Rhetoric Race and Religion
In a recent summit on human trafficking at Johns Hopkins University, kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart made some surprising remarks about why victims of rape may not try to escape their captors. Her conclusion? They, like she, may have been raised in a culture that says a woman’s worth in rooted in her sexual purity. Recounting an anecdote from a childhood teacher who compared having sex to being chewed like a piece of gum, Smart, a Mormon, tells her audience that she “felt crushed” after being raped: “Who could want me now? I felt so dirty and so filthy. I understand, so easily, all too well, why someone wouldn’t run.”
Smart might be the most famous figure to speak out against her conservative religious culture’s sexual ethos, but she’s not alone. Increasingly in recent weeks, prominent evangelical writers and bloggers have also decried the emphasis placed on sexual purity in conservative Christianity. While exposés of evangelical purity culture are hardly new (see, for one, Andy Kopsa’s recent article in The Atlantic), what is noteworthy is that these criticisms are beginning to emerge from within conservative religious circles themselves.
The central thrust of these evangelical critiques is a rejection of the “damaged goods” metaphor. On her high-profile website, New York Times bestselling author Rachel Held Evans calls out the “horrific object lessons,” like the one described by Smart, which aim to convince young people that “premarital sex ruins a person for good.” Sarah Bessey, author of the forthcoming book Jesus Feminist, shares her own story of feeling condemned by the “true love waits” rhetoric of her church, which conveyed the message that she, as a non-virgin, was now “disqualified from true love.”
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