Purity culture's sexual ethic has failed. Not theologically — though as we've shown, the theology is deeply questionable — but pragmatically. An estimated 15,000 churches closed in 2025 alone, a record, with the National Council of Churches projecting 100,000 closures in the years ahead — a projection that assumes current trends stabilize rather than worsen.
In a striking reversal of historical patterns, young women are now leaving the church at higher rates than young men — the very demographic that has historically sustained congregational life. Rising cultural voices may be accelerating this trend. Comedian Taylor Tomlinson, who grew up in evangelical purity culture, has brought relatable conversations about church hurt to millions through her Netflix specials — normalizing the exit experience, particularly for young women, in a way that academic skepticism never could. Call it the Taylor Tomlinson effect.
Between 10–15% of Americans are currently suffering from active symptoms of religious trauma. That is not a fringe phenomenon. That is a public health crisis quietly unfolding inside the walls of institutions that were supposed to offer healing.
The institution is losing the argument in real time. The young adults who leave take their reasons with them. Many who stay privately DIY morality on their terms — because the standard they were handed cannot be lived, the text it rests on does not hold up, and the leaders who demand it struggle to keep it themselves.
Three Paths Forward
Christianity faces a stark choice. The future of the faith — at least in its recognizable form — likely depends on one of three things happening.
Just ignore it
The first is ignoring the purity teaching in practice — the same quiet accommodation already made with the sin of gluttony and others. Both tradition and Scripture have plenty to say about gluttony, but when was the last time you heard a sermon about it? It has simply been set aside, by unspoken consensus, as a standard too inconvenient to address. This appears to be the default option already in motion for sexual purity teaching.
Gluttony, greed, and remarriage after divorce are all classically understood as sin in Christian tradition — each addressed explicitly in Scripture, some repeatedly and in the strongest possible terms. Each has been quietly set aside by unspoken consensus, not through honest theological engagement but through private accommodation lawyering around the standard on their own terms, and the institution looking the other way. This site seeks to do no such thing and advocates transparency about realistic standards of righteousness.
Gluttony — Proverbs 23:2 (ESV) — "Put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite." One of the more startling verses in Scripture. Gluttony was named among the seven deadly sins in historic Christian theology alongside pride, greed, and lust. The institution rarely mentions it.
Greed — James 5:1-3 (ESV) — "Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you... you have laid up treasure in the last days." James's condemnation of the wealthy is among the most scorching passages in the New Testament. Prosperity gospel exists as an entire theological framework to justify what James calls a misery-inducing catastrophe.
Remarriage after divorce — Mark 10:11-12 (ESV) — "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." No exception clause. The Greek word for divorce here is apoluo — unilateral abandonment — which arguably makes the institutional application to modern legal divorce a misreading. But even granting the traditional reading, remarriage among evangelical leadership is widely accommodated with barely a whisper — and without the kind of open, transparent reformation on the subject that this site advocates regarding purity theology.
Some will argue this site is doing the same thing — lawyering around the sexual purity standard rather than honestly engaging it. That objection deserves a direct answer: this site is not looking away from the text. It is leaning into it — examining what the words actually meant in their original context, to their original audience. That is not accommodation. That is the work the institution has refused to do.
The gluttony parallel is instructive in another way too. Swinging to the extreme of obsessive, shame-based dietary standards — treating every meal as a moral test — causes real psychological harm. But abandoning the conversation entirely squanders a genuine opportunity to help people avoid chronic illness. An honest, measured engagement with food and health would serve people far better than all-or-nothing extremism. The same logic applies here. Purity culture's moral extremism causes trauma. But quietly abandoning any sexual ethic at all leaves people — particularly young people — without the guidance that could genuinely protect them.
Marry young — really young
The second is a shift in the age of marriage. This path has already been tried. In 2009, sociologist Mark Regnerus made a high-profile case for early marriage in the pages of Christianity Today, arguing — correctly — that expecting people to remain abstinent into their late twenties was battling biological reality. Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, publicly called it a "bombshell" and threw his weight behind it. The evangelical world debated it seriously. And then nothing changed.
