Two years ago, Julia and Jeremiah started Sexvangelicals as many podcasters do: By introducing themselves and their stories.

As we begin our third season of Sexvangelicals, recording in a brand new country, we want to reintroduce our stories. After all, as we explain, “The human healing process involves telling and retelling our stories. Parts of our perspective and insight change, though the facts and details may be static. The ways we create meaning and alignment with our values is the beautiful part of the story making and storytelling process.”

We begin by revisiting Jeremiah’s story, which intersects themes of adoption and navigating race and racism as a Brown person in White spaces, including:

• The evolution of the relationship with Jeremiah’s birthmother (26:00): Jeremiah describes the process that his parents used to ensure that he felt as accepted as possible—the Jeremiah Story, which was commonly told before bed. In this story were two heroes: the adoption agency and his birthmother. The relationship changed though when five years ago, he discovered that his birthmother had essentially used the hospital as a safe baby haven. Jeremiah talks about the intensity of his relationship with a woman who he’s never met, yet is so important to his story.

• Abandonment (31:00): Julia observes, “So many people who are adopted hear some version of the story that your birthparent loved you so much that they gave you up. That’s an invalidating narrative because what then is the conclusion about what it is to be love? That you could be abandoned. That sets up a negative series of expectations about relationships”. Jeremiah responds, ““The fear of abandonment gets masqueraded for me as a hyper-individualism: I can take care of myself and relationships are nice but I don’t need them, because I don’t trust that people are going to be there for me in the first place.”

• The development of mythologies to define identity (33:00): Jeremiah explains, “Because of my closed adoption and classified information around my birthmother; there’s a lot that I don’t know about myself. So my construction of self has been taking four or five pieces of information and constructing a narrative and mythology around that.” He also describes how this process of creating a story out of minimal pieces of information has been a blessing and a curse, particularly as a communicator.

• Internalized racism as a child (48:00): In north Dallas, where Jeremiah grew up, Hispanic Americans were the minority group that were most discriminated against. The construction of Jeremiah’s elementary school reinforced significant elements of internalized racism. In the gifted and talented classes that he participated in, he was the only Brown person. The children who looked like him were in the “regular kid” or “neighborhood kid” classes, and Jeremiah made many efforts to distance himself from other kids who looked like him.

• Assimilation as a survival strategy (55:00): Jeremiah defines assimilation as “these really quick mental processes where I pick up on the cues and expectations of the larger system and easily begin to mimic that.” He pleads for more nuance in conversations about antiracism, because “ when I was 7 and doing things that White kids did, I was doing it out of survival and fitting is as much as anything. Being in White spaces was the option for me, and because I as an adopted person wanted to be accepted, I wasn’t going to test that.”

Adoption has a significant influence on the development of sense of self, communication patterns, and relationship development, and we hope that Jeremiah’s story can bring more insight, empathy, and awareness to the challenges that adopted folks confront, especially those who are adopted into families with different races and classes than their natural presentation.

Healing from the abuses of religious communities—both specific churches and the impact from the restrictive social policies that arise from intersection between Evangelical leaders and the Republican Party—can be a long-term process.

One of our goals with Sexvangelicals is to introduce you to professionals who can facilitate that healing process.

Our first guest of season 3, Jessie Lane, is one of those people.

Jessie talks with us about a variety of ways that religion impacts emotional and relational processes, including:

• The distinction between guilt/accountability and shame (3:00): Julia begins the episode with these definitions: “Shame is the inherent sense that you as a human being at your core are broken, bad, or deviant. Guilt, or accountability, is the sense that I did something that didn’t align with my values, which allows us to make relational and behavioral changes that align with our values and perpetuate positive cycles in our lives.”

• Anxiety as emotional and relational ramifications of American religious processes (9:00): Anxiety, which Jessie describes first as the physiological ways that our bodies respond to stress, such as constricted breathing, the pit in the stomach feeling, and rapid heart rate, is “secondary to something else you’re experiencing, such as a lack of congruence between your behavior and lack of values, or an old injury that you’re reexperiencing.” In religion, Jessie explains, “it’s been one of the best tools for managing people—if I can give you anxiety about your actions, I can control the hell out of you.”

