The Cult of Purity Rings
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The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable facts. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Hey culties, Amanda here. It's just me hosting this week, so the opinions and work represented on this episode are solely my own and that of my special guest. In the purity culture world, it is always abstinence until marriage, which is

extremely interesting because the Bible is very clear that it is much better for your relationship with God and your relationship to the world for you to remain single forever in service of your faith than it is for you to marry and that you should only marry as a last resort. Whoa. I think that

That's kind of an interesting problem that you're also talking about here is like, there's no money to be made off of an actually devout Christian life. There's none. Because you should live in poverty. You should be abstinent. You should be constantly in service of others. And guess what? You can't sell that. Yeah, you can't put a piece of jewelry on that.

This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern-day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the books Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, and the forthcoming The Age of Magical Overthinking. Every week on this show, you'll hear about a different group or guru that puts the cult in culture, from nonprofits to theater kids, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really?

And if so, which cult category does it fall into? A live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out level cult? After all, the word cult is up to interpretation. We're all a member of something culty these days. And today, I'm going to be talking with a very special guest about the cult of purity rings. A subject defined by control and shame, but also sparkly solidarity?

To try and unpack how dangerously culty this evangelical subculture really is. Oh, buddy. Purity rings. What are these things? And how are they culty? So purity rings are a symbol of virginity and chastity, mostly used in contemporary evangelical Christian communities. A purity ring is effectively a sign that you've made a vow that you will not have sex until marriage.

And this is mainly expected of teenage girls, but also boys, but mostly girls. And it's so much more than a piece of metal that encases your left ring finger, your wedding finger. It's a culture. It's a business. But is it a destructive cult? I have such a special guest joining me today to help me figure that out. She grew up steeped in purity culture in the early 2000s in Texas. She had one of these rings. And hearing her talk about this phenomenon from personal experience was amazing.

utterly fascinating. Not only because of the stories themselves, but because the guest is so good at telling stories, she does it for a living. Kelsey McKinney, host of the delicious smash hit podcast Normal Gossip, will be coming on for a discussion a little later on, so stay tuned for that. But first, for some context, I have personally been rubbernecking at evangelical purity culture. Really? I've

ever since I can remember, I grew up Jewish and super reformed. So purity rings were never a part of my coming of age experience, but I was hyper aware of them in part because in middle school, my best friend belonged to a megachurch and I

I became utterly enraptured with the seemingly conflicting rules and rituals there, especially when it came to sex. So in my cultural community, adults didn't really talk to their kids about sex, like hardly at all, which wasn't good either. But you were allowed to have it without fearing the risk of ostracization or damnation. But by contrast, in my friend's church, they were always talking about sex.

Even when we were like 12 and no one was having it. But it was always in these extremely euphemistic, intimidating terms. Metaphors of girls' sexualities being this perfect pie that you wouldn't want to slice up and deface or else no husband would want it.

I was 12 in 2004, right around the time that purity rings started to explode, not just in evangelical spaces, but in mainstream popular culture. And that was mostly because of the then teen icons, the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez. Well, actually, not so much because of them, but because...

because of the cult leader-ish adults around them. I'm the same age as Miley and Nick and Selena, so I remember clearly learning when purity rings were in tabloid coverage of them. These good, wholesome Christian teen stars who took vows of chastity and that was somehow news.

It was weird that this was being talked about, right? These like 14, 15 year old kids discussing their virginity in magazines? Weird. And over a decade later, the Jonas Brothers actually explicitly pointed out how inappropriate it was to have their sexuality scrutinized in public like that. Nick Jonas said in a Harper's Bazaar interview in 2019, "...it became a defining factor of who we were as a band."

Yikes. Interestingly, I also found that Joe Jonas reflected in a 2019 interview that he and his brothers were never going to talk about their rings. They didn't plan on it. But apparently they decided to come forward about them after a reporter allegedly threatened to say that the rings symbolized that they were in a cult.

So on one hand, you have the church demonizing sexuality. That's what these purity rings are all about. But then the media on the outside are demonizing the purity rings. And so there's great shame on both ends and a teenager in the middle. The power and us versus them dynamics alone are so, so culty. But let's back way, way, way up and discuss the history and roots of the culture of purity rings. Purity Rings

It's basic tenets go, they go way, way back. All the way to the Roman Empire, at least. LOLQ, how often do you think about the Roman Empire meme? Anyway, that's when, according to a book called Virgin, The Untouched History by Hannah Blank, fathers could kill their daughters for having sex before marriage. High stakes.

Ostensibly, over the generations, purity standards and rituals became more of a unified culture as religion itself became more uniformly monotheistic and Christian-dominated. But the foundation of the modern purity culture movement was really laid during the Reagan years, the just-say-no era. According to a Guardian piece by Amy Dennison, in 1981, the Adolescent Family Life Act, nicknamed the Chastity Act, was passed.

And that empowered the government to fund abstinence-only advocacy programs for the first time in U.S. history. In theory, they were aimed at stopping the spike in unintended pregnancies and curb the spread of HIV-AIDS. But this so-called Chastity Act only paved the way for purity rings and the religious dogma and Madonna whore dynamics they symbolized. And they became big business.

So there emerged two main purity rings, sex, if you will. Sects as in S-E-C-T-S, not S-E-X. That's a problem that comes up sometimes on this podcast. Sex versus sects, homonyms, those tricky devils. And these two sects were true love weights and the silver ring thing. So both of these were popular teen purity programs in the 90s and early 2000s.

Both hold these gigantic group events where they basically try to get as many kids as possible to take virginity pledges, to purchase rings. They would, of course, try to convert attendees and celebrate the glory of abstinence. Sounds fun. So let's talk about the silver ring thing first. Kind of sounds like the bling ring, but make it chast.

