In today’s world, it is all too easy for a young woman to fool herself with lies about love. What does she tell herself? “Guys don’t want a pure girl.”“Nobody’s getting hurt.”“It’s all fun and games.”“It’s my body. It’s my choice.”“If I say no, I might lose him.”“I can’t be alone.”“It’s too late for me.”“What good guy would want me?”“It’s impossible to stay pure.” Every woman longs for love, but many have given up. In Pure Womanhood, Crystalina Evert restores a woman’s hope. By her powerful testimony and blunt words of wisdom, she shows that real love is possible, regardless of the past.

In today's world, it is all too easy for a young woman to fool herself with lies about love. What does she tell herself? "Guys don't want a pure girl." "Nobody's getting hurt." "It's all fun and games." "It's my body. It's my choice." "If I say no, I might lose him." "I can't be alone." "It's too late for me." "What good guy would want me?" "It's impossible to stay pure." Every woman longs for love, but many have given up. In Pure Womanhood, Crystalina Evert restores a woman's hope. By her powerful testimony and blunt words of wisdom, she shows that real love is possible, regardless of the past.

In Pure, Linda Kay Klein uses a potent combination of journalism, cultural commentary, and memoir to take us “inside religious purity culture as only one who grew up in it can” (Gloria Steinem) and reveals the devastating effects evangelical Christianity’s views on female sexuality has had on a generation of young women. In the 1990s, a “purity industry” emerged out of the white evangelical Christian culture. Purity rings, purity pledges, and purity balls came with a dangerous message: girls are potential sexual “stumbling blocks” for boys and men, and any expression of a girl’s sexuality could reflect the corruption of her character. This message traumatized many girls—resulting in anxiety, fear, and experiences that mimicked the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—and trapped them in a cycle of shame. This is the sex education Linda Kay Klein grew up with. Fearing being marked a Jezebel, Klein broke up with her high school boyfriend because she thought God told her to and took pregnancy tests despite being a virgin, terrified that any sexual activity would be punished with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. When the youth pastor of her church was convicted of sexual enticement of a twelve-year-old girl, Klein began to question purity-based sexual ethics. She contacted young women she knew, asking if they were coping with the same shame-induced issues she was. These intimate conversations developed into a twelve-year quest that took her across the country and into the lives of women raised in similar religious communities—a journey that facilitated her own healing and led her to churches that are seeking a new way to reconcile sexuality and spirituality. Pure is “a revelation... Part memoir and part journalism, Pure is a horrendous, granular, relentless, emotionally true account" (The Cut) of society’s larger subjugation of women and the role the purity industry played in maintaining it. Offering a prevailing message of resounding hope and encouragement, “Pure emboldens us to escape toxic misogyny and experience a fresh breath of freedom” (Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and founder of Together Rising).

Twenty-five lies stand between abuse survivors and the healing they deserve. They often believe: It was my fault. I’m fine. Really. I can’t tell anyone. I’ll get help later. I’ll never be healed. I’ll never trust again. I’m unlovable. I can’t forgive. God abandoned me… In Made New, Crystalina Evert defuses the power of these lies and others by speaking truth into each of them, showing that no matter what a woman has been through in life, the past doesn’t need to determine her future.