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Heart and Soul: Sex, Christianity and purity

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02/07/2021 GMT

Sex, Christianity and purity

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, Sex, Christianity and purity

Evangelical Christians who pledge to remain ‘pure’ by abstaining from sex before marriage

Evangelical Christians who pledge to remain ‘pure’ by abstaining from sex before marriage.

Where does God fit into your sex life? Decades after signing up to remain ‘pure’ until marriage, many Evangelical Christian Millennials are still confused by that question – and some are turning to counselling for help.  In the 1990s a sexual abstinence movement became popular in the US and eventually spread to the UK. This ‘purity culture’ recruited young people to wait until marriage before having sex, and wear a silver ring to advertise their pledge. But what effect did it have on the thousands of teenagers who took part.

Journalist Harriet Bradshaw went to a Christian evangelical/Pentecostal youth church as a teenager, and has been fascinated with the movement ever since. She revisits her own past, and hears from others who signed up to find out what their lives are like now.

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