UNITED STATES
Religion News Service
Rachel Marie Stone | Mar 20, 2014
A friend recently posted some thoughts on Facebook on the movie ‘Frozen’ and the way it critiques the well-worn “love at first sight” trope that’s part of many other Disney movies:
“If a lonely, love-starved girl [see, for example, Tangled] has been sheltered in a castle her whole life, she might become more vulnerable to smooth-talking Prince Charmings ready to help her escape.”
The psychological set-up of earlier Disney princesses might parallel evangelical purity culture in some significant ways, he suggested, referencing a journal article dealing with clergy sexual misconduct.
As Samantha Nelson told me in a 2012 interview, clergy sexual misconduct is often described — even by the women themselves — as an “affair” with their pastor, rabbi, or priest. Even those who have been victims of sexual abuse often fail to see the ways in which the clergyperson abused his power in order to get sex.
And so they blame themselves.
My friend (and many of those who commented) reflected upon the stories of sexual misconduct emerging recently from fundamentalist Christianity — most notably, perhaps, the case of Bill Gothard, who has been teaching reprehensible things in the name of Jesus for decades but has finally been discredited after numerous stories of his sexual abuse of young women have come to light.
It is hard not to think that there is a causative relationship between Gothard (and Gothard-esque) teaching and sexual abuse, particularly of women and girls.
Purity culture teaches unquestioning submission to authority — and authority figures are almost invariably male.
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