• The impact of silence on sexual health in religious communities (19:00): We talk a lot about the impact of “Don’t”, abstinence only processes, and the scapegoating of queer folks on this podcast. However, silence can have equally damaging ramifications. Jessie explains, “In systems of silence, where sex isn’t talked about, you are taught that you don’t have a voice and using your voice is wrong. This sets the tone for allowing things to happen to you that you don’t want to happen and accommodating to the needs of others because talking about discomfort and wants isn’t allowed.”

• Naming inconsistencies in the dialogue and behavior of religious communities (35:00): Jeremiah describes, “One of the hard things about anger is that criticism as a communication strategy doesn’t work—it leads to defensiveness. The Evangelical Church is organizing and empowering itself in response to the defensive role it finds itself in and turning itself into victimhood, that organizes itself as an ‘us against the world’”. Jessie provides an alternative strategy:

  ”I don’t need to feed negative beliefs and can present alternative viewpoints and see how it floats without it being a correction. I’m not saying I’m right and you’re wrong. I’m just pointing out the internal inconsistencies in the view system. If I can say “You don’t agree with your own perspective,” we can have a different conversation.”

• The dangers of linking love and conformity (45:00): Jessie says, “In the church, love is often based on if you conform to these certain things, like prescribed roles and social norms.” This commonly leads to the following interaction: “You need to be aligned with me in order for me to love you; if you aren’t aligned with me, I no longer love you, and it’s your fault.” Love is ultimately about being able to accept and celebrate differences.

Jessie provides counseling to folks in Massachusetts; if you live in Massachusetts and would like help working through the emotional and relational ramifications of silence, anxiety, and the moral incongruities of religious communities, she’s a fantastic resource, and is committed to our larger value:

Let’s heal together.

Today is our first full day in our new home, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

We have been on break for the last few weeks while Julia and I rotate between Dutch Airbnbs, and Nicole has been in Prague filming a documentary. But to celebrate our first official day in Utrecht, we want to also begin season 3.

Dobbs v. Jackson could not have been made possible without the relentless influence of the Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Catholic Churches to simplify (in the worst way possible) conversations about pre-natal and reproductive health; as a byproduct, the bodies and sexuality of women (and specifically poor women and/or women of color) will be even further scrutinized by a political party who has shown minimal interest in protecting the sanctity and success of family life outside of its “pro-life agenda”.

As such, the time for a podcast such as ours could not be more fitting, and in the inaugural episode of season 3, we reclaim our purpose and mission, and reintroduce ourselves in the process:

• The interconnectedness of human suffering (5:00): Desmond Tutu is incredibly meaningful to our work, as Julia reminds us with his quote, “"My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours." We belong in a bundle of life. We say, "A person is a person through other persons."

• Folk libertarianism (8:30): Jeremiah describes his fear of presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, who author Bonnie Kristian (and others) define as a folk libertarian. “It’s an anti-authority impulse that wants authority for itself, seeks personal license while denouncing libertinism, carries a ”thin blue line” flag while fighting the Capitol Police, and boasts of being a “live and let live” alternative to left-wing pieties while whipping up panic about how other people behave.” Jeremiah points out the connection between folk libertarian politicians and the 21st century Evangelical Church.

• Who is this podcast for? (13:00): Julia names “those who have grown up in religiously and politically conservative communities who didn’t have good information, training, and education about relationships and sexuality” as our primary audience. “We want to support ourselves and our listeners in better engaging the information that we didn’t receive,” she explains.
  
  Jeremiah adds that many folks are included in this, even those who didn’t grow up in the Church: “But you are more than likely impacted by policies that were highly advocated for by evangelical movements in the 70s and 80s that created abstinence only policies. These have impacted every single state in the US. Our public school systems have done a poor job at talking about positive sex education.”

• A commitment to defining terminology (29:00): Jeremiah explains, “Many of us didn’t grow up with the language around sexuality, a process for consent, having permission to use anatomically correct terms to refer to their genitalia. I want to do whatever we can to get back to the fundamental language and processes. It’s important to develop a foundation of what sex means for each of us.”

We are excited to have you be a part of our journey in season 3! Let’s heal together!

The overturning of Roe v. Wade screws all of us over. This is the nicest way that I, Nicole, can put it, but the rage, grief, anger, and despair cannot be summarized in a sentence.