A 2014 Vice piece called I Went to a Promise Ring Show and Took an Abstinence Pledge pulled back the veil on this program. It was an organization launched by Reverend Denny Patton in 1995. And the author of this Vice piece, Harmon Leon, described the program as the Cirque du Soleil of Christian teen abstinence programs. ♪

The company's official silver ring has this inscription inside of it, a Bible reference from Thessalonians. And it says, God wants you to be holy, so you should keep clear of all sexual sin. Then each of you will control your body and live in holiness and honor.

it sends a shiver down my spine, let me tell you. But no shade to the silver ring thing. It actually seems like the other program, True Love Waits, which started in 1993, is the bigger of the two. So I read this New York Times piece called How an Abstinence Pledge in the 90s Shamed a Generation of Evangelicals. And

And it said that at the True Love Waits peak growth period in the 90s, an estimated 2.5 million teens worldwide had joined the program. And one of the cultiest elements of this program, from my point of view, were the purity balls, okay? Girls would dress in all white and they would be escorted by their fathers, kind of like a debutante, but not so much a coming out as a not coming at all, if you know what I mean. ♪

And as sort of glamorous as a purity ball might look on the outside, the repercussions of shame and confusion follow teenage attendees for the rest of their lives. Purity ring culture suggests that women are their father's property until they're their husband's property. Purity rings have essentially served as this very culty means of control that

disguised as a free piece of jewelry at a party. Here's the other interesting thing. Purity rings have definitely faded from the mainstream zeitgeist. I'm not reading about them in Tiger Beat anymore. Pew Research data reflects that Gen Z girls are the demographic that's rejecting traditional religion faster than any other.

So as religion declines overall, certainly purity rings do too. But in areas where it's faded since the early 2000s, millennial women are now kind of left looking back at this religious trauma from their tween and teen years. Like, what the hell was that? Was I in a cult? And was it a live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out?

These are exactly the sorts of questions that today's special guest host, Kelsey, is here to help me answer. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Kelsey McKinney. She is the author of the novel, God Spare the Girls, and the host and writer of the podcast, Normal Gossip. ♪

Oh my goodness. What a delish topic. I've been looking forward to this for so very long. Thank you so much for being here, Kelsey. Can you introduce yourself and your work to our listeners if they dare not to know? Sure. I would love to. I'm so happy to be here. Huge fan. Long time, first time. Very exciting for me. My name is Kelsey McKinney. I'm the host of a podcast called Normal Gossip, which is produced by a company called Defector, which I am a co-owner of.

And I also wrote a book called God Spare the Girls. I primarily know you as a novelist. Really? If I dare say. Wow, rare. Thank you. Well...

Well, because we're cult author girlies. We are. And it's a small world. We love cults. We sure do. Yeah, our relationship to cults is complex, but primarily categorized by love. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about your book? Like what moved you to write it? What it was inspired by? Sure. I would love to. I never get to talk about my book. I wrote a novel. It is about two daughters of an evangelical pastor in North Texas who

who is caught having an affair and kind of the fallout from his choices and what those decisions and ramifications have on both the church and his two daughters who are preparing for one of them to get married. I wrote it because I think for me, you know, I grew up evangelical and then I became not evangelical, which was a very rough transition period that I did not enjoy. And so trying to like sort through having all of those feelings brought me to a place where I was like, oh, I need to like

think about this a little less specific to my own life and a little more broadly, which I think is other artists have done this too, right? Like I think Lucy Dacus' album is a great example of this. I think like

Simler's work is really interesting. And, you know, everybody who kind of grew up with this level of religion is sorting through what it means to have believed something so much and then not believe it anymore. Absolutely. Love Simler. Huge fan. We had them on our show in season one for our episode on the cult of celebrity megachurches, which was a topic that I had been itching to discuss because it ended up on the cutting room floor of Cultish. Oh!

My whole last part of Cultish was meant to be about celebrity worship and celebrity megachurches. And then the January 6th insurrection happened. And I was like, you know what? I think I better pivot to QAnon and conspirituality. That's a shame for me because I would love to read you on that. Oh, God. I mean, everyone's always talking about Mormons, Mormons, Mormons. I'm just like...

Why aren't we talking about the evangelicals? Because they're in power. Like, that's why. I mean, you know that, but that's why. They're in charge. That is why. That is why. I mean, they've been in the Oval Office. Yeah. They are in our courtrooms. They are our lobbyists. They hold so much political power in this country and so much power.

social and cultural power as well. And that's kind of the subject that we're covering today. So considering your evangelical upbringing, do you remember when the concept of purity rings entered your worldview? So I don't. But the reason I don't remember it is like, do I remember when the concept of the color green entered my worldview? No, right? Like it was just something that always existed. Yeah.

To me, the church that I went to did one of the more popular purity ring programs, the True Love Weeds program. And so I watched high schoolers go through it from the time that I was like a very, very young child. So it was very prominent in my understanding of purity.

not only like what sex was and what marriage was, but also what it meant to be a teenager, which is kind of fascinating. Oh my God. What a thorny knot to attempt to untangle. You seem to be doing well. You have a septum piercing. Thank you. Thank you.

Is that the signifier? Should I get another one? Yeah, that's, as we all know, the universal symbol for I left the evangelical church and I'm doing fine. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so can you talk a little bit about what you witnessed, though? So the True Love Waits program was something that felt really endemic to your childhood and your understanding of sex. What did you witness? Yeah, and I want to be clear.

clear that it wasn't just like my church that was doing this. It was every church, right? Like, do you know what James Avery is? I know what it is because when you mentioned it while we were discussing this subject, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. Okay, yes. So for listeners who don't know, James Avery is a Texas-based company that started basically making just jewelry in general, but kind of where they make most of their money now is in purity rink.

and selling them to like young teens. But it was very endemic in the culture that I grew up in. It wasn't just my church. It was everyone I knew, right? Like people who didn't go through the Tree Love Weights program, like you were making a fucking statement, right? Like you were saying, I reject God essentially to not go through this program. So everyone I knew did it.

