The night the first Bachelorette promo aired, I dropped a message in a group chat with friends whom I watch trashy television with once a week.
“Y’all… This season of the bachelorette is going to be epic. She just dropped this line: ‘I have had sex… And Jesus still loves me.’”
This group had explored the Bachelor franchise a couple of years ago, but abandoned it, recognizing that it was a little too cheesy, even in comparison to the mindless fair we typically watch. It took a few episodes worth of prodding (“Y’all, she says Roll Tide all the time!”), but I finally got them on board to watch Hannah Brown’s journey to find love.
Not just on board… Obsessed.
We love watching Hannah Brown’s weekly romantic exploits. Born and raised in Tuscaloosa, AL, she is charmingly familiar. She reminds me of some of the spunky sorority girls I befriended at Alabama in my freshman English classes, the ones who called my style “funky” in the same breath they mentioned their history competing in pageants. She’s a good Christian girl who, at 24, is just starting to explore life outside of the worlds she’s always known. And perhaps, outside of the sexual ethics she’s always known.
There’s no way Hannah Brown wasn’t raised in purity culture. Born in the mid 90s, raised in the church in the South, it was all but unavoidable. I don’t know if she attended a purity ball with her father, but she certainly knows what one is and the purpose behind it.
Prior to becoming the Bachelorette, she telegraphed purity culture’s influence on her life when she was a contestant on the previous season of The Bachelor. During a one-on-one date with Colton–who himself was a virgin, although he claimed it was not for religious reasons–Hannah revealed that she had felt “shame“ in her community for not being a virgin, a sentiment no doubt many young women related to. Purity culture demands that women feel intense remorse for any and all sexual activity prior to marriage. And early on in her television career, Hannah was clearly still wrestling with that reality.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Hannah’s season has been her evolution. In the second half of her journey to love, she mounts Peter–an adorable pilot from California–during a steamy make-out session in a sauna as quickly and easily as she quotes scripture prior to a stressful rose ceremony. She expresses excitement and delight at the start of fantasy suite week, in which she will get overnight alone time with each of the remaining men. But she is not indiscriminately sexual. She talks openly about which men she feels comfortable being intimate with, and which men she feels she needs to use that alone time with for conversation. She is clearly thinking about her sexual choices and making mindful decisions, an exercise of personal agency that purity culture does not willingly afford women.
It is during fantasy suite week that the altercation with one of her remaining suitors, Luke, occurs in which she drops her now-famous “Jesus still loves me” line. Luke is the type of Christian who claims “born again” virginity, after a few years of partying and “chasing sex” in college. His entire persona on the show is based around a religious conversion experience he had in the shower. His Christianity is aggressive and performative, but it doesn’t stop him from taking off his shirt and massaging Hannah the first night he meets her. His opinions on premarital sex seem to become more ingrained the closer Hannah becomes to other men, seemingly stemming more from jealousy than conviction.
On the night of the fantasy suite date, Luke questions Hannah about whether she has been with other men and states that, if she has, he would voluntarily leave the show. Luke exemplifies the type of sexual rejection women experience in purity culture: to have been sexual with other men disqualifies a woman from being the wife of a “godly“ man. While Luke later walks back his comments about leaving, he typifies the view of men raised in purity culture, which is that sex itself and a woman’s sexual history should exist entirely for the pleasure and approval of men.
Refreshingly, Hannah not only pushes back, she turns Luke’s words against him, reestablishing her control of the situation by using his attempt to reject her as a reason to reject him—which visibly tears at Luke’s ego. She says, “If that’s how you feel, then me fucking in a windmill will probably make you want to leave.“ (Peter, the adorable pilot, is supposedly the man she had sex with in a windmill, as his was the only fantasy suite that took place in one.) Luke is flummoxed, clearly not expecting either the reality that Hannah has been sexual with other men nor her unwillingness to seek his approval by submitting to the norms of purity culture. For young women who have been similarly brutalized by an oppressive dogma, the scene is both relatable and incredibly satisfying. For his part, Luke has been roundly villainized on social media, indicating a distaste for his judgmental interactions with Hannah even amongst The Bachelorette’s historically conservative audience.
Hannah’s journey to find love comes in a cultural season in which it seems that purity culture might be experiencing its death throes. Books like Pure by Linda Kay Klein and Shameless by Nadia-Bolz-Weber–both released in the last year–have explored both the realities and long-term impacts of purity culture. Twitter celebrities like Jamie Leigh Finch and Hannah Paasch have made podcast rounds and written their first books about how damaging purity culture in the evangelical context was to their lives, and how they reclaimed their own sexual agencies. Entire Facebook groups are dedicated to post-purity culture healing.
But perhaps the largest nail in the coffin of purity culture was struck just this week, when Josh Harris, author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, announced that he and his wife are divorcing. Harris’s infamous book, written when he was just 21, was the operating manual of early 21st-century purity culture. Outlining a system of courting that emphasizes chastity and virginity, especially on the part of the woman, Harris promised not only the securing of a perfect spouse, but in some ways, salvation itself. Harris has since claimed that his writing was taken out of context and used for unintended purposes, but to read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, it’s clear that the promises and the implied risks are both pretty high stakes.
Harris’s announcement did not go unnoticed by post-evangelicals, often called “Exvangelicals.” Comments on his Instagram announcement ranged from “I’m praying for you” to open mocking of Harris’s history and advice-giving. The hostility and rage toward Harris and his late 90s doctrine is palpable, as is the schadenfreude at his perceived failure at the very thing he so brazenly purported to be an expert in. Harris has shown little contrition for the ways his writing was used to oppress Christian youth, and some in the Exvangelical and progressive Christian communities are all but calling for his head.
With the demagogue of purity culture dethroned and prominent voices telling stories of the harm done to a generation of young people, it seems that the system itself might not survive the “Me Too” era, in which television’s ultimate Girl Next Door is owning her sexuality and pushing back against the very men who would seek to hold her hostage to puritanical standards. Hannah Brown might be post-purity culture’s poster child, and if social media posts are any indication, Josh Harris might end up being its sacrificial lamb.
Personally, I have a modicum of sympathy for Harris’s current situation. There is no greater failure than to not succeed at the thing you once told people how to do. No doubt dating, relationships, and faith in general will be extremely complicated for Harris moving forward. As a divorced person myself, I can confirm that dating the second time around, when most folks in your age bracket have baggage, kids, and yes, sexual histories is much, much harder.
So… maybe Josh Harris needs to spend some time in a windmill.
Don’t worry, Josh. Jesus will still love you.