Over the past year, I have worked on my thesis film about the effects of communism on Romania. One of the worst laws passed was Decree 770, which banned all abortions and contraceptives. Women were gynecologically inspected at work once a month and if found to be pregnant, were closely monitored by the Romanian KBG (the Securitate). If they were found to have had an abortion, they were thrown in prison, along with the doctors or people who performed the abortion. This Decree left Romania with one of the worst orphan crises’ the world has ever seen. Children were left to die in orphanages.

There is truly no way to sugarcoat this. I bring this up because my mother and grandmother lived through that, and I’m seeing it happen again in front of my eyes. People should not have to die because of Christian religious beliefs, because guess what—this country is supposed to have a separation of Church and State.

In this edition of Bedtime Stories, Julia and Jeremiah read through the the first few pages of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the recent SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v. Wade. It is important to be educated and do our homework in these moments while also holding space to grieve and rage.

• The systemic impact of the loss of abortion (10:00): Abortion is not an issue that just affects one group of people, but the decision hurts many of us in different ways. It’s important to understand that some people who lost access as a result of this decision do not have the money for airfare to another state where abortion is legal will be unjustly targeted by this decision.

• The misuse of the term “precedent” by the Supreme Court (30:00): When discussing item two of the SCOTUS decisions, Julia and Jeremiah emphasize the line “the right to an abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation's history.” Jeremiah mentions that during the time of the 14th Amendment (which is the amendment constantly referred to in this document), abortion was punishable by law. “The reason it’s not a historical precedent is that the historical precedent was that women didn’t have rights!” Jeremiah exclaims.

• The lack of recognition of cultural and scientific evolution by the Supreme Court (39:00). There are significant flaws in the literalist interpretations that the conservative judges utilized to dismantle Roe v. Wade. Jeremiah continues, “There was no support in American law for the Constitutional right to obtain an abortion until the latter part of the 20th century. No shit! There wasn’t the technology to engage with a fetus to the extent that we can now in 2022.”

• The terrifying trends about what does and doesn’t have rights according to this Supreme Court (42:00): “We use the language of abortion rights, and while it is abortion rights, at its core, it is women’s health and women’s rights. Interesting though how we use that language for this and for gun control it's about like gun rights.” Julia highlights the discrepancy in language when discussing guns and abortions. Abortion is a human and health right, it is not just “abortion rights.” Guns don’t have rights, they’re not people. However, this SCOTUS decision reveals this country truly has gun rights and abortion control, not vice versa.

• The inability to separate fetal rights from women’s rights. (48:00): “When we obsess over the individual rights of the fetus, we absolutely lose the entire foundation of the argument which is that right of the baby or fetus is 100% enmeshed with the rights of the mother until the mother has the baby or chooses to end the pregnancy,” Julia says. Jeremiah notes the propaganda tactics that the pro-life movement has used: “They post a picture of a baby and use it as a scare tactic to get people to believe abortion is murder. This couldn’t be further from the truth and when we fall for this red herring we are denying the rights of the person carrying that baby.”

It’s important to understand the process of how decisions get made, because these perspectives are likely to be used to take away rights of other people in the coming decade. We grieve, rage, and seek systemic solutions to protect the rights of all people, including fetuses.

We long for the day when protecting fetuses comes in the form of extended maternity and paternity leave, government-paid and grant-accessible preschools, and a healthcare system in which 8-10% of costs go back to the insurance company instead of 35%. Putting women’s bodies at risk by making abortions harder to access is not the answer.

Renowned family therapy Jay Haley said that communication problems commonly occur when people are unable to make transitions from one developmental stage to another.

There are transitions that naturally happen, such as when a couple makes an overt decision to enter into a monogamous relationship (or for that matter, an overt decision to be consensually nonmonogamous), or a child enters puberty or leaves home following graduation.

And then there are transitions that are chosen, such as our decision to move to the Netherlands, which Julia summarizes, “Being in a country that’s chosen to adopt policies that promote sexual and public health reminds me that we have the resources to build a more humane society.”

The fact that we’ve chosen to make this transition hasn’t made the adjustment process any easier. In some ways, the psychological and relational challenges with this transition are more acute. Living in a foreign country requires a more vigilant state and ensuing emotional energy, as we’re expecting differences in language and culture. Making adjustments to unexpected things, such as dodgy Airbnb hosts and a rapid rearrangement of lodging situations is downright exhausting.

