Revive Our Hearts

Dannah Gresh: They say honesty is the best policy, and so today we're getting super honest about the history of so-called purity culture, how it helped, how it hurt, and how we should navigate the sexual purity conversation now. The truth is, sexual purity is only part of a really beautiful picture.

I'm excited for us to get at some legalism-destroying, grace-saturated truths together. Before we do, I want to let you know how you can get this kind of truth texted to you on a weekly basis. Just join our community for text encouragement to stay up to date on podcast episodes like the one you're about to hear. Get in early on exciting event announcements and receive encouragement from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. To sign up, visit reviveourhearts.com/text.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of *Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free*, for May 5, 2026. I'm Dannah Gresh.

Susie Weibel: I'm Susie Weibel. You know, Dannah, today's a big day because your book, *And the Bride Wore White*, is being re-released into the world. We're celebrating over here. We began a conversation about this book yesterday. Go back and listen to that at reviveourhearts.com if you missed it. It's also available on the Revive Our Hearts app or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Dannah Gresh: Yes, I hope you will go back and listen to that. We talked yesterday about how to address biblical sexuality with our girls, and we touched on that elephant in the room: purity culture. It's a topic we're ready to dive into further.

Susie Weibel: Oh, we're going to go there. We're going to go there. Purity culture is something, it's a time during which you and I grew up. Our own high school years were during the birth of this purity culture. I remain confused, so I'm wondering if we can bring some clarity to the conversation today.

I have teenage—well, they're not teenagers anymore, but I had teenage daughters of my own, as did you. This thing that would happen between us often would leave me scratching my head at times. We live in State College, Pennsylvania. It's the home of Penn State University, and things happen in a college town. Football, I'm talking about football. Probably talking about what happens after a football game.

Girls get hurt, and my daughters wanted to discuss this. I would have an answer for them—not maybe an answer, but my conversation would go the route that my mom might have had a conversation with me. I would say, "Look girls, no one should ever, ever be hurt. There is nothing that a person can do that deserves that kind of treatment or response. But downtown at 2:00 a.m. is also not wise. A girl who repeatedly stays away from downtown at 2:00 a.m. is probably going to be less at risk."

Exactly. That seemed to make so much sense to me. My girls would somehow hear from my lips that she deserved it. So let's begin by first of all: what is purity culture and how have we come to a place where saying, "Maybe if we don't go out at 2:00 in the morning we'd be safer," how did that become what it has?

Dannah Gresh: Well, first of all, I'm thinking of a scripture verse that says, "He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm." That's a proverb. That's from the Word of God. It is a biblical concept to be wise and not put yourself at greater risk of harm. But what we just said right now is very politically incorrect to say. I learned that quickly.

I feel like one of the things that's missing as we talk about purity culture is an accurate snapshot of the history. So let's buckle up for a quick history lesson. Purity culture followed about ten years after the sexual revolution met with a really screeching halt. Many people don't know that this actually happened, but you know about the 60s, you know about the 70s, you know about Woodstock and so-called sexual freedom.

What few people know is that in August of 1982, Time Magazine ran a cover story warning that sexually transmitted infections had reached staggering dimensions. They were a "serious, wholly unanticipated consequence of the sexual revolution." That article changed everything. The conversation of so-called sexual freedom really changed overnight. The promiscuity party really began to unravel, and it would be replaced by a counter-revolution, but it would take about ten years for that to happen.

That counter-revolution was because one of those sexually transmitted diseases was HIV/AIDS. It was the leading cause of death of men in 1992. People were terrified. Doctors, educators, counselors, and parents, they all began to beg teens to abstain from sex. That was the word that was now popular overnight; it was like the favorite word.

Right about that time, about the ten-year mark, around 1992, the church decided to find its voice on sex, which was a very good thing. Before 1992, it was like once a year in youth group you heard a "thou shalt not" speech. It was taboo. You didn't talk; if you talked about sex, you talked about it in hushed tones. The reason it was good that the church started talking is God created sex, and those who know him best should be the ones talking about it most so we get the definitions right.

In the beginning of this conversation, as with anything, we're not that great at it. We're learning how to have the conversation, we're learning how to teach accurately. Meanwhile, there are 52 teenagers in a basement in Nashville, Tennessee, who were like, "Our peers are dying, and we have a chance to actually obey this book called the Bible. Let's sign a True Love Waits pledge."

