Fear and Loathing in the Garden of Eden: Evangelical Christian Purity Literature and Reproductive Futurity

Fear can be one of the greatest motivators of human behavior, and that emotion is amplified when children are involved. Adults fear for children’s safety, happiness, and future. But for the members of the evangelical fundamentalist Christian community, 1  fear takes on a monolithic presence, particularly in the purity movement. Fear of female sexuality, loss of power, loss of control, loss of hegemony, and most importantly of the ultimate judgment in the afterlife drives the Evangelical purity movement. The media and culture surrounding the purity movement focuses almost exclusively on the control of the reproductive capacities of young women. This is not simply a movement designed to retain membership in a dying church or perpetuate a specific worldview; this is an attempt to ensure future generations remain in an unending cycle of heteronormativity, reproductive futurity, and feminine dependence. 

In this article, I am going to examine how one of the books marketed to these young women uses pedagogical techniques to control their burgeoning sexuality and critical thinking skills; this control radiates beyond the communities in which they originate, permeating public discourse surrounding how sex should be taught to teenagers. Lies Girls Believe is the first in a best-selling series targeted at evangelical Christian women and girls and is intended for girls aged 7-12; ostensibly, it is about helping them learn to navigate the vagaries of puberty and growing up. The book is introduced to the girls as an activity book and they are encouraged to come to the book armed with a pack of colored pencils to do the various activities conceived by the authors. I believe this book to be the modern lynchpin of the purity movement, given its popularity and more importantly, its authorship.

To understand the sheer ubiquity of these books in evangelical circles, we need to examine both who is writing these books and why. Dannah Gresh is an industry unto herself within the evangelical Christian publishing world. Depending on the source, she has authored at least 20 and as many as 30 books in the past 25 years. She published her first purity book, And the Bride Wore White:  Seven Secrets to Sexual Purity, in 1999.  According to Gresh, she struggled with sexual temptation and obedience/submission to her husband. These personal problems impelled Gresh to prevent similar frustrating experiences for other evangelical Christian women and thus was born her writing career. 2  Her earlier works were primarily aimed at older girls/teenagers and they were wildly popular across the entire evangelical community. In fact, I have only seen criticism of her or her work outside of evangelical Christian circles (mostly by mental health professionals and former church members).  She is also the well-known author behind The Secret Keeper modesty books. And the Bride Wore White has sold 250,000 copies and continues to be published in new editions. The book is formatted around journal entries from a young Gresh with each chapter addressing the concerns therein. However, Dannah Gresh is in her late 50s and journal entries from the early 1980s are hard for digital natives to identify with.  Enter Nancy Demoss Wolgemuth, author of the original work in our series Lies Women Believe.  Lies Women Believe has sold over a million copies and been translated into twenty-six languages. Wolgemuth has also spent her life ministering to women (women are only permitted to teach each other in these evangelical circles) with two nationally syndicated radio shows. 3  Her successful book coupled with Gresh’s reputation for working with young people spawned the remainder of the series. The books were written in reverse order, with the book for adult women being released first, followed by the teenager book, and culminating in the work for girls. The mothers of the young women they target would have grown up on Dannah Gresh and Nancy Demoss Wolgemuth and trusted their new materials for their children.

