Habituating purity: evangelical Christian purity culture and its impact on young women in Great Britain

This project explores the presence of evangelical Christian purity culture in Britain and
its impact on young women within this context. Purity culture refers to efforts in evangelical Christianity – a movement within Protestant Christianity – to encourage adolescents and young adults to commit to sexual abstinence until heterosexual marriage. This phenomenon emerged in the early 1990s in the USA, typified by the wearing of rings and signing of pledges to demonstrate a commitment to abstinence. Thus far, its presence and influence has mostly been examined within the USA, but there is increasing attention to its international reach; this project constitutes the first substantial study to exclusively investigate purity culture in Great Britain.

Drawing on a survey and interviews, this thesis argues for the presence of purity culture
in a specifically British iteration – less overt than its American counterpart but nonetheless evident through a fervent emphasis on sexual abstinence, correlated to understandings of faithful (and biblical) Christian living. Five themes take centre stage – sin, marriage, the body, sexual violence, and shifting faith – the first two as key concepts within evangelical purity culture in Britain, the latter three as key areas of impact.

This thesis utilises Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to explain how and why these
impacts can be so profound, despite the fact that purity culture in Britain appears more subdued compared to America: the values and expectations of evangelical purity culture are gradually incorporated into the body as long-lasting dispositions, known as habitus. It is argued that, in evangelicalism, community and relationships are centrally important, but that sexual sin risks damaging these relationships; this is conceptualised as the habitus of purity culture. The impacts of purity culture can thus be particularly potent, as living with this habitus means living with the tension of simultaneously valorised and jeopardised relationships.