#KatherineBushnell vs #evangelical #purityculture 🧵
@kkdumez #ANewGospelForWomen
“…in opposition to the perceived promiscuity of contemporary society, which they attribute to the influences of modern feminism and its sexual ethic of liberation,
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many evangelicals have attempted to resurrect the nineteenth-century idealization of female purity. Through an elaborate “purity culture” consisting of scripted purity pledges, father-daughter balls, purity rings, and the rhetoric of warriors and princesses,
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evangelicals have worked to reinstitute an ethic of feminine restraint.” Some similarities to Bushnell, “However, whereas contemporary evangelical purity culture focuses chiefly on the purity of young women—
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effectively re-establishing a sexual double standard reminiscent of Victorian morality—Bushnell ardently opposed such unequal measures. Remaining vigilant to the harm that such ideals could inflict upon women,
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Bushnell preferred instead to emphasize the need for men 👀 to exhibit purity and restraint. And whereas evangelical purity culture reinforces patriarchal relationships by assigning husbands and fathers prominent roles in guarding the purity of their wives and daughters,
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Bushnell denounced patriarchy, female domesticity, and any notion of women’s inferiority or subordination. Most significant, Bushnell situated her ethic of restraint within a theology of women’s social and religious emancipation.
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She opposed sexual liberation, birth control, and abortion not because she feared the emancipatory powers of female sexuality, but because she was convinced that the new sexual ethic would ultimately disempower women and play into the hands of sinful men.”
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