Sexvangelicals

This week, Sexvangelicals has teamed up with the I was a Teenage Fundamentalist podcast, to bring you their thought-provoking conversation with Tracey Phalen. She herself was a teenage fundamentalist, and details her experience as a member of the Last Days Ministries. The episode begs the question, was Keith Green a cult leader?

Many folks who grew up in the 90s and 00s grew up with an extreme amount of sex negativity. Regardless of whether or not they grew up in Evangelical churches, Gen-X and millennials were impacted by a culture and policy that reinforced negative messages about bodies, sexuality, and gender. And it's on us to make sure that future generations aren't saddled with equally negative messages and practices about sexuality and relationships. We talk with Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai from the Holy Ghosting Podcast @holyghostingpod about how they have navigated talking with their kids in more effective, affirming, and healing ways. Check out our conversations about: Project 2025 (5:00): Jeremiah starts us off on an important note. "Project 2025 is a legitimately scary proposition. In good news, the Heritage Foundation has published the entire 900 page document on the website, so you can read it. Read through what they are planning to do with a Trump presidency. If you don't want to read the 900 pages, which I fully get, there are fortunately a lot of really good resources that are breaking down Project 2025 and other trends in Christian nationalism." Imposter Syndrome (9:20): Lindsey shares, "I think there's like a a little bit of imposter syndrome happening as a person who, it took me so fucking long to figure out sexuality and pleasure, and I feel like I'm still figuring it out. I don't want that for my child, but it still feels like this big limit, how do I even do this?" Discussing and Demystifying Masturbation (11:00): Meg discusses, "I was really nervous about the masturbation conversation as well. Of course there's a lot of shame around that subject growing up the way we did. lustful thoughts were not allowed, much less anything self pleasure or pleasure with anyone else. But when it came to self pleasure and knowing yourself and knowing what your body needs were, I was so in the dark about that. But it turns out it's actually kind of easier to have those conversations when you aren't including shame." Shame (14:00): Sarai insightfully says: "I feel like the reason why people shame other people is because their shame is triggered when that's happened." Engaging with Sexuality at Different Ages (15:00): Jeremiah highlights: "5 to 11 year olds engage with sexuality in very different ways than adolescents do kids say, like funny things, but also very direct, very curious, very pointed things about sexuality in ways that adolescents, at least American adolescents, tend to not to." The Pain of Saving Yourself (22:00): Meg shares, "Any kind of sexual or sensual touching was not okay, with me, with boyfriends, because I felt like if I turned that light switch on, that was bad, because that was sexual promiscuity, which could lead to sexual things. All kinds of sexual things were villainized for me. But when I started to shift that language in myself about how do I now define sex, given a non heterosexual perspective partnership, like that just blew my little brain." Relational v. Behavioral (28:00): Julia notes, "I appreciate that you're talking to your kids about sexuality from a relational communicative perspective rather than a rigid behavioral perspective. Because all of us grew up with behavioral restrictions dictating sexuality." Discovering the Importance of Sex (32:00): Sarai shares, "I'm really grateful that I've had the time and the space and the specific kind of experiences to help me feel empowered in my sexuality and being able to prioritize that for myself and not feel like that's bad because sex shouldn't be important, right? We were taught to repress. Sex shouldn't be the most important thing in your life and you shouldn't change how your life is just for sex. I just don't think we need to be in self denial all the time. I want to be in communication and alive and progressing and learning and growing." The Gravity of the Deadly Sexual Sins (34:50): Lindsey details, "I had HPV and had some complications due to that and had pre cancerous cells and ended up having to have two LEAP procedures, which is like a biopsy, but then they take a part of your cervix out. It was before I was married, and so because of that I had to tell my parents that I had had sex. I wanted them to know about this cancer stuff. It was pretty serious. And I remember sitting in my car and talking with my mom about it. And she was truly more upset that I had had sex than the fact that I might have cancer." New Generation and Liberation (38:00): Meg says, I think that watching and seeing the liberation from the Christianity that I grew up with, seeing those kids be liberated and be able to live and be themselves. And really when they expressed themselves to me, my only reaction was how lucky I am to know you, how lucky I am that you feel safe with me. That I'm a person that you know is not going to reject you or give you grief about this, but is actually going to become like a really loud advocate."

