Latest / A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast / Deconstructing and Dismantling Purity Culture w/ Sarah Lacour

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Deconstructing and Dismantling Purity Culture w/ Sarah Lacour · A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey everyone.
• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Before we get started with our episode this week, we wanted to send out a trigger warning that this episode contains language that includes sexual abuse, questions of consent and other things about abuse.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: And so if that is something that may be triggering, we want you to take care of yourself and we want you to know that we love you and we are here for you.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, well, hello everyone and welcome again to a Matter of Faith, a Presby podcast, the podcast where we respond to your questions and comments on issues of faith, social justice, and church life.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: I am here, as always joined by the wonderful Lee Cato Lee.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I bet if folks have questions, what should they do with them?
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Hey, Simon.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, everybody, if you have questions, you should send them into Faith podcast@peacesusa.org because, and this is our slogan that everybody should know because if it matters to you, then at what Simon,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: It matters to us.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: And just my be
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Matter of Faith
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: .
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Everybody.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: So we are excited again to be with you this week, Simon.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: How are you?
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I'm good.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: I'm not only excited, I'm a little hyped right now, a little hyped up because I just partake ath partook
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: .
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I just drank something I don't usually drink.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: .
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: That is Baja Blast Mountain Dew from Taco Bell.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: That in a wrong time.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I remember when I was younger, that was like the thing to get at Taco Bell.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Cause it's, for folks that don't know, it is a flavor of Madden Dew.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: The color is blue, I don't think.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Taco Bell's the only place you can buy it, but it, it was a major part of Taco Bell's like marketing and branding, especially in like the early two, early to mid two thousands.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: And uh, the other day I stopped by, picked up some Taco Bell and uh, got myself some Baja Blast and I had some leftover.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: So it's sugar and caffeine people.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: It's a wonderful combination.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: .
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I'm a little, I'm a little jazzed up too cause I've been, I drank a lot of coffee and my, y'all can't see it, but I have a Golden Girl's mug that is huge.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: And it says squad goals and it's the picture of the Golden Girls and who wouldn't, who wouldn't want that to be your squad?
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: So I am a little caffeine up too, and I'm really excited because I'm going to another Real Housewives event if everybody knows.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I made my debut on The Real Housewives of Potomac.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: But this is another franchise.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: We are going to a book reading of Heather Gay who was on the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, if you even knew that existed.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: She wrote a book called Bad Mormon, which we are not sponsored by.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: And I would say, go read it, but whatever you like.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: But we're going to that tonight.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: So I'm a little excited.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad that you've been able to make your debut on the award-winning shows,, like the Real Housewives of Potomac.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: And speaking of award-winning.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the Grammys happened, uh, this past week, which is pretty exciting.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Lots of, lots of, well, I can think this time we would definitely say some well earned winners in a lot of the categories.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Beyonce.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Beyonce, that's great.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Um, I'm very excited for her.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Uh, and also maybe a couple winners that people weren't expecting.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Also, some of the winners didn't look like they expected to win on either
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: .
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I know, I know.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: So the interesting thing about the Grammys is that this specific one, it was like, I mean, one of the best ones we've seen.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And so you building momentum, I mean it's like you Bill, bill Build and then at the end y'all, I like Harry Styles and the album was good, you know, but everybody in the world basically knew who should have gotten it album of the year.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Beyonce, Beyonce won for best electronic dance album and she credited the community for inventing the draw the genre, which was really awesome.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: And, but it was anti-climactic at the end.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And everybody knows I'm an Adele fan and Adele won one award and Lizzo won, which was amazing.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Very body positive.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: And it was a night for women.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: And Harry Styles
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: and Harry Styles, which actually, and I, I don't wanna get too much into like the tabloids and, you know, all of this, oh, he said this and criticism, but something that I was reading that was kind of an, an interesting critique of something he said during his awards speech was that he said something along the lines of awards like this or things like this don't happen to people like me very often, which a lot of people gave some pushback to him for that because it's like, do you mean as, as a white man, people don't win awards very often because that's like always been the status quo and you are winning now.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: So the assumption is that what he meant, or the guess that about what he was alluding to was that people who start their careers in boy bands don't necessarily always go on to have these, you know, careers with a long tail and a lot of success, which there may be some truth to that.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: So it may have just been more a, an in sort of unfortunate or inappropriate or bad phrasing of trying to communicate what he was thinking in the moment.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Uh, but I did see that pushback and it's interesting thinking about that in the context of what you just said.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: It was otherwise a celebration of women winning awards, which was very exciting.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And, and black folk in music and Yeah.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: You know, it was a, it was fun.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Like they, they, they did a 50 year celebration of hip hop and it really did take me back some to, to my childhood and hearing some of like the era, like the millennial era of hip hop.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: And it was, it was a good show I think.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: But yeah, the end was interesting and there was comments made and some things that have been said about Beyonce and a lot and some of the voters and that, you know, they didn't vote for Beyonce because of the hype apparently about her and that that shouldn't necessarily sway somebody to vote something.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: But the reason why there's hype for Beyonce is because of the talent of her.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: I feel like that is something that, I mean, and it was obviously this old white person who said it.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: And I think that that is something that's very interesting when it comes to these award shows and when it comes to how we just take them with the grain of salt, uh, even though it is important because Beyonce is now the person who has the most Grammys out of anybody in the world, which was amazing to see, but they just haven't given her that album of the year award and she's lost it all to white people, which is also very interesting.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: .
