SBC’s True Love Waits emphasis impacted millions of teenagers across the globe
Thirty years ago on July 29, 1994, thousands of teenagers in Washington, D.C., gathered to pledge to remain sexually abstinent until marriage.
Thirty years ago on July 29, 1994, thousands of teenagers in Washington, D.C., gathered to pledge to remain sexually abstinent until marriage, covering the National Mall with an estimated 200,000 signed purity pledge cards.
The cards placed on the mall during “The Great Stakeout” collected by the True Love Waits emphasis was a breakout moment in the evangelical purity movement – impacting hundreds of thousands of teenagers in the United States and across the globe.
True Love Waits was the brainchild of Richard Ross and Jimmy Hester, employees at the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board (now Lifeway). After witnessing True Love Waits take off with students at Ross’s church, Tulip Grove Baptist Church in Old Hickory, Tenn., they decided to take it nationwide.
The True Love Waits commitment card stated, “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, my future mate and my future children to be sexually pure from today until the day I enter a covenant marriage relationship.”
** Follow @baptistreport on X/Twitter **
The organization later held similar displays of cards at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta in 1996 and at the Golden Gate Bridge in 1999.
The abstinence movement began to garner national headlines and amazement from many in the media such as Newsweek and ABC’s 20/20. “They couldn’t believe students would stand up and make statements about their beliefs about abstinence,” Hester said.
2014 Lifeway Documentary
“True Love Waits: The Complicated Struggle for Sexual Purity,” a documentary produced by LifeWay Films, examined the history and future of the international purity movement that captured national conversation in 1994.
The film examined the cultural climate before True Love Waits, where many adults in America had given up hope that teenagers could refrain from sex.
An important aspect of the Lifeway documentary was its examination of True Love Waits’ impact in nations ravaged by AIDS. Before True Love Waits came to Uganda, Ross said, one out of three adults was dying of AIDS, but after True Love Waits, it is about one out of 10.
In the U.S., Susan Bohannon became a teenage spokesperson for the movement, appearing on national television shows and newspapers. Married and a mother of three, Bohannon noted that the movement that began when she was a teenager reached beyond her Tennessee church to impact the lives of people across the world as they make the transition from childhood to adulthood with their purity intact.
“True Love Waits was not just for one generation of teens but every generation of teens,” Bohannon said. “The children who are being born now will be teens one day, and it will be for them. It is not a movement that is relevant to only our culture or our ways, but [it is] an international, intergenerational and timeless movement.”
Lifeway continues to offer True Love Waits resources to churches at truelovewaits.com.
Sources: Baptist Press, Lifeway