These 52 teenagers in a basement were actually the catalyst of what we know as the purity movement. One of the things I like to say is, of course it was imperfect. It was started by a bunch of teenagers with good intent. What happened next is when the church started talking about it and teenagers started signing this pledge, the natural question next was, "Well, wait a minute, how far can we go?" That's what they were really—the question was how far is too far, right?

Susie Weibel: Right. I remember having those conversations with kids that were in our youth group when we were early in youth ministry.

Dannah Gresh: What they're kind of asking is what can we get away with. To avoid confusion, Christian leaders really sat down and said the word "abstinence" isn't enough of a word because the word abstinence connoted not having sexual intercourse. That's pretty PG language for Revive Our Hearts, but we're adults here, we can handle this word.

Christian leaders were trying to get us stuck outside the box that we actually got stuck in, which was equating our behavior to virginity. So they broadened it. They said, "Let's talk about purity instead of abstinence to communicate God's broader vision for whole-life holiness." It was so overwhelmingly applauded that it kind of gave birth to the purity movement or some call it purity culture. Susie, do you remember any celebrities that had purity rings?

Susie Weibel: I remember the Jonas Brothers did, I believe. Miley Cyrus had a purity ring. Teyana Taylor. It seemed like every kid on the Disney Channel. I remember feeling so hopeful as a young youth leader.

Dannah Gresh: Yeah, because I would say—and this is again not very politically correct—I would say in large part, purity culture, the purity movement, was much better for women than its counter-movement, the hookup culture, which was happening in parallel.

We started to forget about AIDS, we started to forget about those sexually transmitted diseases, and hookup culture started. These two parallel tracks—if you look at the women who've been damaged by hookup culture, it's a much broader segment of our population and our church than those who got hurt by purity culture. Now that doesn't mean that there weren't some women and some churches that leaned toward legalism and did hurt hearts during that time.

And so we do have to be honest and say what did we do well in alignment with scripture, and what do we need to correct so that we can keep growing. I think that the conversation that's happening right now critiquing the culture is by and large good if we can keep the Bible in the driver's seat of where we go with it.

Susie Weibel: Right. I've noticed that we're not very good at nuance as a culture, at all. It's very difficult for people to believe that two things can simultaneously be held and both of them be true or good. I think the logical fallacy is called bifurcation. It's the idea that one thing can be true or the other, but it's not possible that both could be of consequence. It's a false dilemma, that's what it's called. And so I think that purity culture definitely got caught in this web of false dilemma, and there are certainly some cultural lies that are culpable here. Some of those things that we maybe are holding out as a false dilemma. Can you think of several of those that you think might be in play?

Dannah Gresh: Yeah, one of the—well, so many. Probably no end to the cultural lies that we could discuss today. There's also no end to disclaimers that we can put on this conversation. But one of the little sub-conversations that I've been seeing a lot in the purity culture critique is the Bible doesn't forbid sex before marriage.

And the interesting thing is if you look at—I'm going to look up a Bible verse here, I want to pull up 1 Thessalonians 4—but if you look at scripture historically, first of all, you can look at verses that say in Genesis that a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.

This is God's definition for marriage and God's definition for sex, that it would be between one man and one woman in a marriage covenant. It is a very high and holy boundary, and all sexual intention, all sexual expression, should be reserved for within that one man, one woman—and I'm talking about a biologically born male and a biologically born female. I can't believe I have to define that, but that's where we are. That is God's boundary for sex.

I want to read to you 1 Thessalonians 4:3-4 because the Bible isn't obsessed with the boundaries of sex; it's obsessed with something much different. Let me read this to you: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality," that would be any sex outside the marriage covenant between one biological male and one biological female. And then verse 4 says, "that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God."

So there's the standard right there: holiness. Holiness is a much higher bar than virginity and sexual expression, and God wants us to be a set-apart and holy people.

Susie Weibel: We see that, I mean, God begins that on day one. When we look at creation, those first six days were all about God separating the day from the night, the sea from the land. And as he established his nation Israel, all of his commands as he gave them the promised land was about separating them, a people holy unto himself. That holiness is the underlying—it's just the opinion of everything that God has established.

Dannah Gresh: And what you're saying here again—I said this yesterday—but all of creation is an object lesson for us to understand spiritual things. And the separation of the land and the sea and the day and the night, this was again teaching us. It's an object lesson for us to understand that the God of the universe who is holy wants to be in a love relationship with us, but the boundary to that is that there must be holiness in our lives to experience that intimacy.

Susie Weibel: Well, that's I guess what I mean by we're not very good at nuance because it's very clear to anyone who understands scripture that that is scripture talking about not having sex before marriage or keeping the marriage bed holy unto God.