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: And we all know the racism in industry.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: So I think that is something that is very applicable to the work we do because racism in white supremacy intersect all things in this world, including music.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Well, speaking of swaying a people's opinion, and that's a terrible segue.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: I was gonna say, speaking of swaying people's opinion and old white people, president Biden, just
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: The state of the union,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: My apologies Mr.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: President, it was too easy.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Um, but anyways,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Well you can't argue that he is not old,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: It's Yeah, fair enough, fair enough.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: I I'm not stating
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Anything and he knows it.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not stating anything that's inappropriate.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: I just, uh, you know, you don't always wanna make humor at people's expense, but, um, in case folks missed it, uh, president Biden did give his State of the Union address recently.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Uh, unfortunately I wasn't able to tune in.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: It was actually very recently.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: So I will, I will catch up.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: But we wanna make sure that people are aware because it is good to catch up if you missed it, and to be informed on the plans, the goals and the hopes of the president and yeah.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: And all the hecklers.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I only saw that part and apparently that was something that was very obvious.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I do know, uh, Tyre Nichols's family was there, and I think that was also that I heard from commentators and, and just reading on that, you know, know, having them there and also the things that the president said, but also it was done in a way that wasn't necessarily using them in, in using them in a way and, but really being there and, and being in solidarity with them, which I heard.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: But again, these, these speeches are kind of something to set the tone and Yeah, people should just go watch it and, but if you don't and if that's not your thing, oh, well, but I think it is important to just know what's going on.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: But apparently there's some people who, who showed themselves during the time, but
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Anyway, but a lot of things have happened this week.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: It seems like a lot.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: The Chinese balloon, y'all, that thing flew over my hometown.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Can you believe it?
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: It was shot out, it was shot down outside of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which is very random to me.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: But my mom sent me pictures and that's a whole nother thing, the balloon.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And we also want to send prayers, definitely send prayers for the people of Turkey and Syria for a terrible earthquake that happened.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: And I think the count is somewhat in the total of 11,000 people, which is absolutely wild to think about that many people who lost their lives because of an event like this.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: And so we are sending out as much prayers and that we can to them.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: And I know the Presbyterian church, which is what this podcast is produced under, is doing some, some work there with them with Presbyterian disaster assistance.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And so if you wanna get involved in that, you should go to their website or just Google press train disaster assistance.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: But that's just, it's just awful.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Um, and I think that we should all be lifting up prayers to them Absolutely.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: And do Ely what we can.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Extending our prayers, thoughts and support and to those folks.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: And speaking of support, we have a question about whether we support the use of organs in music and worship.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Not not bodily
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Organs.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Not bodily organs, folks, the the ones that you have in a church, usually, not bodily.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, we support bodily organs too.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Functioning well, we definitely support that.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Um,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: We do.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: And, and I think if, if you're an organ donor, you know, I mean that's why Bonnie Ray won her Grammy, this song was about organ donating.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Donating.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: So the question reads, what are your thoughts on using organs as part of music in worship organs are very traditional, but not necessarily part of more contemporary music.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: What do you think?
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: What do I think,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: , what do you think, Lee?
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: What do you think about these organs?
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I, you know, I am not the biggest fan of the organ.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I, and I would say I'm not the biggest fan of the organ played in a very traditional way.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I think the organ is kind of, it depends on your experience and depends on like what kind of church it is.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Because in the black church, the organ is played very differently and many times like, or how the, I mean there's a lot of different types of organs.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: There's pipe organs, electric organs, all these things.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: But I've never been a big fan of the big organ.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: I, I just think they're too loud.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: And, and I do think there are times where it can, it can be about the performance, which is fine.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Like who has the best organ player?
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Like who has the best organist, organ player, organist and who can kind of like outmatch.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: But I, but I do know people who like it.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: But for me, I wasn't raised around an organ and if it was, it was an electric one, we always just had piano or we had guitars or bluegrass or you know, people sang by tape.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Like we didn't have anything.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Like whenever I moved away from home and went to my first church that was like this big church with a big pipe organ and, and I just found it very crass and so I never really kind of grabbed onto, grabbed onto it.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Now there are certain hymns that I like when played by the organ, but all in all, I think it is a matter of taste.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: But organs are a controversial topic in churches because they're expensive, so
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: They have a lot of maintenance associated with them.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: You've gotta get the organ tuned.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know if anyone has ever been inside an organ before.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: I have numerous times because I'm small
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: .
