Roy Barsness

Eucontamination

Theology

“In this provocative work, Paul and Billie offer a critical examination of the evangelical purity culture contending that such a framework fosters binaries, advances marginalization, and creates hostility toward those deemed ‘other,’ and is a misrepresentation of the Gospel. Contrary to purity culture’s emphasis on separation and exclusion, they introduce the concept of eucontamination—a sacred undoing, a holy reversal where the impure is made pure not through separation, but through direct contact with the other. Purity is brittle. It hides, it protects, it fears. But eucontamination is wild embodied grace—it is messy, alive, and unafraid. It reaches into the muck. It touches. It heals. It loves. Billie and Paul invite us in—to step into the ache of the world. They challenge the church to abandon fear, soften our boundaries, to live in the blur and imagine a gospel capacious enough, tender enough, bold enough to hold the other in love. This book strikes with a force, awakening and unsettling your understanding of the Gospel.”