Theology in the Raw - 834: Where Did the Purity Movement Go Wrong?

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Jason Soucinek is the Executive Director and founder of Project Six19. Dedicated to talking honestly about matters of sex, sexuality and relationships. Jason has spent almost two decades engaging audiences of all ages and backgrounds. He is an internationally recognized seminar and conference speaker and published writer on issues surrounding sexuality and youth culture. He can be heard on the following podcasts: DriveTime, Sex + Christian Parents, and CPYU’s podcast “Youth Culture Matters”. Jason and I focus largely on the purity movement and where it went wrong. But we did linger on the question of modesty for a bit, which lead to some back and forth pushbacks on each other's opinions.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today, Jason Soschnick. Jason is the president and founder of Project 619. He does a lot of training when it comes to youth and sex and sexuality and parents, like the parent-youth relationship. relationship. He's just such an awesome dude, good friend. And he was actually here in my basement when we were recording. So you can see the video of this if you go to my YouTube channel. But Jason and I, we dig into the whole purity culture thing. He is kind of an expert in trying to understand what happened, what went wrong in the purity movement. How can we fix it? How can we advocate for sexual purity without making the mistakes that we made during the purity movement? So that's primarily what we talk about in this episode. We also end up talking about things like modesty.

Okay. And we kind of went around and around on that for a little bit. So anyway, it was an interesting conversation. Love this guy. He's a good friend. And Jason and I teamed up on our youth project called Christian Sexuality Conversations about Jesus, sex, and gender. And that project is about to be released. If you go to centerforfaith.com, you can find info on that project. It is, from what I can tell, the most in-depth, compelling,

comprehensive curriculum helping youth cultivate a Christian vision for how can we flourish as a sexual being or under God's design. We talk about the authority of God in scripture. We talk about shame. We talk about why God's love for us is foundational to our love for God or for, or for other people. We talk about marriage. We talk about sex. We talk about porn. We talk about masturbation. We talk about,

um, sexting. We talk about VR sex. We talk about friendships. We talk about dating. We talk about same sex sexuality. We talk about transgender identities. We talk about friendships. We talk about dating. We talk about same-sex sexuality. We talk about transgender identities. We talk about LGBTQ stuff. It is a one-stop shop, comprehensive,

and I would say aesthetically compelling and beautiful presentation of a Christian vision for sex, sexuality, and gender. So you can check that out again at centerforfaith.com. And yeah, let's get into this conversation about purity culture and all the different spinoffs that we chased down from that conversation. Welcome back to the show. The one and only Jason Sochner. Hey friends, I'm here with my good friend Jason Soschnik. Did I pronounce that right? You did a great job.

Yeah, I'm proud of you. I'm glad I'm a good friend and you're still asking what my last name is. Last time I introduced you, I had good friend and then butchered the pronunciation of your last name. You did. But I mean, Sochenek is not the easiest.

It's not like Thompson or something. No, or Sprinkle. Sprinkle is a lot easier than Sochenek. Oh, my word. Jason and I have just gotten done filming all week, our second all week filming on our youth project on Christian sexuality. What was the subtitle we landed on? Jesus. Conversations of sexuality, gender, and Jesus. Conversations about sexuality, gender,

and Jesus. I think. i think it's cool something that's great yeah i love it um so we're here we're uh celebrating the conclusion the film in conclusion on this project i don't know how many hours of what would you guesstimate how many hours of footage we've actually recorded i mean it's gotta be in the hundreds for sure oh my gosh the hours like oh yeah for sure i Oh, my gosh. The hours, like, oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, we've had two full weeks of filming with 12-hour days, if not longer. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah.

The first week, I mean, probably 10 days straight of like 12-hour days. And then this last week. Anyway, that's not what we're going to talk about here necessarily. I want to talk about the purity movement, purity culture. So tell us real quick, what is the ministry you've been doing for the last decade or so? I'm going to assume people know what I've been doing. I work in LGBTQ spaces within the evangelical church. What is it that you do with Project 619?

Yeah, so we've been doing work around sex, sexuality, relationships for the last 10 years. We birthed out of a pregnancy resource center. I've been doing this work, conversations around sex, sexuality, and relationships for almost 20 years now, which is pretty crazy. But for the last 10 years, it's been under the auspices of Project 619. So 20 years, that would bring us right back to the height of what would be considered the purity movement, right? Late 90s, early 2000s, was that when purity culture, purity movement, purity rings, purity conferences were a big deal? Yeah, I mean, it was probably on its way out a little bit. I mean, I remember it really strong in the mid to late 90s. So when I started coming on the scene doing this work, it was in the early 2000s.

And so it wasn't as big of a scene as it once had been, but it still had quite a deal of influence. Okay. Now, again, just in case somebody's listening who has no clue who I am or Jason is or whatever, we are both evangelical Christians. Yes.

