Virgin Nation
Sexual Purity and American Adolescence
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
First taking hold of the American cultural imagination in the 1990s, the sexual purity movement of contemporary evangelicalism has since received considerable attention from a wide range of media outlets, religious leaders, and feminist critics. Virgin Nation offers a history of this movement that goes beyond the Religious Right, demonstrating a link between sexual purity rhetoric and fears of national decline that has shaped American ideas about morality since the nineteenth century.
Concentrating on two of today's best known purity organizations, True Loves Waits and Silver Ring Thing, Sara Moslener's investigation reveals that purity work over the last two centuries has developed in concert with widespread fears of changing traditional gender roles and sexual norms, national decline, and global apocalypse. Moslener highlights a number of points in U.S. history when evangelical beliefs and values have seemed to provide viable explanations for and solutions to widespread cultural crises, resulting in the growth of their cultural and political influence. By asserting a causal relationship between sexual immorality, national decline, and apocalyptic anticipation, leaders have shaped a purity rhetoric that positions Protestant evangelicalism as the salvation of American civilization.
From the purity reformers of the nineteenth century to fundamentalist leaders such as Billy Graham and Carl F.H. Henry, Moslener illuminates the evolution of a strain of purity rhetoric that runs throughout Protestant evangelicalism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Moslener, a professor of religion at Central Michigan University, traces the development of Christian rhetoric around sexual purity through the 19th and 20th centuries, with a focus on the links drawn by evangelists between abstinence and the future of the American nation, predicated on fears of cultural decline. Moslener provides fascinating insights into the initial appearance of moral-purity rhetoric that was used to both support and oppose the burgeoning Victorian feminist movement, and, later, to prompt Cold War era fears of nuclear annihilation. She also critiques media usage among more recent evangelical associations, noting the advantages and dangers of their reliance on parody. The book's major flaw is its brevity; occasionally, it fails to sufficiently elaborate how the intellectual constructs it explores are related, shifting rather abruptly from the Victorian era to post-WWII youth culture with little discussion of the years in between, and neglecting to fully explore the political power and context of the movements it analyzes. Nonetheless, the book is an engaging read that provides valuable historical and intellectual context for an important American religious trend.
