About Beyond Purity Culture

Beyond Purity Culture is a live evening of honest storytelling and grounded conversation about the impact of purity culture. We’re not here as therapists or medical professionals, and we’re not offering quick fixes. We’re two people shaped in different ways by purity culture who care about opening up real, meaningful dialogue.

 FAQs

    • Live talks by Stephanie Stalvey and Josh Harris

    • Readings and visuals from Everything in Color

    • Candid dialogue between speakers

    • Audience Q&A

    • A gentle, supportive atmosphere where you can take what resonates and leave the rest

  • Absolutely. The goal isn’t to attack faith or defend it. It’s to name harm, explore healing, and imagine healthier communities together. Whatever your spiritual background (or none at all), you’re welcome in the room.

  • Your ticket directly supports this work. A portion goes to Dahlia Grove, a nonprofit serving women survivors of trafficking and exploitation. Josh is donating his time, and all remaining proceeds help fund Stephanie’s book tour and her work bringing this story and conversation to more communities.

  • Yes. If money is a barrier to your ability to attend, please email hello@clearandloud.com for scholarship options. We'd love to help.

The Story Behind This Event

Here’s how this collaboration came to be. Stephanie and Josh first connected on Instagram, where Josh became a fan of Stephanie's work—art and storytelling that directly deconstructed the purity culture movement he had once helped promote. What began as an online conversation grew into an Instagram Live, a podcast interview, and a friendship.

These events bring together Stephanie's creative work exploring life after purity culture with Josh's perspective as someone reckoning with the harm he helped cause. Together, they create space for honest conversation, mutual learning, and a way forward.

A screenshot of a video call featuring a man with a bald head and a beard in the top half, and a woman with long brown hair and makeup in the bottom half. The man is smiling with a background of shelves and plants, and the woman appears to be speaking with a colorful background of artwork and letters on the wall.
Black-and-white comic-style illustration of two women with short hair, one sad and one serious, with speech bubbles reading: 'I kissed dating goodbye.' and '... sort of.'.
Book cover titled 'Everything in Color' by Stephanie Staivey, featuring an illustration of a couple embracing under a sunset, with trees and a house in the background.
Young woman with long dark hair, wearing a blue top and white earrings, standing outdoors near a wooden structure with a blackboard sign in the background.

About Stephanie Stalvey

Stephanie is an artist and writer, and the creator of Everything in Color, a beautifully painted graphic memoir about growing up as a 90s church kid and falling in love within purity culture.

Her work traces the visceral impact of internalized shame—how even a kiss in a safe, loving relationship triggered full-body panic. Her body had learned to treat intimacy as danger.

In her talk, Stephanie shares the heart of her book and the creative process behind it. She explores how purity culture's messages lodge in the body, why critiquing religious repression isn't abandoning ethics, and how both purity culture and mainstream sexualization share patriarchal roots—casting women as either temptation or conquest.

She offers a vision of sexuality grounded in dignity, mutual respect, and the integration of desire with our deepest values. Her message is about reclamation: of love, embodiment, and the freedom to be fully human.

Learn more about Stephanie’s work at her website or follow her on Instagram.

A bald man with a beard wearing a black t-shirt, sitting against a plain light gray wall, looking into the camera with a slight smile.

About Josh Harris

Josh grew up inside evangelical purity culture and became one of its most visible voices through his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Between 2016 and 2018, he undertook a thorough re-evaluation of the book, a process that led to discontinuing its publication and issuing a public apology. That season coincided with the unraveling of his former life: leaving ministry, stepping away from the church, and confronting the personal and relational fallout of purity culture in his own story.

In his talk, Josh shares the historical forces that shaped purity culture, the messages that defined his thinking, and the ways those teachings still live in people’s bodies and relationships. He speaks candidly about the religious pressure, ambition, shame cycles, and the long process of unlearning what he once promoted.

His goal isn’t to offer expert answers, but to give honest context that helps people make sense of their experiences, support healing, and reduce shame. He speaks as a former insider wrestling with responsibility and repair, not as someone who believes he has it figured out.

Josh is donating his time and is not being paid for his participation in the event.

Learn more through the free documentary I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye, or read Josh’s full statement and apology.

 Contact us.