Mother's Day was this weekend, and is a complicated holiday for many folks. On the one hand, the celebration of women's expected unpaid labor for one singular day seems trite, at best. On another hand, women navigate a myriad of challenges on the pathway to motherhood, from obnoxious questions about timing, to pregnancy loss. Ideally, parenting is a collaborative relationship between two (or more) parents, with each parent contributing an equal amount to the development of their children. We talk with Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai from the Holy Ghosting Podcast about their experiences co-parenting, both while in religious communities, and during the deconstruction process. We discuss: Co-Parenting Wins (10:20): Meg kicks us off, "I think one of my favorite co parenting wins has actually been the way that we have been able to shift our focus from teaching our kid to be a certain way into who are you and who do you want to be? And encouraging and accepting just like who the kid is for who they are." Born Sinner (14:00): Sarai shares, "I think that having him (her son) was actually one of the last sort of straws in holding up any part of that mythology for myself, which really started with my idea of I am connected to this human being. He is born of my body. And I just could not reconcile any part of the idea that we're born evil into this world, and when we come out and breathe our first breath, we're already a sinner. That's so gross to me." Trusting Yourself Outside of Religion (18:00): Meg says: "I think that's the shift for me that just went, I don't need an organized religion or other people telling me what to do or how to parent. I can trust myself. And I can trust that I know my kid and that I'm a person who's responsible not just for their safety but for them to have their own personal safety as they age." Choice in Motherhood (23:00): Lindsey notes, "I freaking love being a mom. I love it with my entire heart, and I do not feel like I have lost any of myself. I feel like I'm a better version of myself, and I'm really grateful that I had the freedom to make that choice when I was ready to make that choice. And I was even older. I had my daughter at 34, for a Christian is quite old, so I'm really glad that I was able to take my time, and I think having a kid has opened my eyes to reproductive rights and how important that is and I'm really grateful that I had a supportive partner and was given the space to make that choice when I was ready." Missing Pieces (24:00): Julia says: "Christian communities have a hell of a lot to say about abortion. And one of the million missing pieces in that dialogue is the importance of abortion care for folks who are trying to become pregnant or have a wanted pregnancy." Stillbirth (28:00): Meg shares her experience giving birth to her stillborn while still in an Evangelical community, "It was like my life didn't matter. My life was not the thing that we needed to worry about; this fetus, this baby's life, that we just had to make sure survived. My first protest was at an abortion clinic in middle school. So I saw The Silent Scream as a movie and that was all I knew. And I just was like, there's no way I'm going to let you murder my baby, with this medical procedure. And my God is greater than that." Lack of Structure and Support (31:00): Jeremiah notes, "Evangelical circles prevent dialogue from happening between partners. There's this expectation that you go along and move into roles of parenting. And we see this with the couples that we work with the negative consequences of that … On top of that, when things go off the rails, when things go wrong, there's also no structure for either the individual or the couple to figure out how to come together and talk in a comprehensive way about what the hell just happened to us." Creating Space for Grief (35:00): Julia discusses, "Just because the numbers around pregnancy loss are high doesn't make it any less traumatic. And I can speak from personal experience and friends and clients. However, as both of you are saying, the message from women and men and religious structures and medical structures is that this is what you do, this is what you endure as a woman, and you just keep going, rather than giving space for individual and relational grief." Spiritual Warfare (38:00): Meg shares, "That concept of me just being un-wanting to this child felt like a big reason that, if we believe in spiritual warfare, then we certainly believe that our thoughts have power over whatever. I really did think for a very long time that it was my fault and that my husband would blame me. Luckily for me, he's a wonderful human being who has loved me for a very long time and did not respond in that way. We both were grieving a lot together. It was the loss of the idea of a family that we were starting." Not Believing is Not an Option (45:00): Sarai shares the roots of her deconstruction journey, "That was sort of the initial part of my deconstruction, which just started when I was at Christian college. And one of my professors made a comment about who he would vote for. It was the first time I realized that some Christians aren't Republicans and it blew my mind. So that was like my initiation into it. And so by the time I got together with my ex husband, I was through that and not really in it anymore, but I wasn't not, I didn't know what to call myself because I didn't want to not believe in something. And that was like the only option I knew." Pre-Existing Conditions and Shame (49:00): Lindsey shares, "I went to go procure my own health insurance and I couldn't get it because of my preexisting condition. Let me tell you if you already had shame about having sex and then getting an STD from having sex and then not being able to have birth control, like the guilt was, it was really intense." Mirroring Healthy Disagreements in Coparenting (52:00): Meg says, "We kind of found ourselves getting upset at each other for not backing me up in front of the kid or not agreeing or not showing a united front. And I realized that all of those things were just shutting down one person's opinions or one person's perspective, and is saying, "We have to always agree in front of our kid and never disagree." And I realized that that was just going to teach him some negative things. It's healthy and important to have dialogue when there's disagreements." Parenting Post-Deconstruction (56:00): Sarai shares: "My moment of change came when I finally was like, I don't need to suffer through my whole life because it makes it easier for this other person … it was really about shrinking and shielding and it just made me unwell. And so I left because I wanted to be a better parent and I didn't want my kids to grow up and think this is how you treat your intimate partners. Like I did not want them to see me being diminished by their dad. And then go and mimic that behavior."