Including me. I did it in high school. And the way that it worked was my memory of high school in general is very vague for a lot of reasons we won't get into here. But I think that most of what it was was there were like sessions similar to sermons where we would go through material and read about like what the Bible said sex should be.

And then there was kind of like a weird Freudian ring ceremony where like you would take a vow to God to say that you like would not have sex before marriage. And also your parent would take a vow to keep the lines of communications open between you, which is kind of fascinating as an adult to think back on this kind of culture where almost nobody talked about sex ever.

ever in any context. And so then to go through this church program where you say like, we promise before God to keep the lines of communication open. It's like, well, they haven't been opened. You have no experience doing this. It's

And and scarcely a vocabulary to discuss your reality, which you wind up gaslighting yourself. Right. When you don't have the linguistic framework, you have extreme difficulty, if not no ability at all to push back against a dogma. And so you're set up to fail when they're saying the lines of communication have to be open. And on top of that, the vow that you're taking inherently implies that there would be nothing to talk about.

Like you're saying, I promise not to do anything. So then to open that line of communication is to admit that you failed, which is right. The vows are broken both ways. You can't keep one without breaking the other. So could you continue describing like what your personal experience was with this program and maybe some highlights and traumas?

Sure. I love to talk about my highlights and also my traumas. So I think one interesting thing about the True Love Weights program that I do think works, which is kind of funny, is that it convinces evangelical teens to talk to each other about sex, which no one does.

Right. So like you go through this program and then you talk to your friends about it in the car about like how their conversation with their parents went, which is like not well. Right. It's like I was so awkward. I wanted to die. But then you have accidentally created a line of communication. At least for me, that happened for me, which everyone wanted to talk to me about it because.

I was not a blameless little flower. And so I think that is kind of – that is the one highlight I will give this thing is that like it did open doors for us to talk to each other even as it closed doors in front of us. Okay. Whisper Network. Hey, I mean that is more than I can say for –

Yeah.

One really interesting kink in my understanding of the True Love Waits program when I was in it is that I am bisexual. I identify as bisexual. And I grew up playing softball, which was like in many ways a very supportive environment that I loved, right? Like girls were body positive. We got to play games together and also everyone kissed. And all of these, like all of my very early sexual experiences were with girls, other girls that I knew.

And always the narrative was like, well, we're just practicing, right? We're just practicing for later. And so it took a really long, like an abnormally long time for me to realize like, oh, wait a second. That wasn't practicing. That's like an early sexual experience because I just like was so closed minded about the world and I like had no frame of reference. It wasn't until like high school that I met

someone who had been on my team and she was like, this is my girlfriend. And I was like, what? Yeah. That I realized, oh, you know, this is something that also happened to me. And so I was kind of coming into the True Love Weeds program with this perception of myself that I was already like damaged goods, having sinned already, which is not the status of most young, beautiful heterosexual girls heading into a True Love Weeds program.

program. Understood. And how old were you when you entered the program? Oh, I don't know. I was probably 16 or 17. I was in high school, like firmly in high school. Okay. So by then, a fair number of softball smooches under your belt. Yes, many, I would say. Prolific. Understood.

I want to share with you my first exposure to the concept of purity rings because, of course, it was the Jonas Brothers. I grew up, you know, ultra-Reform Jewish. My parents are atheists, harbored a certain amount of disdain for organized religion, especially evangelicalism, which only really stoked my curiosity in it.

My middle school best friend was the daughter of an evangelical Christian, but she was also sort of like the school tart. Uh-huh. That's a classic type. Totally. And I would skip Hebrew school to accompany her to the megachurch because anthropologically, it was just like, oh, a delicious buffet to witness. But when I was friends with her, that's when like the Joe Bros purity ring hullabaloo transpired. And, you know, we definitely made fun of it. It was just like so...

so novel to me. But then earlier this year, the JoBros went on Andy Cohen's show, Bravo's Watch What Happens Live, and Andy Cohen got the Jonas Brothers to admit that the purity ring thing was a bad idea. And I thought it was curious that Nick said in

theory, they're not a bad idea, but you should know what you're signing up for before you sign up for it. I'd also never thought about how a purity ring is a contract that you sign that has incredibly high stakes before you have the capacity to understand that, which is so disturbing to me. Yes. I mean, I, as an adult now, I think it is very important to talk to children and teens about sex and sexual being in a like informative way.

But what's interesting about the way that the church talks about sex in purity culture is that it is not informative and academic. It's like mostly about lust. And so there's this kind of interesting period of time in which the True Love Waits program takes people before they know what they're agreeing to not do.

I mean, I'm trying to locate the correct terminology for it because I guess I'm sick of the word creepy. Like a spider is creepy. The evangelical church's coercion of teenagers surrounding their sexuality is not creepy. It's not creepy, but I think if you think about it in the context of salvation, which is the goal of the evangelical church, right? To convert people.

That's the number one goal of this faith is to convert more people to believing what you believe. It is exploitative because what you are doing as church leadership is giving high schoolers, minors, physical symbols that project to the world that they have made an abstinence pledge.

And then you are expecting them. And I mean, I really feel for like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus too, I think had a purity ring. I feel really badly for them because I think to be asked questions about that is bad enough at like a high school level amongst your peers. To be asked it on a national scale is traumatizing and embarrassing. And the people in leadership of churches would tell you, well, that's for the greater good.

