Episode 190 – Satanists Fuck With Purity Culture

by | Apr 1, 2025 | Episodes | 0 comments

Pure evil is all well and good, but what happens when fundamentalists take purity too far–and teenagers and women end up paying the price?

 

SHOW LINKS

  • Sara Moslener, After Purity: https://saramoslener.com/
  • Photo by Tony Hisgett: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_One_Ring_%2831626343711%29.jpg
  • From A History of Celibacy, Elizabeth Abbott, 1999: Chastity as it relates to sexuality is abstention from unlawful sexual activity, said especially of women; celibacy is the state of being unmarried, especially that of a person under a vow. Celibacy paraded through history under a legion of names: It was Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, Florence Nightingale, Gandhi, Tolstoy, and even Leonardo da Vinci, fearful of a second accusation of sexual impropriety. Celibacy is also writ large in the world’s medical literature, monopolizing large sections of textbooks and the wisdom of most cultures. Therein are elaborated a wealth of semen-centered perspectives and detailed instructions about regimens that help conserve precious ejaculate. Most Western kitchens harbor the shades of the intense, celibate social movement that sought to encourage semen-focus and quench the embers of sensuality: which one of us hasn’t enjoyed corn flakes and Graham flour, designed by the chaste John Harvey Kellogg and Sylvester Graham to cool ardor and promote bland healthfulness? Not unexpectedly, sex-negative, celibacy-obsessed Christianity dominates the first part of our book, though its pagan and Jewish antecedents marked important passages along the path–in pagan Greece especially, premarital chastity was such an essential requirement in brides that young women were thrust into marriage just after puberty to eliminate any possibility of a sexual lapse, and among the pantheon of deities, powerful, and ambitious goddesses maintained lifelong vigilance over their virginity. But celibacy is at Christianity’s core, the story of a divine infant miraculously born to a virgin. The Christian fixation on celibacy, from its condemnatory preoccupation with lustful Eve to its ideological sterilization of chaste Mary and, in the Catholic Church, its rejection of married priests, has endured for twenty centuries, embraced hundreds and millions of people, and imbued Western civilization with its ideals and ideology. Through the lens of Christian celibacy, I saw women seize on this new doctrine as a tool to emancipate themselves from the drudgery of marriage and childbearing, but celibacy is not always so uplifting: The great value most societies place on bridal virginity gives this dimension of celibacy a decidedly ugly side, even when girls’ tiny feet are no longer bound, and chastity belts are rusty museum curiosities. 
      • From Adam, Eve, & the Serpent, Elaine Pagels, 1988: For many Christians of the first four centuries, the greatest freedom demanded the greatest renunciation — above all, celibacy. This identification of freedom with celibacy involved a paradox, then as now, for celibacy (to say nothing of fasting and other forms of renunciation) is an extreme form of self-restraint. Yet as Christians saw it, celibacy involved rejection of “the world” of ordinary society and was thereby a way to gain control over one’s own life. Pagan contemporaries regarded such renunciation not only as social suicide but as the worst impiety and dishonor, but ascetically inclined Christians projected their idealized celibacy back into [Eden] and turned the story of the first marriage into a story of two virgins whose sin and sexual awakening ended in their expulsion from the “Paradise of virginity.” The Christian teacher Thaelia accused Christians of using marital relations to gratify themselves sexually while pretending that their concern is with procreation. She admits that scripture did not require celibacy, but says the Apostle Paul certainly preferred it for any who were capable of achieving this “means of restoring humanity to Paradise.”
      • Jovinian strictly avoided any contact with women, but after some years underwent a change of heart and questioned whether this was spiritually beneficial. Although he remained sexually abstinent, he soon argued that celibacy in itself is no holier than marriage and accused certain fanatical Christians of having invented “novel dogma against nature.” Jovinian rejected the common belief that celibate persons are holier than those who marry and declared that “virgins, widows, and married women, who have once gone through Christian baptism, if they are equal in other respects, are of equal merit.” St. Jerome saw Jovinian as a serious threat and set out “to crush this Epicurus of Christianity.” When Jerome read Jovinian’s treatise he said he heard “the hissing of the old serpent; by counsel such as this, the dragon drove man from Paradise.” What bothered Jerome especially was that Jovinian was supported by some of the leading Christians of Rome. Jerome acknowledged that even though everyone praised celibacy, not everyone took it seriously, even as a qualification for the priesthood: “That married men are elected to the priesthood, I do not deny; the number of virgins is not so great as that of the priests that are needed. Jerome declares that Jesus himself remained “a virgin in the flesh and a monogamist in the spirit,” faithful to his only bride, the church, and adds that “although I know that crowds of matrons will be furious at me  I will say what the apostle Paul has taught me: In view of the purity of the body of Christ, all sexual intercourse is unclean.”
      • From What You Should Know About Purity Culture, Joe Carter, Gospel Coalition, 2019: “Purity culture” is the term often used for the evangelical movement that attempts to discourage dating and promote virginity before marriage, often through the use of tools such as purity pledges, purity rings, and purity balls. A prime example is the original pledge from the book True Love Waits, which read: “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to god, myself, my family, those I date, and my future mate to be sexually pure until the day I enter marriage.” Purity rings were popularized by the Christian ministry The Silver Ring Thing, which promoted abstinence primarily through music events. Rings were worn by several young actors and pop stars, including Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and Selena Gomez. Father-Daughter Purity Balls are formal dance events attended by fathers and their daughters that promote virginity until marriage for teenage girls. Fathers would often sign a pledge that they would be the example of purity for their daughter. The dances were originally conceived in 1998 by a California couple, Randy and Lisa Wilson, as a way of “celebrating God’s design and life’s little growth spurts.” 
      • The purity movement began in the 1990s as Christians who were children or teens during the beginning of the 1960s-era sexual revolution began to have children and teenagers of their own. In the 1970s only 2 percent of American women had more than 10 sexual partners before marriage; in the 1990s that percentage had increased to 10 percent; in 2010 it was 18 percent. We cannot only think of our chastity in relationship to our bodies, but to the very way that we are forming and being conformed in our inmost being to the image of Christ as pure, faithful, and chaste beings. I choose purity for Christ’s glory. I am doing this for his sake, not my sake. I am doing this because he deserves adoration, and the purity of my life is a way to show him that adoration. There is no moralism. If I choose sexual purity for the glory of Christ, that is just pure worship. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/faqs-know-purity-culture/ 
      • From How History Shaped Evangelical Womanhood, Sara Moslener & Sarah Stankorb, In Polite Company, 2023: Gail Biederman’s book Manliness and Civilization demonstrates the formation of Victorian gender roles and the cult of true womanhood — the Four Virtues, of which purity is one. What she argues is the true woman ideal was in response to the creation and the growth of the middle class in the 19th century. Capitalism was growing because there was an enslaved workforce, which means white people were getting wealthy. But there’s a sense that there’s a kind of disease with that, because it pushed against certain values — be humble, work hard, very early American grit. So, there’s a sense of unease, and especially because men were working out of the home in politics and commerce and were having to do what could be considered things that lacked virtue. The way to balance is to pair the public man with the domestic woman who takes on all the virtues of goodness: piety, purity, domesticity, and submission. This is where we get these notions of white femininity, what came to be known as “the angel in the house.” She stays home. She raises the children. She teaches and is in charge of her children’s spiritual training. Victorian homes would often have a space, an entire room set apart, as a chapel. You marry the sort of public, rough-and-tumble unethical world that the man is in with the woman’s sanctuary of the home. That’s the perfect combination, because then he can come back to his sanctuary and be grounded in the virtues there. But it’s her job to make sure virtue remains in the home, that the home is a virtuous home. Slavery was created on a black/white binary. When that ended, they needed another way to maintain the race line: anti-miscegenation law was one way, reinforced by two powerful stereotypes: the sexually pure and innocent white woman and the aggressive, black male.  Rumors of clandestine relations or inappropriate exchanges were enough to insight white racial violence against entire Black communities. Pure, white womanhood was a propaganda tool for justifying white racial power. In the 19th century, there was very much the sense of the white, Anglo Saxon Protestant family was the one that was most suited to growing civilization, and it was white women who were bearers of the civilization. Whiteness was all encoded in these gender ideologies, [but] they would be adopted and adapted, especially by the growing Black middle class in the early 20th century. 
      • Fundamentalism was responding to so many things. It was responding to science, of course, because you have the Scopes Monkey Trial. And then you have the response to the New Woman trying to change the gender roles. Also at that time were debates over biblical interpretation, academics who are interpreting the Bible academically while fundamentalists believed that the Bible is one truth and anyone can read it and know the truth. But academics were coming along and saying, ‘Well, no, the truth isn’t self-evident,’ right? The Bible is a complex book.’ So, that was the huge clash. That really animated everything. Gender roles became about protecting biblical gender roles and arguments about science were to come from the Bible. Fundamentalism was very much a response to the more modernizing influences that were happening. Billy Graham comes in the ‘30s, with Youth for Christ, and makes it all hip and interesting again. He’s someone who would go from being a fundamentalist to being an evangelical as a way to sort of bring fundamentalists out of their separatism. This is also the time period when you see the growth of Christian colleges and radio—especially evangelical media. Evangelicalism was really kind of creating their own parallel institutions as a way to separate themselves from “the World.” That really took off in ‘70s. I really like Mara Einstein’s book Brands of Faith. She comes out of marketing and advertising and then writes about and studies religion. That’s why many of these evangelical churches were in the suburbs then. That’s when you get a church that looks like a mall, because people didn’t want to go to a church that looks like a church. There was still this idea within evangelicalism of having a family where the wife doesn’t have to work as a middle class goal. This period is also where I start to see an argument about white Christian nationalism develop, with this vision of the family as the foundation of the American nation state. And it’s the white, middle class, suburban, heterosexual family. https://sarahstankorb.substack.com/p/how-history-shaped-evangelical-womanhood?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1179398&post_id=95847619&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email 
      • From Eric Sprankle: Facts You Need To Know, Ellyn Santiago, Heavy.com, 2018: Eric Sprankle, a professor of sexuality studies in Minnesota, is a sex therapist and a Satanist. A controversial tweet from the not-shy Psy.D. has created a firestorm. In it, he suggests god impregnated the Virgin Mary without her consent. And even if there was consent, god was infinitely more powerful than a teenaged Mary and put her at a disadvantage, he claims. Sprankle is no stranger to controversy in that his ideas and opinions are unconventional and he appears unafraid to share those opinions. A number of students have said he’s funny and smart and fascinating. Others disagree. Now, Sprankle is being criticized for his latest heretical pronouncement, but given he’s a Satanist, he does not hide it: “The virgin birth story is about an all-knowing, all-powerful deity impregnating a human teen. There is no definition of consent that would include that scenario. Happy Holidays.” A commenter replied that in the story of the Annunciation, Mary talk’s about God’s plans with the angel Gabriel and says, “I am the Lord’s servant, may your word to me be fulfilled.” Sprankle responds that Mary could not have consented given god’s supreme and almighty power over her. “The biblical god regularly punished disobedience. The power difference in deity vs mortal and the potential for violence for saying ‘no’ negates her ‘yes.’ To put someone in this position is an unethical abuse of at best and grossly predatory at worst. Not surprisingly, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson blasted Sprankle: “Fifty years ago this kind of shallow banality would be something the province of a drunk undergraduate at three in the morning.” Sprankle is an Associate Professor at Minnesota State University & Teaches Psychology & Sexuality Studies. “Promoting sexual health while reducing shame and respecting body autonomy,” is how Sprankle describes his goal as a college professor teaching students about sexuality. Sprankle is a Minnesota-licensed clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist. Sprankle is also very focused on demystifying sexual mores and abolishing sexual stereotypes, He says, “I tweet mostly about sex worker rights, abortion, and atheism. After the brouhaha over his tweets, some students jumped on a site where people rate their college professors. Some were not happy with his take on the Annunciation. One student wrote about Sprankle saying at once his lectures are “amazing” but that he’s an “awful” professor. Another said simply, “He is a condescending know it all. Has great hatred for traditions.” But another said, “Sprankle is hilarious and very intelligent. He makes every little bit of information interesting and his personality is just too fantastic to ignore.” https://web.archive.org/web/20181207223947/https://heavy.com/news/2018/12/dr-eric-sprankle
