Lauren D. Sawyer, "Growing Up Pure: White Girls, Queer Teens, and the Racial Foundations of Purity Culture" (NYU Press, 2025)

Jan 22, 2026

Lauren D. Sawyer, a Professor of theology and culture, dives deep into the origins and implications of purity culture, particularly its impact on white youth. She connects the rise of this movement in the '90s to historical racial anxieties and critiques how white girls and queer teens have both suffered from and perpetuated its oppressive structures. Sawyer emphasizes the importance of youth agency and accountability, advocating for a nuanced understanding of their experiences in navigating purity norms. Expect sharp insights on the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Purity Culture's Deep Historical Roots

Purity culture in the 1990s built on earlier US movements linking sexual and racial purity.
It centers young white people, especially girls, as symbols for protecting the nation and Christianity.

INSIGHT

Youth Are Agents, Not Only Victims

The book reframes youth as agents with constrained choice rather than passive victims.
Sawyer urges proportional accountability for white people who participated in purity culture.

ADVICE

Own Proportional Responsibility

Take proportional responsibility for harms if you benefited from purity culture's white supremacist framing.
Acknowledge complicity even when your participation began in youth and use that awareness to act differently.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Gaining mass popularity in the mid-1990s with the True Love Waits rally on the Washington Mall, purity culture began as an urge from evangelical conservatives for Christian adolescents to publicly commit to practicing abstinence until marriage. Throughout this decade and the next, millions of evangelical teenagers performed their commitment to sexual purity by signing pledges and wearing purity rings.

Growing Up Pure: White Girls, Queer Teens, and the Racial Foundations of Purity Culture (NYU Press, 2025) by Dr. Lauren D. Sawyer examines the shaping of purity culture in the United States, looking specifically at the experiences of white youth. It shows that white girls and white queer youth were vulnerable to the purity movement, but that they were also complicit in its white supremacist oppressive structure. It makes the case that purity culture follows in the footsteps of other purity movements in the United States, and is very much tied to centuries of anti-Black racism and xenophobia in US social history, seeing white youth as in need of protection, usually from a racialized, sexualized other.
While other works have focused on the ways in which purity culture has victimized young people, Dr. Sawyer argues that their perceived status as victims lets them too easily off the hook. White youth have been afforded the privilege of participating in purity culture’s harmful behaviors without being called to account. Closely reading adolescents’ stories of growing up in purity culture, she uncovers youth as agents, participants, and beneficiaries of its white supremacist framing, even as they were still vulnerable to its harmful teachings.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology