Is Purity Culture Toxic? Revisiting “And the Bride Wore White”

Dannah Gresh: Purity culture? Is it toxic? Did it harm girls? Do we need elements of it today? This week we're going to talk about that.

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, for May 4, 2026, I'm Dannah Gresh.

Two years ago I was standing in a music rehearsal room at Cedarville University, my alma mater, when someone handed me a silver envelope with a note for me. It was from another party, but this woman had met this individual that I knew and said, “Will you please deliver this letter to Dannah Gresh?”

When I opened it up, the first thing I saw was a photocopy of a newspaper clipping from the 1980s or early 90s. (I can't remember which right now.) But it was of this woman who wrote the letter on her wedding day, how the newspaper had celebrated the fact that she and her husband had saved the gift of sex for their wedding day. This is a secular paper, and it was being celebrated. The gift of purity was being celebrated.

And then there was a handwritten letter from this woman who had read my book And the Bride Wore White: Seven Secrets to Sexual Purity about the year 2000 or so. And she said: 

I loved that book. It was such an encouragement to me in how we chose to live our life. I have a teenage daughter now who is in the youth group, and I would love to tell my purity story to her youth group. But when I approached the youth pastor about it, he told me that I was the victim of toxic teaching, toxic teaching from the era known as the purity movement, or purity culture, as some call it.

And then she ended the letter with this question: 

Do you still believe what you wrote?

It had been a long time since I'd penned that book, but I went back to it. I pulled it out, and I've spent the last two years deciding what I believe about purity today versus what I believed twenty years ago or so.

And you may be asking yourself some of the same questions. You might be asking yourself, “Do I believe what I was taught when I was a teenager about the topic of purity?” You might be saying, “How should I be talking to my teenage daughter about the topic of purity?”

Today, we're going to dive into those answers after two years of research. And of course, I'm going to be the one interviewed, so that means I have pulled a dear friend, one of my best friends in the whole world, into the studio to be in the seat of co-host.

Now, she's not a stranger to the Revive Our Hearts community, because she is the theological and content director for the new Wonder app for teen girls. She's also been on the program a time or two since we launched that app in January.

Side note: visit ReviveOurHearts.com/wonder to learn more about that app, and please share it with the teen girls in your life. Wonder turns her screen time into Scripture time—daily video devos. The whole Bible is right there in the app with capabilities to make notes and highlight important truths. Plus, she'll be rewarded with streaks and Bible badges. She'll love it. More importantly, she'll love God's Word. Again, go to ReviveOurHearts.com/wonder and share it with the teen girl in your life.

But this is my dear friend, Suzy Weibel. She's a lead teacher of many years on the True Girl tour team and just a student of the Word of God. Welcome, Suzy, to Revive Our Hearts. You're in the driver's seat today.

Suzy Weibel: Oh, wow! You know I'm licensed, so I guess that's a good thing. But yeah, I feel the weight of this too. I mean, first of all, that's a pretty serious question to have someone ask you: “Do you still believe what you wrote twenty years ago?” That was a big assignment that you were given there—to go back and re-examine that.

I feel the weight of that. I grew up at the same time as you. We're peers. And so, I think that that's a question that deserves some good reflection. 

Dannah: Me too. 

Suzy: As you were talking, telling the story, which I've heard many times, I just now thought of the Bereans. I thought how Paul praised the Bereans because they went back to look at everything that was taught to them, and they checked it against the Word of God to make sure that what they were believing was coming from God's heart and not from any other motive or from any other source.

And so, I think it's a good thing to go back and to take a deep Berean dive into what you wrote twenty years ago and see if it stands. 

Dannah: Yeah, me too. I seek the critique because it does keep us true to the truth of God's Word.

Suzy: So shall we dive in? 

Dannah: Let's do it.

Suzy: You're familiar with the five questions of journalism, right? Who, what, where, when, why? 

Dannah: Yes. 

Suzy: How about we start at the end with that “why” question?

Dannah: Okay. 

Suzy: Why do we need to be talking to our kids at any age? And the Bride Wore White is intended for girls of a more mature stage in their walk. But why, at any age, do we need to be talking to our kids about sex?

I'm going to just throw out that massive, broad question to you to get things started.

Dannah: Well, I think many times as moms, we're guilty that our “why” is one of two things.