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Uh, it's because of one of the churches that I attended.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Uh, you had to be small to fit inside the little ladder stairway that you could go into the organ and we would, um, suspend banners from it or pen uh, banners or Christmas reads and things like that.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: So, and most organs do have some sort of little, little door so that you go in because that's, someone has to be able to go in there to be able to do maintenance and tune the thing.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: But if you've never been inside an organ and it is an interesting experience, sometimes cramped, I will say.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Bet.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: But in terms of using organs as part of music and worship, I do like them.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I think they're beautiful.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: I think that they add something to hymns that is now, I don't wanna say irreplaceable, but it's special and unique.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Now that being said, I don't think everything always has to be played on the organ.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: I think it's nice to have some things done on piano.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: You should vary the types of music that, and instruments that you're using in worship.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I will also say as someone who is a woodwind player, it is very hard to compete with an organ.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Unless you, unless you are micd appropriately.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: And that's a, and that's hard.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: It's just hard to be micd appropriately so that whether people sitting there in a live audience can hear you or people who might be watching virtually or if it's being recorded hear you appropriately.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Like there's a lot of dyna uh, dynamics and sound logistics going on there that are just hard to manage for anyone that the organ sort of complicates.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Um, at one church I was at, they even just said, look, if the organ's playing, unless you're one of these other instruments, we're not even gonna have you play because no one's gonna be able to hear you, which is perfectly fine.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Again, not everyone needs to play on everything.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Totally good to mix it up and have some variety.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: But it does introduce that kind of a, a dynamic just because the organ is so loud and it's easy to dominate in terms of, uh, the sound space.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: But then there's also what you said about cost and maintenance.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: And I think that this is interesting because we talk about, we've talked before in the podcast about the maintenance of church buildings and church spaces and how we are to be good or better stewards of those spaces and what it means to worship together.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: And I think for some people when they think church, they think, oh, sanctuary stain glass, windows, pews, pulpit, organ.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: I think it's, I think it's up there in sort of the, the go-to top five or six things you need to have for it to be a church or a, a place of worship.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: And I do push back on that a little bit again because I'm not convinced you necessarily need to have it.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: I think it's nice to have it.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: I think it's great to have it in the rotation.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: I think it's great to have it on some hymns have it for your intro or your intro and your outro post benediction.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I, so I like it, but I also see why some people might not as much.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: And the only time I kind of think it's cool is if the church is really old.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: , like I, we, I stumbled upon, I stumbled upon an Oregon concert in Basel in Switzerland while I was out traveling for work.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: I thought it was just a tour cuz I wanted to see where, uh, a rasmus was buried.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: He's buried into in this church.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: And I was like, I didn't speak the language, it was French.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: The guy was speaking French to me and he just held up a finger and was just like, kinda like one minute.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh yeah, the tourists happening in a minute.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I just thought they just gave tours.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: No, this was an organ concert that I sat in for an hour and I was like, oh God, this is an organ concert.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I don't really like this.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Like this is gonna be something.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: But that building, well that church is old, old, old, like old and the organ's old and the guy who played it apparently is like world famous and it was wonderful.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: So I think in certain settings for me it's, it's a little different.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: But you know, I have not, I have heard so many arguments in churches about Oregon that it is absolutely wild to think about.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: How much it is, where it should go, how much it costs to repair.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, people get into so many arguments about it.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: It's wild.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting you mentioned these older churches and how organs especially are very, very cool and very special in the context of these older sanctuaries.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: What's interesting about some of these older churches and older sanctuaries, again, this is not a given, it's not a rule, but not all of them necessarily have air conditioning or heat.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: No.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Well at very least air conditioning in the space where the organ is simply because that room, that sanctuary never had it connected.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: No.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Which then can contribute to, oh hey, it's out of tune.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: We need to do some things to adjust when it's hot in the summer or something like that.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Again, it happens, but you can see how these costs, I can see how these costs do add up to where someone's like, you know, what is the benefit of this?
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: The trade off is that what's also the benefit of having this giant organ, if you're never gonna use it, you might as well put some cost and be willing to pay the maintenance so that you can use it.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: So again, like you said, it's uh, up to, up to each person's tastes.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: But we do hope that, uh, we hope folks will write into us@faithpodcastpcsa.org and let us know what they think about the organs.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: What do you think about their use in music and in worship?
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: What's your favorite hymn to be played on an organ or what's like the craziest thing you've heard played on an organ that is memorable for you?
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna give a shout out to my, my buddy Jeff who plays, oh gosh, I forgot the hymn.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: It's the one that has a verse about the devil Now I can't remember, but the name of the hymn, whatever that might be, I'll probably think about it right after we get done with this.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: But there's a verse of the devil and he plays it like a, like he plays it very demonic, which is kind of my favorite thing he does.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: So shout out to Jeff and he's gonna get me for not knowing the name of him.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: But anyway, for this week our guest is Sarah Lacore, who is the kind of facilitator and the creator of deconstructing Purity Culture with this which is an Instagram account that has memes and other things kind of educating people about purity culture and dismantling that and how we are to love our bodies and to kind of talk about sex in positive ways and more productive ways than maybe purity culture has taught us all.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: And so this week we talked to Sarah and we found out a fun fact.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: She is a New Presbyterian, which you don't hear very often,.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Sarah.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Well we are so excited today on this episode of a Matter of Faith, the Presby podcast to be joined by a very special guest.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Joining us is Sarah Laur, who is a physical therapist by day and then runs the Instagram profile, deconstructing purity culture by night.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: I earlier in a pre podcast recording conversation compared her to Batman
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: .
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: I Sarah, thank you Sarah, thank you so much for being with us.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: I'm excited.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: .
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Sarah, it is so good to have you and y'all, we found out a lot of connections before we started recording this podcast.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: So Sarah lives in South Carolina and uh, her husband is from South Carolina and I am from South Carolina and we have somebody in common, Colin Kerr who was on a podcast not that long ago, is your new pastor because brand new is a new Presbyterian, y'all.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: We
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Don't often thinking new,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: We don't often say that.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Uh, but, but welcome and welcome to, to the church.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: We're so glad that you are, you're here.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: I'm excited to be here.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Uh, it's so funny, it's like such a small world that you guys one know who Colin is, but also that you had him on the podcast
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: .
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he has, he has talked to us and we've talked to him for a while, so I love it.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Um, but yeah, we're so excited that you're here to talk to us about a question that we got in about purity culture.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And our question reads, what can modern progressive churches and faith communities due to deconstruct, counteract and change the purity culture that it helped create and perpetuate?
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: What a question
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: It is a good question.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: Um, I asked my, like I put up like a little question box on Instagram and asked some of the people that follow me to say like, well how would you answer this question?
