Joshua Harris Kissed Purity Culture Goodbye. So Did I.

From the outset, let me state unequivocally that this piece is not an endorsement of promiscuity or risky sexual behavior. It is a coming-of-age story, a story that was encumbered by well-intentioned but misguided religious doctrine. It is my story.

I grew up in a devout Christian household with ground rules regarding dating: There would be no dating — not until you were 18. And sex, that was strictly for marriage.

A stickler for the rules (I’m now a lawyer), I had my first kiss on the night of my 18th birthday. As for sex, let’s just say things became, well, complicated.

Enter evangelical author Joshua Harris.

In middle school, my mother bought me a copy of Harris’ book, Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship, as a “must-read.” Harris had ostensibly ditched dating in favor of “courtship” and was advocating his blueprint for that process. Admittedly, the book didn’t have much bearing on my life at that time: I was 13 years old. However, the seeds of fundamentalist sexual doctrine were firmly planted.

Fast forward a few years.

On the last day of my high school sophomore year, I met the boy who would become my first true love. Ethan* had recently become a Christian, and that laid a foundation for the real connection we forged that day. When school reopened in the fall, attending youth group at my church established a social connection for us outside of school. By the end of our junior year, we realized we had begun developing romantic feelings for each other. We spoke on the phone almost every night that summer. I attended youth events at his church. And as our senior year got underway, my parents bent a little and allowed me to go with Ethan to our school’s Homecoming dance. It was two weeks shy of my 18^th birthday. It was magical. My dress. The hair and makeup. The way we danced and flirted and held hands. All the while, Ethan remained a complete gentleman.

Two weeks later, my parents threw me a party to celebrate my 18^th birthday. I was beyond excited to see Ethan again outside of school. Somehow I knew: By night’s end, I would no longer have virgin lips. When our friends left for the evening, Ethan and I found ourselves under the moonlight, gazing into each other’s eyes. And then, it happened. Our first kiss. Who kissed whom first remained a long-standing debate. But that was our turning point. We had become a couple.

In the months that followed, our love grew. Though Ethan and I saw each other almost daily, we wrote letters to each other professing our love, our emotions, and our vulnerabilities on a deeper level. We also began to indulge in our first intimate experiences. Sex, of course, was still off the table — every youth group message made that abundantly clear. As Christians, we had also decided that “honoring God” meant saving sex for marriage. And so, we closed in on the boundaries leading up to intercourse — making out, caressing, and petting. However, internal alarms inevitably kicked in as we neared “the line” that represented “falling into sin.” I often wondered, outside of intercourse, how far was too far to remain “pure” in God’s eyes?

Christian messages explicitly exhort women not to cause their “brothers” to “stumble” through immodest dress and “sexual temptation.” Our bodies were not our own, we were told, but God’s temple. God had died for us, so the least we could do was live for Him. How, then, was I to navigate this new romantic territory in a God-honoring way?

I dug up my old, worn Boy Meets Girl and read it again through the eyes of an 18-year-old. Harris’ “gems” for courtship were to use lips for communication and leave kissing for the wedding day. Harris even recounted an incident when he climbed out of a hammock, away from his future wife, because he was having “impure” thoughts.

Well, for us, that horse had long bolted through that gate.

Harris’ ideas sounded extreme, puritanical even. However, I liked the notion of “romance with purpose” — dating intentionally with the goal of one day pursuing marriage.

I was particularly drawn to Harris’ story about Rich and Christy, a young, college-bound couple, much like Ethan and me, who were very much in love. Christy’s father — portrayed as a paradigm of godly wisdom — felt his daughter and her young suitor were not ready for the commitment of marriage and, thus, should not be dating. At his urging, the couple severed the relationship that was “distracting them from serving God,” exiting each other’s lives “to lay the relationship down at God’s feet.” Years later, upon the realization that Rich and Christy’s feelings were still very much alive, Christy’s father urged the couple, this time, to reunite and begin a “courtship.” Their romance culminated in an engagement that could rival The Notebook.