That them talking about it will convert people into what we believe and therefore it's worth it. And I just like, there are a lot of things I'm utilitarian about, but that's not one of them, right? I don't think it's a teen's job. Absolutely. So we're already discussing so many cultish red flags that point to this group.

purity ring phenomenon not just being like, oh, you know, kind of icky, but cult-like. What you're describing is sort of an ends justify the means philosophy. But when I say the cult of purity rings, off the top, what does that mean to you? I mean, it is the physical symbol, right? Especially with James Avery, you have something to indicate to others that are in the cult that you belong to the cult, but not necessarily indicating to people who aren't in the know.

which to me seems cultish. You have a rule that you have to follow that's really strict and that there are unclear consequences for it.

Unclear and yet bone-chilling. And yet dire, yes. Right? Yeah, yeah. Because often we talk about cults on this show where the context is a fitness studio or the context is a brand. Yes. But the context here, due to the fact that purity rings are connected to evangelicalism, is your life, your afterlife, all of eternity. The stakes cannot be higher. Yeah. So it's interesting because some of that depends on your theology, right? Like some evangelical churches would say...

Having sex before marriage doesn't mean you're going to go to hell, right? Like you can still receive forgiveness for that. You can still repent, right? That there is like forgiveness in the church from those sins. But what every evangelical church would say is this is an indication to us that you are not currently following Christ, right? Which then gives leadership a reason to step in, which I also find very cultish in the sense that if you...

had been found to have misbehaved, they could put you in therapy for it. And by therapy, I mean church counseling, right? They could talk to your parents about it. There could be ramifications on like whether your parents could lead in the church based on your behaviors. So it's not necessarily like if you fuck, you're going to hell, although that is certainly an underlying premise in some churches.

But I think it is a little more damning than that in some ways, because what they're threatening isn't your eternal salvation. It's your reputation and your reputation within the community. And that is scarier in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. Because hell is so abstract. Like your ability to relate to your community is right here, right now. You can see it and touch it. And,

And I think this is not like an actual highlight of the Tree Love Waits program, but like where I am from, abortion is not looked kindly upon. And being a teen mom is very bad. So in some ways it is to your benefit to not have penetrative sex.

until you are older because no one is going to help you the way that like people outside of those communities might. Right. Although I can't help but notice a certain level of hypocrisy. What? Because

Because at my middle school best friend's evangelical church, there were a number of teen moms who had been sort of like saved post-insemination. Oh, yeah. That's a classic. I mean, I can't help but think that there's a correlation there. Because again, like considering the distinct evangelical values of recruitment and profit and –

also the emphasis that they put on salvation, why would the evangelical church as a business move turn down a new member, even if they are pregnant? You know, you can repent away from that. Yeah. Well, it's also, it's a warning shot, right? Like the evangelical church is very good at saying, you know, we have a lot of money and we have a lot of resources and we will open those doors to you if you believe a bunch of things.

And so for a teen mom in a community with not a lot of resources in a country that is not helpful to most young moms, having a church nearby that says, you know, you say you believe in this and you can have childcare is monumental. Of course it's worth it. Lie about what you believe. Who cares? But it has an added benefit of now all your teen girls that are going through the Trail of Weights program can see a pregnant teenager. And it's like, ooh la la, the consequences of your actions. Yeah.

Oh, my God. What a great point. It's like they almost want a certain number of teen moms to lead by negative example. Oh, absolutely. And this brings us back to sort of these cult red flags because they...

The evangelical church in regard to purity culture and so many other tenets is just so good at reducing everything into a good evil binary down to sex. It's like there is nothing in between sex being evil and abstinence being good. Right. The most interesting thing to me about like purity cult is that let's say you do it.

Right? Let's say you take a purity pledge at 16 and you make it through high school, you go to college, you find someone you like enough to marry. There are no resources that are given to you at any point. Similarly, this also happens in the Mormon church. You have now made it to the end of this road with no guidance. And because you are 22, 23, 24, your peers are long past this.

And so they're not in the same position as you. And that's kind of, to me, the saddest part about it. You've set them up to fail because even if they succeed, they don't know what good sex is. And then what happens if you get to your wedding night and it's bad? Right. And you waited all this time. So that's where I was thinking of this question earlier, and I'm curious about your thoughts. Like,

Purity culture is a problem in the evangelical community and far outside of it. Like 100%, we are fundamentally in a Protestant capitalist culture. Yes. Thank you to the pilgrims. Things are going great. Like that cannot be denied as much as this country was ostensibly founded upon religious freedom and such. Like there is a hierarchy and the Protestants are at the top of it and their culture really persists. And, um,

So despite growing up the way that I grew up, like I don't feel like the culture was very sex positive in the early 2000s, you know, maybe compared to the 1950s. But I mean, purity culture was alive and well. And so, you know, you were expressing earlier how like it's really important for young people to have a space to be able to talk about sex in safe, accurate terminology.

But I wonder like, and this is kind of getting slightly away from the topic, but I'm interested to discuss it with someone who grew up the way you did. And neither of us have kids. But like, how do we talk about pleasure to young people in this culture? That is the thing that is like truly the most concerning to me is that in retrospect, I look back on the way that we were taught and not taught about sex and like enjoyment. Enjoyment?

was not really part of the conversation beyond like, oh, you know, Song of Solomon says to delight in the wife of your youth, you know, or whatever. They would say like, it exists and therefore God wants you to have sex but only in this very specific context and there would be no other information. And so I think like, I knew girls when I was in young adulthood getting married at 22, 23 that would be turning to me saying like, what am I supposed to do? I don't know anything. And like, it's bullshit

bone chilling to be like, okay, well, there's a lot you don't know. There are a lot of things that you probably should have figured out developmentally, but you didn't because the shame quotient was so high. In a culture that is less shameful about your body and your pleasure, you have people by the time they have sex with other people knowing a lot more about themselves and what they want

and how they can like bring themselves to climax. And you don't have that in a community where like you not only should not be doing that, you also should not be talking about it. For sure. And those reverberations go so far. Like this is an extreme version, but like I myself did not know how to talk about or prioritize my enjoyment, you know, by the time I was having sex. And that's patriarchy, which, you know, is in bed with Protestantism and the rest. Yeah.

hopeful that it's gotten better since we were in high school. Like I do feel some amount of hope that like Gen Z is better at talking about this and that purity culture has waned at least as a like A-list celebrity form of communication. Like they seem to be more on it in a way that is encouraging to me. What's interestingly,

though, is that I have spoken about language and sex and gender on a few college campuses over the past few years. So much of our understanding of our bodies and our gender and our ability to have sex has to do with the labels that we're given and that we can create. And

So I've spoken about this now with, you know, a bunch of college students, which is a very specific, not at all representative community. But I found that certain college teachers and such have remarked upon the sort of fear and trepidation that exists with some students.