Manuscripts proscribing modesty and encouraging chastity are hardly new. Some of the earliest books dedicated to home keeping and domestic arts included sections on modesty and submission to one’s husband in detailing wifely duties. As the country overthrew its colonial government and installed a Republic, shifts within the American religious establishment led people to want a more personal relationship with God. The first and second Great Awakenings in America’s nascent years planted the seeds for an explosion in evangelical Christianity. One can begin to see the outlines of the present movement toward purity in some of the earliest attempts to control women through literature. For example, early industrialization was quite concerning to evangelical Christians worried about young women working away from home without supervision and with access to ready cash. Sermons, pamphlets, and novels served to warn parents and young women of the dangers inherent to living outside of established gender norms (this usually involved a very unpleasant death in the streets with a starving child). These types of “fallen woman” tropes and works became so common that Barbara Welter observed this in her review of literature for women in the early 19th century. 4  However, it was not until the post-World War II years that the purity movement began to take hold in a uniquely American way. Fearful of a loss of influence in society, the Communist threat, and the looming apocalypse, evangelical Christians began focusing on purity, particularly female purity as the only means to maintain their power and perpetuate Christian worldviews through the offspring of their women. This fear was exacerbated as the country moved into the myriad of social and political changes ushered in by the 1960s. Between the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s, evangelical Christians were terrified for the future of their faith and America. After moving heavily into politics in the 1980s under the guise of the Religious Right, their focus on maintaining the purity of their female children became paramount. The purity movement of the 1990s has been well documented; this is when religious leaders took what had previously been an exercise in religious indoctrination and transformed it into something that fully utilized America’s capitalist marketplace. Galas, trips, books, classes, conferences, apparel, and all manner of products exploded onto the market. Girls began attending purity balls in wedding dresses where they promised their fathers they would not engage in sexual activity until marriage; often a ring was given to the girls to symbolize this commitment. 5  

While popular media coverage moved on after this initial purity popularity, its perpetuators did not. Authors, including Gresh, continue to author new works on purity with increasingly deceptive methods of pedagogy to “teach” these girls how to be proper Christian women. Lies Girls Believe announces itself as a book for tweens loudly.  Sparkly pink lettering adorns the cover, the title page has a fluffy white cloud for the girls to write their name in and is marketed as an activity book. The book is divided into three parts and each part is subdivided into chapters. To introduce each chapter, the authors have “recreated” a text conversation between a tween and a friend, parent, or youth minister.  The book is a combination of written activities and sections and cartoon guides and call outs. The authors are rendered in cartoon version within the book to dispense bits of wisdom.  A variety of eye-catching fonts are employed throughout the work, and the message (while identical to those for the older girls and women) is rendered in a version accessible to their target audience. There are also a variety of supplementary materials for these primary works, including study guides, mother’s guides, novels, web streams, classes, and even cruises. I argue this is ultimately an internalized misogyny handbook; each lesson builds upon its predecessor to teach girls to doubt any version of womanhood not presented in its pages. 6

In Part I of the book, the authors introduce the underlying concept of the series: the “lies” that girls and women believe. They teach the girls that the first lie a woman ever believed was when Eve believed the Snake in the Garden of Eden and caused the downfall of man. A clear progression is presented: Eve listened to the lie, Eve dwelled on the lie, Eve believed the lie, and Eve acted on the lie. The authors teach the girls that if Eve had never listened to the Snake humanity would still be in the Garden of Eden. Part II contains what the authors have entitled the “Truth Lab.” In these chapters the girls are presented with “Truths” with which to replace the many lies young girls are wont to believe. Allegedly, the authors compiled these lies from questions asked of 1,531 girls they encountered during their assorted ministries; 7  however, there is nothing included anywhere in the book regarding the legitimacy, accuracy, or methodology employed. The truths with which the girls are to replace the lies are often pieces of scripture or the authors’ interpretations of scripture. Each of these chapters ends with an invitation for the girls to enter the “Truth Lab” with Zoey, a fictional pre-teen everygirl deployed throughout the book. Part III is praxis for the previous two parts; three chapters detail strategies for identifying and avoiding lies and surrounding yourself with the “truth.”

Ultimately, this is an impressive work of pedagogy. In Part I of the book, when the girls are being taught to identify with Eve, the primary activity involves working with a piece of scripture. On a two-page spread in the book is the section from Genesis depicting Eve’s conversation with Satan and her subsequent decision to eat the apple proffered to her. The Genesis section is double-spaced with ample space for marginalia, and for good reason. The girls are instructed to interact with this passage on ten separate occasions. They are directed to underline the sections where the Snake lied, where Eve believed the lie, and where Eve acted on the lie. Separate instructions ask them to circle the word “ate” every time it appears to reinforce that Eve acted on the lie. Finally, they are directed to circle the sections that follow the Eve progression, draw a line to the margin, and write each of the stages of the progression: Eve listened to the lie, Eve dwelled on the lie, Eve believed the lie, and Eve acted on the lie. The passage from Genesis is only 13 sentences long, and the instructions are all contained within the first two chapters. These are not the only activities within these two chapters, simply the most involved. 