One is we fear that they're going to be hurt by the world's sinful approach to sex. And I'm not saying that that isn't a part of why we teach it, but it shouldn't be the primary motivation. We shouldn't fear them being sexually active outside of marriage. We shouldn't fear sexually transmitted diseases or an untimely pregnancy. Operating out of that is the wrong motivation for why we teach. It doesn't mean we don't take those things into consideration, but it can't be the “why.”

And I think the other reason is, we've been hurt by either teaching about sexuality or sex itself. And out of that hurt, we kind of feel like, “Oh, I have to protect my child from this hurt. I don't want them to hear what I heard. I don't want them to do what I did.”

And I would say that those two motivators are motivators that are not healthy. It doesn't mean they're not factors, but they're not healthy.

What we want to go to is a much deeper “why.” And if you look at the “why” of Scripture, I think what stands out to me is that everything in all of creation is an object lesson. Everything.

You can hardly read two pages of the Bible without coming to something in creation being likened to something in our spiritual life, like the tree planted by streams of living water in Psalm 1.

When we look at Scripture, there is something that portrays the love God has for His people, which is the most important thing we can understand about God—His love. One thing that portrays it is the relationship of father and child. We see that all throughout Scripture.

The other thing that portrays it is the love between a husband and a wife. It goes even more deeply into the fact that their marriage bed, their intimacy, is a picture of the depth of love and intimacy that God wants to have with us.

And when I figured that out, it was like, “Eureka.” A light bulb went off in my mind as a mom of why I needed to talk to my kids about the subject of sexuality.

It's because if we don't paint a picture of sex that does point to the love of God, that does point to the love of Christ . . . I think Ephesians 5:31 and 32 says it most concisely. I'm going to paraphrase here. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,” and “this is a great mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the church.”

Very succinctly, it's stated in those verses—Ephesians 5:31 and 32—but you can see that picture and that intention from Genesis all the way to the wedding supper of the Lamb in Revelation.

Suzy: There are a couple things I picked up there that you're talking about. First of all, our motivation—it may be protection.

That may be why we maybe are fearful of talking to our kids about sexuality, because we want to protect them from maybe hearing things that we think it's too soon for them to hear. And there may be good motives for talking to them about this, because we want to protect them from being hurt in ways that we were hurt.

So the mother's heart is a heart, first and foremost, of protection. That's the first thing that I'm hearing there.

We need to decide what is the best way that we can protect our children. Where do we lean? Do we lean into that protectiveness that says, “Oh no, I don't want to talk about things because it's too soon. She may not be able to handle this yet?” Or do we lean into that protective part of our heart that says, “Oh no, we need to talk about this, because the reality is the world is talking to our girls about sex”?

I mean, every time I open my phone and I go to social media in particular, I think that the world is . . . They're not just talking about it, but it's loud.

Dannah: I think if we choose the first option, which is to just be like, “Oh, I don't want to talk about it, it might tell them things they're not ready for,” that actually is like putting a megaphone up to the world's lies. It allows the world's messages to be true.

And you said, Suzy, like, when it's too soon? I think you can look at a three-year-old or a four-year-old. When my granddaughters were three, I started simply saying, “You know, it's great to be a girl. It's so awesome that God made you a girl. God made me a girl, and it's so great that you're a girl.”

What was I doing? I was taking Genesis 1:27, and I was planting it in their hearts in an age-appropriate way at the age of three. It can be that simple—talking about these things in an age-appropriate way when the world is talking about it not in an age-appropriate way.

Because, now, they're six. At six we have drag queens in kindergarten classes in some public schools right now. I mean, in a very inappropriate, very sexualizing manner, the world is shouting out its lies to our kids. We've got to be very careful that we're taking God's truth to them in an age-appropriate way at a very early age.

Suzy: You said something that made me think of this. So when we're having these conversations with our girls about “it's great to be a girl,” and we're having conversations maybe when they're six to eight years old, and we're talking about something that's maybe a little more age-appropriate at that time, we begin talking maybe about where do babies come from and things like that.

These conversations are not limited to the topic of sex and sexuality or our bodies. There are so many amazing things, so many amazing conversations, that can come out of the beginnings of these conversations with our girls about sexuality. There are other themes. There are great biblical truths that we can begin simultaneously addressing.

In other words, when you talk about talking to the girls at three years old and you're saying, “It's great to be a girl,” and it's referencing Genesis 1:27, which is where we read that God made us in His image—in His image He made them, male and female He created them—and you can begin talking about this broad concept of God's design, that God designed everything.

Dannah: And the image-bearing quality of humanity is a quality that is something that we can talk about with them at any age. And that takes you to—if you're image bearers—it takes you to Paul's letter in Corinthians, where it says that we're supposed to glorify God in our bodies.

