PURITY RINGS (also known as “Promise Rings”) were made popular by TRUE LOVE WAITS and the SILVER RING THING.
SPOTLIGHT: PURITY CULTURE
“Purity culture,” a subculture of evangelical Christianity that peaked in the 1990s — with young girls pledging to their fathers to abstain from sex until marriage by wearing “purity rings”.
While purity culture set out to protect teenagers, it also resulted in unintended consequences, primarily the destruction of sexual intimacy by instilling a deep sexual shame.
Touch Podcast examines the purity fallout as a micro study to a macro issue — EVANGELICAL AMERICA’S LEGACY OF SHAME.
YOUTUBE SERIES
PURITY | Evangelical America’s Legacy of Shame
Touch Podcast’s Youtube series PURITY is a three-month video campaign examining purity culture for purity victims to be posted, shared, and commented on; a social media conversation that creates space, encourages perspective, and invites healing. Featured guests include authors, ethicists, Gospel stars, insider voices of the True Love Waits campaign, purity survivors taking inspirational paths to heal.
Live podcasting recording with GLENDALE BAPTIST CHURCH in Nashville, TN.
These are OUR STORIES, TRUE ACCOUNTS of conviction, disillusionment, and homecoming.
TOUCH PODCAST take viewers on a dark journey into ecclesial control, and back into the light with inspiring STORIES OF HEALING.
A LEGACY OF SHAME
TRUE LOVE WAITS was a program founded by the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 1990’s that grew into a multi-million teen movement, the most popular of the “purity” programs around the country promoted by Evangelical leaders and denominations.
Anxious about HIV-AIDS, rising teen pregnancy rates, and the perceived secularization of America, church leaders sought to protect young people by heavily marketing Bible studies, videos, and conferences that pressured teens into signing pledge cards promising to abstain from sex until marriage. fg Those religious leaders did not anticipate the harmful consequences that would impact so many people later: traumatic, internalized shame.
Touch Podcast dramatically chronicles hows the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful religious organizations in the U.S. strategized to take back America by protecting the virginity of young women, focusing on the family, and pushing this fight into the political spotlight; and how this ties into today’s DECONSTRUCTION OF AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY.
This podcast-Youtube campaign shows how so-called “purity” programs pressured young teens to avoid sexual contact, and how teen daughters were “promised” to their fathers in purity balls and adorned rings to signify their covenant with their earthly and heavenly Fathers.
Pledge card carrying teens stream down isles during Christian rock concerts to publicly declare their commitment to stay celibate until marriage while religious leaders of the Christian Right make significant strides to federally fund abstinence-only education in public schools. Therapists, Biblical scholars, and pastors all weigh in on how pressuring teens into “saving” sex for marriage results to EVANGELICAL AMERICA’S LEGACY OF SHAME.
Former abstinence educators, therapists, professors and pop-stars articulate the intricacies of the machine that commercialized virginity. Former teen members of the movement with diverse starting points explain the crippling internalized shame they experienced and the unexpected paths they found to reconcile God with sexuality.
Ryan and Nate take viewers on a dark journey into ecclesial control, and back into the light with inspiring stories of healing. For the estimated 25 million American households privately paralyzed by purity culture, THIS IS MORE THAN A SERIES,
THIS IS HOPE.
PURITY | Evangelical America’s Legacy of Shame
A TOUCH MEDIA Production | Produced and Written by RYAN CLARK | Edited by VICTORIA SIMPSON & NATHAN NOVERO | Directed by NATHAN NOVERO
RELEASED: SUMMER 2021
DR. TINA SCHERMER-SELLERS
Premiered June 2, 2021
Family and Marriage Therapist and sexologist Dr. Tina Schermer-Sellers didn’t set out to take on the church’s teaching on sex. When she continued to encounter, however, students who were traumatized by deep sexual shame without having been physically sexually abused, Dr. Tina Schermer-Sellers had to get down to the bottom of it.
Hosts Ryan Clark and Nate Novero discuss her book Sex, Shame, and the Conservative Church on Touch Podcast Episodes 6 and 7. She is also author of Shameless Parenting: Everything You Need To Raises Shame-Free Confident Kids & Heal Your Shame Too.
