Purity rings, also called promise rings, abstinence rings, or chastity rings, are worn as a symbol of chastity. Since the 1990s, Christian groups in the United States have used purity rings as a symbol of commitment. Groups such as True Love Waits and Silver Ring Thing, which are part of Catholic and evangelical Christian communities, promoted the idea of making promises to remain virgins until marriage. People who wear purity rings often make religious promises to avoid sexual activity until they get married. These rings are connected to a movement that focuses on teaching abstinence until marriage, and they serve as a physical reminder of the wearer's commitment to chastity.
Organizations
Unaltered, previously known as Silver Ring Thing (SRT), is an American program that helps teens and young adults stay sexually abstinent until marriage. It was started in 1995 by Denny Pattyn. For several years, the program received partial funding from the U.S. federal government. SRT uses ideas from Christian teachings and holds events similar to rock and hip hop concerts to connect with teenagers. At these events, participants buy rings as a symbol of their promise to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. The program’s main Bible verse is 1 Thessalonians 4:3–4.
In 2004, SRT began operating in the United Kingdom, but the results were mixed. Some teenagers in the UK supported the message of abstinence, while others criticized it, calling it unrealistic or anti-sex. Critics also said abstinence programs might not gain much support in the UK because of different views on sexuality and sex education. Denise Pfeiffer, SRT’s Assistant National Director for the UK, argued that the program was needed to address high rates of sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancies in the UK.
In 2005, the ACLU of Massachusetts sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, claiming that SRT used tax dollars to promote Christianity. SRT’s program had two parts: one about abstinence and another about how Christianity supports abstinence. The ACLU said this violated the separation of church and state. On August 22, 2005, the government paused SRT’s 75,000-dollar federal grant until SRT submitted a plan to fix the issue. In 2006, SRT provided a plan, and the lawsuit was dropped. SRT later received federal funding again.
In 2007, a UK court case, R (Playfoot) v Millais School Governing Body, involved a 16-year-old student named Lydia Playfoot, who said her school broke her rights by banning purity rings. The case was supported by Christian Concern. On July 16, 2007, the High Court ruled that Playfoot’s rights were not violated. At the time, her father, Phil Playfoot, was a pastor for SRT and was ordered to pay 12,000 pounds to the school’s legal costs.
In 2019, Silver Ring Thing changed its name to Unaltered.
True Love Waits (TLW) is an international Christian group that encourages teens and college students to avoid sex before marriage. It was created in April 1993 by the Southern Baptists and is supported by LifeWay Christian Resources. TLW follows conservative Christian beliefs about human sexuality.
The True Love Waits pledge says: “Believing that true love waits, I promise to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future partner, and my future children to stay sexually abstinent until I enter a biblical marriage.” The group also promotes sexual purity, which includes avoiding not only intercourse before marriage but also sexual thoughts, touching, pornography, and actions that lead to sexual arousal.
By the late 1990s, Christian music groups helped spread the program. Events similar to youth rallies were held at Christian concerts, where teens could sign pledge cards. In the first year, over 102,000 young people signed the pledge. Other church groups, such as the Roman Catholic Church and Assemblies of God, also supported the campaign. The program grew across the U.S., using events like Valentine’s Day to raise awareness.
By 2004, hundreds of groups supported abstinence. Over the previous decade, about 2.5 million American youth had taken the abstinence pledge.
Criticism
Some studies have shown that virginity pledges may help delay the first time someone has vaginal intercourse, but they do not seem to lower the risk of sexually transmitted infections. These pledges may also make people less likely to use contraception. Some people who take pledges may replace vaginal intercourse with other sexual activities, like oral or anal sex, because they believe these activities are not as important. At least one study found that, after considering differences that were already present between groups, there was no major difference in sexual behavior between people who took pledges and those who did not.
David Bario of the Columbia News Service reported on a study by Peter Bearman and Hannah Brückner published in 2005 in the Journal of Adolescent Health. The study found that 21% of young adults who had taken a virginity pledge had vaginal intercourse, 13% had practiced oral sex, and 4% had engaged in anal sex. In the 2011 book Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric of Evangelical Abstinence Campaigns, Christine Gardner criticized the True Love Waits program for using promises of more satisfying sexual experiences in marriage to encourage abstinence before marriage. She argued that this message could lead to selfish desires, problems in marriage, and dissatisfaction. In 2014, Jimmy Hester, one of the founders of the program, said that while some young Christians had broken their promises, the program had still helped some people return to their faith.
The Jonas Brothers made a virginity pledge through True Love Waits as teenagers. The band and the pledge were satirized in the 2009 South Park episode "The Ring." In 2013, Morgan Lee of The Christian Post interviewed Joe Jonas about the pledge. In 2019, Lutheran minister Nadia Bolz-Weber asked people to send her unwanted purity rings so she could use them to make a sculpture of a vagina. Alisa Childers, an apologetic minister, criticized Bolz-Weber’s project but said that purity ring campaigns needed to improve.