The afterlife of white evangelical purity culture: wounds, legacies, and impacts

This project studies the theological legacy of white evangelical purity culture (WEPC) and proposes a constructive Baptist practical theology of baptism in response. It foregrounds the activism and testimonies of Christian women to foment and intervene in white supremacist constructions of womanhood in the Female Moral Reform movement; to perpetuate and prevent racial violence in the lynching era through the deployment of a reimagined vision of sacred white womanhood; and to expand conceptions of the wounding legacies, persisting challenges, and alternative visions proposed by those harmed by WEPC. In the “afterlife” of white evangelical purity culture, baptism, conceived as a practice of solidarity, is a critical intervention to the persistent and problematic deformations of identity, salvation, and ecclesial formation. The project begins with analysis of the theopolitical history of WEPC and its founding frameworks and promises. It then turns to the Female Moral Reform movement, and particularly the activism and theological arguments of Sarah Grimké and a dissenting interlocutor in 1838, to illustrate how questions of womanhood, race, and women’s rights were forged in the context of institutional slavery. Next, this project engages the activism of Rebecca Felton, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, attends to the character de/formations deployed in women’s activism and rhetoric supportive of and against lynching, and argues that the uninterrogated sacred status of white womanhood prevents a full acknowledgement and dismantling of the regnant theological frameworks of WEPC. It then frames the online writing as testimonies to the wounding experiences in WEPC, offering an emergent tripartite framework of shame, misplaced blame, and silence to capture the impact of WEPC. Finally, drawing from the works of James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Ada María Isasi-Díaz and M. Shawn Copeland, it proposes a Baptist theology of baptism wherein baptism is revelatory rite that initiates solidarity in the service of a world that engenders the possibility of mutual liberation and human flourishing. This project contributes to the growing literature on WEPC by exposing the raced theological scaffolding that necessitate a transformation of core Christian practices.2022-12-09T00:00:00