{"id":1977,"date":"2008-05-27T12:50:20","date_gmt":"2008-05-27T12:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2008\/05\/dancing-for-abstinence-purity-1.html"},"modified":"2008-05-27T12:50:20","modified_gmt":"2008-05-27T12:50:20","slug":"dancing-for-abstinence-purity-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/05\/dancing-for-abstinence-purity-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Dancing for Abstinence? Purity Balls and Party Dresses"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know how I, watcher for all-things Christian chastity culture-related, missed this big New York Times feature, “Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose<\/a>,” by Neela Banerjee, from last week about the growing popularity of the Purity Ball.
\nA Purity Ball, writes Banerjee, is a formal dance where “men st[and] and read aloud a covenant \u201cbefore God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity,” a gesture signaling “that the fathers would guard their daughters from what evangelicals consider a profoundly corrosive “hook-up culture,” over the course of an “evening, which alternate[s] between homemade Christian rituals and giddy dancing…a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed.” It’s similar to a debutante ball, with the girls attending wearing “floor-length gowns, up-dos and tiaras,” however the girls range in age from the very young (elementary aged) to college-aged.<\/p>\n


\nThe article includes comments from attendees at a recent, large Purity Ball in Colorado Springs, and a fairly thorough play-by-play of this new, Christian take on the father-daughter dance. I wrote about Purity Balls in my most recent book, “Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on America’s College Campuses<\/a>,” because they came up in student interviews as a growing trend. Anyone interested in American youth culture, especially evangelical youth culture, should give this article a look, and get to know the newest form of the debutante ball. Soon enough, there will be one happening near you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know how I, watcher for all-things Christian chastity culture-related, missed this big New York Times feature, “Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose,” by Neela Banerjee, from last week about the growing popularity of the Purity Ball. A Purity Ball, writes Banerjee, is a formal dance where “men st[and] and read aloud…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trends"],"yoast_head":"\nDancing for Abstinence? Purity Balls and Party Dresses<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/05\/dancing-for-abstinence-purity-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dancing for Abstinence? Purity Balls and Party Dresses\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I don’t know how I, watcher for all-things Christian chastity culture-related, missed this big New York Times feature, “Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose,” by Neela Banerjee, from last week about the growing popularity of the Purity Ball. A Purity Ball, writes Banerjee, is a formal dance where “men st[and] and read aloud…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/05\/dancing-for-abstinence-purity-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-05-27T12:50:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Donna Freitas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Dancing for Abstinence? Purity Balls and Party Dresses","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/05\/dancing-for-abstinence-purity-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Dancing for Abstinence? 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