Social Movement: the Purity Revolution

The movement I am studying this semester is known as the purity revolution; a largely-Evangelical Christian undertaking that embraces what it refers to as sexual purity in both private practice and public policy. This includes strong support for abstinence-only sex education and a commitment to "biblical standards" of sexual behavior.

The purity revolution can also be characterized as a reactionary 'counter-movement' against the cause of sexual freedom. The purity revolutionaries see the sexual freedom movement as one that threatens cherished traditional values, in addition to the emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being of adolescents. The sexual freedom movement, to them, literally threatens to annihilate sexual purity.

The purity revolution has been remarkably successful in achieving its goals, despite being scowled upon by most of the population. The tenets of the movement have been carried into education, legislation, foreign policy, and religion; and the revolution show no signs of slowing down.

This project will be an instrumental-constitutive analysis of the purity revolution as a social movement that champions both socio-political and ideological goals. It will be also used as a foundation through which I will express and elaborate upon my idea of social movement, which is the (sometimes unsuccessful) alteration of the range of possibilities for action and thought at/across a given place and time. I feel this definition gives enough import to both instrumental and constitutive models of social movement to provide an effective analysis, and is broad and dynamic enough to encompass the spectrum of recognition-redistribution objectives.

The theoretical stuff is of course still very early, but so far I've gathered quite a wealth of textual evidence about the purity revolution. It stands to be a good time. :)


Take care and control!