“Chastity is getting a make-over” (2). Christine J. Gardner's new book Making Chastity Sexy: The Rhetoric of Evangelical Abstinence Campaigns outlines the various ways that American chastity campaigns have undergone a facelift from a message of sexual abstinence to purity of mind, body, and spirit. Throughout the procedure, Gardner argues, the rhetoric has changed from “just say no” to “just say yes” and great sex in heterosexual marriage. Gardner, a communications professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, spent five years traveling around the country and to Sub-Sahara Africa attending chastity events, interviewing participants, and listening closely to the rhetoric of abstinence campaigns. To that end she explores three highly visible groups—True Love Waits, Silver Ring Thing, and Pure Freedom—to understand the rhetorical arguments and some of the substantive strategies for persuading young people to abstain from sex prior to marriage. What she found was a message that co-opted feminist rhetoric urging youth to claim moral agency over their choices and their bodies, and a lot of discourse detailing the ecstasy of marital sex. Her case studies in Kenya and Rwanda yielded different results that convinced her that American evangelical abstinence campaigns cannot be exported successfully without a greater sensitivity to the cultural, social, and historical contingencies that shape theological understandings of sex, bodies, and health in Africa. While the evangelical abstinence message aimed at American teens may not resonate worldwide, Gardner argues convincingly throughout the book that in the United States the most persuasive abstinence message is that chastity is sexy. American evangelicals use “sex” to sell abstinence.

The book is divided into eight chapters. Five chapters focus on evangelical abstinence campaigns in the United States; two chapters are devoted to chastity efforts in Kenya and Rwanda; the final chapter is a summary and conclusion. In the introduction Gardner explains that she is not presenting a strictly quantitative study; rather her goal “is to provide a ‘thick description’ of how virginity pledge events such as those in evangelical abstinence campaigns are persuading young people to wait to have sex and how young people are negotiating their sexuality while remaining abstinent” (6). Chapters one through five provide a brief survey of the history of three popular campaigns and highlight the larger themes that develop in the language of American evangelical abstinence movements. The author traces a rhetorical trajectory from a denial of sexuality through abstinence to a promotion of purity of body and acceptance of sexuality as God-given and saved for marriage. This changing trope, the author argues, moves the sex conversation from negative behaviors to avoid to a positive identity to claim. Purity, she discovered, involves more than refraining from sexual activity, it is a radical statement of claiming the worth of one's body while directing all desires toward the reward of outstanding sex within marriage. To broadcast this message the campaigns use the tools of popular culture. Through the buying and selling of chastity t-shirts, underwear, hats, jewelry, bumper stickers, wristbands, and the like, with slogans like “modest is hottest,” “say YES to sex (within marriage)” as well as reappropriating popular media such as TV shows, film, and music, the campaigns often employ sexualized images and humor to promote abstinence. Gardner claims that abstinence campaigns are no longer about chastity; they are about delayed sexual gratification. The message of a sexually blissful marriage as a reward for abstinence worries Gardner, and she details problems that arise for pledgers who remain single, those who have difficult sexual relationships in marriage, and those who may not be heterosexual. She is also concerned that this rhetorical strategy redefines marriage as primarily about sex satisfaction. Gardner notes in chapter three that the fairy-tale narrative of courtship and marriage popular among some female-focused purity groups can operate to exacerbate problems for individuals who wait forever for their god-sent spouse. But Gardner also believes that this story line can provide empowerment for young women because it allows them some agency in choosing the qualifications for a prince. In other chapters she examines courtship, secondary virginity, and the methods evangelical youth employ to discipline their bodies while they wait for marriage.

This is a well-written book on a relevant topic that is just beginning to receive scholarly attention. Gardner presents her research in an accessible manner and raises some significant questions about how the rhetoric of evangelical abstinence campaigns remains in tension with its larger goals. The one weakness of this book is the inclusion of two chapters on Sub-Sahara Africa. The chapters felt cursory and while they provided examples of how American evangelical rhetoric does not translate well outside of the U.S. context, the subject deserves in-depth analysis and I wondered if it would have been preferable to devote attention to that topic in a separate monograph. For example, Gardner's insightful comments on the politics and rhetoric of the condom begs for a fuller investigation. That said, this is an important and timely study that will direct future scholarship.

There have only been a handful of scholarly monographs on the contemporary American chastity movement. Mark Regenerus, Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), Donna Freitas, Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) and Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women (Berkeley, Calif.: Seal Press, 2010) and a couple of scholarly articles, most notably Breanne Fahs, “Daddy's Little Girl: On the Perils of Chastity Clubs, Purity Balls and Ritualized Abstinence” Frontiers (vol. 31, no. 3 [2010]: 116–142). These studies either tend to be sociological and quantitative, seeking to answer why abstinence campaigns have succeeded or failed, or the studies are directly critical of abstinence movements as a tool of patriarchal religion and culture. Gardner's work sheds light on what she argues are some intrinsic problems of contemporary abstinence rhetoric. By the end of the book she suggests some correctives and discusses what she believes is right about the abstinence campaigns. Gardner is clearly working within her tradition, seeking to reform it. Making Chastity Sexy demonstrates the internal contradictions of using sex to promote abstinence. There is much work still to be done on contemporary evangelical abstinence movements. Future scholars of evangelicalism and sexuality, whether writing primarily inside or outside of the religious tradition, will owe a debt to Gardner and her careful study of this topic.