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: And I got quite a range of answers.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: I got everything from like burn it all down no more to, there's nothing wrong with it.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: Like there was, and there was like a few in between.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: So, um, but I did get some good, like very helpful answers.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: But in general it was kind of a wide range of, I think people are coming at purity culture from a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different backgrounds.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: And my background is, I grew up mostly Southern Baptist.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: I went to like a pretty large non-denominational quote unquote church that was definitely kind of secret Southern Baptist.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: And so we had purity classes that we had to go through and a purity ceremony and you like pledged yourself basically to your dad and had a purity ring that you were supposed to wear until you got married.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: And there was a lot of other fun stuff that got thrown in there.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: It definitely was on the low end of like extreme.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: There's a lot more extreme versions of it that I've heard about and that people have like messaged me about.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: So mine was definitely very tame, which is surprising.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: But I think the first thing that kind of came to mind reading the question was mainly just to understand that there are a lot of people that have been really deeply hurt by purity culture and the, the effects of purity culture and have left the church at over it for like one reason or the other.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: Like many of us that were raised in purity culture weren't taught the difference between like non-consensual and consensual touch or sex.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: And so especially if it was like before marriage.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: And so we were taught that both of those were sinful.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: And so even if we had, you know, non-consensual sexual experiences, we felt more shamed and frustrated and, and now with like a very real reckoning, like happening in a lot of different denominations, it's been kind of more frustrating for a lot of people.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: So I think it's something that has come up a lot more recently, especially with like the S B C report and yeah, all of that, that's still kind of ongoing and a lot of times when, especially pastors specifically, not Colin, thankfully, but other pastors have like approached me about purity culture.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: They want to know like, how can I still teach purity culture, but in like a nicer way.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: Um, which I don't think is the answer.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: I, I definitely think there has to be some aspect of burn it all down, but not necessarily like completely get rid of kind of any talk about bodies or anything.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: Um, I do think that there is a space, like something that the church doesn't do fantastic, um, is just kind of lament and like holding space and grief for survivors.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: And a lot of times people wanna just like brush over it with a broad brush of like, we've changed just different now.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: And unfortunately that's not normally the case.
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I get, I, I get a lot more response from either pastors or people that are still actively involved in like their church leadership saying like, well how can I teach purity culture now without like hurting people essentially, but still teach like the general tenants of purity culture.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: And it's difficult because purity culture has changed a lot.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: There's definitely like a purity culture 2.0 that kind of exists now.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: And that's the hard thing because a lot of us, like I grew up in the nineties and early two thousands in the church and so the purity culture that we think of is very different than the purity culture that like exists now.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: And so it's a little, sometimes it's like harder to spot I think because no one is doing the tube of toothpaste, uh, metaphors or like the, you're like a used up piece of tape.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys also got those or if it was just the girls.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Um, I think it's a little, it's probably was a little bit different for, for boys, but I do think it there were some same, same juice.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: Apparently they're not really doing that anymore, which is good.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: I mean I'm sure some someone still is, but a lot of pastors are, um, or just like youth leaders in general are kind of shifting away from that and trying to make purity culture cultures sound nicer, but it's still like just as harmful.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: And a lot of times it currently still kind of avoids even doing any kind of sex ed, like any kind of talking about anything like openly or offering any kind of like comprehensive sex ed.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: And in a lot of cases it's people, um, almost discouraging comprehensive sex ed and saying that it's, I mean the, the phrase now is like grooming and saying that somehow that's grooming children when it's not.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: But, that's what I've been like hearing a lot.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: And so I think to, sorry to like answer the question.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: There's so much dang background with purity culture such a big thing.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Um, I think like the biggest thing after kind of holding space and grief for people and understanding that like it's not something that can just be brushed over is just talking about it like de-stigmatized talking about bodies, talking about sex, talking about consent, like really openly and at younger ages and um, offer like medically accurate sex ed instead of demonizing medically accurate sex ed, which is kind of what exists now.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: And even if it's just within, you know, a small group or a Sunday school class or whatever that looks like to have like safe spaces where people can come, like students especially can come with like questions to ask about their bodies and what's going on because I know not everybody's parents are gonna be in a position to want to provide that kind of sex ed.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: And depending on what state you're in, like the public school system may or may not, you never know, right.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: It's kind of different state to state.
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: So I think especially within churches with like what's been going on recently, especially in the s b like discussing what non-consensual touch looks like and what it means, how to deal with it and really avoiding like victim blaming tendencies because a lot of people when put in a corner about this and kind of asked about or put in a corner and being told like, this is a harmful thing that you're teaching will immediately resort to like a victim blaming like, oh, well if you know, she wasn't at the wrong place at the wrong time or she wasn't wearing that or something like that, that's what unfortunately like still is happening that I'm like seeing a lot online and there's definitely like a temptation and a tendency to really swing hard into the other direction and talk about how great sex is and, and lead almost to like a prosperity gospel message of if you wait or if you do this, like your sex life will be great and it'll be amazing, but we're not gonna teach you what that looks like or how to even talk about it or how to talk about your body.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: But it'll be great you just wait cuz that is also a lot of pastors tend to swing in that direction.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: And then, I mean unfortunately we have a lot of examples of pastors that have a tendency to be a little bit more sexually explicit and then, um, are also not doing fantastic things, uh, when they leave the pulpit.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: And so that's something to kind of like caution against is if you do talk about sex from the pulpit, uh, have it be something that is not a, almost like a secret or a prosperity gospel message because that kind of continues to occur.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: No, this is great.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: If, if I can just interject for Yes,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Please do.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Oh
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: My gosh, for moment.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: So just for, for our folks listening at home, when you refer to s spc, you're referring to these sort of investigations and claims mm-hmm.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: and accusations and evidence in around the Southern Baptist Convention.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Correct?
