This was the question my mother-in-law asked me this past weekend when I described the purity culture bullshit that I refuse to be a part of. I literally gave her three sentences worth and she was immediately like, my church would never do that. Now, my husband has made it clear that his church growing up (and the church they still attend) really didn't do that. He was taught that sex before marriage wasn't great, but it wasn't the end of the world if you did it. Women weren't told their bodies were sin factories and weren't encouraged to dress in shapeless clothing to hide their figures. Then she used the No True Scottsman fallacy to try and say that they weren't really Christians if they believed that. I shut that shit down immediately. They most definitely are Christians, they just happen to be more puritanical than your own belief system. People don't instantly lose their religion status because they believe women should never show their clavicle and you think that's okay. As for whether that church actually did that well, I think there are two factors here that aren't being taken into consideration by either my husband nor my mother-in-law. Culture. My husband grew up in the rural south. Women are (or are married to) farmers, construction workers, carpenters, and factory workers. Those are 95% of the jobs and what the majority of my husband's family and friends did and do. Even at funerals, I have never seen my female in-laws dressed in anything that I would consider "dressy". It's jeans and cammo and heavy sweaters and boots. I'm not trying to be stereotypical here. Dressing up is putting a skirt on with your cammo shirt, maybe a loose blouse if you are feeling exceptionally girly. This is how they choose to dress. This is what the people around them wear and no one cares until it's a wedding whether people look nice or not. Clothes are economical and you wear boots because you own horses or cows or have to clomp through fields. If this was your average church congregant, you don't need to tell them not to dress provocatively. I'll bet you if girls started showing up to church in short mini skirts with their boobs hanging out, there would be a sermon or two about women and their clothing choices. Perception. I will bet you that there ARE people who were pressured into acting a certain way and dressing a certain way, because their aforementioned culture and religion told them to. Maybe you didn't see it because it didn't happen to you. Maybe no one said anything to you because you never dressed in a way that attracted those types of comments. Nevermind, that most of the comments directed at me weren't them outright calling me out in front of everyone. It was little things. Telling me to put a shirt on when swimming because my boobs were so big and even though none of the other girls were wearing shirts. It was said quietly, pulling me to the side, shaming me. Or the time I wanted to join the dance team and was told by the leader, with just me and my mother there that because they didn't make sports bras in my size (pre-internet where you could find whatever you needed whenever you needed it) I wouldn't be able to join the team. I was in tears, the lady didn't care until my mom pushed a bit. Then she begrudgingly said that I could join if I wore a gold smock to hide my figure. Crying louder I refused. Why should I be singled out and made to look different? I felt so ashamed. I hated my body so much. It was these little barbs that poked holes in my self-esteem. Not a sermon from the pulpit. And I don't believe for a second that a rural Southern Baptist church didn't do this to people too. What kind of church did I go to? I went to three different Assemblies of God churches from the ages of 3-17. Then I went to a Vineyard Church for 4 years. Then I attended an "independent" church that was really just a reformed Southern Baptist church with a glossy cover for a few months. I then moved to Boston to an Evangelical Covenant Church (which I loved btw). Upon another move I attended another independent church that was also a Southern Baptist/Evangelical church not in disguise. Finally, I went to a Church of the Nazarene that eventually broke off from the denomination because they didn't agree with the denomination telling the pastor what to preach. So lots of different kinds of churches and I am telling you right now, with the exception of the church in Boston, they were all the same. All of them. I didn't go to one weird fluke church or denomination where they and only they taught this. There are thousands upon thousands of churches like this out there. Some preach this shit directly from the pulpit, but the majority go by the method of death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts. Slowly chipping away, making young women ashamed of their bodies, their clothes, their sexuality. Just because you don't see it happening or it didn't happen to you, doesn't mean it isn't. It is my opinion, that if you attend any of the conservative Evangelical or Baptist churches in America, you are being fed this bullshit one small comment at a time. Sometimes a pastor may actually preach about something, laying out archaic gender roles using Adam & Eve as a standard, but mostly it will be the little things. Youth group youth pastors who never choose you to be on stage because you are curvy or order t-shirts for your summer trip, but yours is two sizes bigger than it should be because they don't want it to be form fitting. Each little thing whacking away at young men and women, telling them how they should be, how they should dress, and what God thinks of you.
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AuthorThis is a personal, but secret, blog archiving my deconversion from a Christian to a non-believer. Archives
December 2020
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