Dr. Camden Morgante ”Recovering From Purity Culture” pt. 1

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[00:01:05] Welcome to the Deconstructionist Podcast. I'm your host John Williamson and we're back with a brand new episode.

[00:01:12] This week I'm very excited to introduce my guest Dr. Camden Morgante.

[00:01:17] Really, really excited about this one because this is a topic that we've covered before.

[00:01:21] But never from the perspective of a psychologist.

[00:01:25] So Dr. Camden is a licensed psychologist with nearly 15 years of experience as a therapist and college professor.

[00:01:33] She owns a private therapy practice focusing on women's issues, relationships, sexuality, trauma, and spirituality and is a frequent speaker.

[00:01:41] She combines her personal experience growing up in purity culture with her professional expertise and mind-body integration.

[00:01:47] She now offers her clients and online communities strategies for healing their faith and sexuality.

[00:01:53] Really enjoyed this episode.

[00:01:55] Really found it very valuable.

[00:01:56] And as I say throughout the episode, her book, Recovering from Purity Culture, is terrific.

[00:02:03] It's a wonderful resource and we're always looking for more terrific resources.

[00:02:07] But at the end of each chapter, she actually gives therapeutic exercises to help you through certain things.

[00:02:14] So cannot recommend it enough.

[00:02:16] Go out and get it.

[00:02:16] We'll have the links in our show notes.

[00:02:18] Before we get to that, though, if you visit our website, www.thedeconstructionist.org, you can go there and see our blog, read our blog, connect to our Patreon if you want to support us that way.

[00:02:33] You can also stream all of our episodes.

[00:03:03] You can also stream all of our episodes.

[00:03:05] But otherwise, I will get to part one with Dr. Camden here.

[00:03:10] And so without further ado, I give you Camden freaking Morgante.

[00:03:26] All right.

[00:03:30] Welcome to the Deconstructionist Podcast.

[00:03:32] I'm with me very excited today to talk to Dr. Camden Morgante.

[00:03:36] I did it.

[00:03:38] Yes.

[00:03:39] Hi, John.

[00:03:40] Thank you for having me.

[00:03:41] Thank you for saying my last name right.

[00:03:43] Absolutely.

[00:03:43] There was a lot of pressure and I was getting sweaty there for a second, but I did it.

[00:03:47] So I'm very, very proud of myself.

[00:03:50] People who have listened to this podcast for a long time know that I historically am really good at butchering names.

[00:03:55] So we got through it.

[00:03:56] So Camden for the rest of the interview.

[00:03:58] Right.

[00:04:00] So before we kick this off, I think listeners who've been around for a while know that we have covered purity culture before, but never from the perspective of someone in the mental health field.

[00:04:11] So I'm really excited to talk to you about it today.

[00:04:13] So tell listeners a little bit about yourself and the work that you do.

[00:04:17] Mm-hmm.

[00:04:18] Yeah.

[00:04:18] I'm a licensed clinical psychologist.

[00:04:20] So I have a doctorate in psychology.

[00:04:21] I have a private practice here in Knoxville, Tennessee, where I live, where I see women and couples for issues of like trauma and faith and sexuality.

[00:04:31] So, yeah, all of the issues that I kind of talk and write about online and now have written this book, Recovering from Purity Culture.

[00:04:38] So I wanted to write it because there wasn't a lot written by mental health professionals about this topic.

[00:04:44] There's a lot of personal stories and memoirs, which are wonderful to bring to life, like what this looks like in reality.

[00:04:51] But I felt like I had something unique to offer having both the personal experience as a woman growing up in purity culture.

[00:04:57] So there's a little bit of my personal story in the book.

[00:05:00] But then really the professional experience of here's how I've used therapy skills and tools to help my clients find healing and for me to find healing, too, from the shame of purity culture.

[00:05:12] Yeah, that's what's incredible about the book.

[00:05:15] The thing I love about it is just that, is that at the end of every chapter, you have these helpful exercises and things that you can do.

[00:05:22] And largely before this point, you know, we've obviously, like I said, had a lot of memoirs on and we've talked about the negative impacts.

[00:05:29] And, you know, we've made that pretty clear, I think, in conversation.

[00:05:32] But, you know, no one has, you know, largely put forth an effort like this where there's some actual tools that you've provided in here that I think are awesome.

[00:05:41] So thank you, John.

[00:05:43] I appreciate you actually reading it.

[00:05:44] And yeah, that was my hope was that there's been there's been such good work done already on what the problems with purity culture are and really outlining what the teachings were and how they harmed people and how negative they were.

[00:05:57] But I really wanted my book to take the next step of like, OK, now that we know what the problems are, how do we heal from those?