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: The, okay.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: The report that came out in I think August about, I I, I'm not a hundred percent sure I'm getting the numbers right, but I think it revealed basically like 700 pastors.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: Um, who had over the course of like 40 or 50 years, basically had been either accused of some kind of misconduct or abuse convicted caught.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: Like there was like a whole spreadsheet basically.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: Um, and there was an internal or external, I'm sorry, investigation, like a third party investigation that went through 50 years of memos and emails and all sorts of stuff, and came up with this like third party report saying this is, and the S B C voted to be able to even have them come in.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: It was like a fight to get them to vote on it, but eventually they voted to have this organization come in and do this whole report.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: So now it's been a, a figuring out what to do with that information now.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: And as we're thinking about purity culture, I know we, we, you talked about it especially at the beginning, but just to make sure everyone is on the same page, how would you define purity culture?
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Because I think that as a even, you know, I consider myself, I'm a, I'm a male identifying a progressive guy.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: I think I know what it is, but as I've been learning as I get older, there's a lot of things that I think I know that I just do not, I don't know,.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Um, so how would you define it?
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: And as we're thinking about particularly, um, around the church mm-hmm.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: , you, you've mentioned how there's the messages pastors and churches can put out that are just repackaging purity culture in a different way.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Once you give us your definition of purity culture, would you say that sort of silence is violence mm-hmm.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: , so to speak?
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Like, oh, now we just don't talk about it at all.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: , which just lets it permeate.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: And so yeah.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: What what would you say to that?
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Um, as you, as you're giving us your, your the definition?
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: So I like to make the distinction, like when I talk about purity culture, that the, the kind of purity culture that I'm talking about is the essentially like virginity focused, not really sex ed, but kind of sex ed.
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: Um mm-hmm.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: that occurred in like, started kind of in the eighties when it became a company through true love weights and became like monetizable Yeah.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: And kind of went through the early two thousands, partially because there was federal funding for it, for abstinence only education.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: And so that was kind of what was emphasized both in churches and at schools.
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: And the federal funding ran out in the early two thousands and the, I think it was like the second Obama administration didn't renew it, which was good.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Um, but I like to like make sure I make the distinction that like when I talk about purity culture, I'm mostly talking about that era of, of being, especially in the church because there is purity culture that exists, existed outside of the church and still exists outside of the church.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, just like, look at the way that women are treated most of the time in a lot of different areas and there's still a lot of like victim blaming and stuff that goes on and, but inside the church there was a level of morality and like salvation applied, applied to it.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: And uh, if you, you know, have premarital sex, you're disappointing god or you're disappointing your future spouse and that's the worst possible thing you could do.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: And there's a, an added level of like sin to it that, um, just takes it up a notch.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: And so, and I know that a lot of other, like non-white churches tend to use the term purity in different ways.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: And so I don't mean it in any, any other way other than just, this was kind of the word that was used in that time.
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: And yes, I agree like silence is violence.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: I think that especially now a lot of, from what I've seen from a lot of Christian influencers and people that are essentially perpetuating what I would call like purity culture 2.0 at this point, they have a tendency to just say, oh, purity culture is over.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: It was something that existed in, like, it was, it was over by the early two thousands.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: We don't do that anymore.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: We don't compare women to used up tubes of toothpaste or like a cookie that's been passed around or a rose or whatever.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: Like, we don't do that anymore.
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: So it's over.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: And they tend to kind of say like, as long as those like bad metaphors are gone, then purity culture is gone.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: And it's really not, it's just being twisted in a different way and kind of used in a different way.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: And it's still, it's not as, um, explicit as it used to be.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: , there's definitely not as much like hellfire and brimstone kind of talk as there was.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: And now it's a lot more subtle and, um, a lot more dangerous honestly at this point because of the fact that it's like a lot more subtle and kind of, people don't always know exactly what they're getting into, I guess, if that makes sense.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: And it seems like now it takes, I mean, I've noticed even in, even in a lot of like non-denominational churches and but even in churches that in, in that do have a denomination mm-hmm.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: to even find out what you're about, you have to dig, dig, dig, dig, dig down deep into a website, or you have to go to that thing for a good few months Yes.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: To really be like, hold on something.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Isn't it, it's the same thing in the community when you go to something that's just like, love the sinner, hate the sin kind of thing.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: And then you realize you're just like, hold on.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: That's not that's not what I, I want to get into.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: But the package is very different and it's also, it, it is also in a way, you know, marketed mm-hmm.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: in a different way because you can't now, and, and like broader society specifically here in the us, you can't really say that anymore and get anywhere.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Um, and and like you said, it is more dangerous mm-hmm.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: , uh, uh, because it can infiltrate things easier when it's like that.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: And I notice, you know, you just go on Instagram and you see people who are usually beautiful.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: That's another thing.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: The the aesthetic, the beauty of it, like that kind of like e equating purity with beauty and mm-hmm.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: and like the status quo of beauty standards.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: , do you see that too?
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: And like, and I'm sure that's very intentional now Yeah.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: That it's kind of this, like you said, 2.0 a purity culture that we're experiencing now.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: Um, yes, I do.
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: I, I'll also say that I will plug Church Clarity like all day every day.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: If you guys don't know what Church Clarity is, it's fantastic.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: It's a website.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: I do church scoring for them, but it's church clarity.org, I think.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Um, and we basically look at church websites that people submit and we score them, like for back lack of a better word, on whether or not they're lgbtq plus inclu inclusive, um, and affirming and what their policy on women in leadership is.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: So we like go through sermons and go through all sorts of stuff to try to figure out what churches believe before people get there, basically.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: Um, so that they don't have to be involved for years in a church to find out that they can't actually lead in any capacity for whatever reason the church has decided.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: But yes, I, I've definitely to like answer the second part of your question.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: I've seen a ton on Instagram, especially of the, uh, it's like almost, it kind of is a prosperity gospel kind of thing of if you abstain, if you abstain from sex abstain from all these other, like any sexual thoughts or feelings at all, then you will like, you'll have an amazing marriage, you'll be beautiful.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: You'll look like me.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: You'll do like, it's a lot of things from especially young influencers that like just got married and, and talk about like, oh, this is so great.
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: And they're like 21 years old.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: And, and I mean, I got married super young, but, uh, so I can't talk.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: But it's, it was very, like, I see a lot of really young influencers talking about, look how great my life is because I waited and they have this like, incredible life with, they have a lot of money and they look amazing and they have a lot of access to things that kind of the average person doesn't have.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: And they kind of equate it all to, I followed God's plan for my life and I was obedient by not not having any sexual thoughts or feelings before marriage.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: And they lean a lot more into the like, and now it's like, sex is so great and I'm, it's this amazing thing.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: And it's like, well the, the research that's out there says that that's probably not the case.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: And that there's, there's probably a lot that you don't know and don't know how to talk about.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: And there's definitely some issues that are probably going on there that like no one wants to actually say out loud because it would ruin that image that a lot of people wanna have of, of what like purity culture 2.0 looks like essentially.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: And it's a, it's like a reality that's, you know, that doesn't necessarily, I mean, maybe to them that reality does exist
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: , but in, but when we throw in science, when we throw in Yeah.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: You know, the real, like what things happen in the real world, you know, it's, it's also purity culture also builds, builds a reality that is not, that doesn't exist really.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: And it's very fragile.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Would you say?
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: It's very fragile?
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Like one thing I, I know so many people who, who are raised in purity culture and I myself was like purity culture adjacent mm-hmm.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: , we never had anything hardcore like, like the programs or the purity rings or anything like that.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: But I mean, I heard more than a million times that if you have sex before marriage, you were gonna burn in hell.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: Like I heard that a lot.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: And, and then when you throw in being gay
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: You just don't even, that's a whole
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: Other, that's a whole other level.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: .
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: And, and I think that, but that, but the culture is so fragile because if you throw in, you know, you're not asked to, you're not, you're not getting any kind of education about safe sex mm-hmm.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: .
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: So what if something happens?
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: You, you, you contract something, God forbid or, or, or something else happens that that idea and that mentality is so fragile that then you build your whole life on it and you litter.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: I've seen people literally crumble from it.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Because they've been lied to in some ways.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: You know,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: And a lot of times I, I've seen a lot of, especially like more so, um, people in my real life, but also influencers kind of that were promised that marriage is gonna fix all your problems.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: Marriage is gonna be amazing when you get married.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: Your one consent apparently is always implied.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: Which it's not just for anybody listening, but like ongoing enthusiastic consent is very important even in marriage.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: And, but that's not something that the church ever teaches.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: I didn't know the word consent until I was like in physical therapy school and was learning about that.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: And so, but from what I've seen from people in my own life and online is that when they get married, it's like they put marriage on this pedestal of this is gonna fix everything.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: I can finally not have to push down all these like, sexual feelings anymore.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: Even though they've been pushing them down there in their lives, and, and then they get married and realize, okay, this is awkward.
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know how to talk about my body.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: I don't know how to tell my partner what I like and what I don't like.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know how to tell them like, what's going on with my emotions.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: I like, I don't even know how to tell them No.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: Or if I'm allowed to tell them no.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: And then it does kind of crumble.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Like usually for, for a lot of people it ends up being kind of the first like brick in their like deconstruction from a lot of people that I've talked to.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: And again, I'm like very skewed because my accounts all about purity culture, so.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: But a lot of the messages I've gotten have been people saying, realizing that like purity culture was incredibly harmful was the first like thing that I needed to, to realize to also think about like, okay, what else was I taught growing up that may have been like extra biblical.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: Like it may have not actually been there, but I was told my whole life that it was there.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: Cuz purity culture is not in the Bible.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: Like none of the, the things that they taught us or, or said were gonna happen or anything like that.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: Like none of that is biblical.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: And it was a hundred percent just people and um, an industry basically.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: Like, it was a, a way for them to make a lot of money and monetize on, uh, teenagers.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: But it is like, it really is incredibly fragile that it, once it breaks down, it's like a lot of people, it's like their whole world comes crashing down.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: They don't know what to do with it afterwards.
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: Like after realizing that that was a not, um, not like a hundred percent true or a hundred percent biblical, like they were taught
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: I'm really grateful for this conversation and I was just scrolling through the Instagram profile and it also started to get me thinking that, and I'm not trying to center men by any means, but purity culture also damages men as well.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: And I don't think that No, it does.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: We don't talk about that.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Um, but there is, there is an aspect of it that damages men, especially in a, in a, in heterosexual relationships.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: And men's idea of masculinity.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Their role as a partner, their role in a family.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: And I hadn't even really thought about this u until this conversation, but I grew up both in a public school and in a private school system.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: One was Christian, one was very public.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: So I've sort of yeah.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Been in sort of these different worlds where, for lack of a better word, in like public school, it just seems like all your friends are having sex all the time.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: .
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: And then in the Christian school, it's like, no one's talking about sex unless it's about abstinence.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: .
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: And you're like, there's gotta be, I'm not saying there's a, there's a middle ground, but there kind of needs to be there.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: There kind of is.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: There kind of is.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: And there needs to be a way to talk about that because I'm, I'm like, well, I don't wanna be like this necessarily whether that's even true, which also is, I just wanna put it out there.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: Not Yeah.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: Not all your friends are having sex all the time.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: I'm just gonna flip that out there,.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: But also it's not true that everyone is abiding by this purity standard and also that purity standard is harmful as well.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: So there's this, there's this very weird space to navigate as a, especially as a young person in today's world.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: Um, especially for like it purity culture definitely affected like those that were kind of socialized like male very, very differently than those of us that were like socialized as females for men.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: Like for my husband, he somehow grew up S B C, like, did not have to go through a ton of purity stuff.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: And we both can't figure out if that's just because he was a guy or if it's just because his church like didn't put that much into it.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: But I asked him the other day, like, what did they even teach you?
