Douglas Todd: Sexual purity mega-author Joshua Harris, now a Vancouverite, rejects it all
Credit to Author: Douglas Todd| Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 14:00:10 +0000
Esther Yuen has friends who are angry they once took so seriously American author Joshua Harris’s celebrated advice to avoid kissing your partner until marriage. One of them blames Harris’s “purity culture” for his singleness.
Harris’s book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which sold 1.2 million copies, was “must-reading for the devout Christian teenager in the late ’90s and early 2000s,” says Yuen, a Christian in Vancouver. “I remember girls in my church passing copies of the book around, using it to encourage each other as they waited for their future husbands.”
In a dramatic turn of events, however, Harris has been making an escalating series of public confessions since moving to Vancouver. They began to heat up in 2018 when he said he regrets the “hurt” his bestseller caused millions of young Christians.
The pace of his self-disclosure stepped up in early July, with a joint announcement with his wife of two decades, Shannon, that they’re divorcing.
Harris upped the ante again later in July, posting that he is no longer a Christian.
Now running a marketing company in Vancouver, Harris revealed he is turning his back on Christianity on Instagram, accompanied by a photo of himself appearing contemplative at the edge of a turquoise lake in B.C.’s Joffre Lake Provincial Park.
Then came another zinger, at least for the one of three Americans who call themselves evangelicals. In early August, he garnered more worldwide attention by posting a smiling photo of himself eating a rainbow-icing doughnut at Vancouver’s Pride Parade.
Since Harris and his family moved a few years ago to Vancouver to attend the evangelical Regent College, he has been going through a somewhat unexplained metamorphosis.
Writer Joshua Harris at Vancouver’s Pride Parade this summer.
The celebrity author is now promoting himself simply as “a wordsmith and storyteller who helps clarify then amplify messages that matter.” On Instagram, where he has 30,000 followers, he seeks clients. “I use the power of story to help businesses connect with their customers. Message clarity, marketing strategy, website design. Let’s work together!”
But Harris has also said he is no longer talking to the media about his turnaround on sexual ethics. He turned down Postmedia’s request for an interview, saying “right now I’ve been declining all media interviews related to my marriage and change in beliefs,” adding he appreciated the “reaching out.”
That leaves his inner transformation somewhat of a mystery to followers. The thousands of comments being tossed around online are mixed. Some on social media say he did great damage by promoting strict purity. Others in the conservative Christian media urge him to return to the evangelical fold. Some ask, “Are u gay?” And another group admires his “courage” and “honesty.”
Yuen, a communication specialist who has attended Anglican and evangelical churches, says many Christians have been taken aback because I Kissed Dating Goodbye, an evangelical classic published in 1997 when Harris was in his early twenties, had made him an intimate source of biblical relationship wisdom.
“His separation and supposed de-conversion has got to be one of the biggest announcements I’ve seen lately in Christian circles. My cousin, a pastor’s wife, contacted me shortly after she learned of the news, was shocked. Growing up in the church, many of us assumed that Harris did things ‘by the book’ and thus, would forever and ever have a blissful, perfect marriage,” said Yuen.
“Though I didn’t date in high school, and don’t consider myself to be a part of the purity movement, this book influenced me to wait for someone who would love and respect me and who would value the institution of marriage. Harris meant well, but looking back — why should we have gotten relationship advice from a 21-year-old?”
Like many, Yuen in part owes the evangelist’s changes of heart to the decision to move to Vancouver, “a city that prides itself on inclusivity.”
Social media commenters also believe he’s influenced by “secular’ Metro Vancouver, where only 40 per cent of residents are Christians compared to 75 per cent in the U.S., even while the number of foreign-born Sikhs, Buddhists and Muslims is relatively high in Metro.
Joshua Harris, author of the 1997 book How I Kissed Dating Goodbye, says in his recent Instagram post that he has ‘undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus.
The sexual purity movement is not unique to evangelicalism, although Harris’s version was among the more extreme. The ex-pastor at Covenant Life mega-church, which has been battered by accusations of abuse, urged heterosexual Christians to reject dating and take part in “courtship” under the guidance of parents.
Harris told young couples to observe sexual abstinence. They should not kiss, hold hands or spend time alone together before marriage, which he assumed was exclusive to heterosexuals. He argued dating was a “training ground for divorce.”
Although Harris’s pre-marital advice was unusual even in Christian circles in North America, it echoes that present in some religions and cultures, particularly those endorsing arranged marriages. It was only this week, for instance, the high court in Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country of 165 million people, ruled women are no longer required to declare they are virgins on marriage registration forms.
When Harris declared this summer he had “deconstructed” his Christianity, or “fallen away” from it, he also stunned some conservative evangelical writers for the way he apologized for his earlier views on women, gays and lesbians.
“I have lived in repentance for the past several years—repenting of my self-righteousness, my fear-based approach to life, the teaching of my books, my views of women in the church, and my approach to parenting to name a few,” he wrote on Instagram.
“But I specifically want to add to this list now: to the LGBTQ+ community, I want to say that I am sorry for the views that I taught in my books and as a pastor regarding sexuality. I regret standing against marriage equality, for not affirming you and your place in the church, and for any ways that my writing and speaking contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry. I hope you can forgive me.”
In the evolving world that is contemporary Christianity, where both conversion and apostasy are commonplace and liberal Christians have long endorsed women’s equality and LGBQT rights, Harris’s story ranks in a class by itself mainly because it is extreme and high profile. He had turned himself into a star in the vast evangelical firmament, and he gave it all up to follow his increasingly free conscience.
First Things, a large Christian publication, didn’t seem to hold it against him. It did note, however, the marketing specialist’s online posts about his divorce and departure from Christianity lacked self-analysis — and were designed to play to the emotions, rather than the mind. “Life, it would seem, continues as performance art.”
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