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This chapter considers the incongruity of the positive, benefits-oriented rhetoric of an evangelical abstinence campaign that is all about a prohibition. The message focuses on a positive call to a lifestyle of purity instead of a negative prohibition implied by the term abstinence. The campaign rhetoric is reconfiguring virginity too, constructing it as a choice that can be found after it has been lost. To a public audience, abstinence is portrayed as the healthy choice. The chapter considers the impact of this shifting rhetoric—from prohibition to admonition—on attempts to control adolescent sexuality, as well as how it defines the contours of evangelicalism as a whole. Evangelicals use rhetorical agency as a strategy of persuasion, constructing their audience as teenagers who have the power to control their bodies.

This chapter argues that the evangelical abstinence campaigns are unwittingly raising a generation of young people with false expectations about the role of sex in marriage and about the sacrifice and commitment of marriage in general. By tying the abstinence commitment to one's religious commitment, the argument for abstinence threatens to weaken the religious faith of young people if the reward for choosing abstinence is never realized, whether because of singleness or the failure of marital sex to live up to expectations of greatness. However, the abstinence campaigns do get a number of things right. For starters, the campaigns are forcing the church to talk about sex. It may be difficult for the soft voice of religion to be heard against the blaring megaphone of mediated culture, but the campaigns are cranking up the volume, and teens are listening. The campaigns are also empowering young people—particularly young women—to respect their bodies and to make wise, healthy choices.

Millions of young people have pledged abstinence, but that does not mean that they are all virgins. What happens to the happily-ever-after of the fairy tale of abstinence if the prince or princess did not wait for true love? Or, worse, what if the prince or princess never shows up? What, then, happens to the reward for abstinence? The abstinence campaigns offer a message of second virginity for those with sexually active pasts who want to renew a commitment to abstinence, but often young people are left to deal with the pain of their own fractured fairy tales. This chapter tells the stories of young people who have committed to abstinence but are also managing the pain of past sexual relationships, the challenges of forgiving a partner who did not wait, and the silent suffering and loneliness of singleness and homosexuality in a heterosexual world.

This chapter follows the American evangelical sexual abstinence rhetoric to sub-Saharan Africa to explore the differences between the American and African cases. It shows that the abstinence message in Kenya and Rwanda largely borrows the rhetoric of the abstinence campaigns in the United States, with a stronger emphasis on the fear of AIDS. Surprisingly, Rwandan youth express less fear of acquiring HIV/AIDS than fear of displeasing God. American evangelicals offer a positive focus on purity and emphasize that pleasing God has tangible benefits for the individual. In contrast, Kenyan and Rwandan youth emphasize that pleasing God is an end in itself. For evangelicals in the United States, sin is an individual problem; in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, sin is viewed as a structural problem. There are gender differences, too: in the United States, the campaigns portray females as possessing power over their bodies; in sub-Saharan Africa, Kenyan and Rwandan young people portray females as bearing responsibility for their bodies.

This chapter looks at how American evangelical teenagers are negotiating the gray area between sex and no sex. Although all the respondents have pledged to practice abstinence, they regularly make choices as to what constitutes appropriate physical intimacy within the context of the abstinence pledge. Young people choose to limit their choices in acts of self-control, creating boundaries of sexual activity. Whereas a diversity of appropriate boundaries exists, young people seem to agree on an execution of the concept of purity in which respecting others trumps self-gratification. Abstinent teens use their personal agency to discipline their sexuality and choose to surround themselves with communities of support. Positive peer pressure can reinforce the abstinence message, but it also can lead to rebellion within the peer group. Going along with the crowd can sometimes weaken the abstinence commitment by masking a false pledge.

A key argument in the evangelical sexual abstinence campaigns is that delaying sexual gratification today means a greater prize of true love and romance tomorrow. This theme is communicated through the use of the fairy-tale narrative, complete with beautiful princesses in distress, valiant princes on horseback, and evil forces that threaten to steal the princesses' virginity. This chapter analyzes how the fairy-tale narrative both supports and subverts traditional gender roles. Young women may be waiting for their princes, but they are also taught that modestly covering their bodies exerts power and control over lustful young men. The young men, in turn, are actively pursuing and protecting their princesses, but they are also trapped and emasculated by their seemingly uncontrollable hormonal urges.

This chapter examines how evangelical abstinence educators in Africa rhetorically construct the condom. It argues that they construct the condom as (1) a tool for marital fidelity; (2) a tool for saving lives; (3) part of holistic community-based development; and (4) a tool for female empowerment. After demonstrating the prevalence of these four themes, it turns to an analysis of an evangelical statement of conscience on the AIDS crisis as an example of how these constructions of the condom affect public discourse about AIDS prevention. Although evangelicals tend to view the condom as a tool for promiscuity, in Africa the potential to save lives trumps the potential for increased promiscuity. The perceived lack of choices presented by the dire health situation in Africa provides rhetorical space for a positive construction of the condom as lifesaving. This medical focus echoes U.S. evangelicals' construction of abstinence as the healthy choice.