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: And he was like, they told us not to have sex and like, not to like touch ourselves or whatever.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: I don't know how much I can say on your podcast, but um, I can say it.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: They told him like, don't and don't have sex.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: And that was it.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: And then they went outside and they played kickball and there wasn't any, like, there wasn't any talk about, definitely not any talk about consent.
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, at least for the youth group that I grew up in, they always separated the boys and girls.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: And I think it's, I understand why you do it kind of at a younger age, but um, especially in high school, like de-stigmatize talking about your bodies, like put them together, put every gender together in a room and talk about this is like what is happening.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: Talk about consent.
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: Especially because when a lot of these, um, especially young men grow up and are just assuming that consent is implied because that's what they've been told by their youth pastors and their youth leaders and all these things, and that to be a man, you have all these needs that you have to have met and that women don't have those needs and that men are visually stimulated and women aren't.
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: And like none of that is true.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: Like the science literally tells us like none of that is true.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: Everybody is visually stimulated, everybody has sexual thoughts and feelings and desires and like, it's, there's not a ton of difference between like sexes at all.
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: And so, I mean there's, there's a lot of like medically inaccurate information that's going on out there, but also at what's still happening unfortunately that I see a lot is this weird like Christian alpha male thing.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: That's happening.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: That's very like if you're a real man then you'll, you know, like have sex with your wife or you'll like do all these things or, and your wife has to meet all of these requirements in order to like have a good marriage and she has to be like taking care of you sexually and all these kind of things and, and she has to take care of herself so that you still find her attractive.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: So it's a very weird like Andrew Tate e like thing that's kind of come into the church unfortunately that I've seen a lot.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: I literally just had to delete a huge comment thread on my last post from a guy who was talking about like, well as a, as a man, if I meet a woman who has had more sexual partners, then that's not acceptable to me and I don't feel okay with that and I don't feel okay if she has like a better job than me.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: It was just all a lot of like insecurity kind of stuff that's like, yeah guys,, there has to be like some kind of middle ground to talk about it and and to like destigmatize it in general and not put it on this like, pedestal of everything will be better once you're married.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: Everything will be better once you can have sex.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: Cuz I mean like we all grew up in church where somebody talked about like their's smoking hot life and Right.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: That Oh yeah.
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: Like it's still happening and, but it's Oh definitely.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: But they'll never say sex and they'll never say like, this is what, you know, consent looks like or this is what, uh, healthy communication looks like or this is what it looks like to just talk about your body parts in anatomically correct terms and not have it be something that is embarrassing cuz it's not embarrassing they're bodies.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: Like I, I am very skewed because I am a physical therapist in school.
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: I see bodies and treat bodies every day.
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: But it's also like, there's nothing to be like ashamed of, you can call everything what it is and it, it makes it much less scary when everything's kind of like brought into the light essentially.
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: I don't know, it gets me out.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: Fired up
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: .
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: It's, and I mean, and even in my own life, like being someone who is mm-hmm.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: , this kind of stuff.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: I have taken it with me even in Oh yeah.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Even in the relationships that I have had and I have dated people, I've had sex with people and I've, uh, God people are probably gonna turn over
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: Straight to hell
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: .
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: Um, but, but I think that like, but when you carry this over Oh yeah.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Even in relationships that don't fit this quote purity culture like hetero, I mean they all want you to be straight.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: They all want you to get Oh,
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: That's the goal.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: They all want you to be hetero.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: But even, even within the culture, you carry it with you and you carry this, you carry toxic masculinity.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: It's what I did my thesis on when I was in this school.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Cool.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: How this kind of stuff goes and also perpetuates body images, it perpetuates mm-hmm.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: like systems of racism and white supremacy because this purity culture thing, it's also has a lot of intersections with racism.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, a hundred percent.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: A lot of intersections with white supremacy culture Yeah.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And how it perpetuates it, even talking about sex.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: And so I do think it really does invade so much of our lives that I don't think people realize it.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Like you might not have had the, the curriculum or you might not have had anything but it infiltrated culture so much so that, I mean television, Britney
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: Spears,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Britney Spears,
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: That was like the biggest thing that I didn't realize for the longest time until a friend of mine w we were like, had been talking about it and kind of were like, oh my god, that was pretty culture.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: Like.
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: Like she was demonized.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: She was like called out in the media all this stuff for possibly having sex with Justin Timberlake and, and everyone was like, she's supposed to be the good girl.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: And it was like, she wasn't even, there was no, she wasn't wearing a purity ring.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: She might have been, I don't know.
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: But she wasn't like in the, in a youth group.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: She, it was just, uh, everyone from, you know, the people that were in church to the people that like would never darken the door of a church were like, she's a terrible person because she had premarital sex.
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: And you're like, really?
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: Like that's what we're gonna like all come together on is just shaming people.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: Like it, it was just, it's such a weird thing that keeps coming up all over the place.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: I mean dress codes is like the other really big one that, uh, makes me very angry because I think everybody, everybody always has their own internal bias that we have to like work through and Right.
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: Dress codes are where a lot of it tends to come up for people is saying like, okay, well why do you want, you know, the girls to cover up their shoulders?
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: Like why do you think that the boys are gonna be distracted?
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: Or that the men will be distracted?