We both have a, for lack of a better, I don't love this phrase, but for lack of better terms, a traditional Christian sexual ethic. We believe marriage is between a man and a woman. We believe sexual relationships belong within that covenant bond. I mean, the basic stuff that almost christian believed globally up until the last few decades maybe when yeah these questions have been more um these issues have been questioned but um the purity movement how about this why don't you summarize what are some of the main tenets of purity culture the purity movement and then i would love to get into why you, as a traditional evangelical Christian,

have some critiques with that movement. So sum up the purity movement for us. So the purity movement really, it was something, well, it's always kind of been across American culture for quite some time. But when you think of purity culture within the church, it was really something that started to birth in the late 70s and the early 80s, specifically down in the south. What's really interesting is that it had some origins not just in the church, but church, faith, people that wanted to have an influence in the

schools. Really? It wasn't a distinctive Christian? I mean, it was... It was distinctively Christian, but it was Christians who wanted to have an influence in the schools around sex education or what has become sex education. And so it's hard. It's desire to be able to engage in conversations around sex. I think it was a good desire, but ultimately what it was is that they were engaging in these conversations around purity

um you know we've we've moved meaning uh sexual purity meaning don't have sex don't have sex or i always say the easier way is just keep your pants on till marriage like that was the that was the simple way that that you could easily frame the and it was quite narrow i mean there really wasn't a whole lot of conversation to it beyond that. There wasn't a lot of framework to the conversation outside of that. I would argue, and I don't know if this was its intent, but it was fair based in many ways. So it was, you know, fear of either getting pregnant or potentially having an STD or STI, uh, you know, or that you could potentially feel guilty for having sex prior to marriage. That was really the essence, the start of the purity movement.

You could point to a lot of other aspects, the puritanical aspect of our American culture that has influenced or probably is even more influential than what was the purity movement that kind of started some of this. what was the purity movement that kind of started some of this. But if you're looking at the purity movement for what it became, it really kind of started in the South in the early 80s. You know, I specifically remember being influenced by the purity culture growing up in the 90s as a high school student, attending youth group. I just remember seeing the many messages, hearing the many messages. And specifically, it stood out to me when I was in early college, when I'd gone from

a large university in Arizona to a small liberal arts Christian school in Spokane, Washington, and seeing the complete difference in the dialogue the conversation and specifically even the shame that surrounded this conversation the the dynamic of the conversation just was different from one campus to the other and the people that you would see speaking into it were not individuals that were giving a lot of biblical framework or theological framework. It was a lot of moral framework, like right and wrong. Don't do this. You could potentially harm your future if you end up engaging in this. Yeah, I mean, I know what you're getting at.

Can you just unpack that a little more, the difference between it a theological framework versus a moral framework because i can yeah i get here someone saying like wait aren't morals good yeah aren't morals and theology are these aren't these kind of go hand in hand totally yeah so uh the way i would break it down is moral uh arguments were much more about don't have sex before marriage because you could get someone pregnant or contract an std you don't want an std those are bad they could potentially kill you. I mean, that's a very short aspect of it. Whereas you didn't hear, even in the church, you did not hear a lot of conversation around. You might have heard about Jesus, but going further, there weren't conversations around even building a biblical framework.

So looking at Genesis 1, looking at Genesis 2, going to places that we often will engage, Matthew and Mark, Mark 10, Matthew 19, or looking at some of the teachings of Jesus beyond what we hear recorded in the gospel, looking at what Paul might have written. Like that just wasn't always a part of that conversation i think it was thrown in there more to uh make a point whereas today i feel like it's changed a little bit and they really want to understand where this where they we're doing a better job of looking at what the text is saying and allowing it to guide us rather than us guiding through our own moral guide. We were using the moral that we wanted to have taught to interpret the text. I feel like today we're allowing the text to interpret the morality.

I don't know if that's the best way to say it. So, and correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like there are some good values that were promoted by the purity movement that we would still agree with. That like sex outside of marriage is not God's design. That is not morally or theologically good. So there were certain, I mean, there were certain things that purity movement was emphasizing, trying to instill in disciples of Christ that were good. First, would you agree with that, that there were good things? And secondly, what are some of the negative, maybe unintentional effects of the purity movement and the purity message? So the good things.

the purity movement and the purity message. So the good things. One, I do think that there was a heart behind many of the original forefathers, foremothers that were the ones that kind of started this. I think that there was a desire to keep kids safe. I think there was a desire to change some of the trends that we're starting to see emerge around earlier and earlier sexual activity, the rise of STDs, sexually transmitted diseases among youth. I think that there were just a lot of different ingredients that led people to say, we want to change some of this behavior.

But it very quickly became behavior management. It became sin management. Like if you can remain pure then you're good that's yeah if you can if you can remain a virgin and that's where then i think the the where it starts to make a change is that it moved from a focus on behavior to a focus on a very specific behavior to a very specific thing which was your virginity so i i like you can you can be we made a virgin until you're married and be have all kinds of still like dysfunctional thoughts about sexuality you could be dealing with maybe past trauma you've never dealt with you can be um thinking you're holy simply because you're a virgin even if you're like have no or little bit of passion about jesus um you're not

caring for the poor but yeah you can have a You can have accomplished a very narrow sliver of an aspect of Christian morality and think you've kind of gotten the whole thing down. Would that be a good one? Yeah, that would be a good one. I might just look at one very specific thing that you said. So I would agree with most of that. One thing that I would push back on is it would look at the physical. It would look at virginity you would hold virginity up as as one of the holiest things you could do is to hold on

to your virginity but the idea of the mind i mean i i do think lust like even now to this day lust is still this thing that i'm like i don't know i i i sometimes cringe at that word mostly because of the way that it was used in the purity culture. And that it was like, if you had one wrong thought, it was like, bad, really bad. You shouldn't have that thought. Like, I just remember being a student, being a young adult. And it was really tough for me. Like, if I had that one wrong thought, it was like, who do I talk to this about?

