The purity culture wars continue over on Twitter, where a crucial question — from a journalism perspective — can be seen in the following sequence.

There is no question that some church leaders went too far with purity culture themes and rites, including hellish actions by abusive men. Can anyone deny that? However, can journalists (and their academic and activist sources) assume that because evil happened in some cases means that it happened in all cases? And, to be specific, do journalists have on-the-record evidence that the alleged shooter in Atlanta was, in fact, warped by abusive people at an abusive church?

GetReligion published two posts linked to these debates. Check out Julia Duin’s post here: “Panning purity culture: What the press doesn't get about basic Christian doctrines on sex.”

Then, I raised other basic journalism questions here: “Wait a minute: How is a sermon on the Second Coming linked to shootings in Atlanta?”

Before we get to this weekend’s two “think pieces” on this topic — by religious-liberty activist David French and Crossway books executive Justin Taylor — here is a flashback to a key passage in my post, which is linked to some of Taylor’s constructive criticism of the French piece.

It’s not enough to say that this or that conservative congregation, or counseling center, or parachurch ministry is “evangelical” and, thus, the public can assume that Christian doctrines were used in manipulative ways. …

Ponder this equation: Journalists cannot assume that a specific evangelical flock advocates dangerous doctrine X, simply because there are experts (progressive evangelicals even) who insist that all evangelicals teach dangerous doctrine X and, thus, we know that dangerous doctrine X causes broken, manipulated individuals to do hellish things.

At some point, journalists need to find specific people advocating specific ideas and actions — using research methods that are deeper than second-hand reports and the convictions of hostile experts on one side of fights about the Sexual Revolution.

This brings us to French’s must-read piece:

Why the Atlanta Massacre Triggered a Conversation About Purity Culture

The problem with purity culture is not Christianity. The problem is that its extremes are not Christian at all. 

Here is his summary of the debates that erupted immediately after the Atlanta shootings:

In the days following the shooting, however, the evidence of the shooter’s sexual confusion and dysfunction continued to mount. And so it’s important to focus on what we do know, on where the evidence is leading us now. The shooter is a Christian young man, baptized in a local Baptist church. He struggled so deeply with sexual sin that he was a patient at a local Evangelical treatment facility, called HopeQuest. He reportedly told a former roommate at a different recovery center that his “very salvation was at stake” if he couldn’t overcome his sexual sin.

And with these revelations, suddenly the Christian part of the internet broke out into a debate about Evangelical purity culture. The shooter’s stated beliefs and deadly actions represented a hyper-violent and extreme manifestation of a toxic theology that long corrupted a slice of Evangelical Christianity. Those same beliefs and actions brought an immense amount of pain bubbling to the surface of the Christian conversation. Soon enough the conversation burst into mainstream media and splashed across the virtual pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. 

But first, let’s define our terms. “Purity culture” is not a synonym for traditional Christian teachings about sexual morality — specifically the belief that sex is reserved for a marriage between a man and a woman. No, “purity culture” refers to the elaborate set of extra-biblical rituals and teachings that became popular in the 1990s and were designed to build safeguards and “strongholds” of sexual purity in Christian communities. 

The Gospel Coalition’s Joe Carter has written an excellent FAQ about purity culture, and he identifies a number of common characteristics, including specific “purity pledges” that young men and women would take, father-daughter “purity balls” where dads would often given their daughters “purity rings” to symbolize their commitment to chastity, and strict “courtship” relationships that would often feature parent-supervised meetings in lieu of dates and written “purity contracts” prohibiting physical contact.

As an evangelical, French mined some of his own experiences growing up in that culture. While doing that, he brought up a key name — Bill Gothard, head of the so-called Institute in Basic Life Principles.

Gothard seminars were controversial way back when I was young (soon after the cooling of the Earth’s crust). He helps to know that Gothard’s career ended in a firestorm of accusations that he had abused and tormented women.

… Gothard was a powerful Christian celebrity. His seminars could pack arenas, and hundreds of thousands of Christian families hung on his every word. 

His words, however, appalled me. Premarital sexual sin was viewed as defining, status-changing rebellion. You could be forgiven, but if you were no longer a virgin, your life, your wedding, and your marriage would be diminished as a result. You would walk down the aisle fundamentally tarnished, having lost something you could never get back. 

Purity was such a special virtue that God would reward purity with increased beauty, creating a “Godly countenance.” But that beauty must be concealed. Women bore a particular burden to protect “visual” men from temptation. Thus, modesty rules were strict. For example Gothard materials condemned even remarkably modest clothing if it contained what he called an “eye trap.”

The final summary of his Atlanta-shooter thesis is found here:

When many Christian women (and women who’d left the church) heard the killer’s motive, they thought, “That’s an extreme version of an idea that I was taught for years — that men need to protect themselves from women, that they need to protect themselves from me.” 

At its most benign, purity culture put unnecessary burdens on young men and (especially) young women. In its more harmful manifestations, however, it has enabled abuse, and at the extreme edge the male demand that women save them from their own sin can lead to murderous rage. 

Now, it helps to know that French and Taylor know, and respect, each other’s work.

Journalists who read Taylor’s response at the Gospel Coalition website have a chance to tune in PRECISELY the kind of informed and constructive debate about some (repeat “some”) purity culture claims that needed to have been seen in news reports from the beginning. The headline: “Questions for David French on the Connections between the Atlanta Killer and Purity Culture.”

It also helps to know that their dialogue has continued:

Let’s start with Taylor’s summary of what French was trying to accomplish in his essay:

On the sexual angle, David writes: “the evidence of the shooter’s sexual confusion and dysfunction continued to mount. And so it’s important to focus on what we do know, on where the evidence is leading us now.”

No argument from me so far. So what’s the evidence?

David writes:

(1) The shooter is a Christian young man, baptized in a local Baptist church.

(2) He struggled so deeply with sexual sin that he was a patient at a local Evangelical treatment facility, called HopeQuest.

(3) He reportedly told a former roommate at a different recovery center that his “very salvation was at stake” if he couldn’t overcome his sexual sin.

We can add to the evidence a quote from earlier in David’s essay:

(4) He shot the women because “they were a temptation for him he wanted to eliminate.”

Taylor had several questions:

My questions are about the overall argument of the piece. Does it hold together? More formally, Is the argument sound? Is it a valid argument with true premises that lead inevitably to the conclusion?

To answer that, we have to ask: What is the connection between the killer and toxic purity theology and culture? The piece assumes a connection but never gets around to demonstrating one. And that leads to the weird experience of reading something where I agree with virtually every single word and yet find that the actual argument doesn’t hold together.

I think a barbaric act of murder requires a healthy dose of epistemic humility when we have such fragmentary evidence. It’s okay to acknowledge how much we don’t know. And yet within minutes or hours of the sheriff quoting that the killer said he wanted to “eliminate temptation,” there were prominent Christians writing stern warnings to Southern Baptist pastors and seminary presidents and people who had criticized Beth Moore about the life-and-death repercussions of their theology.

There were prominent Christians writing news articles and opinion pieces quoting a boilerplate evangelical sermon the pastor of the killer’s church had delivered the previous Sunday on the second coming of Christ.

There were prominent Christians writing about reckoning with our role in shaping the culture that gave rise to these events.

There were prominent Christians connecting the killer’s motives to the teachings of John Piper and Nancy Leigh DeMoss Wolgemuth on modesty.

One professor at a Christian university even tweeted a link to the name and address of the church and simply declared, “He was radicalized here.”

This leads to a very interesting timeline question about this specific shooter and this specific church. This is the kind of question that, well, journalists could have asked:

But what’s the evidence that the shooter, who would have been in youth group during the presidencies of Obama and Trump, was taught the toxic purity culture that peaked in the 1990s?

My argument is not “no evidence will ever or could ever exist,” but rather “no one actually knows, and therefore we shouldn’t draw that connection until and unless evidence emerges.”

If I was a betting man, I would actually put a hefty wager on this young man having heard the normative / traditional / orthodox teaching on sexuality that David French taught his youth group instead of the toxic legalism that Bill Gothard taught.

Read both of these articles carefully. There are journalism hooks all over the place — at least for reporters who are interested in accurate, informed journalism that shows respect for thinkers on both sides of this high-stakes debate.

Let me stress: These two men agree on many, many of the core facts and issues. It’s worth studying the points they are still debating.

FIRST IMAGE: Purity rings.