You’ve talked about how some of our national myths are tied to White supremacy and Christian nationalism. Would you talk a little bit about how purity culture and purity as a theology and social policy is inherent to these myths?
Yeah, absolutely. This idea of connecting Christian virtue with national greatness was something very much a part of 19th century Protestantism. As the White middle class grew and became prominent, White Protestants were sort of anointed to be the national leaders in the United States. And as far as virtue goes, the greatest amount of virtue was on the shoulders of White women through the concept of sexual purity, which was part of Victorian gender ideologies. (And of course, it was an ideal, so it had nothing to do with White women’s actual experiences.) But it presumed that White women were dispassionate, were uninterested in sex, and therefore were more virtuous and more moral than men.
If you go back to the 19th century and look at personifications of the United States, they’re White women. You have Lady Temperance and Lady Liberty. You have John Gast’s [1872 painting, depicted above] “American Progress,” which features Columbia, this White woman drifting from the East coast to the West; behind her the sun is rising, and there are ships, commerce, and men cultivating the land with domesticated animals, while before her are Indigenous people who are being driven off like wild animals. The landscape is dark and forbidding and foreboding.
This was part of a Victorian gender ideology that even White women would come to use in their own political work, asserting that White womanhood is the high-mark of civilization. This is the origin of the myths of innocence I’m looking at, because of course, none of that would work if women weren’t presumed to be sexually pure.
As a teenager I had friends who signed these purity pledges, but it was never really a part of my Catholic experience. It wasn’t until a couple years ago that somebody showed me how purity culture is connected to the social purity movements of the 19th century. For people who are unfamiliar, how is your podcast a way into that history?
Yeah, so we start from the beginning. We start with the True Love Waits pledge and their goals. In 1994, True Love Waits brought around 200,000 pledge carts and displayed them at an event that was co-sponsored with Youth for Christ in Washington DC. They were put on little stakes and tapped into the lawn of the National Mall. So, there’s an image of this lawn with all these cards, and then behind it, the Capitol building, right? So, [my producer] Brad and I actually start with that image. Already the question of White Christian nationalism looms really, really large. Why is this a national issue? Because this wasn’t just about getting more attention, this was about making a political statement.