White evangelicals
Credit: Michael S. Williamson

When Linda Kay Klein was 13, she joined an evangelical church that prized sexual “purity” and taught that men and boys were sexually weak.

According to Klein’s faith, girls and women were responsible for keeping male sexual desire in check by wearing modest clothing, maintaining a sexless mind and body and taking a “purity pledge,” in which they promised to remain virgins until marriage.

Looking back now, Klein says, “It was all about how [a woman] needed to be a good Christian by protecting them from the threat that is you — the threat that is your body. The threat that is your sexuality.”

Klein says the central tenet of the purity movement is to delay the age at which young people first have sex. But in practice, she says, the movement is most effective at stifling women’s sexuality and creating a “deep, long-lasting shame” among its practitioners.

Because she was a curvy teen, Klein was often chastised for not being modest enough. Even after leaving the church when […]