Pride month next month is going to be especially important. Based on the threats from Project 2025 and the behavior of other religious nationalist groups, federal bills that prevent states from discriminating against queer folks are at risk. Coming out, already a stress-inducing process, especially for folks in conservative areas, would have far greater anxiety connected with it under a second Trump administration. We invite singer-songwriter Adaline, founder of the nonprofit Bad Believer, to help explore the anxieties that come with coming out. Adaline talks with us about: Hymnal (4:50): Adaline discusses her new album: "Hymnal really is, to me, a response to Dear Illusion, my first album.Dear Illusion was written where I was processing who I am. I was going through a really hard time of reconciling the spiritual, religious part of me with my queerness, with my identity. And then of course when Bad Believer happened, and I was having hundreds of conversations with people, where themes would start to really emerge. So when it came time to make a new album, it would have really been impossible to not write about this, because it had consumed my life since 2020." No Hate Like Christian Love (7:30): Adaline says, "There are a lot of people that were coming in through Bad Believer that were either not yet out or had experiences of coming out that were really traumatic and hard. They experienced general themes of how frustrating it can be for God for the church to not be showing the kind of love that they preach." One Size Does Not Fit All (10:00): Adaline discusses: "I think because when I write about love, there's so many unique experiences of love. These experiences that a lot of us have gone through are so palpable and so universal in some sense that it is empowering and freeing to know that there were so many other people feeling the same way. You're going to find out tons of people are going to look back on that time in their life and realize that that was an imposed process of thinking coming from a place of power and shame and that the un-nuanced teaching of those kinds of things when it comes to human sexuality, the one size fits all method caused tremendous, problematic trauma" Erasing Love (14:00): Adaline says, "So the idea of true love waits as we fade away was me trying to say, first of all, the audacity of us to even claim that the only kind of love that can exist is one that waited.that also erases a beautiful love stories from existence. If we're going to say that if you didn't make it all the way that that wasn't true love. So that also was frustrating for me." Rebecca St. James & Waiting (19:00): Julia discusses Wait For Me by Rebecca St. James: "Wait For Me is this really cringy artifact that advocates for purity culture through Rebecca St. James sitting in the back of a car or a cab in the rain singing to her future husband, pleading for him to wait for her. That's where it starts. The song shows Rebecca singing in the backseat of a car, which reinforces this idea that women are both passive participants to purity culture and also the gatekeepers. She is saying, wait for me, versus the other way around." Not Being a Part of Your Own Story (21:00): Jeremiah shares, "In my own experiences in my former marriage, the role that passivity played, the role that avoidance played, this idea that you can tell your story, but also not be a part of your story." Christian Rap (24:00): Adaline raps, "So just wait for the mate that's straight from God and don't give it up till you tie the knot." This line perfectly highlights purity culture, as Adaline used to perform this back in her EMPish days. Myth (27:00): Julia highlights, "The music video and hearing your song and experiencing this deep, deep grief. And then watching the Rebecca St. James, wait for me. And the happiness of it was actually in some ways the most distressing part of rewatching it because it highlighted this infantilization of women and it. It painted this picture of a myth. It painted a picture of something that doesn't actually exist. Your music video and your song is the opposite of Rebecca St. James presentation of purity culture through an idealistic lens rooted in false promises and myths around sexuality and relationships that the field of sociology and sexual health have long ago debunked." Autonomy (29:00): Adaline says, "The difference is that it's having the autonomy and the agency to make those choices based on how it's sitting in your body. So if you're like I don't really feel comfortable to do this until I'm married, that's one thing, but it's another thing to be like constantly messing up and then down at the altar on Sundays and like in the secret hidden pain that no one wants to talk about and I went to Bible college and everyone was like super sexually frustrated." The Waiting Game (31:00): Adaline describes, "The fetishization of the waiting game that happens within relationships. That when you all of a sudden have permission to have sex, that it actually feels like not as exciting. It can lead to a very strange fantasy life." Choosing Yourself (35:00): Adaline shares, "I think it's a beautiful thing to be able to look at yourself and say, "I am brave." But really the central message of the song is, "Can I be this brave? Like, can I do this? In the midst of all of these circling questions, will they still love me? Will they see me as their child?" When you are able to do it, there's a sense of incredible pride of knowing, I looked that monster in the face and I did it. I chose myself. I chose my freedom and my life and my light." Love Songs (41:00): In discussing her song "What Love is All About", Adaline says, "This is definitely a love song to my mom and dad. It was one of those beautiful