The instruction pages for this first activity require further scrutiny. The title of the spread is distinguished using one of four typographical fonts used on the pages. The font employed for the title is what I call the “fun” font: it bounces in some places like handwriting, it is uneven, and has a youthful movement to its composition, various colors are used for emphasis, and some portions are in bold or double underlined. Each page features a cartoon version of prelapsarian Eve (strategically placed cartoon plants keep the images appropriate for the intended audience). On the lefthand page, Eve is depicted in conversation with the Devil, as personified by the snake. Eve is on the lefthand side of the image, apparently squatting in the foliage provided for modesty’s sake given the proportion of her body which remains above the greenery. Despite the diversity of characters found elsewhere in the book, Eve is white, and her long brown hair flows down past the eye. A single white flower is tucked behind her right ear. Her left hand is paused a few inches from fully covering her mouth, which is rounded in surprise with her eyes directed at the devil. Clearly Eve has just heard something shocking. The snake is poorly drawn in comparison, his spotted green body wraps around a tree while he converses with Eve, his pointed tongue is evident, but little can be made of his facial expression as his eyes meet Eve’s with his right eyebrow slightly raised. This is the visage of a suspicious character in opposition to the straightforward and readable expression on Eve’s face. One would not have to know the story of Genesis to read the visual information from this scene.

There are considerable resources available to art historians regarding the placement of biblical characters within visual scenes. In traditional depictions of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Eve is almost always seen on Adam’s left. Deriving from the original Greek definitions of left and right, the left side is seen as sinister, the side of evil, while the right is considered righteous, the side of good. 8  In the image referenced above, the snake is featured on Eve’s lefthand side, appropriately seated in the locus of evil. Shockingly, every other picture of Adam and Eve in the book does not follow this historical pattern. In these images, Adam is drawn on Eve’s left. While it is possible that the authors or illustrators were unaware of this symbology, it’s also possible that another neurological phenomenon is at play here: the human tendency to think that the image on the left is acting on the image on the right. In studies of how the human brain interprets images, it has been posited that since most of humanity is right-handed, we automatically assume that the person on the left is the one performing the action within the scene. 9  At first, this may appear to be another concession to modernity, but it is likely that something far worse is at play. If a person reading this book is under the impression that the primary actor in a scene is the one on the left, then Eve is given direct responsibility for the fall of man. She is the one acting on Adam, the one proffering an apple in defiance of God’s wishes, the one who is the starring character in a story of feminine incompetence. If the authors’ goal is to ensure that the girls reading the book see themselves as the inheritors of Eve’s inferiority, using subtle visual cues to show the girls that a woman really was responsible for the fall of man accomplishes the goal without raising a single eyebrow.

Eve makes another appearance on the bottom right of the righthand page. This is the same Eve: white, nude, but strategically covered, one flower behind her ear, and brown hair loose but not wild. However, this Eve is on her own and her facial expression draws concern: her eyes open wide, and her mouth is rendered as a single line diagonally drawn from upper left to lower right. In case the reader is unclear as to how to interpret this image, the authors have provided us with all the details we need in the form of an informational banner. Winding its way around the entire image of Eve (plants and all) is a white banner which is approximately half the width of Eve’s face. The banner appears to grow out of the top of the plants and winds around Eve’s left shoulder before turning around her back and reappearing across the whole of the image. The first portion is labeled with the word FEAR, in all capital letters. Eve’s right hand perches atop the banner on the left side of the image before the second turn of the banner which lists the word CONFUSION in the same fashion. The image is completed with the tail of the banner fluttering at the bottom of the cartoon with the word REBELLION centered at the bottom of the image. The words appear in a unique font, the fourth used on these pages. It is reminiscent of intense handwriting as if the words were written multiple times by the same person to underscore their importance. 

