Bestselling Author Dannah Gresh Addresses Purity Culture with Re-Release of 'And the Bride Wore White'

Author Dannah Gresh. Photo image courtesy DannahGresh.com
Twenty-five years ago, Dannah Gresh sparked a national conversation with And the Bride Wore White, a book that encouraged young women to embrace sexual purity and went on to sell more than 300,000 copies.

Now, a quarter-century later, she's re-releasing the book in a cultural landscape that looks very different from the one in which it was first published.

I recently sat down with Gresh to explore how the Church talks about sexuality today, what has changed in the discussion around purity culture, and how Christians can approach these topics with both truth and grace going forward.

For every author, there always seems to be a moment where you say to yourself, “I have to write this book! It is non-negotiable!’ If we could roll the clock back 25 years, what was that moment for you with And the Bride Wore White?

It was kind of the height of the purity movement, and there were a lot of people telling their stories of purity. But there weren’t people telling stories of redemption. And as a youth leader, I was watching my girls, and my youth group hear those stories of purity and knowing maybe some of them were like me. Maybe some of them need to be reset. They need the forgiveness and grace of Jesus, and they need to know you're not a chewed-up piece of bubblegum or a trampled rose. You're a redeemed daughter of the King. That is the gift He wants to give to you. That's what compelled me. I had to make sure girls growing up under me knew there was grace for mistakes.

Were you surprised by the success of this book when it was originally released?

Oh yes, I was so surprised. Imagine I'm not the poster child for purity, and I'm writing at a time when that is what the church is celebrating and talking about. Celebrities were wearing purity rings. The secular media was writing about if you got married and had never been kissed, they would show up at your wedding, take a picture of you, and you'd be on the front page of the paper. It was a scary thing. I never imagined that it would sell as consistently as it did for as many years as it did selling well over 300,000 copies.

How has the conversation around purity changed over the years, and what remains true?

Right now the conversation is at a place where we have to revisit the conversation and say, what did we do well? What didn't we do well? And honestly, I was doing that from the beginning. One of the things I wrote about in the original book was, hey, purity does not equal virginity. And I was concerned with the use of the word being pigeonholed into that when God's definition of it is much broader. I understood why they did it. The abstinence movement was happening at the same time. AIDS was terrifying people. Sexually transmitted diseases were running rampant, and teen pregnancy was at an all time high. So, the abstinence movement was front and center in our culture. And church leaders said, ‘That's not the right word for the Christian conversation.’

And it's not because God doesn't want us to abstain. It's not about not enjoying sex. It's about considering that it's sacred enough that we partake of it in the right place and at the right time. And so, I think the word purity was meant to demonstrate the holistic integrity of our lives and our minds being pure, our hearts being pure, our emotions being pure, everything, including our bodies being pure. But it did get pigeonholed. And so, that's part of the conversation we have to correct right now, because there are some women who feel a lot of pain from that era. There are also women who feel like that timeframe and the conversation in their specific church was very healthy and helpful.

Let's spin the clock forward. What unique challenges are young women facing in today’s culture? Obviously, social media is now front and center in the picture but wasn’t 20 years ago.

Social media is like there's an IV drip of sexual untruth and lies for people. And those sometimes are coming from “Christian” sources. I've spent so much time listening to the influencers and saying, oh, this is an influencer? I can get on board with a young 20 something. And inevitably they'll say, ‘Oh, I wasn't a virgin on my wedding night because the Bible said so. It was just what was right for me.’ No. That's the definition of a false teacher. A false teacher is someone who is taking you away from the authority of Scripture and the authority of God in your life. In addition to that, on social media, they're being met with gender confusion. That is nothing we had to deal with. And they're really Guinea pigs in that gender revolution. That experiment is devastating. We won't know the depths of that devastation for many years to come. Girls are struggling with pornography. They weren't 25 years ago. Boys were barely struggling at the level that they are today. Roughly 33% of girls say they struggle with pornography. They have a problem. There's issues like that that we really need to speak into for them.

Is it time to throw out purity culture—or rebuild it from the ground up?

I will tell you what, I think we need a culture of purity. I think so much of the pain that we're in right now is because impurity is celebrated. And I'm not just talking about sexually. I’m talking in every way. Righteousness is not declared as righteousness and evil is not declared as evil. We live in a time where we call what is good evil and what is evil? Good. I do believe that to some degree the Church needs to rebuild or reconstruct this conversation for that reason. But the other reason is this deconstruction that's happening. Women are deconstructing (their faith) more than men right now. We are seeing this from young women through Generation X. We are also seeing a revival that's affecting that same generation, but it's predominantly affecting the men. And that's exciting in the sense that men are rising up and responding to the Holy Spirit.

What we have to be concerned about is that women still are not in as much degree and as great a degree as the men. And when you ask them why, they say it's the sex and gender conversation. So, we need to have a conversation that reconstructs for those who are deconstructing the word purity so that they can know this is an accurate way the Bible handles it. This is how it can be a safe word in your life. You are right to feel this pain. And we acknowledge that, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. God does use this word. So, let's use it accurately.

What role does identity in Christ play in shaping a young person’s view of her body and relationships?

Two things. Identity is everything. Genesis 1:27 says that, “Male and female, He created them in the image of God. He created them.” So, just starting with our maleness and our femaleness, our biological sex, it is rooted in the identity of God. But Jesus, when He was asked what rules matter, the religious leaders were like trying to trick Him. What are the laws we need to focus on?

He's like, listen, this is the first one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, and your soul. And then He says, ‘The second one follows. Love your neighbor as yourself.’ So, loving God and loving other people out of that identity of loving Christ, we are going to find that the rules follow because He didn't throw out the rules. He said, all the laws and the prophets hang on the fact that you will love God and love people. So, when we root our identity in Christ and in the love of Christ, then all these other things start to make sense. The rules aren't a burden. They're an easy yoke that we follow because we love Him.

Since the original release of this book, what is the most important thing that God has taught you in relation to this topic?

Just how deep His grace really is. I thought that when I wrote this book, I understood the depth of His grace, but I had to go through a lot more breaking. That was my sexual pain, my breaking, and my husband helped me heal. But more than a decade ago, he brought a confession to me that he was really struggling with pornography and that he couldn't find his way back to God's heart without breaking my heart. And when he did, he broke my heart. And so, I had to sit on the other side of the healing and see what a joy it is. We are never a fool to be a part of someone's redemption story. That doesn't mean it's easy, that doesn't mean we don't have hurt. But so many people today, they have a husband or a wife who has been unfaithful, who has looked at pornography, or they have a child who is struggling with gender confusion, or sexual orientation, or whatever it is. What a privilege it is. I have been on the receiving side of grace, but to be on the side where I get to cooperate with God and the redemption story of another human being, there is a great joy in that. And I think the Lord has taught me to a greater degree how much He loved me through my healing.

After people have had a chance to read or revisit And the Bride Wore White what would you like your readers to take away from this experience? What is your greatest hope for the book?

That they do experience the love of Christ. That's really what it comes down to. It's not about obeying God's rules. His boundaries are there to protect us and experience His love. I want them to experience that. I also am really hoping and praying that women who have experienced the purity movement, or purity culture, experienced a freedom story. Either they went through that and it produced good fruit in their life, or they walked through that and they were in a more legalistic environment where they experienced pain, but healing. We need women to tell their stories to one another so that we can pass a better conversation on to our kids. Let's not look back. Let's look forward to what we're passing on.

To Purchase a copy of And the Bride Wore White:

Watch an Episode of The Pure Freedom Podcast with Dannah Gresh: