Why Did the Purity Movement Die?

In the 1990s and into the early 2000’s the purity movement was all the rage among evangelicals. It was all about saving yourself for marriage. It spawned an industry—with rings, and other items being sold. Hundreds of books were written about it.

If you have not noticed, that movement is dead. Josh Harris and others of its heroes have recanted the movement or the Christian faith altogether. Why? What happened? After all, doesn’t the Bible teach abstinence until marriage? It is worth taking a look deeper into the movement.

It was not just a biblical response. It was reactionary.

The free sex movement of the 1960s wreaked havoc on our society and upon the family unit. Many of the children of the 1970s and 80s were growing up in broken homes. By the 1990s, sex before marriage was assumed as normal. We faced the rise of the AIDS epidemic and its consequences. Christian leaders looked to the future with alarm and foresaw the world in which we are now living. Many Christians, disillusioned with the public schools and Christian Schools (and even churches in some instances) began to withdraw into the fortress of their own families to protect their children from the dangers ahead. Homeschooling exploded. The education process was a religious and moral indoctrination (not necessarily a bad thing). However, it was a moral movement more than a truly spiritual movement. It was about raising kids that lived right, had good families, and—oh yeah, were saved and might go to church.

It was in this context, that the purity movement exploded. It was an outspoken challenge to young believers to reserve the sexual relationship for marriage. Now please do not misunderstand. I believe in reserving the sexual relationship for marriage. My wife and I did that. We also taught that to our children. We believe it is right. Pre-marital sex is sin, plain and simple.

Dads gave their daughters purity rings. Teens pledged purity to one another. Famous athletes famously remained pure, even when they married at much later ages (Remember A.C. Green?).

Now the purity culture seems like a cult to many.

Anything can be overstated. The purity culture movement was a great blessing to many who are now enjoying fulfilling lives, in part, because of wise decisions and parental involvement during their most tempting years. Just because some people have broken away from the movement or broken away from Christianity altogether does not mean that it is false or wrong. After all, the Bible condemns premarital sex not only as disobedience but also as a violation of God’s principle of marital intimacy.

So, why did the movement fail for so many?

It was an oversexualized response to an oversexualized culture. It kept the focus on sex.

Americans think about sex way too much. It fills the airwaves and the internet. Thinking about sex all the time is one great way to fall into sexual temptation. Thinking about NOT having sex all the time, or constantly thinking about how great it will be when you finally get married, is also a way to fall into temptation. The movement was psychologically counterproductive.

Christian young people lost their true identity.

As they faced the onslaught of the culture, Christian young people declared openly their purity promise before their friends and classmates, and the world at large. This seemed so strange to a sex-crazed world that purity became the identity of these young people.  I remember A.C. Green, NBA power forward, being known more for being a thirty-something virgin, than for being a Christian, or for his prowess on a basketball court.  We can start to see ourselves as the world around us sees us, rather than how we should see ourselves in Christ.  When your identity is your sexual purity and not Christ Himself, you lose yourself when you fall. Your entire world crashes down around you.  It is so important for believers that their identity in Christ does not change even when they fall into disobedience.  There is a path back for repentant believers. David’s moral failure did not prevent him from repentance, turning back to God, or being useful to God (Psalm 51). Sin has painful consequences, but it should not rob us of our identity in Christ.

It became more of a fad than a movement based upon true Christianity. 

True biblical obedience is not a fad. This was a movement that was built on peer pressure and outside compulsion. It had to be. The people involved in it were being shouted down by a free-sex society. They felt their only response was to be outspoken and unashamed in return. So they created their own peer-pressure group, populated by family members and friends to provide external pressure for sexual purity. The problem with being motivated primarily by peer pressure is that when the pressure pushes the other way, failure is inevitable. Joseph and Daniel had to have enough internal fortitude to stand for God all alone. Peer pressure based purity is doomed to fail when the cultural pressure on the other side becomes overwhelming.

What should be simple obedience tended toward moral pride.

This is one of the problems of biblical righteousness. Taking PRIDE in my moral choices turns righteousness into self-righteousness—which is sin. It is the definition of Pharisaism. When I become arrogant in my personal righteousness—especially when I seek fame and attention for it (or use it to sell books because I am the cool pure guy)—I am setting myself up for spectacular moral failure.

It over-promised.

“Avoiding sex until marriage will result in true sexual and relational happiness in the future.”

This is simply not true. Some young people saved themselves for the marriage/sexual utopia that they were promised would come, only to find out that they married unfaithful or abusive partners, or were themselves partners like that. The idyllic marriage they expected became a nightmare and they felt like they were deceived or cheated. Believers should avoid sex until marriage, but that in no way guarantees you will marry the right kind of partner or be the right kind of partner. It also does not guarantee sexual happiness in life. Many more factors go into finding true spiritual joy in life–including the fact that happiness is not found in seeking happiness but instead in seeking Christ Himself.

It failed to appropriately emphasize the biblical reasons for purity.

The two great purposes for purity are love for God and love for others—not love for self. We remain pure out of love and obedience to God for what He has done for us–trusting that He knows what is best for us. As we deepen our love for Him other sinful desires become much less important to us. We should also be motivated by love for others and what is best for them. For the most part, the purity movement was based upon sex itself, without understanding that we are people who can only thrive while experiencing true intimacy with God and appropriate intimacy with others. It did not adequately acknowledge or address that need.  Pleasing Jesus should be enough.

It created a two-tiered body of believers.

Many people are coming to know Christ in our congregation. These are people who are experienced with the sins of our culture. They are hurt and come to Christ with a lot of baggage. These people need to know that they can be spiritually healed and can walk in a restored relationship with their Creator, and also in full fellowship and acceptance in our congregation.

In his book, How to Say No to a Stubborn Habit (it has been published under several different names over the years), Erwin Lutzer said that Satan tells us two big lies. The first lie is “Just once won’t matter.” The purity movement was good at emphasizing and focusing on that lie. One sin does matter and can be quite destructive. The second lie that Lutzer identifies is “It’s too late now.” This is the lie that the purity movement could not afford to recognize. After all, if there is forgiveness and restoration after falling, sexual desires are so great that many young people might think it is worth it to sin and count on finding restoration later. This is manipulative thinking that results in a two-tiered system within the family of faith—those that did it right, and those that failed and were accepted back after repentance. The first group is celebrated, and the second group is tolerated. The idea is that the person who sexually sins can never again be fully right with God.

The problem with this thinking is that it is not biblical. The error of this thinking is the entire point behind the story of the Prodigal Son. We are all sinners saved by grace, and our Father in Heaven readily receives sinners who humbly return to Him in repentance. The ground is equal at the foot of the cross.

We must preach and teach purity to our children. Still, we cannot adequately do that without an even greater emphasis on a humbly loving devotion to our Lord, and the importance of walking in true spiritual intimacy with Him daily.

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Listen to the audio version of this article here: Why Did the Purity Movement Die? (substack.com)