The space between: liminal time within purity culture

Abstract

ABSTRACT Purity culture is an evangelical Christian approach to teaching sexuality and gendered relationship expectations to adolescents. Formal induction to purity culture often begins with an event that mirrors the opening of a rite of passage and is expected to culminate in heterosexual marriage, a ceremony that acts as a reintegration ritual and completes the rite. The author employs her positionality as a biracial Indigenous woman raised in purity culture to bring an Indigenous perspective to this topic. She uses autoethnography and an ethnographic look at data from a large-scale qualitative research project about purity culture’s outcomes to argue that the intensity of the separation rite that introduced the participant to purity culture, the amount of time spent in a liminal purity culture space, the participants’ acceptance of the role of ‘ritual agent,’ and how purity culture ‘ends’ for a participant all significantly impact the way they experience purity culture.