Julia and I talk about the following aspects of navigating transitions, eight days into our European adventure, including:

• Managing expectations (17:00): Jeremiah admits, “I think I had some unrealistic expectations about what we’d be able to do, what our bodies would be able to do, and how much information we’d need to process.” One of the many expectations we’d have to manage was around learning Dutch; we were supposed to begin a two week Dutch course, but were forced to postpone admission due to extenuating circumstances.

• Communicating a transition (24:00): Directness and overcoming the anxiety of how the other person may respond are two key elements of this. Julia describes, “I’m learning to be more direct. In the past, I would have set up the context for like 25 minutes and very tentatively entered the conversation. I’m proud of myself for saying ‘I’m nervous for bringing this up,’ and then bringing it up.”

• Redefining success (26:00): Julia summarizes, “We realized that this month may be less about exploring and adventures and experiences we had wanted and may be more about sleeping, so that when we go back to work, we may be more sustainable. It may be about doing one or two things per day and doing that as a limit or a reframe of success.”

• Refining our relationships with control: Jeremiah (29:00): We both like to be in control of our elements. For Jeremiah, being in control of time and logistics is really important. “If I’m able to complete something, I can feel more relaxed. I have a pretty high confidence in myself that I’ll be able to figure things out, so I don’t typically struggle with disaster scenarios. I’ve been struggling with disaster scenarios in my time in Europe.”

• Refining our relationships with control: Julia (39:00): For Julia, being in control of space is especially important. “When I’m overwhelmed I want to know that the space around me suits me, so that the space is as decluttered as possible. I’m learning how to be more flexible when that just can’t be the case.”

We talk about three strategies for effectively navigating transitions, especially this transition of moving internationally that we’ve chosen:

1. Respond calmly (43:00): Jeremiah explains that when one partner is able to stay calm if the other person is stressed, the relationship can usually hold itself.

2. Expressing emotions, and looking for similar themes (47:00): Julia describes how our mutual ability to share our emotional landscape creates a story of, “We’re going to be fine, and I’m not alone in feeling this.”

3. Naming one or two goals per day (54:00): Julia encourages us (and our listeners) to, “at the end of the day, briefly discuss possibilities for the next day, which is hard for us because we have a huge desire to use our time as wisely as possible. The next few weeks may just be about sleeping and completing one or two tasks.”

Thank you for being a part of our Sexvangelicals journey! We’re excited to share more from Europe in the next few weeks, and continue with guests starting in July.

Today is our eighth day in the Netherlands. It’s been an absolute whirlwind, to say the least, between not knowing how to speak Dutch to dodging whizzing cyclists on the road. This is the third day in a row that we’ve struggled to begin engaging the day before 10 AM. For two productivity-oriented folks, this has caused waffling degrees of panic and frustration.

This isn’t how we wanted our first few days to be.

We’re tired, and it would be easy to chalk that up to immersion in a new culture while navigating immigration.

But we would be doing a disservice to ourselves and our relationship if we were to neglect or underestimate how much the goodbye process is impacting the exhaustion that we’re currently experiencing.

In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah talk about the process of saying goodbye to the US, and our lives and relationships in Boston specifically. Whether or not you’re moving to another country, goodbyes, little and big, are persistent facets of all of our lives. We hope this episode provides structure and strategies to navigate goodbyes in ways that align with your values. We discuss:

• What makes a goodbye meaningful (7:00): Julia summarizes a script that she finds helpful: “To say, ‘This is who you are to me, here’s what I’m going to miss, and here’s my commitment to our relationship moving forward’ is what I wish I could have done in former relationships. This is how I want to navigate relationships now and moving forward.”

• When goodbyes don’t happen well (12:00): Jeremiah asks Julia what emotions she experienced that were unexpected, and Julia reflects on anger that stems from “the relationships that I tried to have a conversation that could allow for a mutually respectful goodbye and the other person chose not to self-reflect and meet me in that conversation.” Jeremiah describes examples of that from his own experience.

• Maintaining relationships in the midst of transition (15:00): Julia reminds us that during a transition, “Although the modes of communication, like texting and Zooming, stay the same, the dynamics of a relationship shifts, because when one person moves through a transition, it challenges the relationship in some sort of way. They [those transitioning] will shift and evolve to adjust to that [new] context and be newer versions of themselves, and that version will be interacting in the same relationship. Those shifts can actually make a relationship stronger.” Julia describes a scene from the end of Lord of the Rings to expand upon her point. (We can’t find the full clip via Youtube, so here’s part 1. And part 2.)

