Sexvangelicals

The first two Deadly Sexual Sins According to the Church—don't have sex before you get married, and don't be gay—are commonly linked to the church's sexual ethic. The third of the sins is the psychological engine for the church's position on sexuality: Don't lust. And to be fair, don't lust has important implications, especially in a world where over half of adult women (and nearly a third of adult men) have experienced at minimum sexual harassment. However, as Jeremiah mentions, "I think that the problem though becomes when "don't objectify women" very quickly moves into, " just don't have wants." And in a context that refuses to teach things, processes like consent , sexual anatomy, sexual physiology, the sexual response cycles and the histories of sexual response cycles, it's understandable how that move gets made." We invite our friends Jake and Sarah to talk with us about how growing up in the Evangelical Church (the same collegiate church as Jeremiah) impacted their relationship with wants as individuals and as a partnership. We describe a three step process that can help people give themselves permission to name their wants and desires, including: Developing a process for exploring your own wants and needs. Determining how to translate your wants into verbalizations, and identify the barriers to vocalizing said wants. Asking the question "What do you want?" And actually answering the question when your partner asks. Share your stories about how you learned to give yourself permission to want and desire! Let's heal together!

Jeremiah and Julia continue their series The Seven Deadly Sexual Sins, According to the Church, with the deadliest of the "sins", as we were reminded over the weekend in Colorado Springs: Don't be gay. Jeremiah and Julia discuss the different ways that the combination of "Don't be gay" and "Don't have sex before you get married" negatively impacted their development. For Jeremiah, he struggled to have male friendships, despite his deep desire for emotional connection, out of fear that if he got too close, someone might shout, "Jeremiah's gay." Like many communities, the church struggles to separate sexual connection from emotional connection. For Julia, "Don't be gay" prohibited her from exploring all elements of her sexuality in same-sex and opposite-sex contexts, leading to a social presentation that was "juvenile". She explains: "The really difficult part there is that hiding for the sake of my safety, hiding for other reasons also severely limited me." They close the episode by talking about two binaries that the church (and other institutions) place around queerness: Either you're gay or you're straight. Either you're "born that way" or queerness was socialized into you. Julia and Jeremiah discuss ways of broadening this binary. Check out their reflections on: The Kinsey Scale, which Jeremiah uses to assess his own queerness. Lisa Diamond and her sexual fluidity model. The practice of naming sexual behaviors that are rooted in your sexual values rather than the social expectations of your sexual identity. We will continue to discuss the impact of the church's relationship with queerness in future episodes, alongside of the five remaining deadly sexual sins of the church. Let's heal together!

The murders at Club Q on November 20 in Colorado Springs are horrific, as are all acts of violence against the queer community. Julia and Jeremiah bypass the impulse to dissect how church rhetoric impacted the murders, especially given that they happened in the mecca of the Evangelical Church, and land on the following position: "The church's anti-queer propaganda absolutely has and continues to set the stage for this violence on large global scales, on individual scales, family scales, and communal scales. No more of this bullshit." We are dedicated to the work of talking about the influence of the evangelical church on the lives of individuals and on the lives of communities. And we'll have more episodes about the seven deadly sins in the next few weeks. But for today, for tonight, please take care of yourself. Get a little extra rest tonight. Do what it takes to grieve on your own terms, whatever that process is.

Welcome back to Church, and Julia and Jeremiah's Wednesday night mid-week class called the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins. Today, we talk about the first of the sins, which is also the apex of Purity Culture: Don't have sex before you get married. And as Jeremiah and Julia discuss, the Evangelical Church has collaborated with policy makers to ensure that abstinence only sex education is infused throughout public schools nationwide. The Evangelical Church suggests three ways that sexual experiences will be blissful for those who wait until marriage to have sex. 1) You and your spouse will be able to intuit each other's needs. 2) Your honeymoon will be the most incredible experience of your life. 3) Sex will be spontaneous, and will flow naturally without any need to discuss it. Remember: These three lessons fit into the last week's episode, Don't Talk About Sex. To be fair, most couples have a sexual relationship that only occasionally fits into these three categories, but what happens when these three ways no longer work for your relationship, and you lack a foundation of sexual literacy to talk about the types of sexual experiences you'd like to have? Jeremiah and Julia discuss strategies to base a healthy sexual relationship. Learn more about: 1) The eight characteristics of optimal sexual experiences, from Peggy Kleinplatz's and Dana Menard's book Magnificent Sex 2) How to identify and disrupt the sexual shame cycle. 3) How to develop your own sexual menu practice. Check out the full transcript of the episode on Descript!

Sexvangelicals is a podcast about the sex education that the church didn't want you to have. What's the sex education that the church did want you to have? So glad that you asked! Julia and Jeremiah talk about the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church): Don't have sex before you get married. Don't be gay. Don't have an affair. Don't lust. Don't watch porn. (This is for men, because obviously women don't have sexual desire.) Don't say no. (This is for women, because women are supposed to be the recipients of sexuality. Plus, obviously, men would never say no to sex.) Don't ask questions. And you'll notice that they all have one word in common. Don't. In this episode, we talk about the implications and limitations for how the word "don't" can negatively impact sex education, as well as how you can name some "do's" to more effectively communicate what you need. Welcome back to Sunday School! Get some animal crackers, a cup of apple juice, and enjoy the episode!