The legacy of purity culture: Spiritual care and discourses of sexual purity in contemporary evangelical Christianity

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project will explore contemporary evangelical discourse on sexual purity, the potential harmful implications of this, and what churches within the UK should do as a result. Specifically, it will involve the collection of data (focus groups and resources on sexual purity in evangelical Christianity) to be examined using a constructed framework of spiritual trauma. The implications of this for UK evangelical churches - namely, those united under membership of the Evangelical Alliance - will then be evaluated, and a pastoral theology to guide Christian teaching on sexuality will be articulated. As well as drawing on the emerging academic field of trauma theology, and a concurrent concern with spiritual abuse that straddles academic and non-academic dialogue, this study will be pertinent to the increasing focus on sexism, sexual abuse and gender-based violence in academic religious studies, and highly current within recent public reports on similar issues in church congregations.