After Purity with Sara Moslener and Cait West

If the phrase “Purity Culture” means anything to you, this event may be just what you need. Join us in our Grand Rapids event studio for a conversation with author Sara Moslener about her new book, After Purity.

Sara Moslener will be in conversation with author Cait West.

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About the Book:

An intersectional analysis of evangelical purity culture’s influence on gender, sexuality, race, and national identity in the United States.

With a foreword by Linda Kay Klein, author of Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free.

In After Purity, purity scholar Sara Moslener conducts a nuanced investigation of purity culture in white evangelical Christianity, revealing its profound impact on gender, sexuality, race, and national identity in the United States. Moslener shares exclusive stories of participants from her research on the After Purity Project to discuss how purity culture affected women—particularly white women—who grew up in the evangelical church. These stories depict how white supremacy has a hand in constructing idealized “traditional” or “biblical” views of family, white racial identity, sexuality, gender expression, and religion, and how our physical bodies are situated within systems of power and oppression.

With a blend of history, current research, and sustained analysis, Moslener explores how white evangelicalism has become so politically powerful, why gender and sexuality are positioned at the center of debate, and how those debates aim to obscure deeper histories of white evangelical racism. She describes the full disturbing effect of the “True Love Waits” movement and how purity teachings displaced all other forms of religious education in evangelicalism. From her interviewees in the After Purity Project, she shares stories of oppressive personal piety, sexual repression, disembodiment, self-hatred, mandatory hetero-normativity, and the many layers of obligation and shame in sexuality before reaching adulthood and navigating their way out of the church. Moslener also describes her own story of being a teen advocate for purity culture to becoming a researcher, scholar, and advocate for people harmed by purity.

After Purity provides a window into the world of white evangelicalism and how its leaders and political allies have manufactured socio-sexual panic to justify the elimination of sexual and religious diversity that thrive in a flourishing democracy.

Not able to join us? Order your copy here: https://www.schulerbooks.com/book/9780807014998

About the Author:

Sara Moslener is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Religion at Central Michigan University. She is the author of Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence and creator of the podcast Pure White: Sexual Purity and White Supremacy. She lives in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, with her best friend and soulmate, Gibson the Chug.

About the Conversation Partner:

Cait West is a writer, editor, and survivor advocate working to spread awareness about the harms of religious patriarchy and authoritarianism. She was featured in the documentary For Our Daughters and is the author of Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy. She lives in Traverse City, Michigan, with her cat, Sherlock.