Gen Z, you know, college students, because they are so afraid of causing harm that that actually can be silencing too. The conversation around sex and safety and pleasure is still imperfect. We haven't figured it out yet at all. And I largely blame the effect that the cult of purity culture has had on our entire society. I think all the time about

Well, I was recently having a conversation with one of my sibling-in-laws who is rather young about gaslighting as a concept and the terminology of it. And I was telling them, you know, like...

I'm so glad that your generation has like the words for these and that you have kind of like come into a knowledge of this and also knowing that word will not save you from it. Being aware of the fact that having all of the knowledge about consent in the world cannot save you from having a mediocre sexual experience, right? Like that is still going to happen to you. Yeah, or even like a really, really bad.

Yeah, sometimes you consent to something and then you wish you hadn't, right? And that is a hard thing about being alive in general, that like you cannot save yourself from hurt and you can't save yourself from hurting others. ♪

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I just want to talk about jewelry now. Great. I love talking about jewelry. Perfect. So, okay. Cults often, though not always, are structured as such. There's a single charismatic leader and then an inner circle who does their bidding. And then there are these sort of like descending tiers of people with various degrees of influence. Right.

Who would you say are the major players in the cult of purity rings? Is James Avery one of them? Are there purity ring influencers? How is the power being structured and wielded here? That's an interesting question. There's a book I read several years ago called With God on Their Side. It is an academic, researched book about how evangelical Christians took over the United States government.

And it's fascinating. And one of the things it argues is that white men realized that they were losing power. And so they began to create a system and inject it with power that would make sure they kept it.

And so I think like on some level, those men are at the top of this pyramid, right? Like they aren't the charismatic leader you want. That's actually the most insidious kind of cult leader. It's one who does not have a face, who does not have a persona. Who even is it? It's harder to imprison someone who you can't even identify. And I think at my most generous level,

I do believe that people can believe things and not be hateful, bad people. There's not a lot in the Bible about sex. So like, I don't think that you can say it is the book's fault or it is the like fundamental idea of religion's fault. Like the Bible is pretty quiet on sex in general.

And so then why is import being placed here? And who is deciding it's important? And the answer to that is pastors, right? Like the people who are deciding this is an important piece, even though it is half a verse in a book of 400 pages, are the Southern Baptist Council and then the pastors underneath them. And then I think beneath that, there's a lot of people who make money off of this, the churches themselves.

And also like in some cases, private high schools, private Christian high schools will make a lot of money off of this. And then also companies like James Avery, where your main source of money and income and induction into your business is coming from 16 year olds. Can you talk more about James Avery? What's the aesthetic? Why is James Avery such a power player?

So I am like kind of obsessed with James Avery in that it is a pretty new company. Like it's not one of these like ancient American companies. It's not giving Rockefeller. No, no, no, no. It's giving Joanna Gaines. Oh my God. Like it's not tacky tacky. You're not like, oh, that's gaudy or ugly or whatever. No.

But it is that kind of like blessed in a script on a shiplap on the wall type. Bridesmaid font. Yeah. It's bridesmaid font. It's like delicate crosses. Like the kind of like subtle silver. Yeah.

It's Pinterest Christianity. Oh, yeah. And I think you asked about influencers. In some ways, James Avery is like very similar to what I would consider like a Christian influencers aesthetic, which is that there are not Bible verses everywhere. There are not big signs that say like, I'm a Christian. It maybe even doesn't say Christian in their bio. Right.

But if you can hear the dog whistle, it's just straight dog whistles. It reminds me of Disney Bounders. You know how like you're a Disney adult and you go to Disneyland, you're not allowed to dress as Cinderella, but you can sort of suggest Cinderella core. Yes. Yes.

Let's say you were in a suburb of Dallas and you went into a strip mall. You might be like, oh, that looks like a cute jewelry store. And I think immediately upon entering, your body would be like, I cannot be here. I'm rejected. You would know, right? Like I think it's that kind of place where you're like, oh, there's something amiss here slightly as someone who doesn't believe in this. I could tell that something's off and I will be leaving. Yeah.

Actually, speaking of evangelical influencers, and I haven't thought about these folks for a very long time, but in 2017, like long before I started writing Cultish, long before it was my job to comment on this stuff in public, I was completely riveted by evangelical YouTubers, including and especially the channel Girl Defined. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's like Rachel Hollis core, right? Like, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Oh, my God. Those who are unfamiliar with Girl Defined, it's essentially these two six foot tall Texas blondes. Gorgeous. Beautiful. Yeah, absolutely. No, lovely. I mean, they're like modesty influencers. They are those Pinterest Christians, but they are much more forthright than the sort of subtle James Avery vibe. Because the entire point of their channel and they have books, they have a bit of an

empire now and they had a conference at least then that I believe was called radical purity I swear to god they aim to instruct their viewers how to live as a modern Christian girl in the eyes of God so the message is a little bit I'm your bestie I'm your big sister but I'm also your prophet so follow me

Yeah. It's also don't look like a loser, right? Which is interesting. Very much so. That it's like the Christianity of your mother's is lame. Yes. Yes. It's not your mother's Christianity. And the cognitive dissonance is fascinating because my understanding of evangelicalism and Christianity in general is like you surrender your life to God. You know, like Semler spoke about this in our evangelical megachurches episode, but a lot of Christian music is very much like,

I am nothing. I am unworthy. You are everything. You saved me. There's this sort of sense of like- My boyfriend Jesus. Yeah, my boyfriend Jesus. Like I don't matter. But to be an influencer requires a shameless amount of individualism and personal branding. Yes.

