Public Theology is based on the work of Zach W. Lambert, Pastor of Restore, an inclusive church in Austin, Texas. He and his wife, Amy Lambert, contribute to and moderate this account. Zach’s first book, Better Ways to Read the Bible, is now available wherever books are sold.
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When I was fifteen, I met a boy. He was a friend of a youth group friend, and he came to youth camp with my youth group. This was the summer after my freshman year of high school which, for a number of reasons, had been a pretty bad year for me. I broke up with my first sit-together-at-lunch and write-each-other-letters and hold-hands-in-the-hallway “boyfriend” in January because I felt convicted that he wasn’t a Christian. When I think back on it now, I believe that *maybe* my youth group leader (one year my senior) accusing me of “missionary dating,” as well as a number of youth group moments of emotional manipulation, may have had more to do with that than the holy spirit, but who’s to say.
This new boy was different from the boys from my school. He played the drums. He dyed his hair. He could not care less about sports or hunting or country music. He owned a skateboard and went to a huge high school in the suburbs. I was instantly interested.
I loved the attention I got from him (even though I knew I was not supposed to). I started attending youth group more regularly, hoping he was there. I wasn’t old enough to date yet– my parents had a very strict rule about not going on dates until I turned sixteen– but I texted him and chatted with him on AOL instant messenger and looked forward to seeing him on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. I even invited him to the Sadie Hawkins dance at my school, where he immediately walked into my high school gym, surrounded by corn fields, and said, “This place is weird. I don’t like it.”
Just a few months after that dance, my grandfather, with whom I was extremely close, died two days before my sixteenth birthday. I didn’t hear from the boy for either occurrence. Maybe his phone was broken? Or he was sick? Or had gotten in a car accident? (Scenes from You’ve Got Mail about “the rooftop killer” are now playing in my mind.)
I was certain there would be a grand gesture on my sixteenth birthday– I could date now! Hadn’t he been counting down the days like I had? Where was the boombox outside of my window? The flowers he was surely going to send with a card declaring his intentions? Wasn’t I a prize to be treasured?
I remember leaving tennis practice on my birthday, staring at my Virgin mobile pay-as-you-go phone, and feeling the anger well up within me. Within the week, I expressed that anger. He responded with something along the lines of, “I actually started dating another girl. She’s a lot like you but she’s old enough to date! You would really like her.” He even referenced her pink hair, something my parents would never let me do. I furiously typed back, “For future reference, don’t ever say that to another girl. Ever.”
This tense relationship continued. We flirted off and on, but the damage was done. I would seek him out before taking communion and tell him I was sorry for harboring resentment toward him. I even confessed my lingering grudge in a Chicken Express parking lot on the way home from a youth retreat where I had felt convicted about not forgiving others, him being chief among them. He always looked a little afraid in these moments.
Thank God (truly) that I can look back on the absurdity of it all and laugh. I was one huge walking red flag and we had almost nothing in common. I was preparing for marriage, and he was a high school junior trying to have fun. He had a Honda Accord and he wanted a girl to pick up, drive around, and maybe, as Erin Moon says, kiss a little. But I was a Serious Susan, and kissing was not at the top of my to do list. No wonder he found a pink-haired girl who was “like [me] but could date” to kiss in his car. I’m sure she was a much better time than I would have been. I honestly don’t blame him.
I have this vivid memory of a conversation we had during the awkward period between meeting him and realizing that we were not meant to be, that period clearly involving a lot more pining on my part than his. We were having a conversation about kissing– he had done it, and I had not. He proudly stated the number of girls whom he had kissed, and I was shocked. “Don’t you feel bad about it?” I asked, completely earnest. He laughed and told me that he did not, in fact, feel one ounce of guilt.
How could this be?! I was certain that I was honoring God by not giving my kisses away to random high school boys. I was even praying for my future husband to remain chaste for me as I had for him. But this boy, who was a member of my youth group band (the highest honor) was out there kissing girls willy-nilly. And not feeling bad about it?!
Would you, dear reader, like to know why he did not feel bad about it?
Because his messaging was completely different from mine. While I was being told that my bra straps could be seen through my oversized t-shirt and were probably making the boys in my youth group lust (and, therefore, cheat on their future wives in their minds because of me), he was being told that his birthright was to meet a girl, marry her, and become king of his own castle where she would cook and clean and take care of his offspring. Where I was being chastised for “front hugging” a boy in my youth group (true story), he was thinking about skateboarding and his favorite bands and driving that Honda Accord wherever he wanted. While I was physically drafting a handwritten list of things I would accept in a future husband (as well as the things I would not), he was counting the number of girls he had made out with, guilt-free, and was looking for the next.
