Sexvangelicals

It's the first week of school for many students and families. The excitement of a new school year comes with new relationships, new beginnings, and setting goals. For many folks, especially those who grew up in conservative religious environments, setting goals can carry an enormous amount of anxiety with it.  This week, Julia and Jeremiah explore what it might look like to engage with the back-to...

Social media has the capacity to bring out the worst in us as communicators. Julia and Jeremiah talk about strategies for communicating as effectively as possible on social media, which can include taking a break from it altogether. We explore: What Not to Do on the Internet (6:30):  Jeremiah shares an experience he had trying to solve an internet dispute through conversation: "I re-read one of hi...

Our work as relationship therapists invites couples to consider the variety of ways that their relationship could look, based on the values, traits, and preferences of the people in that relationship. Plenty of couples choose monogamy because it best aligns with these characteristics. However, performative monogamy refers to cultural aspects that reinforce explicit and implicit expectations of sex...

One of the biggest myths about sexuality is that the more sex you're having, the better the relationship is. Perhaps that's true, perhaps that isn't. But the myths around quantity place extreme pressures to perform sex, and a lot of panic around seasons with a lower quantity of sex.  This week, as we continue our summer series "Taking a Break From...", Julia and Jeremiah talk about: Sexual Sabbati...

Happy first official week of summer! We recognize that for many folks, summer requires a reorganization of scheduling and routines for parents, who have three months in which they cannot rely on schools to partner with them in rearing their children.  While some parents see these three months as exciting, others face these months with growing trepidation. This week, we're talking about how to crea...

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 practice...

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...

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 T...

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 alignm...

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):  ...

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 meaning...

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...

"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 conversatio...

There's a lot of memoirs, social media comments, and dialogue about leaving the evangelical church. However, as our guest, NPR National Correspondent Sarah McCammon , says, "you can't really understand the leaving without understanding loving and living the evangelical church." Sarah is the author of the new book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church . She tal...

It's been really fascinating to watch the ways that Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal (EMPish) cultures have begun to be deconstructed and discussed on a wider cultural level.  While some still struggle to accurately name the direct correlation between EMPish cultures and the construction of the modern-day Republican Party, NPR national correspondent Sarah McCammon discusses the strategy and im...

One of the most common relational processes that the deconstructing world talks about is boundaries. Evangelical circles encourage the elimination of boundaries. Sexuality is public, as Purity Culture invites people in leadership positions to make a variety of comments about people's bodies. Accountability groups and testimonials favor people who describe the most intimate parts of their stories. ...

What is religious abuse? Dr. Laura Anderson , in her new book When Religion Hurts You , defines it as: "The improper use of religious beliefs, teachings, doctrines, and relationships against another person. This might include harassment, humiliation, mind control, psychological abuse, isolation, threats, intimidation, minimizing, denying, blaming, asserting spiritual authority, and making it diffi...

Purity Culture is largely embedded within White social and political systems intended to dominate and control bodies through a hyper-moralistic, anti-sex landscape. However, in this last week of Black History month, it's imperative that we talk about the ways that Purity Culture has impacted Black communities. To help us, we are sharing our interview with Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives...

Julia begins, "Unlearning the messages from the church archive is only part of the healing process. The next step is learning new ways to engage relationships and sexuality.  So, together, we are going to begin creating a new library with literature that can support us in building better, more sustainable, and thriving relationships."  In order to unlearn unhelpful messages, we have to understand...

The Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptist Convention, and Acts 29 Churches have all had significant challenges with sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse in their systems, something that becomes even more pronounced when religious systems become intertwined with private and home schooling, sex education, and the expectations of rigid gender norms. Sarah Stankorb ,  author of the national best-s...

It's well documented that reporting abuse to larger systems is a daunting process. The Southern Baptist Convention is the latest organization to have been outed for the ways that it protects perpetrators of violence, especially against women and children, two categories of people whose stories are commonly dismissed in our larger society. We're thrilled to have Sarah Stankorb on our podcast. Sarah...