Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence

ISBN-13: 9780199987764 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 232 str.

Sara Moslener

Opis

First taking hold of the American cultural imagination in the 1990s, the sexual purity movement of contemporary evangelicalism has since received considerable attention from a wide range of media outlets, religious leaders, and feminist critics. Virgin Nation offers a history of this movement that goes beyond the Religious Right, demonstrating a link between sexual purity rhetoric and fears of national decline that has shaped American ideas about morality since the nineteenth century.

Concentrating on two of today's best known purity organizations, True Loves Waits and Silver Ring Thing, Sara Moslener's investigation reveals that purity work over the last two centuries has developed in concert with widespread fears of changing traditional gender roles and sexual norms, national decline, and global apocalypse. Moslener highlights a number of points in U.S. history when evangelical beliefs and values have seemed to provide viable explanations for and solutions to widespread cultural crises, resulting in the growth of their cultural and political influence. By asserting a causal relationship between sexual immorality, national decline, and apocalyptic anticipation, leaders have shaped a purity rhetoric that positions Protestant evangelicalism as the salvation of American civilization.

From the purity reformers of the nineteenth century to fundamentalist leaders such as Billy Graham and Carl F.H. Henry, Moslener illuminates the evolution of a strain of purity rhetoric that runs throughout Protestant evangelicalism.

Recenzje

Moslener's monograph is a fine addition to the growing list of works that explore the intersection of gender and American evangelicalism. Students of evangelicalism, sexuality, and American politics would be wise to add Virgin Nation to their libraries.

O autorze

Sara Moslener holds a doctorate in Religious Studies from Claremont Graduate University. Her research focuses on the intersection of sexuality and religious identity, in particular the ways that Protestant evangelicals have historically situated sexual morality within discourses of national security. She is Assistant Professor of Religion at Central Michigan University.