Like, it was that unspoken sin that you just really couldn't speak. So do you feel like a lot of people were in a lot, a lot of virgins ended up still doing a lot of lusting and not dealing with the heart of kind of the. Yeah. Like I think, I mean, I always used to say that you could, you could remain a virgin, but you could, you, you, you, you doesn't necessarily mean that you honor God. Like it doesn't necessarily mean that you honor god like it doesn't necessarily mean that you're honoring god by choosing to wait like it's just simply an act that you've chosen to do but has it been something that you're doing in submission to god like it's something that you're wanting to honor him with you see your body as a temple like i i so i would

i would say that there is an aspect of yes, virginity, but there, I would just, I would say that also lust was a whole, like the mind was, there was a lot of discussion around that, but there was a lot of, like, we need to put rules around this. And, and so I think that led to a lot of people in the purity movement. And we have to remember too, when we're talking about the purity movement now, of them are now parents like like like i mean you and i right are similar age and many of us are parents and we are byproducts of the the purity movement so we are we are parenting out of the purity movement so that has a huge influence on the way that we we engage. So being able to be aware of the way in which we were taught, the way we were engaging this conversation as teenagers,

is going to be important because it does influence it in the way that we parent our own kids. And there was just, you know, quite honestly, there was a lack of education. It seems like from my vantage point, females in particular seem to have had a particular uh what's the word i don't want to say trauma necessarily although there might have been some of that but like a a a lot of fallout maybe or maybe some some just relational damage that happened as a result of the purity message i've heard uh i think maybe even you even said but i've heard other people say like you know you're told like if you have sex before your marriage you're damaged goods you're

dirty your your husband's not gonna i don't know like yeah you've stolen something away from your future husband assuming that you're gonna have a future husband right and um and all of a sudden like all this negative negative dirty dirty negative negative dirty dirty then the second you get married that night you're supposed to have a complete switch. A complete 180. Like, oh, no, now it's great. Is that, I might be overstating things, but have you heard from women in particular that really struggled with that?

Dirty, dirty, bad, bad, dirty, dirty, bad. Now it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can't get into the amazing nature that it's supposed to be yeah oh all the time like i i think one of the things that i i often hear and we've talked about this that there is often uh among christian couples a dynamic of an inability to talk about sex because they never were able to really talk about it prior they were never able to engage in honest dialogue around sex and the

joy that it could be because they were so focused on the no no no no and they never focused on the yes after they said i do like what is it actually okay you're not supposed to do it before you're married but what is it actually for on the theological yeah or or like you can enjoy this like like it's like like there is a pleasure aspect to this. There is a dynamic of... Sex really is meant to be this shared experience, this mutual experience where one is pleasing the other. Where your focus really is not about whether or not you can be pleased,

but whether or not you can please the other. It's not self-focused, it's other-focused. And that's just not what is ever taught in the purity movement because the purity movement was always focused on the self it was always focused on the physical it wasn't even focused on any other aspect that was emotional social or spiritual it was always physical don't have sex well what about the whole idea though like like i know in some conservative christian circles especially women were kind of groomed in this idea of pleasing your husband and you want to serve your husband and your husband has needs. And, and I am not

going to deny some general biological differences between sex drives among males and females, statistically speaking, not individually. Um, testosterone does have certain effects on, on a human person. Um, but that, that whole idea of like your sexuality is defined by giving pleasure to the man. Like, is that an over, is that a message that has been implicitly or explicitly, um, comes out of the purity movement or? Yeah, I think it's been explicit and implicit. I mean, I, so like even going back to the earlier question that you were asking with regards to how the purity movement treated women,

Jessica Volante wrote a book called The Purity Myth. And in her book, The Purity Myth, she subtitled it, which I think is a phenomenal subtitle. It's how, I don't know if it's America's obsession or if it was Christian obsession,

but America's obsession with virginity and young women or something along those lines. I might be demolishing the subtitle. Did you recommend that one? It's a great book to be able to understand some of the influence that it has had, how the purity movement has had an impact on American society. Say it again.

What's the title of the book? It's called The Purity Myth by Jessica Volante. She's not a believer. Oh. but what? Never been a believer, but she studied the purity culture, wanted to take a look at it. And some of the premise of it, it's hard for me to say this, but I would agree. Like the idea of our focus on virginity has really hurt young women. Let me give you a couple examples. So when you think of

artists that have emerged, specifically female artists, music artists, over the last several years, think about the way in which they were sold to the American teenage girl. So Britney Spears would be one. Miley Cyrus would be one. Well, from the ages of about, whenever they come on the scene, 9, 10, 11, 12, to the time that they're 18, their purity is front and center. Both Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus talked about choosing to be a virgin, wanting to wait until marriage to have sex. They talked about that. Now, even your face is even telling the story but but but like what happens if you're still sitting naked on the wrecking ball and i guess still be well but but here's what's amazing is that um at 18 the record label switches the marketing from their

purity because who's now buying at 18 they're now they're now looking at a young adult audience and so so their audience is growing up with them and as their audience is growing up they're becoming more aware of their own sexuality so so what happens is when they're younger it's the parents that are buying them the music and so the parents want a wholesome uh model uh someone for their kids to look up to and so they're using sex their puritanical aspect of who they are so their sexiness in a way that they're virgins they're they're not having sex until they're 18 and then all of a sudden they turn on their sexiness and they use their sex in a whole other way yeah and so i yeah i actually think that the, the aspect of virginity has been quite harmful more to women than it has to men because it, it's also been up to women to be the ones that are the gatekeepers.