LINDA KAY KLEIN
Premiered June 20, 2021
Linda Kay Klein, author of PURE: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, shares some of her experiences of sexual and gender-based shame after having grown up in the American Evangelical Christian Church. Throughout her youth, she was taught to be submissive, repress her sexuality, and avoid becoming a “stumbling block” for men—that is, tempting them in any sexual way. The church emphasized a girl’s sexuality as the most important mark of her spiritual standing with God.
Hosts Ryan Clark and Nate Novero discuss her book on Touch Podcast Season 2 Episode 2. She is also founder of Break Free Together, a not-for-profit organization serving individuals recovering from gender-and sexuality-based religious trauma, and a community committed to releasing shame and claiming our whole selves.
JENNIFER KNAPP
Premiered August 11, 2021
In addition to her Dove Award Grammy nominations, Jennifer Knapp is a 2015 Ted Talk speaker, author, and song artist in Nashville, TN. When she’s not occupied with music, or doing advocacy work on behalf of LGBTQ people of faith through her Inside Out Faith organization, she is working on a master’s degree in theological studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School.
Hosts Nate and Ryan speak with Dove Award winner and two-time Grammy nominee Jennifer Knapp about her experience of almost becoming the poster child of the evangelical sexual purity movement. They discuss faith, sex, shame, and Christian consumerism. The conversation is also featured on Touch Podcast Season 1 Episode 1 and Season 3 Episode 1.
PURITY MOVIE YOUTUBE SERIES | FILMOGRAPHY
TINA SCHERMER SELLARS, PHD, LMFT - 06/02/21
TINA SCHERMER SELLARS, PHD, LMFT - 06/09/21
TINA SCHERMER SELLARS, PHD, LMFT - 06/16/21
TINA SCHERMER SELLARS, PHD, LMFT - 06/23/21
LINDA KAY KLEIN - 06/30/21
LINDA KAY KLEIN - 07/07/21
LINDA KAY KLEIN - 07/14/21
LINDA KAY KLEIN - 07/21/21
LINDA KAY KLEIN - 07/28/21
LINDA KAY KLEIN - 08/04/21
JENNIFER KNAPP - 08/11/21
JENNIFER KNAPP - 08/18/21
JENNIFER KNAPP - 08/25/21
JENNIFER KNAPP - 08/25/21
JENNIFER KNAPP - 09/01/21
JENNIFER KNAPP - 09/08/21
JENNIFER KNAPP - 09/15/21
COMING SOON
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TOUCH MEDIA PRESENTS
PURITYLAND
A DOCUMENTARY
IN DEVELOPMENT WITH ORIGINAL PRODUCTIONS AND ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE
REV. DR. EMILIE TOWNES, Dean Vanderbilt Divinity School, Social Ethicist and Theologian REV. DR. MARVIN ELLISON, Professor, Bangor Theological Seminary, LINDA KAY KLINE, Author of PURE: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, DON SCHLOSSER, Music Minister, Glendale Baptist DR. RYAN CLARK, Producer REV. BROMLEIGH MCCLENAGHAN, Minister, Author of Good Christian Sex JENNIFER KNAPP, Dove Award Winner, Grammy Nominee REV. DR. AMY MEARS, Glendale Baptist Pastor JAMIE LYNN FINCH, Sex Witch, Author of You Are Your Own BRIAN CURRIE, Pastor of Compass Church DR. SHAWN WARNER-GARCIA , Linguist Professor University of Santa Barbara REV. KELLY BROWN DOUGLAS, Episcopal Priest and Theologian Dr. BILL STAYTON, Baptist Clergyman, Sexologist REV. DR. AMY BUTLER, Ordained Christian Minister LYNDSEY GODWIN, MDIV, Vanderbilt Divinity School DR. TINA SCHERMER-SELLERS, Family Therapist, Author of Sex, God, and the Conservative Church NATE NOVERO, Former Camp Pastor, Filmmaker DR. MONIQUE MOULTRIE, Professor and Author Harvard Divinity School.; Author of Passionate and Pious: Religious Media and Black Women Sexuality
“UNCHURCHING THE CHURCH BRAIN”
TOUCH PODCAST