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: Like if you, especially in schools, if you have fully grown male teachers being distracted by high school girls' shoulders, like we have bigger issues and if they're distracted by her upper thigh again we have way bigger issues to deal with.
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: And a lot of that is just purity culture of like, you have to look a certain way, act a certain way, kind of fit into like this really good good like kid mold to eventually grow up and get married in your like white heterosexual marriage and live a happy life onward when really like there's so much research saying that that is really not the reality.
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: And I mean, I'm a physical therapist and I deal a lot with patients with pelvic floor disorder and dysfunction and that is huge to when people have been raised in purity culture.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: And now there's a ton of research backing that up saying people who are raised with really restrictive sexual values are experiencing way higher levels of pelvic floor dysfunction and pain with sex and like difficulty even being able to like, have sex at all because of your entire life being told sex is bad, don't ever do it.
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: And until all of a sudden you're married and you have to flip a switch and now you're supposed to be like wild and crazy and that's not, your body doesn't do that.
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: Your muscles don't do that.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: Like your pelvic floor muscles, they will involuntarily contract and, and stay that way for a while until you like work through it and you know, pelvic floor, physical therapy or, or just like with a mental health therapist and stuff, it's just there it like affects so many little things that all kind of head up into this big like purity culture umbrella.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: That's, that's wild.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: And I also wonder cuz this is a matter of faith, I also wondered like the undergirding theology of all this stuff.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: I know that, you know, we know how it manifests, but it has been undergo, but as you said, not necessarily everything was scriptural mm-hmm.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: because it didn't say that.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: So I wonder if, if people don't realize, like how, how has it been theologized if we can say that in a way because they had to do that because again, scripture wasn't necessarily there.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: .
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: You know, they're, it, they kind of used similar verses to verses used to like defend being, uh, homophobic.
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: Um, it's a lot of the same verses about sexual immorality, even though that's not really ever described or it's not described in a way that we think of it now.
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: It's like the word that's used is always the word that means like sexual abuse or, um, something that's like non-consensual.
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: And so it's a, a lot of times that those were kind of the verses that were used that and the verse about like, a man will leave his, his parents and he and his wife will become one flesh and all that um, as like, okay, well it says that in the Bible and therefore it can be one man, one woman.
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: They can only have sex and they get married cuz it says one flesh after they get married.
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: And that, and it's like, okay, but also there's a lot of like historical context that we're missing and a lot of cultural context that we're missing.
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: And like, if we're gonna say that, then okay, are we also gonna look back at all of these, you know, old Testament kings and all these people that had multiple wives and definitely we're having, you know, sex premarital sex and you know, what did marriage even look like back then?
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: And so, yeah, there's a lot of like misuse of verses to try to justify it and to try to justify like, this is what God wants.
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: A lot of times the purity culture 2.0 people will say we're just defending like God's design for marriage.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: That's like the really big phrase that they use.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: And it's like, no you're not, you're actually not.
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: Um, but they, they do it in a way that it's very love the center hate the sin.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: Like we just love you and we care about you and we want better for you and we care about like, this is what God says and so therefore we get to say that, you know, you're doing all these horrible things or you're going to hell or whatever it is.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: Like, we just wanna bring, bring you back and all this kind of stuff.
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: But it is a lot of like, you really would have to like parse through some verses and take them very out of context to be able to like justify a lot of the purity culture kind of teachings.
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: Like if, if you like boil it down to just like the, the main thing about virginity, like you would really, really have to take some stuff outta context to say that it's biblical, which they do.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: There's, uh, true love weights still an organization still selling books.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: I went through one of'em the other day and was like, oh, this is not great.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: It's, it's that same, it's just like, here's all these verses to explain why this is okay.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: .
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: Well Sarah, we are so grateful to have been able to have you on the podcast and to think through this with us.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: We're grateful that we have been able to welcome you onto the podcast and also to the Presbyterian church usa.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: Yes indeed.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: And I just wanna give you a, a huge shout out for the work that you're doing with the Instagram profile.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: We'll be sure to have a link in the show notes for folks to check out.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: We'll also have a link to Church Clarity so that folks can reference that as well.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: And we'll, uh, I guess we'll, we'll all just be continuing the fight against, uh, against purity culture and trying to, as you say, deconstruct it.
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: Thanks.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: And, and can I, can you end, if you know, if there's people out there that might be going through some things, I wonder if we can end on like, what would you say?
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: What would, what would you say to them?
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: Because I know there are people out there.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: And, and maybe we can end on that.
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: Um, I, I try to end a lot of my posts the same way by just saying like, in case you haven't heard this recently, or in case you've never heard it, like you are allowed to make decisions with your own body.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: You are allowed to appreciate your body, you're allowed to say no.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: Um, your body is good, your body was made good and it, you, you were allowed to celebrate your body and figure it out without threat of hell basically.
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: Um, yes, but also go to a therapist cuz that's very helpful.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Indeed.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: Well again, thank you and we'll have all the links to your stuff on our show notes.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: And we're so glad you came and talked to us.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Uh, tell Colin we said hello and
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: I will
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: , maybe we'll have you both back on the podcast at the same time.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: That'd be so fun.
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: That'd be so fun.
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: .
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: Thanks everyone for listening to this episode of a Matter of Faith, the Presby podcast, produced by Unbound and the Presbyterian peacemaking program of the Presbyterian Church usa.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Sarah from deconstructing Purity Culture for being with us.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Y'all check out her Instagram account, it is great, full of good information and check out the links on the show notes and we hope you subscribe and leave us a review.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: We would love to hear from you and we would love to hear questions from you at fate podcast peace usa.org.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Just email us and of course check out our website a matter of fate podcast.com and we will talk to you again, as always next week.