Sexvangelicals

Transitions are a natural part of life. There are big transitions, such as a person leaving home or a child aging into adolescence. There are smaller transitions that happen everyday, such as leaving to go to work or switching from topic to topic in a conversation.  A family system has to be adaptable enough to respond to transitions, and many relationship and family problems are rooted in challen...

"Romantic comedies and chick lit reflect messages that are prevalent in both secular culture and religious spaces. Although Christian spaces give lots of lip service to being counter cultural, they usually repackage the same message from popular culture with a different wrapping paper." We continue our mini-series Let's Kick Off the New Year with Spiritual Abuse, with Katherine Spearing, co-founde...

Happy New Year! January is Spirtual Abuse Awareness month, and so we're kicking off the New Year with a couple of episodes with Katherine Spearing , host of the Uncertain Podcast  and founder of the nonprofit Tears of Eden.   Katherine defines spiritual abuse as "invoking a religious text or deity as a way to maintain power and control over both individuals and communities." In this episode, we de...

Happy New Year! We hope that you had a safe, peaceful, and festive holiday season with family and friends! For most of us, this week will be about transitioning out of the excitement and chaos that comes with the holiday season and into the rhythms of everyday life. That transition process can be really challenging on individuals and relationships. To help us, we invited our marketing and communic...

One in six people worldwide experience infertility, according to the World Health Organization.  As the holiday season focuses on the celebration of children and families, infertility creates its own holiday horror story for individuals and relationships who experience it. We're excited to have Dr. Niko Wilson , director of the Couples and Family Therapy program at William James College, join us f...

What would holiday celebrations be without women?   No really. They would not exist without women. The holiday season often represents the worst part of Christian relationships, where gender roles define behavior and eliminate collaborative dialogue in the process.   Julia notes, "Even Hallmark movies join the nativity story, relying on women sacrificing--either their singleness, their autonomy, t...

The Christmas story starts with a teenage girl, Mary, and an angel of God.    Kelley Werner, co-host of the  Woman Being Podcast , explains: "She's portrayed as this passive participant in her faith. There's an edification of her. "Lord,  whatever you say, I will do. So be it ." She's passively impregnated by an angel, and becomes this side character in the narrative of Jesus.    That angle was al...

While individual growth and self-discovery are vital to our healing and human evolution, we live in the context of a myriad of relationships. And the end-of-year holidays are a time of year in which many folks are engaging in a lot of different relationships at the same time or in close succession.   This December, we're presenting a series called Holiday Horror Stories. The holiday season replica...

In the initial stages of what we typically call deconstruction, folks tend to focus heavily on meeting individual needs, self-advocacy, engaging the body in different ways, and finding new personal connections.  And while all of this is fantastic, much of the resources within deconstruction communities, and popular psychology for that matter, use the language of boundary setting.  Just set those b...

Deconstruction can be an exciting time for folks. We read new books. We explore the world and build relationships with a more diverse group of people. The world gets bigger. We see numerous amounts of options for living a happy life. However, especially for folks in long-term relationships, deconstruction can result in some really challenging relationship dynamics. As we talk about in this week's...

Desire discrepancy is a set of differences about the quantity, quality, or types of experiences that a couple or a group want to have. As we mentioned in the last episode, desire discrepancy is not inherently a source of conflict. The difficulty or inability to negotiate these differences is what leads to conflict. So how can we talk about the different ways that two (or more) partners might acces...

Desire discrepancy is one of the most common challenges that we see in sex therapy.  Desire discrepancy is ultimately a difference in a couple or a group's interest in frequency, quality, or types of sexual interactions. Desire discrepancy does not necessitate conflict. Conflict occurs when folks are unable to manage those differences, which is a necessary skill inside of and outside of sexual int...

We did it! We just released our 100th episode! And we could not have a more fitting episode than with Nicki (@broadeningthenarrative) and Stephen Pappas. Nicki and Stephen answer the question: What happens when one person in a partnership begins the deconstruction process before the other partner? This can be a really intimidating, vulnerable process for a lot of folks, and Nicki and Stephen talk...

We did it! We just released our 100th episode! And we could not have a more fitting episode than with Nicki (@broadeningthenarrative) and Stephen Pappas. Nicki and Stephen answer the question: What happens when one person in a partnership begins the deconstruction process before the other partner? This can be a really intimidating, vulnerable process for a lot of folks, and Nicki and Stephen talk...

Purity Culture isn't just a collection of pithy quotes and misappropriation of Scripture about bodies and relationships.    It's a creation of a myriad of businesses, media, and political systems that work together to showcase and reinforce the existence of particular types of relationships.   We've learned that understanding the larger context of Purity Culture, from the intersection of theology...

While much attention has been given to the Evangelical contingent of American conservative Christianity, it's important to note that even though systems of worship may be different, Pentecostal Christians navigate sexuality, relationships, and bodies in similarly troubling ways as Evangelical and Mormon communities do. This week, we're thrilled to have Teddi and Nick, co-hosts of the podcast Oh Go...

Julia shares, "The myth from the church is that upon getting married, we transition seamlessly into marital sexual bliss." Purity Culture describes a lot about how to avoid sexuality prior to marriage, but says very little about how to navigate sex during sexuality, outside of: 1) The two shall become one, meaning uniformity is expected. 2) Sex will be regular and consistent, but there are few too...

We're back from our month off hiking the Alpe Adria in Austria, Slovenia, and Italy. And we pick up today where we left off, talking about the Sound Marital House model from couples therapy gurus John and Julie Gottman. For a friendly reminder, the first three levels of the Sound Marital house are curiosity, appreciation, and leaning toward your partner. And this week, Julia and Jeremiah talk abou...

After our month-long foray into the disturbing literature from the Evangelical Christian publishing industry, we continue our new series The Sex Ed We Wish We Had . Last month, we interviewed Doug Braun-Harvey , who describes the six sexual health principles that we and many other sexual health providers use as their rubric for co-creating healthy sexual encounters. We begin with a two-part series...

16 years ago, Linda Kay Klein embarked on a storytelling journey that would change her life (and the lives of many others). In her 2018 book Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free , Linda captures the experiences of hundreds of women, herself included, who grew up within and confronted the consequences of the Evangelical purity culture mo...

Tia Levings is a writer and content creator whose work explores the female narrative in patriarchal spaces. A survivor of church-sanctioned domestic violence, Tia shares the realities of Christian Fundamentalism, and sheds light on the strategic influence high control religion has on our society and headlines today. Her memoir releases in 2024 with St. Martin's Press and you can find her videos on...