Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free

Based on her own experiences, and interviews with dozens of women, Klein's scholarly memoir describes how the purity movement (or what Jessica Valenti calls "the cult of virginity") perpetuates rape culture and creates a climate of humiliation for women. Far from being healthy, many of those who grew up with abstinence-only messages not only found themselves unable to have a healthy sexual relationship, their mental and physical health often suffered as well.

Libraries are mentioned in only three places in this work, but of course that is three times as many as are needed to secure a spot on my blog. They all came near the end. One involved a young evangelical man concerned about his obsession with women's bodies. He would walk "around campus, the library, the supermarket, perpetually hoping to see another accidental glimpse of ...something [cleavage, leg, skin]". He was, laughably, advised by his pastor to attend a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting, where, not surprisingly, he was met with "an awkward silence" after sharing his story.

Another passage recounted a gay lawyer's research in Washington, DC's theological libraries "where he continued to wrestle with the rift between theology he loved and the lived experience he couldn't refute."

The most interesting, however, was this passage of a young woman who told her story of contemplating suicide

Rosemary prepared for a trip to Europe, where she would spend her sophomore year of college. By the time she was packing her bags...she was so depressed that she was seriously planning her suicide. She would kill herself in a European library, she told herself. She had always loved books so much.

Ultimately, the trip had a healing effect when Rosemary found a brand of Christianity in Europe that focused on fellowship rather than shaming.