And while I previously berated myself for being so serious, so little fun, so future-focused at the ripe age of fifteen, it is absolutely no wonder that I was.
Let’s back up a little:
The summer after seventh grade, my family moved. I went from attending a large suburban school (with Zach) to a teeny tiny but highly esteemed rural district. My Christian faith and identity as a good Christian girl was very important to me at that time, but it felt pretty personal– I didn’t feel particularly connected to the kids I went to church with but God mattered deeply to me.
When we moved, my family started going to a church one town over. The preaching was great, the people were nice, and there was a very active youth group. It was an instant community when we didn’t know anyone, but because we lived outside of town, my brother and I weren’t as active as many of the other kids. I felt a bit like an outsider in this group. The kids were nice enough, but I was shy and didn’t have the desire to put myself out there. It was all very overwhelming, which may be the reason that I didn’t find it odd that my Sunday School teacher, an older woman in the church, was teaching each week from a workbook titled, “God’s Priceless Woman: A Bible Course for All Ages.”
Here’s the description:
“A life-changing study that addresses the concerns of young, old, married and single women in light of God’s Word. Based on Titus 2:3-5. Each phrase in the passage is studied in at least two lessons. A character study of a woman in the Bible provides either a positive or negative example, followed by a broad based overview of what the Bible says on the topic. For example on the idea of “not being given to slander” the character study is of Miriam who because of gossip against Moses was struck by God with leprosy. Then we study the verses in Scripture on positive uses of the tongue. Designed for private, one-on-one, group study and homeschool. This highly popular study has continued in print for fifteen years.”
Was it weird that we were learning things about submitting to our husbands, not drinking too much wine, keeping busy at home, and loving our children? At age thirteen? This woman certainly didn’t think so. Titus 2:3-5 was very clear about our roles as females in the church, and thirteen was as good a time as any to start preparing.
Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.
Titus 2:3-5
Maybe this is actually the reason I didn’t make an effort to get involved. What thirteen-year-old should be learning about keeping a home and making her husband happy? I was still going through puberty and was years away from understanding how sex even worked.
I knew that this group of people thought that this was my singular hope and destiny. I, a fairly smart girl with decent athletic prowess, would one day be blessed to stay at home and mind my house, husband, and a gaggle of his children. And even though I did not like the way that this workbook framed this weird nineteenth century version of the tradwife ideal, deep down this was my ultimate goal. I wasn’t sure how I would balance this with my desire to have my own interests and the possibility of a career, but if you had made me choose, in that upstairs Sunday School room on the floral couches with the girl who asked for prayer for her lizard each week, I would have chosen the domestic life presented to me as God’s best and my highest calling.1
Again, I was thirteen. It would be another four years before I even kissed a boy, and I was already mapping my life around an unknown future husband.
In the years following, I got more involved at church as my difficulties at school increased. Church became a safe haven from the stress of school sports and small town politics. I made deep friendships with many of the kids in my youth group and many of us went all in on the things I have since deconstructed: purity culture, culture wars, reading the right books and attending See You at the Pole rallies, carrying our bibles in our backpacks and abstaining from sex, drugs, and (secular) rock and roll.
There were cracks, though. I was observant enough to know that what was being said to the boys was different than what we were being fed. And while it felt like all of the pressure was being put on us (and much of it was), it was damaging to the boys, too. They were painted as animalistic in their need for sex, their inability to control themselves around two-piece swimsuits or errant bra straps under tank tops (although their lust would have ultimately been pinned on the wearer of said bra). Toxic masculinity and homophobia2 and gender roles were being shoved down their throats just like restriction and modesty were being shoved down ours.
The guys were being taught damaging theology, but they were centered as the heroes– God’s ultimate creation– while we, the girls, were being taught that we were an afterthought. They were Adam, exercising dominion over creation (not cultivating the goodness of the garden, but that’s an article for another day), and we were Eve, the eternal temptress. They were made as God’s handiwork, and we were made for them.
But then we screwed it all up. Dumb, duplicitous, gullible, sexy Eve. Had she just stayed in her lane, Adam never would have stumbled and we’d all still be living in God’s perfect world, naked and unashamed.
What a convenient story, and we’re all still dealing with the ramifications.
When I recently read Anna Rollins’s book, Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl, it all came back to me: the pressure, the posture, and the positivity surrounding what women could and should be in the church. It wasn’t restriction, it was elevation to the highest calling. It was separate but equal, different but divine. Anna, 1200 miles away and my same age, was experiencing the same exact messaging.