      • From Christian purity culture is still being felt, Chrissie Thwaites, The Conversation, 2022: Purity culture was most significant in America, and since the noughties it has gradually faded from cultural prominence. Its impact, though, is global and ongoing: Purity culture was built on an established religious ethic but came to encompass a subculture in American evangelical Christianity. A prolific industry of purity-themed bibles, rallies, and books emerged. Beyond abstinence, young Christians were encouraged not to date. Romantic attachments not leading to marriage were discouraged due to a perceived risk of emotional and physical impurity. Young women and girls were instructed to be careful how they dressed and interacted with others to avoid “tempting” men, and strict gender roles were encouraged. Purity culture is harmful: It taught women in particular to be suspicious and ashamed of their bodies, and resulted in anxiety, panic attacks and even PTSD. The identifiable rituals of purity culture – such as purity rings and pledges – have receded, but key organisations are rebranding themselves and changing the way purity culture is presented. Purity ring organisation Silver Ring Thing has recently remarketed as Unaltered Ministries, dropping its focus on purity rings but nonetheless holding onto its heritage. Alongside this, new brands which recycle purity messaging are also emerging, like GirlDefined, a YouTube channel run by two sisters promoting “biblical womanhood”. Both sisters waited until marriage to kiss their husbands and describe feminism as an “attack on God’s design for woman”. The permeation of purity culture into church teachings and cultures can be seen in anxieties around male-female friendships, relationship expectations, the Christian idolisation of marriage, the equation of virginity with value, and inferences that women are responsible for gatekeeping men’s sexual behaviour. Meanwhile, former purity culture adherents are grappling with its after-effects. Many have spent years analysing how purity teachings affected their view of their body and relationships with other people. Women have described feeling trapped in their own skin. The repackaging of purity culture into new formats, and its permeation into broader Christian culture means the movement persists. https://theconversation.com/the-impact-of-christian-purity-culture-is-still-being-felt-including-in-britain-182907 
      • From Satanists’ Sexual Self-Concept, Samuel Danielson Minnesota State University, 2022: This sample of Satanists consists primarily of white, cisgender women from the United States with an average age of about 32 years. Additionally, more than half of the sample also identified as being bi- or pansexual. Most Satanists in this sample were raised in childhood homes where Christianity was the primary religion. Participants reported primarily engaging in forms of Satanism that are atheistic or non-theistic. A majority of participants also reported being members of The Satanic Temple. The average age that participants converted to Satanism was about 25. The analysis of Satanists’ sexual behavior indicated that two-thirds of Satanists have engaged in BDSM play. More than two-thirds of the sample also reported having engaged in non-BDSM kink or fetish play. This surpasses the percentage of individuals in the general population. More than half of Satanists masturbate more than once a week, but only about 35% utilize pornography at the same rate. The high prevalence of engagement in taboo or stigmatized sexual behaviors within Satanism could be attributable to the sex-positive and permissive attitudes promoted by the religion. Additionally, the more positive feelings one has about being a Satanist, the more positively one may evaluate their ability to relate with others sexually, as engaging in sex is an affirmation of their Satanist identity and beliefs. 
      • Interestingly, the analysis also indicated that these factors are all significant predictors of sexual anxiety. A possible explanation for this relationship between the strength of Satanist identification and sexual anxiety could be minority stress from one’s Satanist identity: As Satanism is an atheistic belief system, it is likely that identification with the religion also leads to social stigma and, therefore, negative psychological outcomes. Furthermore, as sex may be considered a religious activity for Satanists, engagement in sexual behavior may make Satanists’ internalized anti-Satanism more salient, leading to increased tension, discomfort, or anxiety. However, cognitive engagement with and affirmation of one’s Satanist identity may help to buffer the negative effects of minority stress on sexual anxiety. Future research could also attempt to control for otherl factors that past research has found to be associated with social anxiety such as gender, marital status, race, disability, and body image. Though data for gender, marital status, and race were collected in the data set used for the current study, this data used a nominal scale of measurement which cannot be used for regression analyses if there are more than two levels to the variable, as there were for these variables. The minority stress model could also be applied to Satanism, similar to how it has been applied to atheism in future research to determine if there are any specific affects that minority stress may have on Satanists. 

 

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