[00:06:02] Like, what do we do with that?

[00:06:04] Yeah.

[00:06:05] So I hope my book just helps people take the next step when they're like, I don't know where to go from here.

[00:06:11] Yeah.

[00:06:11] So let's let's get into it a little bit.

[00:06:14] Obviously, before we dive too deeply into it, you talk in the book about sort of the rise of purity culture teachings, the basic premise of it.

[00:06:22] So what is the history of it and how did we get there?

[00:06:24] Mm hmm.

[00:06:26] Well, I define purity culture as a largely evangelical movement that peaked in the 1990s to 2000s that used fear and shame as tools of control in order to coerce young people into making not making a choice.

[00:06:40] It wasn't a choice and to and to being abstinent before marriage.

[00:06:43] So I distinguish between like a personal choice and abstinence and purity culture because there really was no choice and shame and fear were just so embedded in purity culture.

[00:06:54] Sure.

[00:06:54] So how did we get there?

[00:06:56] I mean, I make the argument that purity culture is not biblical.

[00:06:59] It's socioculturally influenced.

[00:07:01] I really think it was a reaction to some of the other sociocultural changes we had, like the sexual revolution of the 70s, the feminist revolution.

[00:07:11] And then all of a sudden in the 90s, especially, we start to see more of that like religious right and focus on the family and just a lot more of like conservative family values and an emphasis on that.

[00:07:21] Um, there was also like a rise in teen pregnancy, I think, in the 80s.

[00:07:26] And so like all of that kind of combined, um, led up to this perfect storm of purity culture.

[00:07:31] But it's really essential for people who are healing from it to be able to say that it wasn't biblical, to be able to see maybe what parts of it, um, you know, are good or are parts that people want to carry with them.

[00:07:44] But really to be able to see that largely it was cultural and not biblical.

[00:07:49] Largely it was about being able to control people's sexuality, especially women's sexuality.

[00:07:54] Um, and yeah, have, have that patriarchal control over women.

[00:08:00] Yeah.

[00:08:00] And you, you talk about, you know, as, as you said, uh, the beginning part of the book, you sort of talk about your own journey in it.

[00:08:06] And, um, and you talk about the fact, and I had to laugh a little bit because I also own this book, uh, in college.

[00:08:12] Um, you know, that's when I started to sort of dabble or dip a toe into the evangelical pool.

[00:08:17] I grew up largely Lutheran.

[00:08:19] And so I was, we didn't, this wasn't a thing, at least in the Lutheran churches I was a part of.

[00:08:25] Um, so my first exposure to it was in college.

[00:08:28] And, you know, when a friend handed me a copy of that book by Joshua Harris, uh, I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

[00:08:34] And so you mentioned the fact that you had it, but I mean, this thing sold a ton of copies.

[00:08:39] A lot of, uh, young people out there, um, boys and girls, uh, both had, uh, copies of this book.

[00:08:47] And I remember even then thinking, being sort of wary of it because I thought, hey, this is a book written by a guy who has no like professional credentials.

[00:08:56] Who's also very young.

[00:08:58] I think at the time he was roughly the same age I was.

[00:09:01] Like 22.

[00:09:02] Yeah.

[00:09:03] 23 maybe.

[00:09:05] And so I thought, why am I taking advice from this guy who has no, you know, no professional credentials and being suspect of it even then.

[00:09:11] But talk about just like the impact of, you know, the, the, um, I guess the content that was being sort of pushed in this book.

[00:09:21] Mm-hmm.

[00:09:22] I think that book is, and Joshua Harris will always kind of have that, um, title, unfortunately, of being like the poster child of purity culture or one of the fathers of the movement.

[00:09:33] And even though at 22, 23, I can hardly call him a father of a movement, but, but yeah, it had a huge impact.

[00:09:39] I think I was 13, 14 maybe when I got that book, um, from my parents wanting me to follow this model of courtship.

[00:09:47] And a lot of parents probably had good intentions or friends or whoever gave you the book had good intentions of like, we don't want you to be heartbroken.

[00:09:56] We don't want you to get your heart broken or make some, the mistake, same mistakes we made or things like that.

[00:10:02] But it set up just such a rigid, um, very rigid and so many rules.

[00:10:08] And that created so much fear.

[00:10:10] Like people just still today, like single clients that I work with don't know how to date, even if they're in their thirties or forties.

[00:10:17] And some have like never been on dates or never had a serious relationship because there was so much fear about it from Harris's book and from this whole courtship culture that grew out of it.

[00:10:29] Yeah.

[00:10:29] And what's interesting too, is that you point out the fact that, you know, things like that book and, and some of the other resources that were around at the time,

[00:10:39] largely influenced, you know, the ways in which you viewed dating.

