Pure

July 15, 2018
A young woman raised as a conservative Evangelical Christian reflects on her community's sexual shaming and the psychological scars that it left.By any normal standards, Klein's first relationship was about as good as it gets; her high school boyfriend was smart, good-looking, and respectful, and he made her knees buckle. But the author wasn't raised with normal standards. In her community, governed by a strict Evangelical church, not only was sex forbidden, but the onus was on women to enforce that nearly impossible rule. While men were forgiven for impure thoughts and actions, girls and women were blamed for "eliciting men's lust." After Klein and her boyfriend kissed, she panicked, worried that she had committed an unpardonable sin. Citing a message from God, she ended the relationship. Though she eventually distanced herself from the church, the community's view on women and sex left an indelible mark. (At hyperliberal Sarah Lawrence College, she was probably the only virgin on birth control to ask for a pregnancy test, just in case.) Klein examines the damage through an admirably candid look at her own personal life as well as extensive interviews with women (and one trans man) who were raised in similar circumstances. In between anecdotes, the author quotes a variety of sources, from feminist Jessica Valenti to the magazine Christianity Today. In a particularly mind-boggling passage, the author writes that some purity advocates suggest that women set aside "date nights" for Jesus. Klein's personal story is fascinating, but it is the larger context that makes the book important. Politics, religion, and gender are more inextricably linked than ever before; Vice President Mike Pence, for example, is part of the purity movement and doesn't allow himself to be alone with any woman other than his wife, to avoid temptation. In the context of this book, that fact becomes all the more harrowing.Timely and relevant, particularly in the age of Trump and #MeToo.

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July 23, 2018
In her contentious debut book, Klein explores how purity culture within evangelical Christianity causes girls and young women to feel shame about sex and sexuality. In accessible prose, she shares intimate stories from her childhood in California—her failed attempts to have sex with a boyfriend, her difficult relationship with her body—to illustrate how evangelical purity culture had a traumatic effect on her. In addition to her personal experiences, Klein includes a history of the evangelical purity movement and shares extensive anecdotal evidence about sex and shame within purity culture from interviews she conducted, including a particularly heart-wrenching account of a girl overburdened by the blame of her family after she is raped while intoxicated. Though Klein’s research provides a snapshot of a narrow group of women (many of whom are from her youth group), she draws in additional relevant literature, such as I Thought It Was Just Me by Brené Brown, to help bolster her argument about the negative long-term effects of sexual shame on women within evangelical Christianity. This scathing condemnation of purity culture and all that goes with it will surely cause debate within evangelical circles.

October 15, 2018

According to debut author Klein, the Christianity of her youth was actively weaponized against female sexuality. Woefully misinformed (some might say uninformed) about the most basic aspects of human biology, the author anxiously took numerous pregnancy tests while on the pill and still a virgin. Eventually, Klein discovered she wasn't alone, which led her on a 12-year journey to connect with other women--some still evangelical, some decidedly not--in order to document the realities of gender-based sexual shaming. Using interviews and evidence-based scholarship, Klein demonstrates the pervasive and often long-term suffering evangelical girls and women experience that causes them to question whether a healthy, sexually active individual can ever attain the love of Christ, let alone eternal salvation. VERDICT A potent account of purity culture that deserves our attention.--Sandra Collins, Byzantine Catholic Seminary Lib., Pittsburgh

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