Saving yourself for marriage – modern chastity movements

Saving yourself for marriage – modern chastity movements

Saving yourself for marriage is an important part of the lives of millions of young US citizens. They wear a ring to show their dedication to this abstinence pledge. In Europe, modern chastity movements have never quite taken on.

Abstinent until marriage: Modern purity culture

What do Giovanna Garzoni, Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus have in common? No, the answer we are looking for is not the most obvious one: that they all are or were recognised female artists of their time. In fact, the three women followed a belief that seems outdated: being abstinent before marriage. It may be doubted if Spears and Cyrus actually executed this pledge.

Garzoni, however, was even called Chaste Giovanna because she lived her life in celibacy. It’s not clear if she ever got married. It’s possible that she entered into a short marriage with the painter Tiberio Tinelli that either failed because of her vow of chastity or because Tinelli was suspected by his father-in-law of being a sorcerer.

STDs and pregnant teens

The concept of sexual abstinence before marriage might be strange from a European point of view. In the USA, however, it’s relatively popular. The reason for that is the widespread Christian religion in the country. Especially conservative groups believe that it’s their duty to keep their young members safe from premarital intercourse. In their eyes, the risk of unintended consequences of sexually transmitted diseases is too big; moreover, the USA is one of the countries with the highest number of pregnant teenagers in the world.

Purity movement

There even are several organisations whose only purpose is to postulate sexual abstinence before marriage and promote purity culture in the name of God. The first one was conceptualised by the Baptist priest Jimmy Hester in 1987. His church assigned him to create a chastity program. He literally did this on a napkin and started a massive purity movement for Christians – one of the biggest of our time. Under the name True Love Waits, the church started handing out commitment cards in 1993; in the first year alone, more than 100,000 young people signed them, taking a pledge of purity to abstain from sexual behavior. Ten years later, the number of purity pledges in the True Love Waits movement had increased to three million.

»Wahre Liebe Wartet«

In other countries, purity culture and True Love Waits spread as well. At the end of the 1990s, the German business student Michael Müller founded the movement Wahre Liebe Wartet (»True Love Waits«). It had quite a major media presence because several members expressed their beliefs and feelings about sexual purity in interviews. Also, the organisation published a brochure in which the »Dr. Winter team« – as a counter-idea to the sex tips of Dr. Sommer in the youth magazine »Bravo« – gave advice about living celibately.

Compared to the millions of supporters in the US, the German purity culture movement received relatively little support with its 10,000 signed commitment cards. From 2011 on, the homepage of Wahre Liebe Wartet¹ wasn’t updated anymore, in 2018, the content was replaced by three dots. Maybe it’s because Michael Müller got married since…

Purity pledges: a ring on the finger

Rather than a card, purity rings are the symbol of some other virginity pledges. One of them is called Silver Ring Thing and was founded in 1995. The members don’t wear the ring as piece of jewellery but as a constant reminder of their promise. In the USA, purity balls are organised where young women pledge that they would enter marriage celibate. After taking their abstinence pledge at purity balls, they get their symbolic purity rings or bracelets. In some cases, the piece is formed like a heart and the father of the teenager gets a key that he hands over to the future husband of his daughter on their wedding day.

In 2007, the case of the 16-year-old schoolgirl Lydia Playfoot from the English town of Horsham attracted worldwide attention to the purity culture movement. She attended a school that prohibited its students from wearing jewellery. However, Playfoot refused to take off her purity ring. She then sued the school because, in her opinion, it restricted her human rights to practice her religion. After all, Muslim schoolgirls were allowed to wear a hijab. The court, however, agreed with the school because the ring is not an integral part of Christian faith. Playfoot’s father Phil who was the chairman of the British branch of Silver Ring Thing, was responsible for legal costs of 12,000 British pounds.

Hands off, Justin!

Generally, it can be doubted that being part of a chastity movement prevents young people from having sexual intercourse before marriage. In 2004, scientists from the universities of Yale and Columbia conducted a study with 12,000 teenagers from 12 to 18 years old who signed virginity pledges before marriage through True Love Waits. The overwhelming 88 percent of them had premarital sex within six years after their abstinence pledge. Also, the participants of the study got married at a younger age than the average American.

And when Britney Spears proclaimed in 1999 that she would be celibate until marriage, she was dating Justin Timberlake. It’s rather unlikely that they kept their hands off each other.