• Prolonged goodbyes (25:00): Jeremiah describes his goodbye to Boston as an extended process: “The goodbye to Boston happened three years ago [as a result of being fired from a church and a divorce that quickly followed], and the last three years has been about building this beautiful relationship, doing it in isolation because of COVID, and it’s hard to make friends in the middle of a pandemic. I had zero relationships that survived through my divorce, outside of professional relationships. The goodbyes that I had weren’t really goodbyes—they were ghosting. I may as well have been on a dating app and had them stop responding to me.”

• Intentional goodbyes (49:00): Jeremiah talks about his goodbye with his therapist: “It was good to have a goodbye with my therapist that was intentional. I appreciate that he asked a few sessions before closing. At first, the question through me off. What do you mean, ‘How do you want to say goodbye?” You just walk out of my life, right?’ And then I was like, ‘Oh no!’ And we were able to talk about what a mutual goodbye might look like.”

Julia concludes our episode: “So often, we focus on the next things, but what happens if we focus on ending something well. What are the goodbyes that you’ve said that are meaningful? What are the rituals and processes about ending a relationship well—intentionally, vulnerably?”

Please feel free to share your experiences with goodbyes with us on the Instagram feed or by emailing us! Let’s heal together!

I grew up in clashing cultures. My mom and step-dad both being Romanian while raising me in America. When it was time for the “sex talk” at 13 I was shocked by my mom's openness, as Romanian culture is not one defined by sex positivity as it is deeply entrenched in Orthodox Christian values. Reflecting on that talk we had as an adult, I find it incredible that she was able to unpack her own cultural restrictions and have an open and honest conversation with me about contraception, consent, gynecology appointments, and STDs. This is not to say America has a sex-positive culture- it doesn’t, but it is to say that being able to communicate with your child about sexuality and sexual health has its benefits. That conversation prepared me to not be riddled with shame when I went on the pill, and not to be embarrassed when buying condoms, it all seemed very normal and proactive to me.

This week Jeremiah and Julia explore the intersection of religion and sexuality in different cultural contexts as well as the strength in understanding and communicating values through their conversation with Scotney Young.

Scotney Young is the Prevention and Outreach Manager at Doorway, a Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Organization. Here she develops and facilitates educational programming to promote healthy relationships and prevent intimate partner and sexual violence before it ever happens. Scotney is also the Co-Creator of You + Me = We, a queer sex education program for LGBTQ+ Youth. She is also the creator of Boundaries and Doorways a college consent education program. After earning a Masters' in Social Work from Boston University, she started teaching sex education to teenagers in a rural desert town in Peru as a Peace Core volunteer. Scotney also holds a post-graduate certificate in sexual health education from the University of Michigan. She’s developed comprehensive sex ed curricula for youth of all ages and service providers, she is also one of only two sex educators certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Consolers, and Therapists in Virginia, and most recently she completed her Anti-Up Certification which focuses on applying various justice and anti-oppression frameworks to sexual health education.

(07:35) “I just think young people are so eager to talk about these topics and learn about them, and I personally believe that sexual health and relationship education is really important because everyone should have the knowledge and tools they need to make informed decisions about their bodies, relationships, and futures” Scotney reflects on her time in Peru as a Peace Core volunteer and how she got into her field, she touches on a deeply important topic: that everyone deserves the correct knowledge to make informed decisions. Jeremiah notes how on this podcast conversations deconstructing a lot of incorrect knowledge or narrow perspectives towards sex and sex ed are usually the focus. Scotney then says “I loved being the person who could destigmatize and demystify these topics,” which is truly the goal with Sexvangelicals as well.

Sex Education and Different Cultures (15:57) “You have to find ways to share information and tools that fit the context of the lives that they’re living in” here Scotney talks about “adjust[ing] the content to adapt to their local cultures” when she worked in various countries. She touches on how in Peru she used biblical teachings to challenge ideas of sexual violence and street harassment and in Afghanistan she volunteered with a program that taught Afghan women how to swim and practice body autonomy through movement.

(21:50) “Sexuality is a core part of the holistic being. It’s a core part of being a fully actualized human that should be nurtured and tended to and isn’t that the same for spirituality?” Scotney says after being asked about the relationship between the field of sexual therapy and religion. There tends to be judgment from the field towards religious groups or religious people, but in reality, it is important to value all parts of a person, including both religion and sexuality: “It would be hard to feel complete if any one of these core parts of our humanity is wrapped up and shamed”

(24:08) “I like to distinguish between what is a true religious tenant versus what is a way the structure around the religion might be enforcing that might not even be a religious tenant” Julia talks about distinguishing between the religion in itself and the religious structure, because many times the ideology being pushed by the structure is not in line with the religion itself.

(40:40) “When you focus on the behavior as the final outcome of what it is typically speaking when we do that in sex therapy we’re inviting anxiety into the conversation” Jeremiah touches on how when we talk about behavior, for example, he mentions “pressuring ourselves to think about orgasm in this cultural norm instead of my [our] own meaning” can be damaging. It’s important to find our own values and contexts for these behaviors and actions, and not try to align ourselves with the cultural idea of “orgasms,” or other behaviors, but to understand what it means to us.

(41:45) “In what situation is telling someone don’t do this with no extra context work? It doesn’t work. It’s like don’t touch that red button and don’t tell them why? What’s gonna happen when they do it” Scotney gives this example when talking about the issue with abstinence-only education, which enforces a value without an explanation. This is a part of the larger conversation on how parents can impart values to their children in less rigid ways and offer room for conversation, not shame. It’s important to have the “why,” because a “don’t do this,” does not stand on its own.

Did any of our listeners go to one of the numerous protests against the feared revoking of Roe v. Wade yesterday (May 14)? What was your experience?

In the NPR report on reproductive rights rallies, Illinois Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton said it most succinctly:

In fact, as western European countries show, increasing access to abortion (and contraception) reduces the numbers of abortion altogether.

Julia and Jeremiah explore how the dichotomy between “pro-life” and “pro-choice” completely misses the larger point: How do we support adult women, and the folks they choose to include in their lives, make choices to build healthy families, families that involve and don’t involve children?

• The propaganda around dead babies (7:30): Jeremiah summarizes: “If you want to sell a good idea, put a child’s voice behind it, put a picture of a child behind it, better yet, put harm to a child behind it. Because the conversation loses its perspective about policy and morphs exclusively into the emotional world.” The Republican Party has aced the marketing of anti-abortion by centralizing their campaign around “dead babies”, and Americans routinely (and understandably) fall into their traps. If we didn’t have souls at Sexvangelicals, we would consider hiring their PR team to market the Sexvangelicals brand.

• Putting children’s health before adult health (16:00): From a systemic perspective, as Jeremiah reminds us, “Children are most likely to succeed in systems with parents with strong mental health, are in strong communities. We have to put more effort into how we support families and the adults who lead them. Providing financial benefits to struggling families, demand that extended maternity and paternity leave protocols are present—those policies are much more likely to lead to life.”

• Ways liberals get caught in the unhealthy dialogue initiated by conservatives (21:00): Julia explains, “There are women who choose to make an abortion and don’t regret choice AND that choice is still complex and holds quite a bit of pain. In combating the “dead baby dialogue”, liberals have not given women the space to explore the complexities of the abortion experience.”

• The perspective of grief (31:00): Julia observes, “Women who choose to have an abortion often have to hold that, and any ensuing pain they may experience, in secret, which only intensifies their own grief process.” Jeremiah muses, “If you grieve something as a right or wrong choice, we invite shame, guilt, and a warped emotional process. But if we acknowledge abortion and pregnancy loss as grief and create processes that allow for time off following a pregnancy loss, that shifts the discourse.

• Rage (42:00): Julia exclaims, “I’m trying to not remember how little my body and identity is valued and respected on a systemic and legal level. How on earth is this the standard for living?”

We will continue to talk about the impact of potential revocation of Roe v Wade, through blog posts, our own reflections, and interviews with our guests. We hope that Sexvangelicals can be a safe space to explore, grieve, rage, and process the implications of the presumed revocation.

In the introduction of Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot, author Mo Isom establishes the position that the church has been relatively silent about sexuality.

Julia was out of town for this episode of Bedtime Stories, but Jeremiah’s colleagues Stephanie and Tina team up with him to refute this assertion.

