Abstract: While “purity culture” is most associated with the evangelical abstinence teachings and rituals of the 1990s–2000s, featuring purity rings, purity balls, and abstinence pledges, scholars of the movement have recognized how purity culture transcends white evangelicalism, infiltrating broader US culture and policymaking. This Feminist Studies in Religion roundtable convenes interdisciplinary feminist scholars to discuss how purity ideology operates as a dangerous and often invisible force driving the current wave of antiqueer healthcare rollbacks, the Make America Healthy Again movement, proposed pronatalist policies, US foreign relations, and other current events. They engage the following questions: Where do purity culture logics show up in specific policies or ideologies of the Trump administration 2.0? How can understanding these policies/ideologies as rooted in purity logics help us better challenge and dismantle them?
Across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and the wider ecosystem of Black online spirituality, a renewed sexual conservatism is taking hold. Influencers stage balloon-popping demonstrations to illustrate women's sexual "value," debate "body counts" as predictors of relationship success, and frame submission as des-tiny.1 These messages are delivered through glossy aesthetics, charismatic speech, and cultural cues drawn from the Black Church. But beneath the familiar styling lies a striking revival of purity culture. This revival is not a simple religious return. It is a political, aesthetic, and theological restructuring shaped by algorithmic pressures, eroding public literacy, and the rise of Christian nationalist logics in Black digital spaces. For Black Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences who often lack deep connection to Black religious history or tools for theological critique, these teachings register not as conservative theology but as common sense, empowerment, or survival strategy.
This article examines the dynamics of reading and drawing upon womanist interpretations as primary sources as a white man to create a womanist-accomplice hermeneutic. The author begins with personal notes about why he has chosen to work with womanist interpretation and ethics as primary interlocutors in his work, including his experiences with a Black sister and how working with womanist interpreters fulfills the work his soul must have. He then examines the ethics and obligations of primarily interacting with womanist interpreters in his work. After this analysis, he lays out his praxis of challenging traditional interpretations and including womanist ethics and interpretations, expanding to other forms of minoritized criticism to ensure his work is inclusive and challenges whiteness while expanding the discourse to the benefit of minoritized groups. The article ends with a short analysis of Ruth 2:2 through the author's womanist-accomplice hermeneutic.
This article proposes a decolonial feminist critique of Paul Tillich's concept of the "New Being," a new reality that overcomes existential alienation. In line with new understandings of subjectivity and subject formation that derive from postcolonial theorists including Homi Bhabha and decolonial feminist scholars Gloria Anzald & uacute;a and Maria Lugones, this article proposes the individual subject as "split" or a site of multiplicity, constituted by interpersonal relationships and intersecting systems of oppression, and seeks a concept of New Being sufficient to this view of the subject. It offers a critical reconstruction of the New Being as an emergent phenomenon of resistance to self-estrangement and material oppression grounded in the particulars of marginalized/colonized identities, and draws on practices and examples from the transformative justice (TJ) movement to find New Being arising from concrete acts of justice making and resistance.
Women and girls' struggle for equality is perhaps nowhere as vital to support as in the humanitarian sphere, where scenarios of violence and global responses to violence are pressing realities. The biblical parable of the Good Samaritan depicts a parallel scenario, framed as an ethical reflection on the divine command to love. This article reads the parable through the lens of feminist solidarity, recasting the two main characters as women and considering the interactions between the characters in turn, drawing on critical theory to highlight key issues for women in humanitarian contexts. An ethic grounded in feminist solidarity emerges in relation to the wounded woman at the heart of the parable who has suffered violence. This woman is figured as femina sacra (the female counterpart to homo sacer), thereby underscoring her vulnerability to violence in the humanitarian sphere. The Good Samaritan Woman recognizes femina sacra's full humanity and their shared vulnerability in the world while the passersby fail to truly see her and discharge their responsibility to their fellow human. The gendered aspect of the interpretation illuminates the complex realities of identity and the effects of structural trauma. The reading gives form to a new expression of the ethical foundation for active promotion of gender-and faith-responsive humanitarian programming.