And so watching them reckon and try to negotiate those two inherently conflicting attitudes was just a train wreck from which I could not look away. So this is also reminded me of something which I had forgotten, but that I meant to speak about here, which is that in the purity culture world, it is always abstinence until marriage, which is

extremely interesting because the Bible is very clear that it is much better for your relationship with God and your relationship to the world for you to remain single forever in service of your faith than it is for you to marry and that you should only marry as a last resort. Whoa. Which is interesting but it's like very nunnery vibe, right? Of like, oh, never have sex and simply go to the nunnery ignoring the fact that nuns have been having sex with each other there forever. Just pretend that doesn't exist. Bloop. And

I think that that's kind of an interesting problem that you're also talking about here, right? It's like there's no money to be made off of like an actually devout Christian life. There's none because you should live in poverty. You should be constantly in service of others. You should be abstinent. You should be putting forth like goodwill over everything else in the world. And guess what? You can't sell that.

So true. I mean, there are so many cult comparisons to be made there. Like if there is no hierarchy, if there are no levels to ascend to, then you can't sell the book or the tape or the course of the ring, you know, like you need to create stratification to have a successful cult.

And Girl Defined does that, right? Like they will say the Bible is enough and like Jesus is enough. And then they will also say, but like, isn't it hard to focus, right? Like, shouldn't you take these supplements that will help you focus on the Bible? The hypocrisy is riveting. I understand why you became obsessed with that. It is. It's totally, I mean, I was paying their bills. I was watching all those videos.

I mean, this brings me to another thing that I wanted to discuss, which is like, what is the allure? Because this must be like a very alluring, fun thing to like to be able to bond with other people over your purity ring. Like that sounds kind of exciting. And also it provides an identity template. So much of the allure of these modern day cult is that there are just simply too many choices for what to wear and who to be and how to live your life. And it's,

If there is a template, then that can feel comforting. Well, the first benefit is like societal standing, right? Doing the purity ring rigmarole gains you some kind of prestige within your social group. But I think particularly for women, and we kind of already talked about like the lack of reproductive health services that a lot of girls in places that are high purity culture face.

It gives you an excuse to not have sex, right? Like I think for a lot of girls who are maybe scared, be that of pregnancy or of like the physical act of sex.

It gives you an excuse to not do it. And it makes your expectations on the people you date very clear up front, right? Because a guy is going to ask for sure, like, why do you have a ring on your wedding finger? You're clearly 17 years old, right? And then you're going to say like, oh, I took an abstinence pledge. And that is going to weed out a lot of people who wanted to talk to you. And so if your goal is to get married and to get married young, which is the goal of a lot of people,

they want to get married young and have kids young, the absinthe string helps you because it weeds out people who don't want that. And it is a kind of signal to people who might that you're there. Yeah. Wow. For better and for worse, it keeps you inside of this very tight-knit community because those who can understand the symbol are more likely to, I guess, respect the symbol according to the rules of this fiction. Yeah.

I want to talk about how purity rings and purity culture can set you up for failure on your wedding night. You know, just to put the stakes into perspective here to show how this cult can really follow you in places where you wish it wouldn't.

I found this story on Reddit where someone was talking about their personal experience and said, purity culture is really traumatic. Since we were kids, as young as 12, we did these purity retreats where we learned how physical intimacy wasn't yours to give. It was your husband's to take.

men simply couldn't control themselves and it was the female's responsibility to dress better because it would be their fault if something happened. If you did make a mistake and had sex even once before marriage, you were broken. You were damaged goods for the rest of your life. This person said, my wife and I waited until we were married. We wish we did not in all caps very openly. It affected our marriage so much and introduced

so much dysfunction that took us years to get over. We didn't know who we were sexually. We hated our own bodies and felt immense shame. Even after having married sex, it takes a ton of work to get past this. Yeah. I think some of that is person to person, obviously, and some churches are worse at it. But I think

That if you keep an abstinence pledge until marriage, I think that that is extremely common because you have the expectation that on a dime, you could go from telling this person you love like, oh, we can't do that because it's an offense to God to saying, oh, this is something that glorifies God, right? Like it is a mind fuck.

fuck, I think if you make it that long. Yeah, I mean, I really, really feel for people in this position because as someone who didn't grow up like this at all, like it's hard enough. Like it's fucking hard enough. I did find that there is a trauma recovery counseling center in Ohio called Sea Glass.

that specializes in offering help for women recovering from purity culture. Oh, I'm thrilled to hear that. That's great. Yeah. Their website says that research shows that women steeped in purity culture often experience the same amount of hatred and shame in adulthood that sexual abuse survivors do, even if there's never been any instances of sexual abuse or assault. Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me.

I mean, I am like lucky in many ways in that like I was a huge failure of the program. And I think like it makes sense to me. I knew girls who like when they got married knew nothing on the eve of their weddings were like asking me questions that they should have known the answers to.

That's a very scary thing. And I think it puts you in a position where you can't advocate for yourself. My DMs are open. If you need me, I am here. That's generous.

