Virgin Nation
Sexual Purity and American Adolescence
Sara Moslener
Reviews and Awards
"In a welcome addition to a growing body of work on religion and sexuality, Moslener offers a subtle exploration of the subterranean themes that inform evangelical sexual purity campaigns. Arguing that they are not simply a response to the sexual revolution, she deftly connects their rhetoric of therapeutic individualism with longstanding tropes of civilizational decline and immanent apocalypse, thus locating issues of sexual purity at the heart of American culture." --Ann Taves, Professor of Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara
"In this fascinating study, Sara Moslener locates contemporary purity movements in a historical framework that highlights moments when American evangelicals have perceived cultural crisis and responded with efforts to promote adolescent sexual purity. Virgin Nation provides a thorough and nuanced examination of American evangelicals' efforts to assert a relationship between sexual immorality and national decline, and place their hopes of salvation on the pure bodies of adolescents." --Amy DeRogatis, Associate Professor of religion and American culture, Michigan State University
"A useful addition to the growing body of research on Christian sexual politics. Scholars in the field will wish to be aware of Moslener's work." --Library Journal
"Moslener provides fascinating insights into the initial appearance of moral-purity rhetoric that was used to both support and oppose the burgeoning Victorian feminist movement, and later, to prompt Cold War-era fears of nuclear annihilation . . . an engaging read that provides valuable historical and intellectual context for an important American religious trend."--Publishers Weekly
"Moslener organizes the book chronologically and thematically, with each chapter representing an era in fundamentalism in which the sexual abstinence and bodily control of youth served as a cultural solution to national and global current events. This is a book for students of American and religious studies, particularly those interested in sexuality, religion, and politics." --CHOICE
"As a tale of sex as a means for power, Virgin Nation presents a novel perspective about a polarizing but little understood movement." --Times Literary Supplement
"Virgin nation demonstrate[s] the richness of Protestant evangelicalism, from the nineteenth century to modern times concurring that there is more to the discussion of evangelicals and sexual purity than biblical interpretations of sexuality." --Women's Review of Books, Vol 33 No 5