So, we glorify God. What does that mean? Well, it means that we make Him seen. We make Him known.

A thing I like to tell children when they're like four, five, six, seven, eight, I say, “When you look at the moon at night, is it bright and glowy, or is it dark?”

We'll have to go through the conversation of “it depends on when you look at it,” depending on if they're in elementary school. But we get to, eventually, it's glowy.

And then I say, “Does the moon have its own light?” By elementary school they know, no, the moon does not have any light of its own. It's a cold, dark stone, but it is glorifying the light of the sun.

This is like the world's biggest object lesson for how we understand the purpose of our bodies. The purpose of our bodies is to glorify God.

 

And so you go to that lesson in a very age-appropriate way. You say, “Your body was created to glorify God.” You're preparing them for when they're older and they hear “my body, my choice.” That is really a message of self-glorification.

And I want to say this: when you say “my body, my choice,” I want to be very clear—the Bible honors the concept of consent. In Ephesians, husbands and wives within a marriage relationship are told that mutual consent should exist in a healthy sexual relationship.

So the Bible loves and honors consent, but we look at it very differently. We have a higher view of consent because I'm not just protecting my body for what I want. I'm protecting the temple of the living, loving God of the universe.

The reason that I'm making this choice is not because it's “my body, my choice.” I'm making this choice to glorify and honor the light of the world.

That's a conversation you can have with an eight-year-old girl, talking about the moon and the sun, preparing her for when she's fifteen and you do talk about consent . . . or it may be even younger than that.

Suzy: I mean, in Timothy we read that all Scripture is God-breathed, and it is useful. And then we go back to Deuteronomy, and God is telling Israel, “Hey, these commandments that I'm giving you today, they are to be on your hearts, so impress them on your children. And talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (see Deut. 6:7).

It’s all-encompassing. This command, this directive, to talk to our children,it is not isolated to sexuality in any way, shape, or form. This is every single aspect of life we should be touching on in conversations with our kids.

Dannah: Yeah, and Deuteronomy 6 is a good passage to look at in terms of the important object lesson that sex and marriage is—the love of God, the love of Christ. It means that it deserves a lot of our attention. It's not relegated to the “sex talk.”

You don't have this conversation with your kid when they're ten or twelve and we're like, “Oh, I'm done.” No, it's all-encompassing—when you sit down, when you rise up, when you lie down, when you walk in the way. You are teaching them the beauty of what God was trying to communicate through the covenant of marriage.

Suzy: And I would think, too, that one of the early things that time and focus can be directed at is just the authoritative nature of Scripture, so that when kids have a question about anything, one of the things you've taught them when they're young to do is, “Well, what do you think?” Kind of hear what they have to say, and then say, “Let's go together and see what we can find in Scripture.”

Dannah: I love that. This is really important because I was asked a pretty loaded question when I was doing an interview on this book recently, and it really does point to the importance of being rooted in Scripture.

The question was: “How has the Church's teaching on purity contributed to sexual sin, especially with women inside the church?” It's a very loaded question. There's a red herring in there. It assumes is that everyone inside the church is teaching sex the same way, and that's not true.

I think maybe twenty or thirty years ago there was a lot of legalism in the church. We did teach out of following the rules and a lot of the technical things of sexuality and purity without the “why.” We weren't having the conversation of why. We weren't having the conversation about the picture of Christ and the Church and all that kind of thing.

But today, not only is that legalism still present, but there's license in the church. People that are teaching basically: “My body and my choice” inside the church in every way. “It's how you feel. Your sexuality is your identity. It's fluid. It's based on how you're feeling.”

Well, Genesis 1:27 says we can build our gender and our sexuality on something much more solid—the image of God.

And so you have the license, you have the legalism. Where you see a healthy response to the teaching is when neither of those things are present, but the complexity of examining the Scriptures to see what they say and what they don't say.

Since Eve, we've been adding to God's rules in a way that only makes the temptation worse. But that place of biblical truth is a much harder place to teach because it encompasses not only truth of “these are God's boundaries,” but also grace.

Suzy: That is so important. 

Dannah: This is what happens when you mess up with the boundaries. Grace rushes in. What does that look like? Sometimes we forget that, especially over on the legalism side of the spectrum.