[00:10:42] And, and again, you bring up the term shame, which we'll talk about throughout, uh, this episode, but, um, you kind of mentioned the fact that, you know, it really carried with you largely even into your thirties.

[00:10:52] And so your journey is kind of interesting because the whole time you're studying, you know, psychology and, and, and, and things.

[00:10:59] And so at what point did you start to sort of pick that apart and think to yourself, maybe this isn't quite right.

[00:11:06] Yeah.

[00:11:07] I think I went through a period of faith deconstruction in my twenties while I was in grad school because I was, became a therapist, you know, like, um, a student therapist and just started hearing stories of trauma and abuse and suffering that I had not experienced in my like largely privileged upbringing and largely sheltered.

[00:11:27] Um, and that really challenged my faith.

[00:11:31] The, the question that we all have of why does a good God allow suffering, you know, the universal question.

[00:11:36] And then reconciling that with my own pain in my own life of unmet longings for marriage.

[00:11:42] That was my, that was my big struggle was I was single throughout most of my twenties after a serious relationship in college ended with the person that I thought I was going to marry.

[00:11:54] And that is when, yeah, I just started realizing like this fairytale myth of purity culture that if I follow all the rules and do all the right things, God's going to give me, you know, a husband and a happy marriage and a, and a happy family and, and life.

[00:12:08] Just, it just didn't come true for me.

[00:12:10] And it felt very unfair and it made me really angry towards God.

[00:12:14] Um, but then, like I said, seeing so much bigger suffering in my clients started me on that path of deconstruction.

[00:12:20] I didn't have that word back then.

[00:12:22] Um, but as a psychologist learning about the stages of faith development, and that's kind of included later on in the book, like I recognized it as a normal part of faith development.

[00:12:32] It's normal to go from more concrete to more abstract thinking, to go to more complex rather than black and white thinking.

[00:12:43] Um, so I recognized that that was normal, but it was still very like uncomfortable, you know, as it is for all of us and disillusioning.

[00:12:51] And it wasn't really until my, well, probably I got, I did meet my husband and get married about age 30, which was later than on my peer group here in the South and conservative Christian circles.

[00:13:02] And I, it was really after that, that purity culture started to be talked about.

[00:13:07] Um, you know, Linda K. Klein's book came out a couple of years after I got married and, and some people started writing articles.

[00:13:12] And I think that was the first time I'd heard that name purity culture.

[00:13:15] And I started to realize like, this makes sense.

[00:13:18] Like what I thought was so great, what I really bought into as a teenager and even as a young adult, um, having a true live weights ring and taking this pledge and like really being gung ho about it.

[00:13:29] Um, like I just see how it's left so many of us with this false promises and broken pieces.

[00:13:36] And I saw how it affected me even as I stayed a Christian, like maintain my identity as a Christian.

[00:13:42] It still really shook my faith.

[00:13:45] So that's when I started to get more critical of it and to really start examining and using some of the tools that I learned as a psychologist to, for how to deconstruct, for how to examine beliefs and analyze them and see what part of this is truth and what part is false.

[00:14:00] Yeah.

[00:14:30] It's a little bit bigger than that.

[00:14:30] Cause like most, when most people talk about the journey of deconstruction, it's, you know, you're examining a lot of like very big issues, uh, within that it's, uh, it's not just one, but, but all sort of are tied together through this very sort of, uh, dualistic, uh, what we might call dualistic black and white way of thinking.

[00:14:48] Exactly. I think that is the underlying, the legalism and the black and white thinking is really what underlies our deconstruction because we're moving away from that.

[00:14:59] And then that causes us to think about topics with so much more nuance and so much more like complexity of both.

[00:15:06] And, you know, can this be both harmful and can there be truth or what part is truth?

[00:15:13] Um, yeah.

[00:15:13] So I think that is an essential first skill when someone is deconstructing purity culture is to start with being able to move from the black and white thinking to what I call in the book dialectical thinking, which is that both.

[00:15:25] And, um, so I would say that legalism underlies a lot of the topics that all of us deconstruct.

[00:15:31] And I would also say patriarchy, um, you know, I make the argument that patriarchy underlies purity culture.

[00:15:37] That you can't really deconstruct one without the other.

[00:15:40] Um, you can't really support patriarchy and deconstruct and heal from purity culture and move forward because it's just, it's just so toxic and pervades everything.

[00:15:50] So those are some of the, the like big threads that people pull are pulling, you know, when they're going through deconstruction from what I see in my, um, clients and my readers.

[00:16:01] I think that's a great, uh, point to, to talk a little bit more about right now, because that's one of the myths that you talk about that absolutely drives me nuts as a guy.