gifts in my life of experiencing unconditional love, which I don't think a lot of us really fully experience. For someone in Evangelical spaces to choose loving you is them overcoming an insane amount of programming, an insane amount of indoctrination, that you know that in that moment, them choosing you is like they went to war for you." Radical Acceptance (42:30): Adaline shares her experience coming out to her parents, "It was wild to me to see how quickly they chose me. I told them what I was feeling or I told them what was going on. My father said, "Today is a beautiful day for our family because now there are no more secrets." That was his instinct. Jesus and Unconditional Love (45:00): Julia states, "[Jesus] loves me unconditionally and no matter what happens, I can go to Jesus and he will love me and I will be okay no matter what. That's what I learned. However, that wasn't what so many communities that I have experienced and that others have experienced actually witnessed" Hymnal was released March 22. Download it today! Let's heal together!

One of the most common targets of Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal (EMPish) communities in the 21st century are queer people. The moralizing of straight, married relationships places people who are attracted to folks of the same sex/gender and folks who are curious about sexual experiences with same sex/gendered people in terrible double binds. Folks can accept and practice sexuality in alignment with their sexual orientation in the face of name-calling, loss of relationships with family members, and threats of violence. Or they can squelch or hide their sexuality, or practice their sexuality in more secretive ways, which itself can have negative impacts. Coming out in EMPish communities carries a ton of undue emotional and relational pressure. To help us navigate that, we've invited singer-songwriter and founder of non-profit Bad Believer, Adaline to share how she navigated her own coming out process. We talk with Adaline about her first album, Hymnal, as well as: Body Talk and EMPish Communities (4:00): Julia kicks us off by discussing the song Body Talk: "EMPish communities train folks to disconnect from their bodies, which has detrimental consequences. I love how this song expresses the power, wisdom, and inherent beauty of bodily experiences, which quite the different messaging we learn from folks like Paul or St. Augustine." Hierarchy in Sin (9:20): Adaline shares, "Anyone who grows up in any kind of church system, being LGBTQ in any kind of way, … [there was] definitely implicit reality that it is a big sin. I think we all knew that there were certain ones that just had a lot more emphasis and a lot more weight thrown behind them." Binaries and Sexuality (13:00): Adaline says, "When things started to get more fluid in society and we started to see women or non binary people moving away from traditional gender norms, I think that's when it really hit me that it's not necessarily gender I'm attracted to. It might be a certain feeling or a certain situation." Co-Opting Coming Out (16:00): Jeremiah notes: "Some families and communities co-opt the coming out process of an individual by misappropriating, say for instance, the trauma that queer folks experience in religious spaces onto themselves. So for example, highly religious parents may experience judgment from their community by having a queer child and act as if the trauma is theirs rather than fully recognizing the literal demonization that queer folks receive in evangelical communities." Part of You (23:00): Adaline discusses her song, Part of You: "There's a secondary adolescence that can happen when you start to feel feelings for someone that's really different than you grew up believing." Building the Strength (27:00): Adaline says, "I have always dipped my toes in, but always like very cognizant of knowing that I might have to talk to family about it, that I might have to talk to religious friends. Everything has felt like I've had to well up all of the energy I have inside of me and just be like, "I need to say it," Almost every time I've released music, I've had to drum up the strength and be like, okay. And just know that I can't be controlled by it because if I'm controlled by it and I can't make music." Trusting Desires (28:00): Jeremiah offers, "All of us in evangelical Mormon and Pentecostal spaces are taught not just not to have our desires, but for the desires that come up to to not trust them. That they are of something else that is quote not of God" Double Authority (30:00): Adaline recounts, "So when someone in a power position or pastor or even my father, which made things even more confusing because my father was my pastor, so there was like a double authority thing happening. He was a good man, but he was also my father and my pastor. So everything he said had a ton of weight for me. So when I'm being told this as true, and I'm seeing something that makes it seem like it's true, When someone is like this thing you're feeling is of the enemy, that's it. You shut it down." Embracing Your Body (33:00): Adaline says, "I think there's two things going on with my body. I think that I've felt uncomfortable around the sensuality of my body for a long time because of growing up in purity culture narratives, but also I've always been curvy. So I think there was also this part of me that felt like no one wanted to see my body, or that that was something I needed to hide in order to appear more artistic, or more, palatable. I never really embraced or celebrated my body." Waist Down (38:00): Adaline discusses, "It's really the only true connection you have. And so you're actually noticing that parts of your relationship are flailing and not working. And