Think about modesty, the conversations around modesty. Yeah. It's always focused. It's always been, I shouldn't say it's always, um um my wife is teaching me not to always say always and by your laughter you you've had similar but but here's the here's the thing right like um often what has happened is we um we do have these these moments where um yeah i um i said a total brain fart what what's talking about i've got several questions oh modesty modesty so so oftentimes modesty is the the specifically the the thing that is most important the one that drives modesty and the like even in churches we've

always said women you must do this girls you must do this you must wear this you shouldn't do this where we've not placed as much emphasis on the men we've not allowed for the men to be the ones that also are a part of that is it so i i i get that and i um i don't know i'm really wrestling through this because on the one hand yeah it's absolutely wrong to say, like, women, you need to be modest. Men are going to grope you with their eyes. And if they do, it's kind of your fault. Obviously, that's wrong. Obviously, every human has a moral agency, on and on and on.

At the same time, is there not a place, and this is... It's weird. Yeah. I'll just say it because that's what I do. I think out loud. Yeah, think out loud yeah send me your emails you can't find it online whatever i just i don't know like just again just thinking just factually biologically um i've got three teenage daughters and that's i'm navigating this okay so if a woman woman dresses in an immodest way yeah and a guy gropes her with his eyes that is his fault and yet that is just what's gonna happen like you know i'll tell to my daughters if they have an

immodest kind of outfit i'm just gonna give them the facts saying if your booty's hanging out if you're showing cleavage like just so you know, when you go out, the overwhelming majority of heterosexual men are going to look you up and down and have fantasies and are going to be having sex with you in their mind. Oh, no. I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm just saying that is what's going to happen

because we have fallen human nature. We have this sex drive that can be, not not we most men and a lot of women have a sex drive we have minds that are fallen that's just with the facts a buddy of mine got in this with like cheerleading you know you go to a sporting event you have people that are uh slightly inebriated sometimes not so slightly inebriated and you have a bunch of scantily dressed cheerleaders dancing in front of the guys and every single guy is doing this with like this like slobbering up and down yeah he is a moral agent he is guilty he is less i'm not blaming the women i'm just saying like you can't turn around and say how dare you in a sense you can he's guilty but

we don't live in some utopian society where like you can dress immodestly and expect and be shocked when humans with lots of testosterone going through their veins, they're not going to. I don't know. So I don't think it's an either or. Again, I'll say it for the thousandth time. I'm not saying the woman is to blame for that. I'm just saying that's just what's going to happen. Am I off or how do I know? Maybe I am.

I do understand what you're saying. I think what I look for is the word consistency. We are not as consistent with our daughters as we are with our sons. We're not as consistent with girls as we are with our sons. We're not as consistent with girls as we are with guys and youth groups. Like, like the thing I think about, let me just give you one small example. So, so, um, whenever, uh, uh, I read some of the stuff or, or I, I, I always ask this when I do like a summer retreat or something, cause I always want, I'm curious about the policy. What's the policy that you had around dress? Well, typically the people that get the conversation around dress are the girls.

And what the conversation is, is we don't want you wearing a two-piece bikini. That's kind of a two-piece swimsuit. That seems a little arbitrary. And we don't want you showing off certain things and doing certain stuff. But they never say anything for the guys. And I just kind of feel like, well, that's kind of like you're wanting, or actually they won't let you wear a two-piece. They also want you, sometimes they'll even say you got to wear a shirt.

Shorts. Yeah, but the guys can do whatever. There's nothing for the guys. I feel like that is one very small example of many that happen around modesty. What would be the policy? Guys aren't typically, in America at least, wearing Speedos or whatever. But even then, like, wow, we're going to get lost in the weeds here. What would be?

So let's just say a really skimpy bikini for the girl. You say, you know what? Yeah, that's just, you can't come out with a thong and you're barely covering anything. You got to have a little, a bathing suit that covers a little more. What would be the equivalent for a guy who's not going to wear a Speedo? Like wear a tank top instead of a, I don't know, if you got washboard abs, you got to wear. I mean, I don't know. I don't have, there has to be consistency in the policy.

Because here's, we're trying to say that purity conversation, but this does, I will say that this fits with this because there's a lack of consistency that happened in it that we're now trying to build back into the conversation because even with the work that you do, there's a lack of consistency historically. And so I think with the purity movement, there was a lack of consistency. And I think modesty is one of these places where there was a lack of consistency. I, I, I think I, I, I understand what you're saying, uh, with how you discuss this with your daughters, but like, I, then I would also say, well, what are you talking about with your son? Like for me, I, I, I don't want my daughters, um, or my daughter, uh, to uh to be um at all shamed by her body like that that

her body is and and honestly and honestly just so the guys who are like i that's a great point i 100 agree yeah and so i think i and and and i for the the girls like i i understand having some rules around what you have at a camp and all that. And I would also put it on to the girl and to the guy. What is your intent of what you're wearing? If your intent is to draw attention, then that might not be the right outfit. If your intent is, I like this. This is a beautiful outfit. Cool.

