In language that ought to cause even a brand-new Christian, as well as anyone with a modicum of common sense, tremendous distress, the Patheos.com article below posits a lurid, perverted theology that centers on the thin membrane within a woman’s vagina called the hymen.
And yes, you needed to know that. The hymen evidently is the new frontier in covenant-keeping and blood atonement …
“Hymens are for Forming Blood Covenants” and Other Things I’ve Learned from Christian Dating Books
I’m not feeling well enough today to respond at length, but to those who think this is merely the kooky, lunatic fringe of the “purity movement,” I’d like to offer a different persective:
That’s just stupid.
The authors and those who believe as they do are evil-besotted, power-hungry, lascivious, and dangerous. They don’t belong anywhere near other believers, much less young people needing counsel on dating and romance.
This is just more elegant, descriptive prose from a vibrant, vital part of evangelicalism. It has its effects, and those aren’t good. I know young women not allowed to use tampons because they “corrupt the hymen.” (They don’t, generally, and the hymen can be torn in any number of non-sinful ways). My husband’s side of the family has a few members who believe things like this, who believe that in every encounter with an outsider, a woman needs a male “covering,” who adorn their daughters and sons with “purity rings” that put virginity above all else in regards to a young person’s character, who teach them that masturbation is sinful, a threat to sexual “purity.” It’s time to stop thinking that these people are just kooks.
They’re influential, far more than some believe, and they are setting the agenda for the Right, for the complementarians, and for a heartbreaking number of girls and women whose understanding of their sexuality is perverted by these teachings. The males behind these teachings have a puerile and base fascination with their little daddy’s girls’ virginity, and it’s long past time for the Church to rebuke them as sharply as it rebukes those who sin sexually.
I’ll forego a long discussion about the New Testament’s teaching of the only blood-bound covenant that exists for the Christian, because, frankly, if I have to tell you, you’re far more concerned about what lies between a girl’s legs than you are about what lies between the covers of your Bible.