She, too, learned to pray in the right order: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication, knowing that you had to say things to God in the right order if he was going to consider granting your request.
She, too, believed that the rapture was imminent and she may not make it, her anxiety piqued when she found herself alone at the grocery store– her initial belief that her mom and brother had been raptured rather than in another aisle.
And Anna, too, believed that her body was a problem, just as I was taught:
“Even at the age of ten, I knew that my flesh was a liability and a stumbling block to men. The main way to control men’s insatiable lusts and desires, I learned in Bible class, was to control my own body, to be fully clothed, to be chaste.
The reward for my good and careful behavior would come in the form of a savior– that is, a husband.
Any future that did not involve being a helpmeet to a husband at home was spoken of by pastors, by teachers, even by my parents (who tried to find balance in the midst of hyperconservatism) as failure. This meant I had to learn how to attract a husband. Carefully, without making him lust. I needed to be friendly but not a flirt. Outgoing but not loud. Attractive but not sexy. Submissive but not needy. It was a precarious task. I felt the weight of the situation.”3
No wonder I was planning and plotting and freaking boys out with my need for eternal commitment, making mental plans for how I would keep their home and mother their children. No wonder Anna was physically shrinking herself through disordered eating and compulsive exercise.
We were both squelching our desires in order to make ourselves more acceptable to those around us and, in turn, acceptable to God.
And while Anna and I were being fed this patriarchy as the gospel of Jesus Christ, many of our parents didn’t even know. It’s easy to look in from the outside and ask, “Where were the parents?” But rest assured, dear reader, my parents were very much in my business. More than I would have liked (sorry, dad, I know you’re reading this). It’s not that they weren’t involved, it’s that this effort was new and carefully crafted by pastors and politicians who were planning a conservative revolution. Neither of my parents grew up in Evangelical churches, and they weren’t privy to the messaging being slipped into our Sunday School lessons, the words whispered across sleeping bags at church lock-ins (an activity I am now horrified by), and pushed in popular Christian dating books.
I’m also not sure that the adult leaders of my youth group were aware of how harmful these ideas truly were. Many of them had engaged in premarital sex (and told us how great it was at the time), then went on to feel extremely guilty over their sins much later in life. They were trying to shield us from the consequences of these sinful choices, to protect us from the pain they had experienced (again, much later and without any real repercussions). They were scared of “the sex-crazed culture” and needed us to fall in line– thank god for True Love Waits and I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
I believe that most of them– parents and volunteers alike– were doing their best. They truly cared for us and wanted what was best for us. And wasn’t church the best place for that? If they could keep eyes on us and feed us a steady diet of prescriptive gender roles and sexuality scripts over pizza and Contemporary Christian Music, we would all be okay.
What they didn’t know is that this messaging would have detrimental consequences for many of us who were just needing a place to fit in during those awkward middle and high school years. They didn’t know that harping on sex before marriage as the worst thing that we could choose would actually lead to painful and shameful sex after marriage for those of us who tried our best to stay “pure.”
“Many women who have grown up in purity culture respond to sexual situations in a way similar to assault victims. We respond as though we’ve been abused. We’ve been taught that our bodies are a liability to our souls, that our eternal salvation is contingent upon our ability to maintain corporeal control.”4
They didn’t know that their preaching of women as passive sexual creatures waiting to respond to the animalistic tendencies of men would create unhealthy sexual dynamics even within the most loving, respectful relationships.
“When we’re taught that our inherent, intuitive cravings are bad, it really affects our ability to enjoy sex or food. It’s not until we can believe that our bodies are inherently good and worthy of pleasure and joy that we can begin to heal.”5
They didn’t know that we were internalizing the message that men desired but women didn’t, that men pursued and women waited to be wooed, that men conquered while women deferred, that men made their wants known while women kept their needs to themselves.
“The solution to the difficulties of desire was simple: refrain. Say no to all of it. And the promise for this self-denial was a desirable body and a happy marriage The more you withheld, the more blessings you would receive. It expanded the health-and-wealth gospel to include romance, reducing Christianity to a simple equation of sacrifice and reward.
As a teenager, I learned that there was no sin that seemed more egregious and unforgivable than sex before marriage. Women’s bodies– what we could not do with them– was the focus of many sermons and Bible studies in my youth group.”6
We had no script outside of making ourselves small, taking what was given, and never speaking up. We were told we would never need more than that.
