Christian Purity Culture is Pretty Racist, Actually (with Sara Moslener)

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, another hashtag reckoning emerged: #ChurchToo. Religious women are coming forward with stories of being harmed by the tenets of Christian purity culture, which often foster sexual shame and disconnection from one's body, which contribute to environments where abuse is normalized or concealed, and which continue shaping people long after they leave evangelicalism

Scholar of religion Sara Moslener noticed a troubling trend in the stories women told about their purity culture upbringings: Purity culture was part of a much bigger project to gain political power, and it was deeply rooted in racism.

In her book After Purity: Race, Sex, and Religion in White Christian America, Moslener traces how ideals of white women’s sexual purity became entangled with slavery, racial violence, fears of interracial sex, and the construction of whiteness itself.

She says we can't fully reckon with purity culture without confronting the white supremacy at its core.

Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org.

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About the Guest

Sara Moslener is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Religion at Central Michigan University. She is the author of After Purity: Race, Sex, and Religion in White Christian America. She also wrote Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence and created the podcast Pure White: Sexual Purity and White Supremacy.