I mean, I would like to have... Let's move away from... Because swimsuits can be a different thing, but even the way in which we, I've heard this. Let me give you one last example. Women, you shouldn't have a purse over your breasts because it makes your breasts stand out. And it's like, but we don't tell that for the dude that like, Hey, he's wearing a very tight shirt. It's probably two sizes too small.

And it's just like, it's showing like his abs. It's like, just like, but like, but like what we're, what we're saying that, can I just say this? We're saying that, that only men, less women don't. Okay. I guess some thoughts are going to work. Um, I, yeah, I, yeah. Pushback. okay i i guess some thoughts are gonna work um i yeah i yeah push back i mean it's this well i i don't even have a push i have a thinking out loud yeah but it's not gonna push back but like

i i i want to acknowledge that the general sexual interests are different between men and women on a general level on a general yes um i know when i and when i have frank conversations with um can we just be explicit i mean this is theology so um like women would generally speaking um lust after the male body in different ways than the males would generally less at the female body. I talked to many heterosexual women that like the thought of like a, a penis doesn't have the same kind of overwhelming collapse over myself. Sweated just like that, you know?

Um, in fact, some find it a little bit disgusting not disgusting but like oh like can you put that away but they're still very heterosexual whereas i don't know any heterosexual male who would see a vagina or or breasts who wouldn't just like be like just overrun with blood flow and we can even talk physically just biology we can just talk and they've measured this you can you can you can hook people up and test blood flow you know and um like so i yeah like so i was at star this is several years ago um i used to work at the

starbucks in california right next to a gym and one of the trainers would always come in and get a cup of coffee she would always come in and this is a big thing like yoga pants right yeah and every this is a kind of a thing behind like heterosexual men have a really hard time with yoga pants um it's i know i've talked to many heterosexual men who are like oh my my gosh, I just, it's so hard. Like when women wear yoga, it's just like, it's fine. You have the freedom. It's my fault. Whatever.

All I know is it's like, it's so hard for me not to say. So this, this trainer would walk in with yoga pants. Every time I would watch the men's eyes, every single man in that startup, I would sit there like this. And they were like, one guy literally is like like out loud like oh my gosh like staring and just grow every every guy put down and just groping this one i've never seen that with a guy wearing tight jeans i'm doing this so like all these women just like the guys wearing tight jeans shouldn't be wearing tight jeans so that's that's another and again so i don't know it's just like the the things about

and again i'm just talking yeah and if you're gay you can just flip it around yeah yeah um i would say if there was lesbian women in there maybe they would have the same i don't know the same reaction yeah so i don't want to other people with different sexual desires here. But I do think that the things about the opposite sex between men and women, typically there's different things that ignite that kind of struggle, that lust or whatever. I don't know. And so going back to your analogy, like what would modesty look like with boys so yeah i know what you mean by that that yeah that the purse sideways like i know it like immediately like so i'll just say about my wife but she's wearing like whoa yeah you know but like um yoga pants is this thing that gets overused and i understand that but like like, does it? Well, I've never been able to talk about it.

But you saved it for your podcast. I love it. Here's what I would say is that personally, that kind of drives me a little bit nuts when we have that, that guy's like, Oh, I don't know. Like,

like, like the, the truth is, is, is no, he's saying that my reaction was like, he's just falling over lusting. I know, but what I'm saying is that's his problem, not the woman's problem.

Oh, no, totally. Okay, because see, I actually think... But I'm saying if that was my daughter, I wouldn't tell her, oh, you wear those yoga pants you you be you you i would i would say if you want to your yoga pants it's fine but when you go to starbucks every single guy there is going to be having sex with you in his mind that's just the facts like i think it's okay to say that every guy in there half of them probably went home and

masturbated to that scene i'm just i'm just being this is the reality and if you're okay with that that's just the world we live in. Is it okay to acknowledge that without being like... See, this is where I would push back against some of that. And that's not your fault. I'm just saying, wear the yoga pants. But I'm just saying... But what I...

So this... I do hear what you're saying a little bit, though, is that you would... Don't be naive to the lust of men but i think i think that but but yes i think we need to educate our daughters we need to educate our sisters we need to educate our our our our women about the society we live in and the way in which unfortunately they might be seen there is an objectification that happens there's a thing called sin there's a thing called falling absolutely think of testosterone you blend

all that together this is what you get yeah but i would also say like um like like i don't know personally i think one of the aspects of the purity movement is that it moved modesty to this place that we're now having these conversations and it's like like if you want to wear yoga pants wear yoga pants i want you to understand what's going on in our culture. And a lot of that has to do with what's gone on because of porn. Like, I think that like, and so, and the way we look at lust and then we talk about it. But for me, like, I also want to have a conversation with my boys and be like, dude, listen, like you are wired in a way. And for me, it's like, I want you to be able to understand like that person.

So if that was a young adult that I was ministering to or loving on, that was like, oh, I'd be like, man, what's your problem? Totally. Like I say, and I want to know, like, do you find that beautiful? Yes. Can you celebrate that? Okay, cool. Well, now let's understand. What are you afraid of?

Oh, I don't want it to move into sin, to lust, to like something where I'm masturbating to that. Okay, dude, let's have a conversation about that. Because that is like there is something beautiful in the fact that you find this body naked, whatever. But like there is a time and a place for that. And so we've got to understand that there might be some heart change that has to happen. But almost what we do with the modesty conversation is we in some ways require the woman

to have a heart change rather than the man to have a heart change. 100%. So if what you're saying is, acknowledge just the reality of all that stuff, but then turn it around. Now my son is working at Starbucks. This trainer walks in, whatever.

