|TOP|The Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) is launching a course called ‘Pure’, on several campuses across Britain, in the hope of encouraging students to remain celibate until they marry.

The evangelical Christian group wants to encourage students to avoid the temptations of alcohol and sex that bombards campuses.

Unlike the controversial American programme ‘Silver Ring Thing’, where teenagers wear a silver ring to show they intend to remain virgins until they are married, the ‘Pure’ course will not give students a list of do's and don'ts, but rather encourage them to come up with ground rules for relationships in everyday life.

The Pure programme is believed to be the first of its kind in Britain.

In addition to spreading the gospel of sexual abstinence before marriage, the course will also offer advice on how to shake off evil thoughts that could lead to promiscuity.

|AD|The director of the UCCF, the Rev Richard Cunningham, told the Daily Telegraph the biggest struggle Christians faced at university was sex and relationships. He said the course was needed because students were given condoms during freshers' week and taught biology at school.

Mr Cunningham said: "Pure was born when we were approached by a Christian union leader dismayed at the number of people in the union going out with non-Christians, feeling bitter about being single, or sleeping with their boyfriends or girlfriends."

He told the Daily Telegraph that the general advice was to "always have a reverse gear" out of a physical encounter. "Taking off clothes, touching certain parts of the body - different people have different thresholds."

The UCCF, an umbrella group of university and further education Christian unions, will roll out the six-week course, comprising of weekly 65-minute sessions, nationwide in the autumn, following a pilot on 15 campuses.