexuality being shamed, information regarding reproduction, sex, and gender is withheld from young Evangelicals. Unilaterally, among men and women, participants who were raised in the Evangelical church were denied sex education from a young age. Creating a culture of gatekept ignorance makes sexuality feel less accessible. This refusal to equip and educate young people about reproduction and sexuality is used to reinforce the Evangelical messaging that sexual abstinence is the only moral and available avenue for non-married Evangelical congregants.
In addition to gatekeeping information about reproduction, sex, and gender, purity culture completely denies the validity of LGBTQIA identities. While there are some progressive Christian circles who are openly accepting of queer Christian identities, Evangelical purity culture either denies the validity of the queer identity or condemns queerness as “soul-killing idolatry” (Desiring God, 2023). Half of my participants questioned and explored their sexuality after leaving Evangelicalism. Four of those five found some form of safety in a queer gender expression or sexuality that they did not feel they had the knowledge of or safety to engage with in the Evangelical church.
Purity culture is a mechanism in the Evangelical church to maintain power and control over the thoughts, feelings, and relationships of congregants by limiting their access to age-appropriate sex education, gender education, and information on the wide array of human sexual expression.
Clinical Recommendations
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Because religious fundamentalism splits everything into black and white under the banner of divine mandate, it is important to be able to help those traumatized by purity culture deal with the dissonance in both their brain and body. Dr. Marlene Winell pointed out that in healing from leaving fundamentalist religion, it is important for people to have a safe space to recognize manipulations, engage with the damaged inner parts of themselves they had to deny, reclaim their access to feelings, and find into their own identity outside of purity culture (Winell, 2007). Components of Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) that can be helpful in addressing cognitive distortions and helping ex-Evangelical clients recognize manipulations are psychoeducation, cognitive restructuring, and relaxation training (Lowe & Murray, 2014).
By providing psychoeducation, clinicians can help those who have lived in fundamentalist black and white thinking begin to understand what cognitive distortions are and how they impact mental health (Kliethermes et al., 2012). In helping clients identify the areas where rigid thinking and previously immovable beliefs are causing harm, clinicians can help ex-Evangelical clients understand cognitive areas where they can be more flexible and gracious with themselves. Black and white thinking, such as being considered worthless for having premarital sex or being born sinful and wrong, can be harmful and restrictive if internalized. By helping those exiting purity culture understand that these rigid beliefs and thoughts that no longer serve them, clients can step forward into cognitive flexibility and healthier thinking patterns. The participants I interviewed pointed out that given the opportunity to individuate and challenge their former beliefs, they were able to access parts of their sexuality and identity of which they were previously unaware. Through cognitive restructuring, therapists can help clients identify limiting beliefs and reevaluate whether those hold a place in the client’s life as they individuate and think beyond the ways they were taught within purity culture. In questioning and reevaluating core beliefs around sex, identity, sexuality, and gender, it is important for clients to be able to find new meaning in the midst of unearthing their trauma. Cognitive restructuring has an important role to play; by seeking to identify dysfunctional thinking and testing those long-held beliefs, clients can identify those that are unhelpful and find new ways to conceive of the world (Bisson et al., 2013).
As psychoeducation about cognitive rigidity and cognitive restructuring around unhelpful patterns help with the intellectual and mental side of trauma, helping ex-Evangelical clients engage with their bodies in a relaxed way is crucial to begin helping the body-based trauma symptoms (Kliethermes et al., 2013). Those who have experienced trauma that disconnects them from their bodies, trauma that tells them that their bodies are wrong or bad, may need to engage in work to have an understanding of what their bodies are feeling (van der Kolk, 2014). As my study participants repeatedly alluded to, they were taught repeatedly throughout purity culture that their bodies were wrong and sinful for feeling desire or being desired by others. Movement-based activities that help clients engage with their body’s sensations, such as yoga, deep breathing, and playing sports or games are playful ways for people to get into their body and feel the sensations in a dynamic way. A body-based approach is integral to helping resolve religious trauma; rather than disconnecting from their body and only reckoning with thought patterns like they did in purity culture, it is important to help the client get in touch with their body’s sensations and begin noticing what feels pleasurable and good (Kliethermes et al., 2013). In order to help heal the connection with their body, it is important for clients to see the way that they can reconnect with their body and see it as neutral or good.
Somatic Experiencing
In addition to relaxation training and physical activity to help promote mindfulness of their body’s sensation, somatic experiencing, a “bottom-up,” body-based approach that involves drawing attention to visceral internal sensation while experiencing emotion can be helpful for clients who are experiencing internalized shame after leaving purity culture (Kuhfub et al., 2021). Intensely visceral feelings tied to the body’s development and inherent sexuality in purity culture, such as shame, can be accessed in a safe environment with the therapist. Clients are then taught to experience these emotions through mindful engagement. The goal of somatic experiencing is to help clients engage with their trauma narrative and modify the traumatic-stress response by helping clients increase their tolerance with difficult emotions such as shame and guilt, which participants noted were tremendous motivating factors in purity culture. Clients are trained to gradually reduce their arousal associated with their trauma by learning to accept and tolerate the visceral internal sensations associated with the traumatic experiences, then moving the parts of their bodies associated with those memories. Being able to notice body sensations and connect them to emotion and experience is crucial for those who have experienced lifelong teachings that divorce them from the sensations of their body. Bessel van der Kolk (2014) describes,
“After trauma the world is experienced with a different nervous system. The survivor’s energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their life. These attempts to maintain control over unbearable physiological reactions can result in a whole range of physical symptoms, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and other autoimmune diseases. This explains why it is critical for trauma treatment to engage the entire organism, body, mind, and brain.”
By moving the sensation through those parts of the body, it gives clients access to a “discharge process,” after which the trauma-related arousal is gradually dissolved (Kuhfub et al., 2021). As clients re-engage with their body and learn to tolerate the parts of themselves that have been wounded, they are given the space to find new parts of themselves that are whole and other parts of themselves that still need healing. As Winell (2007) states, “after an indoctrination about the sins of the flesh, learning to appreciate your own body and enjoy your sexuality is likely to be another challenging but rewarding area of growth.” By empowering clients to reconnect with their bodies, we can eventually help them reconnect with their own innate sense of self and sexuality that they were robbed of through purity culture’s teachings.
Internal Family Systems Therapy
As my participants noted, they were not only actively limited in their understanding of sex and gender, but also in the exploration of their own identities as a result. Internal family systems therapy is an inner-parts work approach that helps clients who have experienced trauma identify the various parts of themselves that construct their inner world and identity (Anderson, 2021). As clients begin to get to know themselves through their trauma narrative and the ways their brain and body respond to the stories they tell, they can establish an internal relationship between their core Self and their identifiable parts. This is done through clients finding this new facet of their identity, focusing on this part, and fleshing out this part’s function and origin. After this, clients can identify how they feel about this part of their identity and approach themselves with compassion by befriending this part of themselves. Once clients can identify the different parts of themselves and find compassion for them, they can confront what they fear within themselves (Anderson, 2021). Purity culture has sowed disconnection within my participants, such that they identified new parts of themselves after leaving, parts which were previously unidentified. Therapists can help those who are dealing with the dissonance created by purity culture’s beliefs by helping clients identify the previously unearthed parts of their identity and befriending those former unknowns.
[1] https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wheels/faqs-about-the-wheels/