Our worth was tied to our ability to fulfill our husbands (literally as often as they wanted without the option to say no), to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with more Christian babies. But that directive didn’t work for a number of reasons:
Because sex was too painful, too shameful for women coming out of purity culture. We now know that women who come out of religiously conservative households are twice as likely to experience pain or discomfort during sex, a condition called vaginismus which both Anna and I experienced
Because the wife’s libido was greater than her husband’s
Because a husband had been addicted to porn for years and did not share this with his wife until after the wedding
Because the couple was not actually well suited for marriage but got married because that was the only way to have God-approved sex
Because children didn’t come
…or husbands were abusive
…or people deconstructed
…or women decided they wanted to use their brains and their voices, too
…or one (or both) of the partners were gay
The list is lengthy, but these scenarios were not presented as options. If I was good– if Anna was good– if we followed the rules, our husbands would be happy, our wombs active, and our rightness with God intact.
But you and I both know that this isn’t how it works. I do now, but I didn’t then. I truly thank God that Zach and I survived– that Anna and her husband made it through– when so much was stacked against us. I have zero judgment for the couples who tried and simply could not make it work, for the people who threw faith away altogether due to the pain of enduring this messaging, giving it their best, just to be demonized anyway. That could have been any of us, and we’re not any better because we didn’t get divorced.
I have so much compassion for thirteen-year-old Amy in that Sunday School class, sixteen-year-old Amy checking her phone for a declaration of love on her birthday, for twenty-one-year-old newlywed Amy crying tears of pain after another failed attempt to enjoy the sex for which she had waited so long. And I have enduring compassion for present day, thirty-six-year-old Amy who is doing her best to process, heal, and help others who have come out on the other side.
So many of us were given a lie, then blamed when the truth was revealed.
Thankfully, I believe in a God who cares much more about me, a being he created and loves deeply, than the children I can bear or my ability to keep my husband happy. I believe that my experiences can inform my parenting while giving grace to my parents who were truly and actively trying to keep me safe, not knowing the consequences of a political movement by the religious right. And I will continue fighting to believe that I am enough, that I am okay, that I am forgiven and whole and good. That I am safe in this body, that it is not less than that of a man. That I belong to God and to myself, and that I can share my body as I see fit with a husband I truly love and respect.
If you enjoyed this post and want to share the word, please like, share, restack, leave a comment, or subscribe! If you are interested in a personalized copy of Better Ways to Read the Bible or art inspired by the book, check out our new store.
If you are interested in hearing more from Anna Rollins about her book, please click below for a candid conversation about scrupulosity (religious OCD), marriage after purity culture, and more. Her book, Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl, will be our December book of the month, so keep an eye out for that post.
And lastly, we are happy to cover subscription costs for anyone who needs it but can’t afford it at this time. If you would like to join the Public Theology community and gain access to our paid subscriber content (which we keep behind a paywall for the privacy and connection of our community) but cannot afford to do so, please message Amy Lambert directly.
For the record, I stayed home with my kids for the majority of their baby, toddler, and preschool years. I am clearly not against women staying home— I am opposed to telling women they must stay home in order to be right in God’s eyes. There are a million reasons that women choose to work or not work when they have children, and those choices are theirs to make. It’s also important to note that many women don’t have the choice due to financial, geographical, or other reasons. This issue is complicated and reducing it to soundbites does not support women in their attempt to raise healthy, happy, well-adjusted kids.
Several of my youth group friends have come out as gay or, for those who remain in more conservative circles, “same sex attracted” (SSA).
Famished by Anna Rollins, pages 22-23
Famished by Anna Rollins, page 123
Famished by Anna Rollins, page 133
Famished by Anna Rollins, pages 98-99
Wow! I wanted to restack this entire thing. Wow! It is so incredible to read your story, Amy, the absurdity and heartbreak of it all — and what a gift to be in a place to believe that you belong to God and to yourself, not to a man, or a very rigid behavioral script
I am so, so grateful you are recommending Famished to your community. I hope it helps readers feel seen and find healing. Thank you for everything ❤️
Amy ~ this made me tear up. I raised teenagers during this time, and although I didn't learn much about the purity culture (they weren't talking about what they were learning at youth group), I did get the message early on that my husband was the spiritual leader of our family and that I needed to submit...even to emotional abuse. He wasn't a "leader" type, so I always felt "ripped off," which probably led to some of his later adulterous affairs and drinking. Much later, I learned that my daughter was in a youth group where the youth pastor had raped one of the boys, and another one had raped one of the girls. The church brought the victims into a forced "forgiveness" session, and the leader did not even lose his job. If the victim could not forgive, then it was the victim who was sinning. I feel guilt to this day for not knowing, for trusting people with my children without overseeing things myself. Thank God, like you, Amy, they grew up and are loving and successful in their relationships. They know the truth, and the truth has set them free.