Searching the dial Tuesday night on my drive home, I came across a Christian radio station's half-hour repeat Focus on the Family broadcast. The experience provided a fascinating window into how conservative evangelicals often speak within their own circles, as opposed the rhetorical style and issues they use in political debates.

The show was introduced by James Dobson and another male host. Their conversation and commentary, largely about abortion, was oddly overproduced and stilted. Then there was a longer segment featuring a woman interviewer and authors Dannah Gresh ("Secret Keeper: The Delicate Power of Modesty") and Leslie Ludy ("Teaching True Love to a Sex-at-13 Generation"). These conversations were much more down-to-earth and approachable (Gresh confessed she loves to shop). Amidst all the anachronistic advocacy of "sexual purity", however, I was struck both by important concessions these Christian-culture activists made to modernity and by the dualistic model their pro-abstinence mentality insists on asserting.

Once upon a time, a show like this would likely have advocated abstinence aggressively and sternly, avoiding all acknowledgment of emotional complexity. While their position emphatically do not think sex before marriage is acceptable, they urge parents to be honest by telling their children (without gratuitous detail) about their premarital sexual experiences and the pain (these authors take for granted) that these experiences caused. The strategy of improving parent-child communication was a strikingly psychological, almost humanistic, approach to further their moral objective. The moralism and religiosity, in fact, were essentially entirely implicit -- the entire focus of these conversations was on communication and outlining practical means of managing the tensions of adolescent sexuality (Gersh discussed girls' fashion options in detail). Religious terminology seemed mostly an extension of the focus on the social-conservative view of sexual health. This relative embrace of cosmpolitan means seems to confirm the analysis of Heather Hendershot's engaging 2004 study of evangelical media, "Shaking the World for Jesus". (If you can't beat 'em, join 'em; this strategy broadens the evangelical appeal, but at the cost of diluting its religious content.)

On the other hand, consider the subtitle of Ludy's book. To be sure, sex among 13-year-olds is hardly just a paranoid nightmare of Christian conservatives. But it hardly follows that regarding 13-year-olds' having sex as problematic requires advocating "sexual purity" until marriage. The all-or-nothing paradigm that underlies their entire discussion undercuts whatever sincerity and respect for youth is to be found in the friendly tone of the sermon. Since studies document the prevalence of a range of sexual behaviors at various ages before marriage, it's absurd to suggest the only choices are the extremes, or that those with other views than their own aren't interested in loving relationships, as well as in sex. Finally, you can't help but notice that the episode (the second of two parts) was focused on "Teaching Girls the Truth About Modesty and Purity", rather than teaching boys and girls alike. A review of their December archive does reveal another episode focused on teens of both sexes, but the prominence of the focus on girls suggests a particular interest in controlling girls, under the guise of protecting and nurturing them. I sense there's a hint of the "boys will be boys (resigned sigh), but girls had better stay in line" mentality here.

Without singling anyone out, it's fair to wonder about the cultural meanings of the widespread "compassionate puritanism" attitude toward sexuality. Underneath the earnestness, dogmatism, and surface polish, underneath the self-help format and the obsession with teenage behavior, I do get the sense that without a cause for which to evangelize, without never-ending efforts to foster in-group cohesion, the lifestyle compromises the compassionate puritans have made in their own lives might become more apparent, less tolerable, and less idealized to them.