Warning: Jeremiah, Stephanie, and Tina only make it through the first three pages of Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot; however, these first three pages say a lot about how Evangelical theology, philosophy, and social structures center their discourse around bodies. Jeremiah summarizes:

“Christianity of today seems to have a clear moral and political agenda about what to do with bodies, who can do what with bodies, and if people who aren’t supposed to do certain things with bodies do certain things with bodies, here’s what those bodies can expect.”

In this episode, Jeremiah, Stephanie, and Tina explore:

• The appeal of the “us” versus “them” theme (23:00). Stephanie explains, “When naming the distinction between us and them, it’s appealing to have something that feels true, a shameless culture that doesn’t care about them. Because for the majority of people, capitalism is the dominant course in the larger culture and it doesn’t care about them. Capitalism is concerned about making money and maintaining the current power structures. The idea that the culture doesn’t care about you is true enough to align with what people feel, so they read it and think this person is really speaking to me.”

• The communal impacts of engaging in sexual openness (32:00): Jeremiah asks his female co-hosts what it’s like to have a woman promoting idea that women are sexual gatekeepers. Stephanie names, “Breaking away from some of this ideology also involves a massive break from community and opening that person up to criticism and judgment from people in their lives who’ve been important to them. I may open myself up to my agency and freedom to be who I am, but at what cost? If the cost is all of my attachment relationships, that’s way too big for me to even begin to look at.” Jeremiah shares some of the ways that this process has played out in his own life.

• The role of “eternity” in moral discourse (45:00): Jeremiah notes Isom’s strategy of using eternity as a metric for relational decision making, reflecting, “As soon as we start talking about eternity, we start injecting fear into the conversation. We assume that God is the YHWH who burns villages and supports genocide in the name of nation building. If that’s the God that I believe in, sure, the present world seems really scary and no wonder I’m looking to eternity. And now I’m in a spiritual relationship where I have to restrict myself and place undue boundaries on myself in order to get this never-happy deity on my side to accept me into this club of heaven.”

• Reflections on uncertainty (54:00). Tina observes that in Buddhism, one of the key tenets is that of impermanence: Everything is changing and evolving, including humanity. Jeremiah responds that Christianity holds the opposite view, that evolution is a threat, but God is the same today, yesterday, and forever. Tina summarizes the internal conflict: “It’s Important of accepting things that can’t be changed and having an open mind. If we accept that things are so black and white, how do we expect ourselves to change and be better versions of ourselves?”

• The connection between the pursuit of certainty, anxiety, and sexuality (1:03:00): Jeremiah explains, “We are taught as Christians that you aren’t to trust yourself. The body is bad, and the pleasures of the world are untrustworthy. What sits outside of us, God, the otherworldly, is what to look toward. What are your authentic desires is a terrifying question because what I should be going for is what God wants (or what people are telling me God wants). It’s hard to move into that authentic voice.”
  
  Stephanie responds, “If the body experience isn’t to be trusted and you should pursue the divine, if you aren’t in touch with that, you’re going to have trouble having sex. You have to allow the wisdom of the body to lead the way sexually. If you’re too in your head, you’re not being in the present moment. The battle between their religious ideology and their sexual functioning fits into this.”

Stephanie, Tina, and Jeremiah are graduates of the South Shore Sexual Health Center’s training program in sex therapy; Stephanie and Jeremiah teach in this program. For more information about how to become an AASECT certified sex therapist, check out their website.

Mother’s Day is Sunday. 

Motherhood is an expected stage development for women, despite the growing number of women who voluntary (or involuntary) do not have children. Many of the stereotypical traits of femininity are aligned with the characteristics of mothers that we aspire to have and to be. (Interestingly, this is not as true for men, which we’ll explore next month.) Many women experience a lifelong craving to be moms, while others have an initial sense of ambivalence around having children that morphs into a desire and longing with age.

However, this Mother’s Day, we’re especially mindful of the growing number of women (and men) for whom fertility is a fleeting process. Those who have physiological challenges, such as low follicle and sperm count and motility. Those who have experienced miscarriages. (We separately fit into each of these categories.) Or, as our guest, Paula Leech, those whose fertility issues are simply unexplainable.

We talk about defining infertility, the consistent relationship with grief, and the impact of fertility on relationships, among other things. 

Paula concludes: “Having a greater recognition of how incredibly complex and painful infertility can be is so important. It’s not just about taking meds and injecting ourselves with needles. Acknowledging that it’s a transformational process for everyone involved. There’s no escaping bumping into grief when we talk about infertility.”