You know, it reminds me so much of some of what I heard about. I spoke at a conference last year called the Rights and Religions Forum, which was attended by people who had survived an extremely oppressive religion. There were ex-fundamentalist Mormons there, but also ex-Amish and Mennonite and so many other oppressive religious communities. And

It's the type of thing where on one level in certain groups like the Amish, there are a lot of people who don't learn to read growing up or who don't learn to speak fluent English. But in a way, like growing up extremely evangelical in purity culture, you're like illiterate when it comes to sex, which is a major problem. It is. Yeah. It's like handing an Amish person James Joyce's Ulysses and being like, read it aloud.

It's like, you can't like, it's a nightmare. It's just like, oh my God, someone help them. Exactly. Exactly. Holy shit. Okay. A couple more questions and then we're going to play a game. I love games. I want to know your take on why purity ring culture was so massive in mainstream during the Y2K era and how you think it's changed since then. Thank you so much for asking. Britney Spears.

That's what I wrote down too. I think that the Disney-Sony industrial complex, which created the Mickey Mouse Club and then realized essentially overnight, oh, we could simply turn these people into pop stars, is a smart business decision. But if you are a good executive, you also know that any adult

who saw this literal child on the Mickey Mouse Club four years ago is not going to want to think about them having sex. So I think the purity loophole is helpful, right? Because it's like, oh, she's sexy?

But like they were asking Britney Spears on the red carpet, are you having sex with Justin Timberlake? Like explicitly. And she was saying, oh, no, we don't do that. Right. This kind of girlish response that I think is trained. And I think to her credit, we are from the same culture. Right. She's from like backwoods Louisiana, which is certainly the same purity culture. And so I think like I think it's Britney. I think it's Britney. And then I think it was –

the Disney group seeing that as a successful method and being like, great, send Hannah Montana through it. Send Hilary Duff. Let's see what happens. Right? That is the fucking ding, ding, ding. So then in terms of purity culture now, I wonder like if you have thoughts on this. I've been thinking about it, how...

I'm sure that purity ring culture and the business of it all is still alive and well in the Bible Belt, but it's no longer as mainstream as it once was. And I wonder if that has to do with just the broader... Decline of American evangelicalism? That and sort of just politico-spiritual divides in the culture at large. We are more divided as a culture than we were in the early 2000s. Absolutely, but...

I do think that the decline in American evangelicalism is relevant here. Like we statistically, it is dying and like they are in trouble and like they are losing young people at a rate that is untenable.

Like purity culture absolutely still exists. But I think teens have more access to the world. And I think they are more willing to question something that's put in front of them like that than teens were in the past. And I also think sex sells better than abstinence. Yeah.

The fact that religion is declining so sharply among Gen Z is endlessly fascinating to me because historically, Pew Research reported that women were more religious overall than men. And Gen Z has completely flipped that script.

Gen Z women have been quicker to reject religion than any other demographic. And yet a ton of research by Pew and other organizations reflects that they are also the most mentally unwell. So I kind of want to unpack that correlation a bit.

Okay, I can speak to this from my personal experience as someone who grew up very religious and then rejected that religion is that every coping mechanism that you have created for your entire childhood and teenage years gets ripped away from you immediately. So like, yeah, that's why they're miserable is that like, it's not that the lack of God makes you so miserable that you become mentally ill. It's that your community is gone and your culture is gone.

is gone. And all of the things that you knew how to do, like pray and go to Bible study and read your Bible, the ways that you taught yourself to self-soothe are gone. Totally. I also think it can be just really existentially painful to know things. Yeah. It's awful knowing things. I would love to have a flat, smooth brain. I think I could be so happy. Yeah.

Well, and the sheer amount of information, true and false, and people, friends and strangers that young girls are exposed to and assigned to contend with now is just so overwhelming. So actually, speaking of today's mental overwhelm, before we get into our very, very juicy game here, I actually wanted to take a second to share an exciting announcement with the listeners. ♪

So for the past two years, I have been writing a new book called The Age of Magical Overthinking. The subtitle is Notes on Modern Irrationality, and it is finally available for pre-order. The book comes out April 9th, 2024, and it's all about delusion in the information age.

So a little bit about it. Every chapter is dedicated to a different cognitive bias, which is a sort of mental magic trick that the mind naturally plays on itself. All of our minds do this. Confirmation bias and zero-sum bias might be a couple that you've heard of before. And I use each of these cognitive biases as a lens to explore some mysterious irrationality plaguing the zeitgeist at large and my own life.

So a lot of the subjects in this book were really inspired by some of the research I did for Cultish. The first chapter in the book is called Are You My Mother, Taylor Swift? A Note on the Halo Effect. And it's about the psychological underpinnings that motivate modern celebrity worship and dethronement. And

and how that psychology is connected to our relationships to our own parents. There's also a chapter called I Swear I Manifested This, Notes on Proportionality Bias, which is about how ideas of manifestation and conspiracy theories are actually motivated by the same thing. Anyone who was a fan of this podcast episodes on the cult of Instagram therapists or the cult of self-harm

help will be very interested in this chapter. There is some juicy reporting and tea in this chapter. And another example of a chapter is one called A Toxic Relationship is Just a Cult of One, a note on the sunk cost fallacy, which is a chapter that's very, very intimate and personal to me. So I am so proud of this book. I really,

really hope you love it. And even if you've never pre-ordered a book in your life, I invite you to consider doing it for this one because it really does make all the difference for an author. You can pre-order The Age of Magical Overthinking at any book retailer. Barnes and Noble, bookshop.org is my favorite one, or even Amazon if you must. Pre-order links are also handily available in the show notes of this episode or at amandamontel.substack.com.

So if you want to check out more about this topic of magical overthinking, I just launched this newsletter called Magical Overthinkers, where you can find everything from interesting interviews to behind the scenes of the writing and publishing process and foreshadowing.

fun culty things too, like a weekly list of books, podcasts, and more that I'm quote unquote cult following, as well as audio commentary that I'm recording for my last book, Cultish. So that's the Magical Overthinkers newsletter. You can check it out again at amandamontell.substack.com. Book pre-order information is there as well. Okay. Thank you so much for listening and back to the episode.