Absolutely, I would say, look, I don't care if she walks in buck naked. It is your responsibility to admire and appreciate the beauty of a female body, because it's God-created. Acknowledge this attraction you probably have and yet when it steps over into lush less than not just admiration or appreciation of beauty that is on you and we need to take the proper steps of discipleship to be able to appreciate god's beautiful creation and yet when you take advantage of that well whether it's overeating or whatever like there's so many areas in which we turn beautiful aspects of god's creation into

lust or ideology or our own pleasure so i would 100 100 um say and again i'm not even saying like she's wrong for where that i'm not even saying that yeah wrong for wearing that. I'm not even saying that. Yeah. You know, I mean, I... But can I just... All of this conversation would not have happened without the purity movement. The purity movement was instrumental in framing some of the conversations around modesty that now we're having to deconstruct. We're having to rework. So this, you know, I know...

I think we're 100% in agreement. Yeah, we are. We are. Yeah. And so I... I just don't like when it swings so far in the other direction. It's like a woman can wear whatever she wants, and she's just completely shocked if a guy is hitting on her. Totally.

I don't know. Well, I just think that for too long the emphasis has been – we started this aspect of the conversation talking about the influence that the purity movement had on women. And this was but one aspect. But again, look at how far into this conversation we had. We should bring it back to the actual topic. So it is something that for us to, like, this is but one example. And you're going to have listeners that are, like, they'll resonate with this. Like, on both aspects

and like this is probably one of three areas where i do hear a lot of issues uh around even the work we do now because of the way it was framed in the period okay all right so let's go back to um some of the negative effects of the period but there's been a lot of backlash now even books being written where people have i mean people like abandon the faith because of the damage that they experienced during the purity movement right yeah i mean i think there's some yeah pretty well well read books so yeah so how would you just real quick bullet points like what are some of the main negative effects from the purity movement that you're seeing today so So bullet points, we, we focused entirely on the physical. We, we, we did too much conversation around, uh, modesty. We, um, I think we, we left out, um, our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. So that, that was not a part of the

conversation. We, we did not dive into the theological, uh, arguments or a conversation. We, we did. What is sex for? What is marriage for? What's singleness? And then we included Jesus by name, but I don't know if Jesus by power. And what I mean by that is we would include Jesus in a statement, but I don't know if we really

believed in the transformational work of Jesus and specifically the work of the Holy Spirit. So those are five really quick bullet points that I would say we're missing in the purity movement. So you run this organization and one of your taglines is, we are not a purity movement. Yeah. Which is like, what are you, a sex positive movement? What's your, the phrase you use instead of sexual purity is sexual integrity. Yes. Can you unpack

sexual integrity for us? And I want to, I almost have an eye on how is this different or improving upon sexual purity? Yeah, so sexual integrity, the way that we look at it is what I realized from years of just being around the purity movement, being around many authors and not just authors, architects of the purity movement, being around many authors and not just authors, architects of the purity

movement, what I realized is it would focus so much on the genitalia and not on the entire person. And the idea of integrity comes from the word integer, which is to be whole. And there is an aspect of our wholeness that we miss in our sexuality. Like sex is not just our genitalia. It really sex is much more about what's between our ears, our brain than it is about our genitalia. And, and so with integrity, what we wanted to be able to do is we wanted to be able to focus on mind, body, soul, spirit. We want to look at physical. We wanted to look at social, emotional, and spiritual. Like what, what is it going on? When you look at scripture, I mean, let's get to scripture. Like

when you look at it, just even in Genesis one has been written in Genesis two, right? Like the two become one profound, um, Adam knew Eve in Genesis four, one, like, like that word new. It's so like, I know now recent translations recent translations are starting to move to made love to or had sex with. That's lame. It is. But because the new yada is way, way, way more complex and beautiful. And so we minimize sex. So with sexual integrity, you're not minimizing it.

You're maximizing it. You recognize that integrity, you're not minimizing it. You're maximizing it. You recognize that there's so much more to it. And I guess I'll capstone this with just an example. Over and over and over again, I've had students that will come to me and start talking to me about a sexual experience. I've had this with young adults. I've had this with parents now, even pastors. And what I find is that they never end the conversation about sex. They started the conversation with sex, but they're really talking about all the other things that are going on in their life.

It's like peeling an onion. Like sex is just a thing that allows you to get to the center. And when you get to the center, it's not about sex anymore. It's about being known. It's about being loved. It's about being understood. It's about finding a place where you are um accepted and seen and and so that's that's why sexual integrity has become um the the the key word that we use because we want them to um look at um the the grander yes and not all the

restrictive no's and don'ts we just i mean yeah it made me think that story we heard today from a buddy of mine. I'm just going to leave names out of it just to keep it general. But a friend of ours, he's gay. He's a gay guy, attracted to men, like exclusively attracted to men. Long story short, married a woman who was his best friend. And they knew it going in. Like it was very open, authentic. But they just said said we just love being

