What if healing from purity culture requires more than naming how you were hurt? What if it also means asking how you participated?

In this episode, Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen sit down with their colleague Dr. Lauren Sawyer, to explore her new book, Growing Up Pure.

Lauren names something many haven't had language for: as teens, we weren't only victims of purity culture; we were also moral agents within it. We made choices. We found belonging. We sometimes resisted in small ways. And at times, we participated in systems that harmed others and ourselves.

That tension between vulnerability and agency, harm and complicity can feel destabilizing. Yet Lauren invites us to see accountability not as punishment, but as a sacred, even hopeful, practice.

What if repentance wasn't shame-driven, but a pathway toward integration? What if healing meant not only tending to the wounds purity culture caused, but also examining how we were formed by—and sometimes upheld—it?

This episode is honest, nuanced, and tender. It creates space to grieve the damage of purity culture while also imagining a different story. One rooted in the belief that we are made in the image of God as embodied, relational, sexual beings… and that restoration is possible.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

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https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/