Purity Culture

On March 16, 2021, a 21 year old male in Atlanta murdered eight people, mostly Asian women who worked in spas. It was racist. It was misogynistic. But it was also something else that folks outside the Bible Belt probably won’t know about: a horrifying twisted version of Purity Culture.

Purity Culture developed over the past 30 years primarily in the conservative white evangelical church. Based on an ideal of heterosexual virginity ending on the wedding night, Purity Culture usually takes the form of father/daughter relationships where the teen daughter makes a public pledge of virginity until marriage with a Culture created to maintain this ideal.

But Purity Culture goes beyond fathers and daughters. As an idealized expression of human sexuality in the Bible Belt, it defines Purity in all relationships.

I understand folks outside the Bible Belt rolling their eyes in disgust while expressing solidarity with Asians experiencing the violence of racism and misogyny.

But for me this is fascinating because of a prophecy by Rev. William Seymour back around 1910. Seymour, the son of slaves, led the Azusa Street Revival of 1906, named #68 in the Time-Life list of One Hundred Most Important Events In One Thousand Years 1000AD to 2000AD. After three to four years, the Azusa Street Revival began to collapse mainly due to racism and Seymour gave a prophecy that in around 100 years a greater and more far reaching Azusa would take place. Azusa is a Tongva word, indigenous people of Greater Los Angeles, that translates as Healing and Blessed Miracle.

Seymour was heavily influenced by the Bible teachings of John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church and father of the Holiness Movement from around 1850 to 1900.

The Christian teaching of the Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Holy means to be set apart or dedicated. The essence of Holiness is Purity. For John Wesley there was Personal Holiness and Social Holiness. In Los Angeles, Social Holiness took forms like Methodists as founders of the University of Southern California and John Wesley County Hospital, later becoming a string of medical clinics serving the poor called Wesley Health Center.

And so while Holiness is God-initiated and somewhat mysterious, there is also a human free will aspect of “entering” into it. But when you lose the sense of mystery and historic denial/blind spots occupy that space, then human prejudices take center stage.

And that’s how Purity becomes Culture.