around each other and you know she as a heterosexual female she's attracted to him as a gay man he's not sexually attracted to her at all he's not attracted to women but he loves her as a human being and for several years um they like he even said love what he was saying. He was saying our emotional and spiritual bond was so rich. Yeah. He says all my heterosexual married friends were so jealous of how the purity, the richness of the relationship was so profound. relationship was so profound like they were just this organic i mean team this this partnership that every person longs for to be known and know and finish each finish each other's thoughts and sentences and they love being around each other just this period but the sexual thing was like yeah just that was a challenge but and he didn't get into i mean i'll just fill in a

little more details this dude is having some of the most robust amazing off the chart sex more recently yeah and he where he's calling me saying i don't know what's going on here this is amazing still attractive to guys this is but but what what he was getting at there was like you can't separate sexual bonding from emotional or spiritual bonding yes and because he had laid such a thick relational spiritual relational bond emotional bond yeah that it's almost like over time and i'm not prescribing this at all it's not a prescription this is an anecdotal story take it for what it's worth that the sexual the unexpected sexual bond between a gay man and a straight woman um was something neither of them

could have predicted yeah and it just shows that like just i don't know it's what you've been getting just a sexual relational emotional like these are categories that overlap. They cannot be completely. No, you can't. You can't. When we try to do that and that, and unfortunately that's what happened. And I'm just reminded of, I might've shared this in one of the last podcasts we had, but it's, it's one of the more profound statements that's ever been made.

And it's, it's, it's just something someone had spoken to my brother and sister-in-law when they got married. And it was the simple fact that you're not really going to know what true sex is until seven years into your marriage. You've had several fights. You've had a couple of kids. Sleepless nights. And it goes back to Genesis 4.1. Adam knew Eve. That word knew.

Yadah. The idea of it is that you have you have done life. Like you, there is, I know you, but I don't know you. Like we haven't, like, uh, we, we, yeah, well, no, like, yeah, but you know what I'm saying? Like, they're, they're like, we, we know each other, but like, I, I will never know you like Chris knows you, right? Like I, I, I, you will never know you like Chris knows you. Right. Like I, I, you will never know me like Emily knows me. Like there is this dynamic to, to knowing that is so very important in, in,

um, what, how, like when it comes to this concept of sex, that is totally different than just, there is no, and there's like, yeah,

I know you like, and, and I think that that's really, and, and what I hear your friend talking about is that very, that very thing. Like there is a knowing that is taking place. And I'll just say this, because I know you probably want to dive into some other stuff, but I'll just say that that is ingrained in how we've been created.

Like we've been created to be known, to be seen. And this is one of those few places beyond the relationship we share with our creator where we get to be known and we get to be seen because it's at our most vulnerable, right? And we've separated that sexual knowing as a separate compartment, right? Yeah. I mean, through culture, but even the church has kind of adopted some of that. We just add the caveat, wait till you get married.

But we kind of adopted secular sexual ethic. It seems funny. I mean, it's this one. Yeah, well, I love, Timothy Keller said it this way. I love it. He said, we've allowed the culture as a church, we've allowed the culture to define what sex is, and the church has just simply said no.

That's exactly right. He said that? Yeah. I've said the same. I've never heard him say that. Yeah, it's exactly right. I think he stole it from, I think Tim Keller jacked that from me. He jacked it from you?

Yeah. All right. Yeah. it's it's it's exactly right i think he stole it from i think tim keller jacked that from me he jacked it from you all right yeah well no we should probably wrap this up um yeah any any okay so any last words to people who maybe have been how about this people who have maybe been damaged on some level with the fury movement maybe they've been wrestling with their sexuality maybe again maybe they're a man or woman who is struggling in knowing what it means to be a sexual man even within marriage like it's like i just can't this just isn't working i don't enjoy this i don't know what so let me let me just say this that if you've been hurt shamed damaged by the purity movement i'm i'm sorry. Like, I don't think that that was its intent. I think the hope was to reveal God's desire and design for sex. I just think that at some point it went offline or it went a different direction. And I would really encourage you to look at some of the more recent writings.

I mean, I think there are people like Timothy Keller, even individuals like yourself, or even our ministry that's really trying to redefine and really kind of look at this. I wouldn't say redefine, actually give definition to where there wasn't definition before. Like fill it out a little. Yeah, absolutely. And I would also just say our tendency that happens, even my tendency, is when we come across or we've experienced something painful, and maybe the purity movement was that, we tend to go to the opposite extreme.

Yeah, totally. We tend to move to a place that it's hard for us to even dive into scripture. Or if we do, we go with a lens that, that we were never intended to have. And it blinds us from what is really happening in scripture. And so we read into it based upon our own hurt and shame. And I would just encourage you to, um, challenge yourself to be aware of that. I don't think that we exclude those voices because I think there are some great things that I've learned from people that have critiqued not only the work I do,

but the work of the purity movement and allowed for me to really reflect and be challenged. But I'd also say maybe challenge yourself to come to scripture without a lens and be able to look at the text for what it is and what we see and and i think that what you find is this robust and beautiful framework for sex and sexuality that we don't often get a chance to engage so what about that if we didn't mention yeah what about

joshua harris now yeah i got some thoughts on it so i'm supposed to have him back on my podcast i had him on my podcast um a year ago i reached out to him just recently yeah. I'm supposed to have him back on my podcast. I had him on my podcast a year ago. I reached out to him just recently. I said, hey, I would love to have you back on. I'm not looking for anything. I'm not going to try to reconvert you. I just want to see how you're doing. What are your thoughts on him?