you're kind of using that, the sexual connection, the sensual connection to put a big bandaid over everything else that is going on. I had done this in the past. The title itself is evocative and I think it invites people right away to know, okay, well, what, what is going on there?" Sensuality and the Music Video (40:00): Julia highlights: "This really lovely layer of nuance, we've referenced multiple times already, the 80s, 90s, and early aughts, and I cringe thinking about the way that women are portrayed in those music videos because they are so objectifying in this awful, misogynist kind of way. And what I love about your music videos is that they are sensual in this celebratory kind of way. And even the colors and the fabrics and the tones highlight the lovely sensuality that you're describing in this song." Coming Out and Guilt (44:00): Adaline shares, "I don't know if there's many more moments anytime someone has to come clean about something or unveil or be vulnerable in a way that feels like your body is like shutting down how scary it is. I am very lucky because my parents showed up for me in a really beautiful way and never said to me, "Now we have this thing they had to carry." But I still feel these feelings of guilt and shame and having to disappoint or not being like the gold star religious family, especially growing up as a minister's daughter and growing up a pastor's daughter." Story Behind the Non-Profit (48:00): Adaline discusses her non-profit, "So the song Ghost aired [on TV] in August. The fans were just like, what song is that? So they started Googling and found out what the song was. And then they went to YouTube and because they were curious of who I was, they read the description. So then I woke up to like thousands of emails from people all over the world saying, "This is my story. Like I'm in a small church community and no one knows I'm out." Or, "No one knows I'm gay and like I don't know how to come out." I was like, "This is wild. There's so many people who are struggling and who also feel you." Let's heal together!

What are the messages that we wish we learned about masculinity? What are messages that we'd like to teach younger generations about masculinity, and in conjunction, how we might do relationships more effectively, more collaboratively? We are thrilled to have Zach Wagner, author of Non-Toxic Masculinity, on Sexvangelicals this week. Zach talks with us about: The Books of Deconstruction (3:10): Zach highlights the books that aided him in his deconstruction journey including: Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch Embodiments by James Nelson Church Too, How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing by Emily Joy Allison The Right to Sex by Amiya Sreenivasan Conquest & Sex (13:00): Julia says: "The toxic forms of masculinity that the church promotes not only impacts relationships between men and the women in their lives, but also between them and the other men in their lives. And men don't typically talk about sex in ways that are human with each other in Christian contexts. Men often talk about sexuality from the perspective of accountability groups and rein in their sexual desires. In other contexts, men will talk about sex in a really dominant, aggressive kind of way, in terms of how they can conquest women. And neither of those conversations among men are particularly helpful." Broadening the Script (15:00): Zach discusses, "Broadening the script of what sexual experience as a man might look like broadening the very kind of narrow, hyper hetero script around sexuality, and the way that is tied into whether or not you're a real man. Male Sexuality (18:00): Zach says: "Living out your sexuality as a man can look different ways, and even the way you experience sexual desire can look different ways. We don't need to like live into this Every Man's Battle narrative where to be a guy is to kind of have this constant struggle against, and the only way to lock this down is to like find a smoking hot wife that can then be your "release valve" for your pent up sexual energy like it's obviously dehumanizing to women, but I think it's also just really dehumanizing to men and at the same time." Injecting Shame (20:00): Jeremiah says, "Zach, as you're talking about that, I think that you're naming something really important. How do we have these conversations without injecting shame or injecting sexual exceptionalism into them?" Shame & Desire (22:00): Zach shares, "That the experience of sexual desire or the acting out of certain sexual behaviors can cycle back on itself to a negative view of self as bad or evil or uniquely broken in some way. And I think starting from the premise that one can experience a certain sexual desire, or even acting out of a certain sexual behavior does not compromise your value as a human being." EMPish Communities and Being "Counter-Cultural" (28:00): Julia notes, "Christians are so obsessed with sex. I learned that the secular culture was obsessed with sex. And what Jeremiah and I find in our work is that Evangelical Mormon and Pentecostal structures pretend to be more countercultural than they are, when actually models of masculinity are actually pretty similar in Christian and secular context." Internalized Narratives (32:00): Zach shares: "It took my therapist saying point blank, Zach, you don't need sex. And also to [my wife], Zach doesn't need sex, he'll survive without it. It's not like you're asking him not to drink water for a week, or not eat food for a month. It's a human desire, it's a human need in a certain sense, but it's not something that's gonna kill him. That was like a huge moment where I realized the way that through various avenues, including the teaching of Mark