That story began to weigh on me. My feminist consciousness had not yet awakened to the fact that such a narrative was reinforcing a repressive system of patriarchy in which a young woman’s agency (her freewill, sexual autonomy, and decisions regarding her own life) was being inappropriately “guarded” by her father.

Toward the end of our senior year, Ethan got me a copy of Harris’ first book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, written in 1997 when Harris was just 21 years old.

Big mistake.

Harris’ age, his lack of real-life experience, and the likelihood that he was merely regurgitating the dominant Christian influences in his own life were lost upon us as 18-year-olds. Harris had become a revered “author” in national Christian circles, circles that, ironically, were seeing many of their own leaders — Benny Hinn, Paula White, Eddie Long, et. al — “fall from grace” due to scandals involving sexual impropriety. Harris hadn’t even had a real relationship when he wrote the first book that would catapult him into the spotlight of evangelical purity culture. Yet, he was being heralded as an “expert” on Christian relationships.

Ethan and I were heading off to different colleges. Questions swirled. Could our soon-to-be long-distance relationship work? If marriage was not on the table, weren’t we just leaving ourselves open to temptation? At least four years of college lay ahead. Our passion was real. But like Christy and Rich, had our relationship become a distraction from serving God?

I prayed — hard — and, with Harris’ words swirling in my head, I knew what “God” wanted me to do: I had to break up with Ethan. I had to be a good Christian and lay down my love for Ethan for my “first Love” — God.

It would become the first of several such agonizing “breakups.”

The next four years in college would be tumultuous. I lost my adoptive father to cancer and I struggled between what I believed God wanted me to do and my love for this good, supportive, loving man who stood by me in one of the hardest times of my life. Ethan had become my best friend and, even though we were “on” and “off” again due to our struggle with the messaging of Harris’ books, we were always “on” in our hearts.

Christian women are taught that one of the tragedies of premarital sex is regret over not saving the “gift” of virginity for their future husbands. But judgmental future husband aside, would I truly regret a sexual relationship with someone who had become such an important part of my life, even if he never became my husband? Sex or no sex, Ethan would forever hold a special place in my heart. Therefore, no. Our abstinence boiled down to what we believed God expected.

And soon enough, it hit me: If we shouldn’t date until we were ready for marriage — and we were, in fact, going to keep dating — then we needed to get married! I wanted to wake up to Ethan, to come home to him, to enjoy him without the stress. His reassurances that we shared a common vision of our future as husband and wife were sincere. However, he was equally sure that he wasn’t yet ready for that commitment. He was taking a long route toward his degree and still living at home.

Resentment began to set in on my part. Maybe it was my OCD (seriously). But I agonized over feelings of disobedience for carrying on a relationship that was “outside of God’s proper timing.” Ethan was the man I wanted to marry and have sex with. If our feelings were mutual, couldn’t he see how the lack of consummation of our relationship was fueling discontent? How was he coping in that regard, when I clearly wasn’t?

Our arguments escalated.

After graduation, I landed a political internship in Washington, D.C. that would’ve required a prolonged long-distance relationship. By then, already five years in, and despite the promise ring Ethan had given me, I was tired — tired of disappointing God, tired of pressuring my boyfriend into a commitment he wasn’t ready for, tired of the sexual frustration. And I called it quits — for good. If God wanted us to be together, He would make it happen.

A year and a half later, Ethan proposed to someone else.

Eight months prior, he’d called to say that he had begun seeing someone. He wanted me to know he was grateful for our relationship. He wasn’t going to make the same mistakes he made with me, he said. I suspect his quick proposal might’ve been about not wanting to let another woman he cared about slip away.

Still, when I heard of his engagement, I was heartbroken. A part of me still hoped for reconciliation in true “Rich and Christy” fashion. But that was clearly now a pipe dream. For months, I was devastated by “what could’ve been.” I grieved the loss of the future we had mapped out in 2 a.m. conversations. I grieved the loss of my first love. I grieved the loss of my best friend. In those moments when I felt completely gutted, my mom would lay with me in bed and physically hold me till I fell asleep.

A few weeks before Ethan’s wedding day, I gained enough composure to write him a final letter. It is, to date, one of the most heartfelt letters I’ve written in my life.

