Date of Award
2009
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Religious Studies
First Advisor
Kathryn McClymond
Second Advisor
Tim Renick
Third Advisor
David Bell
Abstract
Over the last ten years, a newly created ritual called a Purity Ball has become increasingly popular in American evangelical communities. In much of the present literature, Purity Balls are assumed solely to address a daughter’s emerging sexuality in a ritual designed to counteract evolving American norms on sexuality; however, the ritual may carry additional latent sociological functions. While experienced explicitly by the individual participants as a celebration of father/daughter relationships and a means to address evolutionary sexual mating strategies, Purity Balls may implicitly regenerate existing social hierarchy. This ritual facilitates a sociological purpose by means of re-establishing the role of the male through halting the psychological development of sexual identity in the daughter, and these rituals are enacted in the ownership of the daughter by the father, who is responsible for maintaining the daughter’s purity, for “covering her with his protection.”
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/1533466
Recommended Citation
Phillips, Holly Adams, "To Cover Our Daughters: A Modern Chastity Ritual in Evangelical America." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2009.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/1533466