Driscoll, I had internalized this narrative about masculinity and maleness that marriage was kind of the solution to all of my sexual frustration or all of my sexual desires." Desire (37:00): Jeremiah says: "Just because you have a desire doesn't mean that that desire has to have an end goal. Sometimes the desire is just a desire. I have a desire to go to Iceland and hike the ring road for three weeks. Yeah, it's a desire. The likelihood of that happening, probably not going to happen. I'm also not going to invest a lot of energy in that. And I'm fine. I think that there's also something to be said about giving more permission to folks to have people's desires. It makes sense that you would desire that. Something that would be fun without moving into, okay, how do we want to operationalize that?" Sex in Different Frames (39:00): Zach shares: "I think it's like so often the case that Christians will be like no, sex is sacred. And like, I do believe that. I do believe on some level, of course, it is a really beautiful and sacred and intimate part of the human experience. But I also know, like, when you've been with somebody for a long time, and sometimes it is pretty just like, yeah, sex for sex." Starting Sex Ed Early (47:00): Zach shares how he discusses sex education at an appropriate and honest level with his son. "I think that can start early. This is part of yourself. That's not something that you need to be embarrassed about. You need to be respectful of these parts of your bodies and parts of other people's bodies. And these are private to you and other grownups shouldn't be touching you in these ways or seeing you in these ways and stuff like that. But we also try to create a boundary between that as like, this isn't a gross and dirty and disgusting and bad part of you, which I think can easily be a message that a kid receives."

Healing from Purity Culture involves conversations of how Evangelical communities have created undue amounts of anxiety and pressure for men as well as women. We talk with Zachary Wagner, author of the new book Non-Toxic Masculinity, about the importance of deconstructing simplistic, reductive practices of manhood and reimagining new ways that men can conceptualize themselves and create meaningful relationships. Zach talks with us about: Why Does the Book Matter Now (6:00): Zach kicks us off, "We need to grapple with the crisis of masculinity broadly. Post industrial revolution, sexual revolution, technological revolution--these types of things have made for some unique challenges for male identity and the concepts around masculinity in the western world in general. Everybody should be thinking critically about and thinking about what it means for themselves." Generations of Toxic Masculinity (10:00): Jeremiah says: "Every generation has its own organization, structures, cultural narratives, iterations, that reinforce these ideas. We're all millennials. And one of the most significant cultural institutions that have really fueled and played into unhelpful ideas of masculinity as this idea of purity culture. You write: Purity culture refers to the theological assumptions, discipleship materials, events, and rhetorical strategies used to promote traditional Christian sexual ethics in response to the sexual revolution." The Power of the Purity Movement (14:30): Zach discusses: "Conservative Christians saw that kind of broader cultural movement and the fallout from it and wanted to recommend something different to the young people within their communities. This was an appeal to a traditional quote unquote sexual ethic. I think there was something new and unique about the purity movement." The Non-Banned Books (19:50): Zach talks about the books he read within the Church walls: "Every Man's Battle, and books by Elizabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity, Quest for Love. These types of things view romantic affection for another person as potentially ranking above your love for the Lord. That's one of those strange double binds where Christian marriage is so highlighted as the picture of God's love for his people or the church." Effects of Christian Literature (21:00): Julia highlights: "Then looking back, I read these books or I talk to my clients, and I know from myself that there's a deep well of shame and anxiety and all kinds of distress caused by these materials." Purity Culture and Sex (24:00): Zach shares: "Our intimate life never clicked in the ways that these messages that we had received in purity culture would have led us to believe: If you don't have this baggage or sexual history or, quote unquote, all these ways of talking about it, you'll be able to engage with your partner in a shame free, enjoyable, easy, free flowing, fulfilling way." Violence as a Result of Purity Culture (26:50): Zach discusses the mass spa shooting: "I saw the connections between the most kind of extreme form of violence that you could imagine. Given explanation because of compulsive sexual behavior and a temptation towards sexual sin, that's when some of these things started to click together in a really clear way for me." Sexism Taught Through Literature (27:00): Jeremiah notes: "Most straight men don't begin to realize the harmful impacts of purity culture until they're in relationships with women and until they see the ways that women have been significantly impacted, by the shaming messages, the misogyny that comes out of the literature that we're talking about." Purity Camp (32:00): Zach reflects on his time at purity camp: "As it relates to men, the main message was just this kind of inevitability of this hyper-erotic, hyper-sexual way of viewing the world." More Reflections on Christian Camp (34:00): Julia says: "Christian camp in general, but