As his friend, I wanted to congratulate him:

“[A]lthough I still ache at times, I can genuinely say that I am at the place where I can truly be happy for you, even if that happiness doesn’t include me.”

As his former girlfriend of five years, I also wanted closure:

“…I just want you to know that I never stopped loving you, and even if it’s in the tiniest trace, I don’t think that will ever die. I just love you enough to let you go.”

It’s now seven years since Ethan and I ended our five-year “courtship.” And a lot has changed in my life. For starters, I am no longer an evangelical Christian; the God I believe in isn’t the God of the patriarchy up in the sky policing women’s vaginas. I date, not court. And I am committed only to reserving sex for the context of a loving, healthy relationship. I put no pressure on myself to prematurely race to the altar. And I no longer see “purity” through the lens of sexual experience — or lack thereof — as if that is a barometer for one’s morality. 

It was interesting, therefore, to see a recent feature story on Joshua Harris, published by NPR on December 17, 2018. Harris, it seems, has evolved regarding some of his ideas, acknowledging candidly that, “Maybe there are problems with my book.”

Ha!

Though Harris has not completely renounced his views, he’s recognized enough flaws to cease further publication of his books. Which is a good thing. The profound, deleterious effects his views have had on adolescent readers like me and the romantic trajectories he stunted in the lives of millions of young people cannot be overstated.

“My mom made me break up with my first and basically only boyfriend, in large part, because of this nonsense,” an old friend confided after hearing about Harris’ redirection. “I’m almost 30, and the most I’ve ever done is hold hands! I don’t know how to date or even flirt. I’m happy by myself, but I feel like I wouldn’t even begin to know how to go about getting a girlfriend or a boyfriend.”

For better or worse, Harris was a prominent voice in the purity culture movement that impacted an entire generation of evangelical youth. To say that Harris himself wasn’t exploited by those seeking to reinforce extreme fundamentalist views would likely be inaccurate. Harris now discloses the pressure his book and its ideas put on his own marriage to his wife, Shannon.
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Thankfully, most of us will have our epiphanies. Through life experience, we live, learn, unlearn, grow, and evolve. But some won’t. Which is why 50-year-old virgins exist, and it is time, perhaps, to challenge fundamentalist teachings that condone this.

Let us recognize that, in “Biblical times” — and cultures still dominated by patriarchal religious dogma — women were considered property, classified with no regard for their sexual agency. Exodus 20:17, in fact, classifies women as chattel, alongside other “belongings” such as servants, oxen and donkeys.

Women were expected to marry men who raped them, if their fathers were paid the proper “bride-price,” and to marry their next of kin when their husbands died to dutifully carry on his name. Even Lot, reportedly, handed over his own daughters to be violently raped so that two male guests would be spared the wrath of his city. That was the sorry state of women who were subject to “purity” laws — essentially, they were pawns. Because God forbid that a man’s property or reputation was, somehow, sullied. But just as we don’t rely on 5,000 year-old data to inform modern scientific knowledge, perhaps, it’s not the best idea to rely on 5,000 year-old texts that have been used to subjugate women to inform a modern view of female sexuality.

Thankfully, in 2019, in the era of the “Me Too” movement, a new generation of badass women are growing up with a healthier understanding of their sexual agency. They have learned that their bodies are none but their own, that abstinence does not define their worth, and that sexual ethics should center on lessons like consent, open and honest communication, and mutual empowerment.

Modern T.V. shows like “Jane the Virgin,” now deliver more honest messaging that vows of abstinence until marriage, upheld for so long by “abuelas” as the ideal, far from guarantee smooth-sailing into and within marriage.

For better or worse, the choice to enter and exit a relationship, and the pace at which it progresses, is yours to make. It’s time to kiss the purity culture goodbye and say hello, once again, to you.
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* Name changed to protect his privacy.
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© Copyright 2019 Lauren A Levy. All rights reserved.
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RELATED ARTICLE: Even While Apologizing, “Purity Culture” Advocate Joshua Harris is Screwing Up By Sarabeth Caplin, Patheos, December 19, 2018.
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