Dear Church: Hope and a Future from the Wilderness of American Purity Culture

Abstract

This project-in-process examines the legacy of evangelical purity culture (EPC) through narrative theology, textual analysis, and pastoral reflection. It foregrounds lived religious experience, arguing that EPC's emphasis on behavioral control and moral absolutism has caused significant relational and spiritual harm. Framed as a letter to the Church, the project critiques EPC's internal logic while speaking in its own vernacular: testimony, confession, and biblical allusion, attempting to engage on shared moral ground. Drawing from trauma theory and the corpus of post-EPC literature, it proposes reparative tools grounded in sacred values reframing work for individuals and their communities as both or either seek reparative action. It calls for institutional and interpersonal healing rooted in biblical repair process (witness, confession, and atonement) as an act of faith, not a promise of outcome: hope, not certainty, for a future for the church and all her children.