Johannesburg, Department of Sociology. In 2021-2022 she is a Religion, Spirituality, and Democratic Renewal Fellow of the Social Science Research Council. Gaddini holds master’s degrees from Boston College and the London School of Economics, and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge.
Her debut book, The Struggle to Stay: Why Single Evangelical Women Are Leaving the Church, is a book based on over four years of in-depth ethnographic research with single evangelical women in the US and the UK. Her current research investigates Christianity and politics in the US.
Gaddini applied the “Page 99 Test” to The Struggle to Stay and reported the following:
Page 99 is in the middle of the chapter ‘Purity Culture,’ which details white evangelicalism’s approach to dating, sex, and sexuality. I meet Jo, a single evangelical woman in my study, at a bar in New York City, and she tells me, in her characteristic directness, her thoughts on the matter. Here is an excerpt:Visit Katie Gaddini's website.Soon after we sat down, I bluntly asked if she ever felt an imposed muteness around sex. She nodded her head and swallowed her juice, clearing her throat before speaking. A few months prior, she recounted, she was talking to a friend and had casually inserted the topic of masturbation into the conversation. Her friend had interrupted Jo midsentence.Readers who open to Page 99 might think that my book is all about sex. It isn’t. Although my research originally started as an investigation into evangelical women’s approach to sex and sexuality, it quickly bloomed into a larger inquiry into what it means to be a single evangelical woman in the US and UK today – including various struggles, joys, and complexities. Even though the book covers a range of topics, sex and sexuality are a major issue that devout women must contend with, and as a result, ‘Purity Culture’ is the longest chapter in the book. I had so much material to cover! So, I would say all in all that the Page 99 Test works for my book, and at the very least introduces the reader to Jo, a spirited and very likeable character.
“Wait, what? A Christian girl who masturbates?”
“Um, what Christian girl doesn’t?”
“Um, most of them,” her friend answered, her certainty starting to wither as she spoke.
“And so I told her, well, they are either lying or they are fucking dumb!” Jo roared with laughter after this final pronouncement and emptied her glass.
Jo’s friend’s assumption that evangelical women did not masturbate was understandable. As Linda Kay Klein notes in her book about the evangelical movement, “The purity movement teaches that every sexual activity—from masturbation to kissing if it elicits that special feeling—can make one less pure.” Although I had never heard a pastor at Wellspring speak about masturbation, leaders at Bethel Church, in California, certainly did. On day 11 of the “Purity Plan” on YouTube, Caitlin Zick and Jason Vallotton explain, in separate sexual purity messages, that masturbation is a “painkiller” that people use when they feel disconnected from others. They articulate the standard evangelical stance clearly: masturbation violates God’s plan for purity and connection.
--Marshal Zeringue
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