particularly these purity camps, I see as this most awful pairing of misandry and misogyny in which men are these sexual monsters and that women are a walking set of breasts or their bodies in general, rather than full humans, and so neither the men or the women, or girls and boys, actually, in these scenarios, get to be fully human, because they are reduced to being sexual monsters or sexual objects." Reducing Each Other's Humanity (41:00): Zach discusses, "I think purity culture has a tendency to reduce men and women to their sexuality as the sum total of their humanity.The woman as a seductress is a way of reducing female humanity to her sexuality. Then if there's a woman who is not sexually interested in a man or he doesn't find sexually attractive or by some standard she is not sexually attractive, her value as a person becomes radically diminished." Healing (46:00): Zach shares: "It was a very healing thing, where I just had to slowly learn not to hate my sexuality and hate my sexual desire. And view it through the resources of Christian theology, as a creative good, as a beautiful thing, and not something that God is frustrated about. Wouldn't it be better if that wasn't a part of who Zach is?"

Are you interested in writing a memoir? Then this episode is especially for you! We're excited to have Tia Levings, author of the upcoming book A Well Trained Wife, as our guest for Sexvangelicals this week. Tia talks with us about: Hero's Journey (4:30): Tia starts us off: "It's a way to externalize the trauma so that you're not constantly re-traumatizing yourself every time you tell the story. My character goes through this trauma. It's a very emotional journey, and ultimately it's a character arc and the best novels all have these kinds of journeys. It's called the hero's journey. Not Exploiting Your Own Story (6:20): Tia describes: "I had a trauma informed memoir coach, that meant there was a lot of talk about self care and there was a lot of talk about not exploiting myself through the story. Every scene had to earn its place in the story, and it was told in a way that is just what happened. It's like a factual, this is what happened. And then I wrote about the emotions that I took from it, the story that I took from it, the wisdom I gained from it, just like we do in our life." Babies and Resilience (8:05): Julia says: "Babies get such a bad rap and I think babies have to be the most brave human beings on the entire planet. So to consider, oh, okay I'm actually going to treat myself a little bit like a baby. And to reframe that in such a positive way to me is brilliant." Children and Exploitation (11:00): Tia discusses: "This was also very intentional on my part, they (her children) had already been exploited through fundamentalism. That's it from the time they were born. In dominionism and Quiverfull children are born for a purpose. And that's an agenda and they lose their identity and their humanity in that process." Nuance in Deconstruction (17:00): Julia states: "We love the nuance that you bring, because so often the world around deconstruction can be overly simplistic when we view things like gender, among many other things, and in fundamentalism, we learn a simplistic, rigid perspective of gender, and I hope that your book can, in the healing process, get us out of those binaries to a more compassionate perspective for all of us." Finding Light in the Dark (21:00): Tia shares: "Something that got me through a lot of the suffering in my whole life is if I'm going to have to live through it, I'm going to make something from it. I cannot get the time back. I know that's a loss and I do a lot of work around grief work. I'm going to make something positive of it. Take something and make this worth something in your life, help someone with it." Honoring Our Instincts (24:00): Tia says, "One of the things that happens in captivity, is that there's lots of little mistakes you make along the way before the big thing is made. And when you're groomed, there's lots of little introductions that happen before the big betrayal. And we train ourselves to blow past them, to lean not on our own understanding. I read somewhere that we're the only mammal that regularly shuts down our own instinct and denies our own instinct." Slowing Down (29:00): Jeremiah shares: "Julia, you and I have had different interactions between the two of us where both of us have practiced slowing down before we respond to each other. I think it's a little jarring for you when I do it. It's a little jarring for me when you relationally move to that space. But also being able to trust yourself and then also in the relationships that are trustworthy in your life, being able to, to kind of practice that together." Write the Book (32:00): Tia offers a tip: "If you're wondering if you should write, that right there is your answer. Start. Don't spend any time debating if your story is going to be valuable. Don't spend any time, especially in the beginning, trying to think of what the outcome of it is and that it's got to be marketable in order to be of value. That is a capitalistic, fundamentalist attitude that's been bred into us. The work of the book will benefit you, period." The Books of Deconstruction (35:20): Tia discusses the books that helped her deconstruction journey, "It was the key that was missing from so much of my healing efforts. I couldn't understand why I just couldn't get past things, but grieving turned out to be the reason. Another one that I use frequently is No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz. It was my intro to internal family systems and the multifaceted mind, which I always thought of myself as." We hope this episode is a source of encouragement this week! Let's heal together!