Dannah Gresh: And I think, you know, when you say we're not very good at nuance, I think do I still believe what I believed when I wrote *And the Bride Wore White* in 1998, 1999, leading up to its release in the year 2000? The overall answer is yes, and I want to explain this.

I wrote the book because I was concerned about the conversation in the purity movement. I didn't think it was perfect. I thought, "What about—" I was a youth leader at the time, I was in my 20s. I was like, "What about the girls in this youth group who have my story and you're telling stories, object lessons about roses without petals and chewed-up bubblegum? Wait a minute, God's grace and redemption is so beautiful. Why aren't we telling her that? Why aren't we telling her about his forgiveness and that we do get do-overs? He is the do-over God."

And so I wrote it because I was like, I don't think I'm the only one. And I honestly wrote the book originally thinking nobody's going to read this. The purity movement is happening right now, people are going to criticize it. It actually got applauded because I wasn't the only woman with that pain in my life and with the healing—that's the key, I had the healing. The Lord had already begun his healing work in me or I couldn't have written that book.

So I wrote it because I was concerned about the culture and I was trying to be like the Bereans, Susie. But it was before cancel culture, so I didn't come out and say, "Hey, everybody that said anything wrong, you have no voice anymore." If that's the standard in the church, the standard for the church should be to test what is taught against scripture, always. And if that teacher is humble and corrected and teachable, they're still a safe teacher. But when we start to say, "Oh, that teacher made a mistake, let's cancel them," that's not a safe environment because what's going to happen is we're not going to own our mistakes.

Susie Weibel: Well, it disqualifies everyone. It would literally disqualify every human being from teaching.

Dannah Gresh: And I've tried to be very careful with scripture. But when I have been approached and I haven't gotten something right, I have, with the measure with which I spoke it, corrected it. If I made a mistake at our local Christian high school and was corrected, I would go to that audience and correct it. If I made a mistake on a blog, I would go to that blog and correct it because I have made mistakes. I haven't said everything as well as I would have liked through the years. But all in all, yes, I do still believe what I believed when I originally wrote that book, and I have grown, and the church has grown, and that is a good thing.

Susie Weibel: So where would you say today the resistance is to, say, this *And the Bride Wore White* and the message of grace that flows throughout the book? Why or how could there still be resistance to this message?

Dannah Gresh: Well, so it goes back to where you started. There are, for example, if you teach a girl that making wise choices and not being out at 2:00 in the morning is going to reduce her risk, then you're considered to be blaming her if something inappropriate happens to her. And I don't think that is logical.

Another thing: teaching a girl to dress appropriately and with dignity—which we could do a whole program on the topic of dressing with modesty and dignity and looking at what God's Word says about clothing—but we're told that if we do that, we're body-shaming her.

Susie Weibel: So how are we missing this very clear—for me there's a very clear understanding that women do not hold sole responsibility. That's clear. I mean, I just don't even understand how the argument could be made.

Dannah Gresh: I would say the responsibility is higher for the men for sexual integrity and purity. I'll read the verse to you where I get that from because I think some people may disagree with me and, again, be like the Bereans. Write me an email, follow me on Instagram and tell me if you don't agree.

But I want to look at this, it says in Ephesians 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her," so it's giving specific instruction to men about how they love their bride, "that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water of the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body."

If you look at that verse, it's talking about the responsibility of Christ to purify the bride, to present her to the Father clean. And the instruction is, "Husbands, I want you to paint a picture of this in your marriage," which to me means that a young man of God would guard his own purity and also be vigilantly protective of every sister in Christ because he doesn't know which one of them God may have for him to be that picture in his life.

You're placing a great responsibility on the guy. I think so. Do you think that's a reasonable argument?

Susie Weibel: I do, which is why I've always been so confused as to how the argument could be made then that purity culture shifts all of the responsibility onto the woman, because I don't see it that way at all. I mean, I am so far away from that in my thinking. And you and I are longtime friends. We fall—like if we start talking about the whole egalitarian/complementarian, which we don't need to have a discussion on, but you and I don't fall at the same point on that spectrum. Same page, different points, different places on the yeah. And yet, I don't know, I just I completely fail to see how in any way, shape, or form it could be construed that all of the responsibility falls to the woman when both biblically and through everything that you and I have taught together could not be further from the truth.

Dannah Gresh: Well, I think one of the ways that it gets in the water is if you look at, like, there are not many teachers from the purity movement—it's ironic that I wanted to talk back to the purity culture and make it better but am now equated with that movement. But there aren't many of us, if any of us, left that are still saying I still believe what God's Word says is true, I'm still here.

