Joshua Harris (author)

Joshua Eugene Harris is an American former Evangelical Christian pastor. Harris' 1997 book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, in which he laid out his ideas concerning a biblically based Christian approach to dating and relationships, helped shape purity culture for many Christian millennials. Harris was lead pastor of Covenant Life Church, the founding church of Sovereign Grace Ministries, in Gaithersburg, Maryland, from 2004 until 2015. In 2018, Harris disavowed I Kissed Dating Goodbye and discontinued its publication. The following year, Harris announced that he was separating from his wife, had "undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus" and was no longer a Christian. He now describes himself as a seeker: "I pray to Jesus and visit church, but I engage with religion very differently than I did in the past."