The image and the emotions written on the banner are an important marker in the book, as this is the section where the authors teach the girls that Eve had begun to believe the lie that the snake told her. This is the point where Eve caused the downfall of man. The words are indicative of the conversation on the two pages about how Eve’s feelings are what truly imperiled her and Adam. The text section above the image emphasizes this by positing different feelings that Eve may have had that led her to believe the lie. Each uses the fun font to place the word “FELT” in all capital letters within the standard text. They posit that she may have felt confused by God’s instructions or felt rebellious due to the limitations imposed on the tree or felt afraid that God wasn’t the person she thought He was. These suppositions are executed in supplemental fun font (it matches the fun font, but is more regular and consistent, and distinguishes it from the rest of the text). In the last paragraph on the page, the fun font informs us in pink, that “Eve began to believe the lie.”

The goal is to teach the girls that if they listen to, dwell on, believe in, or act on lies, they will be sinners, just like Eve. Sin is presented as an all or nothing proposition; all sin is offensive to God and goes against his plan for the girls. They propose that the main driver for sin is what they call “sticky feelings.” They define this as feelings that you have persistently. A closer reading of the book finds that “sticky feelings” seem to describe any number of mental activities including regular emotions, critical thinking, agency, and rebellion. The authors give advice about how to avoid these, usually by encouraging the girls to read the Bible, talk to a member of clergy, or another respected Christian elder. However, more emphasis is placed on avoiding information that could lead to “sticky feelings” in the first place, specifically severely limiting their interaction with the secular world. To this end, the authors have devised a helpful decision tree to assist the girls in choosing what type of media with which to interact. Anything the girls interact with should meet the following criteria: it should be true (nothing which espouses atheism and evolution), it should be noble (no cursing or glamorization of drug use), it should be right (elders would approve), it should be pure (modest), it should be lovely (nothing violent or ugly), it should be worthy of respect (elders could be shown it), it should be excellent (high quality), and it should be praiseworthy (it could be recommended to others). It should be noted that the Christian Bible does not meet these standards. 

The long-term effect of this decision tree cannot be understated. Coupled with the recommendation from the authors that the girls utilize software such as Covenant Eyes to ensure that secular media sources don’t make it onto their computer screens, these limitations silo the world.  These children will never read Harry Potter, or Darwin for that matter; Jurassic Park is out, as is most of the American literary canon.  Shakespeare is far too bawdy for this decision tree and history tends to be violent.  If a girl begins to implement these suggestions at age 7 and continues to mediate her consumption of media in this way for her entire life, she would be completely ignorant of the larger world. The decision tree is proof that these women have no desire to protect these girls from anything except critical thought; denying access to large sectors of media and education will leave these girls unprepared for their inevitable crash with the real world. It guarantees that these girls will grow up with few real-world skills, incapable of escaping from a community on which they will be entirely dependent. Separately, it precludes them from participating in a large swath of the workforce. One cannot become a doctor if one cannot study evolution and it’s difficult to obtain a law degree without learning about the protections afforded other faiths. At the extreme end, it is difficult to understand how these young women could even obtain a secular undergraduate degree.  

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this book is its shellac of modernity. Bright and shiny on the outside, it purports to reflect the image of a modern, Christian woman.  But as with any reflection, it is distorted. It is a distraction from the actual contents of the book. This veneer sets this book apart from the more traditional advice manuals typically given to evangelical youth and is indicative of the evolution of evangelical Christian literature within the past 20 years. In previous generations, teenagers would be encouraged to read I Kissed Dating Goodbye (for both sexes) or And the Bride Wore White; these works are simply advice manuals, not instruments of pedagogy. Most importantly, this is the youngest demographic for these books that I have seen, as much of the existing literature is focused on teenagers and young adults. The work is exceptional both for its pedagogy and the age range of its intended audience. Interspersed with pictures of girls of a variety of races wearing pants and playing sports is messaging which perpetuates internalized misogyny, homophobia, heteronormativity, lack of agency and critical thinking skills, as well as a generalized fear of the world at large. As church attendance and religiosity dwindles across the nation, 10  the evangelical Christian community has become more insistent in their attempts to address their anxieties regarding the future through their children. It seems that the primary anxieties being addressed in these books are the fear of homosexuality and its effects on the population of these dying churches, as well as the agency of women preventing the birth of Christian babies. 