But the ones that are, are largely female, Susie. And so I guess that's a call-out to our brothers to step into their responsibility to train up men, young men. I'm a woman, I'm not going to teach a young man to keep his way pure. That's not—I don't know how to do that, and the scriptures don't assign that task to me. The scriptures assign the task to me to raise up the young women in my church body to live in holiness and purity.

Susie Weibel: You know, maybe another verse that would be helpful is I think of Philippians 2:3, which says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility value others above yourselves." And for me that just feels like an encompassing verse to meditate on and maybe help us understand the responsibilities of each party here. Just a thought.

Dannah Gresh: It's a good thought because if we're going to sort out the conversation about purity culture and we're going to do it well that guides us closer to the truth of scripture, it's going to require that we have humility and we hear each other and we listen to the women that were hurt during that time because they were under a legalistic teaching system. And we also listen to the women who have beautiful stories of purity and a beautiful marriage relationship with their husband in part because they followed God's Word and were blessed by it. It's okay to say, because it's biblical, that there are blessings that come from living according to God's Word. We have to hear each other in humility.

Susie Weibel: Wow. Amen. Grateful for this wisdom and encouragement. I'm so glad we had this conversation, and I'm so glad that your book, *And the Bride Wore White*, is being re-released today. Woohoo! That is worth celebrating, my friend.

Dannah Gresh: Well, thank you, Susie. I have been anticipating this day for many years as I've studied so that we can accurately handle the Word of God on this topic. So, you can make a donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts today, and we're going to send you a copy of that new edition of *And the Bride Wore White*. The subtitle is *Seven Secrets to Sexual Integrity No Matter Your Past*. Yes, you're going to want this resource on your bookshelf for you, your granddaughters, your daughters. The message is just so gracious, so balanced, so needed in the chaos of our world today. To give and request *And the Bride Wore White* by Dannah Gresh, visit reviveourhearts.com or call 1-800-569-5959.

Wow, you really got that down, Susie.

Susie Weibel: Thanks, Danna. I learned from the best. Before we go today, I want you to hear a word on this topic from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. She's been a faithful communicator on this subject for decades, and she has so much wisdom to share.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: You see, the gospel is a message of hope for people who are broken in every way, including sexually. You may have sinned sexually, and I want to tell you the good news today is that the gospel can set you free from guilt and can—get this—restore virtue. Yes, it can. The enemy doesn't want you to know that.

Now maybe you've been sinned against sexually, and I want to say to you that the gospel can set you free from shame and can bring healing and wholeness to your heart that has been busted into smithereens because you were sinned against in ways that you had no control over, no choice in. You need the gospel.

Whether you're married or single, you may be struggling to abstain from sex outside of marriage. You may feel the pull, and it may feel incredibly strong, of sexual fantasies, pornography, erotica, self-gratification. And I want to say you need the gospel. The gospel can give you the desire and the power to please God and to walk in self-control and love rather than lust. The gospel can give you the power to experience deep satisfaction in the love of Christ.

I long for every Christian woman to experience God's perspective on the good gift of sex in its time and place, between a man and a woman united in covenant marriage. And I want our sex lives, whether single or married, to tell the gospel story and reflect the covenant love of Christ. Knowing God, loving God, and his ways will free you up to enjoy his gifts to the fullest in every season of your life, whatever those gifts may be: the gift of sex in marriage, the gift of abstinence as a non-married woman.

But I want us to remember that God's instructions, his limitations, are for our joy, for our freedom, for our peace, for our flourishing. And so I want to plead with you, married or single: don't settle for less than that. Don't trade in God's good gifts for anything less. And I'm speaking to women with all kinds of situations. We have some college students here, we have a high school student, we have young married women, we have women who've been married forever, we have widows. People in just a lot of seasons of life, and I'm saying: don't trade in whatever God's gift is for you in this season. Don't settle for anything less than that.

Dannah Gresh: Wow, amen. Grateful for this wisdom and encouragement from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. You can listen to Nancy's whole message at reviveourhearts.com. You'll find it linked in today's transcript. So far this week we've talked about what truly makes us pure. We've addressed the purity culture elephant in the room. And tomorrow we're going to land this purity plane. I'm going to tell you why I titled my book *And the Bride Wore White*, and then I'm going to speak to the woman who's dwelling in shame. Yeah, that's right. I'm really looking forward to handing out some healing tomorrow. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.