Slow Train to Heck

Check out a special bonus episode of Slow Train to Heck where I interview Mindy, the creator of The Divorced Virgin Project, about her experience growing up in purity culture and how leaving it motivated her to create this resource for others who are trying to figure out how to deal with the fallout of purity culture in their own lives.

The Divorced Virgin Project brings together dedicated psychotherapists and specialists, including divorce coaches, financial advisors, sex educators, and more, providing accessible content to help victims of purity culture to heal.

Check out The Divorced Virgin Project at thedivorcedvirginproject.com, @thedivorcedvirginproject on Instagram, or The Divorced Virgin Project on Facebook.

Background music in this episode was provided by:
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Welcome to the finale of a podcast about people, sharing their stories of deconstruction and leaving behind toxic religious systems... so what happens next? I've got one more story for you.

Podcast episode about Hegel's God: https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/hegels-god

Slow Train To Heck - the Substack: https://slowtraintoheck.substack.com

Thank you all for listening for the past two years. It has meant the world.

In this final conversation on Slow Train To Heck, Matt and Mandy Ottaway share the story of their lives together: Growing up in evangelicalism, attending Moody Bible Institute, getting into youth ministry in their early 20s... eventually with Matt realizing the restrictive intellectual cage that his ministry position required and Mandy experiencing the burnout of a life dedicated to church ministries while trying to raise their kids. After leaving ministry, they discovered what the world outside of "required belief" was like, and the freedom to be able to "deconstruct", to learn, to grow, and to change.

Matthew Burkholder joins the podcast to share his experience of growing up immersed in purity culture, starting all the way back as a kid in a Christian bookstore surrounded by the key texts of that ideology. We talk about the lasting damage that can be done by teaching children to hate the natural things that make them human, and the subsequent roadblocks that are created that can get in the way of healthy spirituality. We also chat about his journey into academia, as he's now working on his PhD in Theological Studies through Wycliffe College, how that has affected his faith, and why he's made the decision to step away from the label "evangelical".

Content warnings: self-harm, suicide

Theology Jam, Matthew's podcast with Dr. Jon Korkidakis: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theology-jam/id1577928391

Olivia Grigg shares her experience of Christianity and the spiritual trauma that it caused her, and gives her take on religious trauma as a whole from her perspective as a social worker and counsellor focused on helping people navigate changing beliefs, deconstruction, and that religious trauma. She discusses how many church environments force us to betray ourselves in many ways, from an early age, and normalize the lack of boundaries, portraying that lack of boundaries and submission to church authority as a necessary prerequisite to community. Additionally, she dives into the normalization of physical abuse of children in the form of spanking, how that abuse is advocated by Christian groups like Focus on the Family, and how that can have long-lasting effects even into adulthood.

Content warnings: traumatic religious experiences, physical abuse of children

Find Olivia on Instagram at @oliviagrigg.rsw, or her website https://www.oliviagriggrsw.ca/.

Resource list for further reading on Adverse Childhood Events provided by the CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/resources.html

Articles describing evidence for spanking causing higher levels of stress for adults:
https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1533&context=senior_theses

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213417300145?via%3Dihub

Hillary McBride's Holy/Hurt Podcast:
https://holyhurtpodcast.com/ 

Laurel talks about the link between dysfunctional families and dysfunctional fundamentalist churches, and how people in abusive situations who are desperate for love are reeled in by the promise of love from leaders who manipulate that desire for the purposes of control.

She also shares her own story of growing up in an abusive environment and how she has since found freedom from environments that use fear as a method of control.

Content warnings: physical and spiritual abuse of children, mental illness, depression

Books Laurel mentioned:

Bradshaw on The Family (John Bradshaw): https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/223513

The Search For Significance (Robert S. McGee): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/406464

Further Along the Road Less Traveled (M. Scott Peck): https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7371

This week I'm joined by Kevin Wilcox (see his previous appearance on the podcast in Episode 6) to talk about how you might be able to maintain or forge relationships "across the aisle" - is it possible for an evangelical and an exvangelical to be friends, and if so, how? What needs to be considered when entering into a relationship like that? What boundaries need to be established, what considerations need to be taken into account, and most importantly, how can we best love and care for ourselves and other people in the process?

We chat about these questions and more in this episode!

Content warnings: evangelical perspectives, Bible verses, a discussion about abortion debates

Kevin's Carl Jung quote comes from the book Psychology and Religion: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123636.Psychology_and_Religion

Kevin's appearance on MBC's "Transforming Culture" podcast where he talks about deconstruction: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3VBJLpp4QzXlm4F8BMiLn6?si=FDnsA1q9RdeaSPHMb57Gxg

This week I had the pleasure of chatting with Jannah, who grew up Pentecostal in Southwestern Ontario and has since left the church. Jannah has a lot of really insightful things to say about the anxiety and fear that Christianity generated in her as a young teenager, the challenges she has with some of what Christianity seems to require of young people in terms of evangelism and certainty, and how she relates to Christianity and Christians now in a positive way.

Alexandra and John share their experiences growing up Christian and the fear-based narratives they lived within. Eventually, they entered the mission field, living in China for some time, and eventually worked for Christian nonprofits. What they saw in these arenas further confirmed what they had grown up experiencing of Christianity - the system is broken. The way Christianity said Christians would act was not at all how the Christians in their lives were acting - even worse than "the world" in many cases - and this caused them to question whether the church really had a role to play in their lives.

Content warnings: binge drinking, homophobia

Cassy shares her story and talks about her mental illness and sexual assault, and processing these heavy things while also processing her faith deconstruction. Cassy is an incredibly strong person who has come through a lot of really hard things, and I hope her strength inspires you as much as it did me.

Please take note of the content warnings below and mentioned in the opening, as this episode digs into a few things in detail.

Content warnings: sexual assault, mental illness, self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, trichotillomania, homophobia

Cassy's essay "Should You Report Your Sexual Assault?": https://drive.google.com/file/d/197D8L5nUMKSwbQFtEGYI6f8gTfrK_kCl/view?usp=share_link

Cassy's Suicide Safety Plan Template: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-shzbtb-CYu8CEqxYWUIrQ6om3QKGBVb/edit?usp=share_link&ouid=112809201114914334694&rtpof=true&sd=true

Olivia Grigg's Instagram: @oliviagrigg.rsw
Olivia Grigg Counselling Services: https://www.oliviagriggrsw.ca/