Suzy: Yeah, I was reading in Joshua today. From the time I've been young, I thought that was really weird that God would have them walk around that city for six days and do nothing but blow those trumpets. But the commentator said even this is a picture of the great grace of our God, because what was offered to Rahab—an escape from the destruction that was coming on Jericho—certainly would have been offered to any who had turned their hearts toward God in repentance.

He is so slow to anger. He is not slow in keeping His promises. He's just full of grace.

Dannah: Rahab, of course you’re referencing that because she was a prostitute by profession, and yet God says, “Hey, the grace of God is pouring all over, and it's for everybody.”

Suzy: One of Jesus's grandparents.

Dannah: Yes, one of Jesus' grandparents. What a gift.

Suzy: Yeah, so here's something. When we're talking with our kids, kids can easily misconstrue things that we're saying. Have you noticed that? 

Dannah: I like to say they're great observers, very bad interpreters.

Suzy: Very bad interpreters.

I've had conversations with my daughters as adults. They're well past their high school years, and they will share with me something that happened in high school and how they perceived it. And I just have to pick my jaw up off the floor.

And I'll say, “How could you think that that was what I was saying?”

And my girls are wise enough to say, “Mom, I was fifteen. I don't see it that way any longer, but yeah, that's what I thought you were saying.”

So I think one of the reasons maybe that we need to be talking to our girls is simply so that we can get an accurate picture of what they're thinking.

Dannah: Yes, yes. 

Suzy: Because we may be assuming they understand. 

Dannah: They might be interpreting it very differently.

Let me share a brief testimony of how I interpreted some things when I was a teenager.

I was hearing a lot of “thou shalt not” speeches when I was a teenage girl. And of course, the reason that I originally wrote And the Bride Wore White was because I was sexually active, and I felt an adequate amount of shame—an appropriate amount of shame—that drew me back to Jesus and out of that relationship, and that was good.

Shame can be a tool in the hands of God that says you're on the wrong path. “Come back here, sweet girl. I need you over here. You're going to get hurt over there.”

Shame can be like the skin of our soul. You know, when your skin touches a hot stove, you recoil because it's going to hurt you. Shame at the beginning can be like that. 

But then, Suzy, the messaging of some of the teaching I heard in the church—not all, it would be very clear to say that—but some of the teaching made me feel like because I no longer was a virgin that I couldn't be pure.

But I really honestly think I was interpreting most of that teaching badly. When I looked into God's Word I found—let me read it to you—because I finally was like, “I’ve got to reconstruct or reframe what this word means.” 

By then I'm in my late twenties, and I'm like, “Was I interpreting those words, the word “purity” and the word “virginity” correctly?”

I found I was reading 1 John 3, and I came to verses 2–3. Let me read it. This was such a healing to my heart, and it helped me to reframe the word “purity.”

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

I suddenly realized I was interpreting all those teachings to mean I had to follow rules. I had to behave a certain way to be pure, when the fact is Psalm 51 says I was not born pure. I was sinful from the moment I was born. Like, purity wasn't something I could lose.

Suzy: I remember we used to talk about that at events. You were born innocent.

Dannah: I was born innocent, but I wasn't born pure. What makes me pure is Christ in my life.

This verse was like a healing balm. I suddenly realized that all I have to do is hope in Jesus and I am purified like He is pure. That's it. It's not about my works. It's not about my behavior. It's about Him.

When I was able to reframe where purity begins and the source of purity—which is not me, not my innocence, but it's Jesus because He is pure—well then that really was my motive for pursuing purity. When we live in purity, it shows people who Jesus is and what He's done in our lives. And that changed everything for me . . . everything!

Suzy: Amen. You know, that's the gospel right there. It really does change everything. The woman who is in Christ is pure. Isn't that such good news? 

At its heart that's what Dannah's book, And the Bride Wore White, is all about. Revive Our Hearts would love to get this grace-filled resource into your hands. Request a copy when you make a donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. You can do that by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com, or you can call 1-800-569-5959.

Did I do that right?

Dannah: You sure did, my friend. Great job.

Tomorrow you're going to want to join us again. That's because we're really zeroing in on purity culture. 

Suzy: Oh yeah, we are going there together.

And you know, I don't think we ever circled back to answer the question, Do you still believe what you wrote all those years ago? So, we can do that tomorrow too. We're asking the hard questions: What was purity culture? Was it harmful or helpful? What does all of this mean for us today?

There's a lot to unpack, but I think it's so important that we do. It's time to look at these questions through the correct lens—the lens of God's Word.

And Dannah, you're going to help us do that.

Dannah: I can't wait. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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