I just have one more question for you, Kelsey, and then we'll get to our naughty game. The last question is just when did you finally take off your purity ring and what did that experience feel like? Ooh, interesting. You know, I definitely wore it to church and around my house and

And I drove a 1994 Honda Accord, so it still had an ashtray in it. And I would just, I would take it off and put it in there when I went to school. And then when I returned from school, I would take it out and it would be so hot because it's always 500 degrees in Texas. And so then my little finger would burn. And, you know, that's how you know you're doing evil. That's a vivid memory. Okay, but when did you take it off, like forever and ever and ever? Like not in front of my parents. Yeah.

When did you throw it away? Like, when was it not a part of your life? Oh, not until my 20s, for sure. Like, I was lying. I was lying hard. Yeah, I was extremely good at masking. Perfect. Well, speaking of things that you can't tell your parents, we are going to play our game now. Okay, I love games. It's called Pure or Perverse. Oh, no. Okay.

Okay, I'm going to regret this decision. Yeah, this is definitely the grossest game that I've ever created for Sounds Like a Gross. Oh, great. Okay, perfect. And I'm going to have hot flashes throughout it. Okay, same. This game, Pure Perverse, is very silly. It's rated R. Okay. I am going to read a list of sex acts to you. Okay, great. And based on your experience, you're going to tell me whether the act would allow you to, in good conscience, on the books, say,

Stay in the cult of purity rings, a.k.a. continue to wear yours and have it be valid. Or is the act so perverse that you should really take it off? Okay, got it. I'm interested to see what I'm going to say here. So that's thrilling. Number one, pure or perverse?

Dry humping. Pure. That's fine. Definitely a lot of people would say no, but I think it's fine. I think most of the girls I knew in high school were dry humping. Like, can't get pregnant. You're not naked. I mean, who's to say? Dry humping's fun. It's underrated. That's one of my favorite lines in Lady Bird is when somebody asks her how her first time having sex was and she said, it's not as good as dry humping. Yeah.

Oh, completely. It's like, is it purity culture? Is it foreplay? I don't know. Okay. Pure or perverse? Masturbating side by side. Ooh, perverse. What about masturbating in different rooms, adjacent rooms, thin walls? Fine. That's fine. Yeah. I think that's fine. This is not endorsed by the church. The church certainly would not agree with anything I'm saying, but that's fine. Fine.

Totally fine. I'm interviewing you. Okay. Oh, but what about masturbating in a bunk bed? Up top, you can't see. Ooh. I'm trying to think about what the distinction is here that is concerning to me, like that would have bumped it to perverted in my understanding of purity culture at the time. And I think it's visibility. Like I think the reason the wall is okay is that it's like, well, you can't see each other.

So what if you're visually extremely impaired? Like what if you're blind? What if you take off your glasses? Yeah, like what if you're mutually masturbating, but you both have like a really, really, really strong astigmatism? Oh, great question. I think it's fine. Pure. Yeah.

That's the loophole. It's to blindfold yourself. Again, hot. Yeah. Way hotter. Is it purity culture or is it kink? You know, where's the line? Yeah, honestly, honestly. Because like deprivation is hot actually when it's your idea. Yeah, when you choose it.

That's also, that's the crux. That's the difference. It's only pure if you didn't choose it. Yes. We're getting closer. We're getting closer to figuring it out. I like that distinction of what if you're blind. Okay. Okay. Next one. Soaking? Evangelicals are not soakers. Like I know that Mormons are. Evangelicals do not do that. Okay. In my understanding, at least. I don't know anyone who did it. Someone certainly would have told me.

Cool. What about toys? No. Perverse, for sure. Perverse. I think a lot of even married companies...

Perverse, for sure. Sorry. I think a lot of even married evangelicals are like anti-toy, anti-anal, for sure. Wow. Yeah. Because you can't get too creative. Yeah. Don't be too creative. And, you know, toys, that's science. It's not God. Right. That's electronics. Yeah. Yeah. That's the robots. Tick.

taking over and replacing our jobs. Yeah. Wow. Now you're making an argument against everyone using them, which can't be good. Okay. That was illuminating and deeply confusing at the same time. Isn't that beautiful? That is the experience of purity culture though, actually. It's like you are just confused most of the time. Okay. Well, those are all my questions. That is our game. So Kelsey, the big question.

Out of the three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out, which do you think the cult of purity rings falls into? I think get the fuck out. I don't think there are many good and happy endings at the end of that cult, both metaphorically and literally.

So very true. Yeah, this one is pretty cut and dry. I mean, not even being able to soak alone. Please. I know. What's the point? I agree. It's a get the fuck out. It checks off every box, every red flag, the power abuse, the exploitation of children nonetheless. Yikes. The consumerism of it all. It's the hypocrisy. I mean, dear God. Well, thank you so much.

so much for being my very special guest on this episode. Oh my God, I had a blast. If folks want to keep up with your cult, where can they find you? I am on every social media, unfortunately, at McKinneyKelsey.com.

The podcast will be back at some point and it's everywhere that podcasts are found. And you can buy my book on bookshop.org. Hell yeah. And please do that. I had a wonderful time. I'm so grateful to you for doing this. Oh my God, I had a great time. Thank you for having me. Well, that's our show. Thank you so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week. And in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. But not too culty.

Sounds Like a Cult was created and hosted by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina. This episode was edited and mixed by Jordan Moore of The Podcabin. Our theme music is by Casey Kolb. To join the Sounds Like a Cult cult, follow the podcast on Instagram at soundslikeacultpod.

You can find me on the internet on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montel or on Substack at amandamontel.substack.com. And feel free to check out my books, Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, Word Slut, A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, or the forthcoming The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality. And if you like the show, feel free to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts.

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