The average age of first marriage has continued to rise, not fall. Demanding that people white-knuckle their way through an entire decade of prime young adult life with abstinence is simply not a sustainable ethic. The data confirms it isn't working, and sixteen years of trying to promote early marriage confirms the culture is not listening.
Fix the text
The third — and the one this site advocates — is an honest reformation of the theology itself, grounded in what Scripture actually says rather than what institutions insist it says.
What the Text Actually Suggests
The textual evidence points toward Abstinence Until Adulthood — a framework grounded in the text itself rather than imposed upon it.
Three anchors establish this reading:
- 1 Corinthians 7:2–5 — One of purity culture's key proof-texts. When analyzed without institutional bias, the ambiguities around the assumption of marriage are significant, and the alternative readings are textually stronger than the traditional interpretation. Committed, non-marital partnerships are not as clearly excluded from this passage as institutions typically insist.
Nemeth, Scott M. The Fellowship of Thy LLMs. Zenodo, February 27, 2026. Preprint. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18808385
This study applied identical prompts to six major AI platforms analyzing 1 Corinthians 6–7. Every platform's default output resolved every ambiguous term in the passage in favor of the traditional marriage assumption — silently, without acknowledging the ambiguity existed. Every platform's steelman output identified textually stronger alternative readings already present in their training data, including readings that do not require the assumption of marriage.
The study found that 63% of recommended commentaries across all platforms came from a single theological tradition (conservative evangelical), with zero social-historical scholars represented — a source bias that directly shapes how passages like 1 Corinthians 7:2–5 get interpreted by default.
- The Song of Solomon — The lover in this text meets every ancient standard of adulthood: she lives away from her parents (independent, not under paternal authority), works unsupervised (economically autonomous), and is capable of giving valid legal testimony (legal personhood in the ancient world). These are not modern impositions. They are reliable ancient markers of adulthood — and the woman who meets all three is presented approvingly, in an intimate relationship, with no marriage mentioned or required.
Song of Solomon 1:6 (ESV) — "They made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept." She works in the vineyards under her brothers' direction — not her father's. She is out in the fields unsupervised, economically active, and darkened by the sun from outdoor labor. This is a portrait of a woman with economic autonomy, operating independently of paternal authority.
Song of Solomon 3:1-3 (ESV) — She moves through the city alone at night, and in verse 3 addresses the city watchmen directly: "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?" In the ancient world, the ability to approach and question law enforcement — the legal authorities of the city — implied recognized legal personhood. A woman without legal standing would not have been in a position to address them as an equal. She does so without hesitation, and without a male escort.
Note on independence from parents: Song 1:6 specifies that it is her mother's sons — her brothers — who set her to work in the vineyards, not her father. In the ancient world, a woman under sibling rather than paternal authority suggests parents who are absent, deceased, or otherwise not actively guiding or protecting her. She operates under her brothers' direction in the fields, moves freely through the city alone at night, and addresses city watchmen without male escort — a consistent portrait of a woman functioning without parental oversight. Her mother's house is referenced warmly elsewhere (3:4, 8:2), but parents are not the ones immediately guiding or protecting her. The argument is one of functional independence from paternal authority, not a claim that she lives in a separate dwelling.
- 1 Corinthians 7:36 — References a woman at "the flower of her age" — a phrase understood in its ancient context to mean physically and socially mature, ready for an intimate relationship. Not a child. An adult.
Taken together, the textual evidence supports a framework that protects the vulnerable — children and those without agency — while not burdening responsible, mature adults with a standard the Bible itself does not clearly impose.
Abstinence Until Adulthood does not open a door to licentiousness. It opens a door to honesty — about what the text says, about how romantic relationships actually work, then and now, and about what a genuinely protective sexual ethic actually needs to protect against.
It protects children. It honors maturity. It takes Scripture seriously enough to read it carefully rather than conveniently.
The alternative is a church that continues to hemorrhage its youngest and most vital members — that leaves one in three of its people carrying wounds it refuses to acknowledge, and that demands a standard in the bedroom it secretly abandoned at the buffet line decades ago.
That is the reformation this site is proposing.