These anxieties reach their apogee in Chapter 8 of the book, “Lies About Being A Girl.” Ostensibly a book about puberty and growing up, this is the only chapter which discusses the physiological changes which will occur during puberty. The shellac of modernity once again emerges with a fairly accurate depiction of the female reproductive system; a cartoon uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries are rendered to explain the process of menstruation. There is no additional advice on how to handle the practical aspects of menstruation; the girls are told to talk to a trusted, older woman who will help her learn about these things. Instead, readers are presented with the truth that “Your ability to create life is something to celebrate” to counteract the lie that “Getting My Period is Going to Be Awful.” 11

Additionally, there are comments throughout the book about the “concerning” trend of society trying to eliminate the binary sexes. They concede that not all girls prefer pink, and some may even like to play sports, so long as they recognize that they are female and that this is immutable. Pedagogy returns to reinforce these ideas as the girls are told to interact with a biblical passage stating that God created men and women in His image. By stating that this is their intended purpose on earth, the authors are effectively removing any agency these girls may have to live a life not depicted in the pages of these books. The fear within the text of these books is palpable. The authors state that their intended purpose is to help girls avoid the same mistakes they made, but also to not be influenced by a larger society which is demanding that they engage in secular culture. The authors have effectively pathologized modern society, something from which the girls need to be saved, and trained to avoid. 

The work may even fall into what Julie Elman calls “rehabilitative edutainment.” She proposes that adults have pathologized adolescence and are now utilizing various media to “correct” what have been deemed inappropriate values or incorrect engagement with the world. She describes how children “became development opportunities, ripe for sexual, emotional, and bodily instruction and compassionate intervention.” 12  While Elman’s focus was on a secular version of this idea, one that inculcates neoliberal values into the next generation of citizens, her theory absolutely applies to the way in which the authors treat the outside world: as a terrifying place full of people who are actively trying to eliminate your faith, your church, and anyone who thinks like you. The books and accompanying media serve as a remedy, an inoculation against the secular world.  A visit to TrueGirl.com sheds more light on the accompanying media.  In addition to the books themselves, one can purchase Mother’s Guides or Study Guides (depending on the age) that help you make the most of the original works.  A line of novels that bears a striking resemblance to American Girl books explores the day-to-day issues these young women would face such as bullies, mean girls, peer pressure, etc.  Mother-daughter groups can sign up for web classes, and those with the funds may join them on their annual cruises that focus on purity and modesty. Most of the marketing for these books is directed at mothers, as a means of protecting their daughters from the dangers that haunted them as girls. The website is littered with references to protection, safety, prevention, and most importantly fear. 13  A fantasy has been created by the authors that if you simply deny information and agency, demand obedience, and convince the girls that the secular world is an evil place, you will create the perfect adult woman: a Christian wife and mother who obeys her husband and knows her place. 

Many would argue that there is nothing wrong with the messaging of these books, as the girls are free to choose whether to marry or have children. Whether or not that is true following this level of indoctrination is a subject for another article, but even those women who do manage to leave these kinds of churches experience lifelong consequences from purity culture and the ideas being perpetuated in these books. Linda Klein details these harrowing effects in her memoir Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free. In addition to sharing her own experiences, Klein also interviewed women like herself who had escaped purity culture. Many of them were diagnosed with PTSD as adults, and they struggle with healthy sexuality and self-esteem. 14  These women are more predisposed by this culture to end up in abusive (sexual, physical, financial, emotional) marriages from which there is no escape. They are also more likely to have an unwanted pregnancy or contract an STI. 15  Lessons learned as children stay with us as we age, and when you grow up in a culture that constantly tells you that your value lies in your virginity and ability to have children, you begin to believe it.

