Faculty Webinar: Purity Culture and the Therapeutic Turn in American Evangelicalism with Dr. Lauren Sawyer
The purity movement of the 1990s is often remembered as a grassroots response to the sexual revolution鈥攁 return to 鈥渂iblical values鈥� in the face of cultural permissiveness. Yet this framing obscures purity culture鈥檚 deeper roots in a century-long evangelical negotiation with modernism. This webinar traces how American neo-evangelicalism, born from the fundamentalist-modernist conflicts of the early twentieth century, ultimately capitulated to the very therapeutic frameworks it once rejected鈥攁nd how purity culture emerged as a product of that accommodation.聽Drawing on research from her book聽Growing Up Pure: White Girls, Queer Teens, and the Racial Foundations of Purity Culture聽(NYU Press) alongside the work of scholars Heather Hendershot, Heather R. White, and Sara Moslener, this session examines how mid-century evangelicals adopted psychological and therapeutic language from their liberal Protestant counterparts, repackaging secular knowledge as 鈥渂iblical truth.鈥� By the 1970s, figures like James Dobson had fully embraced this therapeutic Christianity, positioning the nuclear family as the fundamental unit of national strength鈥攁nd adolescents as both its most vulnerable members and its greatest threat. The family values rhetoric of this era, visible in anti-abortion campaigns, welfare reform debates, and proto-purity culture language, consistently placed young people at the center of a moral panic. Within this framework, sexual purity emerged as a cure鈥攁 therapeutic intervention promising to heal adolescents, restore families, and ultimately safeguard the nation.
This webinar invites participants to consider how understanding purity culture as a therapeutic project shapes ongoing conversations about sexuality, faith, and formation in Christian communities today.
Dr. Lauren D. Sawyer graduated from 天美视频 with her MA in Theology and Culture in 2014. She then became an Assistant Instructor before taking on the role of Notetaker for the Allender Center, focusing on Dan Allender鈥檚 teachings. In 2020, she returned to Seattle and began teaching as an Adjunct Instructor, and a year later, she expanded her role with the Allender Center as a Curriculum Specialist. In July 2022, her roles were combined: Adjunct Instructor at 天美视频 and Curriculum Coordinator at the Allender Center.聽She has since been promoted to Affiliate Faculty and Manager of Curriculum and Instruction.