He's like a... I don't know. We talked about this last time. You know, I... Real quick, for the audience. Joshua Harris wrote, I Kissed Dating dating goodbye it was one of the most influential books in the period absolutely right probably one of five books

he was like a poster child yeah right yeah and then he more so that was 2000 99 i think 98 it's probably like 99 yeah okay and then uh was a conservative pastor for a number of years then more recently a several a few years ago kind of said hey i got a lot of things wrong started renouncing some stuff then a i think a year and a half ago told the publishers to like take this book off and then more recently maybe a year ago ended up saying i don't think i'm a christian anymore like yeah yeah which i've got some thoughts on that do you want me to lead with that or do you want me to lead with it and then oh yeah well i i he had this famous instagram post where he basically said um and i i'm not i'm just paraphrasing but it's something like um the god that had um the view of god that i had originally embraced i don't embrace that anymore it was kind of nuanced in a way that was almost like um i'm not christian by by the the the way in which most people define christian that's

yeah but then i know he's coming out of a really conservative kind of narrow context i'm like there's a lot of things in that context that i wouldn't be a christian you know like yeah totally like oh i actually love gay people so i can't be a christ, you know, like, like, Oh, I actually love gay people. So I can't be a Christian anymore. It's kind of like, yeah. Yeah. Like, Whoa. Like not only, I mean, you can even be affirming and be like, there are other brands of Christianity that you're still can believe in the uniqueness of Jesus and salvation by faith. But anyway. Yeah. So I don't know.

I would love to have a conversation with them and see how he's doing really. Yeah. I would love to be on that with you, quite honestly. I think that I first – I wish we would have gotten to see this Josh many more years ago, like just the honest Josh, the one that's really introspective, the one that – like I do follow him on Instagram now. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Has he had any follow-ups? No he hasn't had quite the the post but he's been introspective

like i he's funny but like i i didn't actually know that he was that funny like like you would get that from the book yeah you don't really get that from the book but um a couple of things first i i i've probably said this before but i always like to lead with this when i'm talking about joshua harris he's one of the few christian authors that i appreciated because he would A couple of things. First, I've probably said this before, but I always like to lead with this when I'm talking about Joshua Harris. He's one of the few Christian authors that I appreciated because he would always, in each of his books, speak about something that he learned in the process. He was always a learner. I always, he always, like when he came out with a book that followed I Kissed It and Goodbye. Because that one was different, right?

Yeah, and he critiqued that. He critiqued, not to the degree that he is now, but he critiqued some of what he had written in I Kissed Eating Goodbye, which I, that just didn't happen. And then when he wrote another book on lust and he was looking at it, like he reflects well, like I've always appreciated that. I will say that when it comes to, I will just say, I would love to hear his direct thoughts on what he thinks about that book and the movement he helped give framework to now like what would he have changed would he have just simply not done it would he like uh have done different what what does he see out there that's being done well like oh he's got his own teenage um kids who and what would he direct them to like would he have any kind of sexual guardrails yeah like i i just i i i do think as someone that engages in this as a christian i want to listen

to someone like that because i i i do think even if i might not agree i do think there are things i can totally learn that that like um there there's a book called I think it was called Pure. It was written by a former evangelical that looked at the purity movement and there were things that I learned in that like it's like wow. So there were several non-Christians writing about the purity movement? It was that big?

Just as a sociological phenomenon? Yeah I mean us talking about it we're not even really scraping the surface. Like there is so much harm, pain, and hurt. And what I know is that, and I probably just need to say it again. Like, I'm so sorry. Like, I want for individuals that are a byproduct of that to know that they are loved, they are seen. And that, like, there is a more fuller gospel.

There is a more rich conversation around sex and sexuality that is available and i i i unfortunately i just think the purity movement uh did not allow for that i don't think that like i mean quite honestly you could i'll close with this like i we use the word purity but i always think that the word that people were trying to get at and never quite did and really didn't describe it this way was sanctification like there was something to like because i remember when i was younger i was like where is purity in scripture like and you would find one or two rep but like i felt like what they were looking the way that they were defining it the way that they were it was like we were in search of our sanctification. Yeah, and the Greek word for at least impurity is different than even the opposite. I have to go back and look.

It's a lot more holistic than the way we're using it today. Yeah. Hey, guys, you've been listening to Theology in a Raw. Thank you for watching. If you're watching from YouTube, if you're listening, then thanks for listening. And you've been listening to jason soschnik his uh ministry is project 619 uh website six night project six project 619.org s-i-x-1-9.org s-i-x-1-9.org check it out um it's i think again from my vantage point he is doing as a ministry a ministry, what the Purity Movement was trying to do.

And you've obviously heard some critiques of that. But love everything he does. So check out his stuff. And I think that's it. Let's get out of here. And check out our Christian Sexuality series. Christian Sexuality. By the time this releases, there may not be a website yet. So if you go, if you're interested in a holistic, fresh, embodied, relevant, biblically centered, relational, gracious, holistic curriculum for youth on sex, sexuality, and gender,

then you can sign up for our newsletter at centerforfaith.com, centerforfaith.com. And we will be blasting info through our newsletter on when this product will be released. January 5th is the target release date. And we'll probably start pre-sales in mid-November. So yeah, sign up for our newsletter. I'm sure you'll get your newsletter.

Yep, and we'll get it out too. Yeah, cool. Awesome. it out too see you later guys you