In this movement, we can see adults projecting their political anxieties onto their children and going to extreme lengths to assuage these anxieties. Adults’ treatment of children resonates with Lee Edelman’s theorizing on the Child, and the ways that the Child becomes a figural projection for adults to make claims for a better future to maintain the present political order. 16  Edelman notes the reproductive and sexual undertones of this sentiment stating, “The Child, that is, marks the fetishistic fixation of heteronormativity; an erotically charged investment in the rigid sameness of identity that is central to the compulsory narrative of reproductive futurism.” 17  Edelman argues that in this dynamic, both children and adults are harmed; in the case of the purity movement, we see this prediction realized and extended. The damage of this culture does not remain in the evangelical Christian communities in which they originated. Amazon ranks Lies Girls Believe as a Teacher’s Pick for a reason: this dreck is being peddled in America’s schools. In states where sexual education is limited to abstinence-only, many school districts are turning to local religious leaders to conduct their sexual education. Religious figures (often youth pastors or women from the church) are invited to give guest lectures or to do the primary education regarding abstinence. Even where the book itself is not used in instruction; it very often has influenced the person doing the instruction. Dannah Gresh has been writing books about purity since the 1990s, with no signs of stopping. She simply updates the material and content to make it appear appropriate for a modern audience.

Lies Girls Believe looks at home on a modern bookstore shelf. Contemporary and fashionable on the outside, it is easy to be distracted by its modern look. It is only when the work is dissected, read, and fully digested that all its messaging becomes clear. This is the authors’ intent. Had Gresh’s earlier work continued to be effective in its messaging, she would have had no reason to continually reinvent the series and publish new books. The cartoon imagery, the use of a variety of “fun” fonts, the informal tone, and the introduction of the authors as cartoon mentors are all intended to convince parents, educators, and children that the work is acceptable for girls as young as 7. Unfortunately, the shellac belies the book’s true purpose: to indoctrinate young women into a culture of inferiority and dependency.

Footnotes

• 1

  For ease of reading in this article I will use the term “evangelical Christian” to refer to this subsect of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. 

• 2

  “Meet Dannah,” Pure Freedom Ministries (website), last accessed July 22, 2024, https://dannahgresh.com/meet-dannah/.

• 3

  “About Nancy Demoss Wolgemuth,” Revive Our Hearts (website), last accessed July 22, 2024, https://www.reviveourhearts.com/about/nancy-demoss-wolgemuth/.

• 4

  Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): pp. 151-174, https://doi.org/10.2307/2711179.

• 5

   Sara Moslener, Virgin Nation Sexual Purity and American Adolescence (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015).

• 6

  Dannah Gresh and Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Lies Girls Believe: & the Truth That Sets Them Free (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2019). 

• 7

  Gresh and Wolgemuth, Lies Girls Believe, 49.

• 8

  Sergio Della Sala and Robert D. McIntosh, “Righteous Adam, Sinister Eve,” Laterality 27, no. 6 (November 2, 2022): pp. 605-615, https://doi.org/10.1080/1357650x.2022.2151614.

• 9

  Anjan Chatterjee, “Portrait Profiles and the Notion of Agency,” Empirical Studies of the Arts 20, no. 1 (2002): pp. 33-41, https://doi.org/10.2190/3wlf-agtv-0aw7-r2cn.

• 10

  Jeffrey M Jones, “U.S. Church Membership Falls below Majority for First Time,” Gallup.com, November 20, 2021, https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx.

• 11

  Gresh and Wolgemuth, 104-5.

• 12

   Julie Passanante Elman, Chronic Youth: Disability, Sexuality, and U.S. Media Cultures of Rehabilitation (New York, NY: New York Univ. Press, 2014), 8.

• 13

  True Girl (website), Pure Freedom Ministries, last accessed April 11, 2023, https://mytruegirl.com/.

• 14

  Linda Kay Klein, Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free (New York, NY: Atria Books, 2019).

• 15

  Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women (Berkeley: Seal Press, 2010).

• 16

  Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 1-31.

• 17

  Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, 21.