EPISODE OVERVIEW

For many of us raised in the Evangelical tradition, we're familiar with what the term "purity culture" means on the surface: teaching children to save their first time having sex until they're married to that one person with whom God had always intended them to be. However, as time went by and the scars began to manifest, we realized what it entailed deeper down: sexual shame, sexual silence, and social and structural hierarchies that overwhelmingly subjugated and victimized young women. In her book, Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, Linda Kay Klein interviewed a number of women over a 12-year period who were raised in the purity culture movement to get intimate perspectives on the environments that foster it, the damage that comes from it, and ultimately, the healing that can begin when separating from it. 

Interviewers: Jim Rohner and Jonathan Williams

ABOUT LINDA KAY KLEIN

Linda Kay Klein is an author, speaker, teaching faculty at Claremont Lincoln University and the President and Founder of Break Free Together, a not-for-profit that uses story exchange to help people release shame and claim their whole selves. Raised in purity culture, she's made it her mission to coach and consult with both people who experience the PTSD-like symptoms that have arisen from purity culture and organizations who are striving to establish a greater good.