"While this story is my own memoir, the situations in this book are far from unique. With me stands a choir of invisible fundamentalist women, too silenced to tell their stories for themselves." We're honored to have Tia Levings, author of the upcoming book A Well Trained Wife, as our podcast guest this week. Tia shares her research, wisdom, and immense bravery with us; we focus our conversations around: How the Evangelical Church is a Microcosm of a Bigger System (12:00): Tia explains: "What happened to me in my little home is a microcosm of what is playing out in our headlines every day. And there are very few people who live behind the scenes who are able to convey that story and demonstrate the subtle ways that it is transforming families, relationships, communities, churches, faith groups." Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop (15:00): Julia quotes from Tia: "At any moment, the cup could spill, the glass could break, the arrow could fly. The only way to soothe an angry god is to make sure you tiptoe quietly. To make sure you're pious enough to never break any rule." She reflects, "I remember growing up hearing the sermon from Jonathan Edwards in which he describes humanity as sinners in the hands of an angry god. So, in that quote, you're reflecting the same sentiment." Perfectionism (20:00): Julia says, "What a mind fuck to be living in a world in which your depravity is total and perfectionism is expected with the consequences of hell, threatened at any moment in time." The Books of the EMPish (26:00): Tia discusses Debbie Pearl's book and its effect on her: "You're holding something that's so horrifying and so relatable. You're living through abuse and the answer is you should still be radiant and you should still smile. And the radiant language comes from fascinating womanhood. I was already trying to cultivate radiance in the face of suffering." Tradwife (29:00): Tia says: "If I was a fundamentalist wife today, I would probably have a very large Tradwife account on Instagram. That is probably what I would do because I'm good at honing an image. Nobody has to see what's behind the scenes, but also the secrets that you're really keeping. And you're not necessarily embarrassed that you're keeping them because it's kind of glorified that you would protect your husband's image at all costs." Dating Under Purity Culture (32:00): Jeremiah reflects on a picture from his wedding: "The photographer captured the first time in five years that I had taken a breath. And that it's a sense of exhalation, but it's a sense of relief that we survived kind of the gauntlet of dating under purity culture rules." Covenant Marriage (33:00): Jeremiah states: "Covenant marriage is church sanctioned domestic abuse." Cosigning Misery (37:50): Tia shares: "There are some certain points where it's really hard for me to extrapolate older me and younger me. That's because I can in hindsight see the warning bells much more loudly than I heard them at the time. I was so consigned to misery. I wasn't gonna leave there. I figured my life would be miserable, but I'd accepted that a long time ago. It was harder for me to accept that my children's lives would be miserable. And that ultimately played into our escape." The Wellness Industry and Christianity (41:00): Tia says: "Christians find a home in non religious fundamentalism because they're fundamentalists. Same thing happens in the yoga community. Fundamentalism can be in anything because once you realize fundamentalism is not inherently religious, now you can look at it in different expressions. And so I think they piggyback and co opt these movements, because it's comfortable for them. Very similar to politically, how the Catholics and the Evangelicals will get together on abortion. They're not really together. They really do not see themselves as the same kind of Christian, but they'll get together on a single voting issue." Assigning Credit to the Higher Power (47:00): Tia shares her escape from her abusive marriage, "In Christianity, especially, where even your accomplishments have to be attributed to your higher power. You didn't do anything on your own power. You, it was all because Christ did it through you, and at that point I realized, no, I'm on me. Christ isn't coming. Nobody's coming to save me, we are about to be another headline and I could see it in my mind because I read People Magazine and they have those headlines of murder, suicides, situations, and we were going to be, I could see the big font and my babies. and I was the only person there to do it. So, I'm not giving that credit to anybody."