[00:16:10] It, it, it's just like this weird free pass thing that we were given where this idea that we're men are these hypersexual beings who just can't control themselves in there.

[00:16:19] And therefore are somehow allowed a free pass to take less responsibility over our own actions, like some sort of weird horny cavemen.

[00:16:25] And it's up to women to make sure that we aren't constantly walking around aroused, which is absurd.

[00:16:31] Yeah.

[00:16:33] But there's a double standard there, right?

[00:16:35] Like it is.

[00:16:36] Yeah.

[00:16:36] I call that the gatekeepers myth.

[00:16:37] Like there's so much double standards with that of women being the gatekeepers, um, but both before and after marriage, like, you know, setting boundaries and monitoring how far are we going.

[00:16:47] And then after marriage, like, oh, now I need to meet this need for him and be constantly available.

[00:16:53] Um, yeah.

[00:16:54] So that, that is very patriarchal, patriarchal because who does it serve?

[00:16:57] And that's one of the questions I encourage people to ask as they are deconstructing a theology or doctrine or belief is who does me believing this serve?

[00:17:07] Like who benefits from my believing this?

[00:17:09] And who taught this to me and what motivation did they have for teaching this to me?

[00:17:14] And sometimes there are benign or even positive motivations.

[00:17:17] Like I mentioned earlier with like parents wanting us to avoid heartbreak or things like that.

[00:17:22] But sometimes there are more insidious ones.

[00:17:25] Um, and I think the gatekeepers myth, like the motivation for that is, oh, we can like blame women for their own sexual assault instead of the perpetrators having to take responsibility.

[00:17:35] Or, you know, this, this allows men to just kind of get away with how they treat women.

[00:17:41] Um, even in marriage, consent's not a thing according to this myth.

[00:17:45] Um, and you know, women just constantly have to like be giving to their husbands because sex is for him and not for both of them.

[00:17:52] Of course, this is all the myth.

[00:17:53] This is not what I believe anymore, but I'm just repeating this.

[00:17:56] Um, yeah.

[00:17:58] So looking at who benefits from that and who suffers from believing in that.

[00:18:02] Yeah, that's, that's a good lead into, to my next question, which is really largely based around some of the, um, examples that you give in the book.

[00:18:10] Um, you talk about, you know, counseling some of the couples that come through your door and just examining like the ways in which this has created trauma within their marriages.

[00:18:19] You talk about one couple who come in, who waited to even kiss until their wedding day.

[00:18:24] And at this point, like they're having some pretty significant issues in their sex lives where it's like really bad by this point.

[00:18:32] By the time they come to you, I think you had mentioned that they hadn't even been intimate in like months.

[00:18:38] And so, uh, talk about that and just like the lingering effects of purity culture into these marriages that they are under this sort of, um, this myth that it's going to be magical.

[00:18:49] And then it's just going to happen, you know?

[00:18:52] Yeah.

[00:18:52] I call that the flipped switch myth that you just get married and you just automatically can flip a switch and sex is going to be great.

[00:18:59] Um, rather than emphasizing that it's actually takes work and education and communication and like mutuality and all of those skills.

[00:19:07] It just seemed like something that was just magically going to be easy.

[00:19:09] And unfortunately I've worked with several couples like this who've been married for like 20 or more years.

[00:19:15] You know, they got married when they were 20 and, um, like didn't even kiss till their wedding day.

[00:19:20] And sex has just always been a struggle.

[00:19:22] This has always been a hard spot in their marriage and they love each other deeply, but yet they just can't seem to connect sexually because they both carry shame.

[00:19:31] They both carry these myths.

[00:19:33] They both carry trauma from purity culture.

[00:19:35] Um, yeah.

[00:19:37] And they just can't seem to, to find a way to make it work.

[00:19:39] And that's usually when they come to me and they'll say, they'll even say like, I know what the right beliefs are.

[00:19:45] Like, I know that this is false, but I don't really know how to make my body get on the same page with my mind.

[00:19:51] Like, I don't know how to make my body switch.

[00:19:53] Um, and so that's a lot of the mind body integration work that we have to do to help them get their body and their heart, their emotions on the same page as their new beliefs.

[00:20:03] Um, because unfortunately this, the trauma response in your body just stays around.

[00:20:08] And that's what I mean when I refer to trauma, because some people will say, well, purity culture wasn't that bad for me or like, I wouldn't consider it trauma.

[00:20:16] And, and usually when people say that they're thinking of more like the big T traumas of like this big major event, like a sexual assault or a natural disaster or combat or something like that.

[00:20:26] Um, but purity culture leaves a traumatic response in some people's bodies.

[00:20:31] So when you're clenching up at just the thought of sex or you have this like disgust or the shame or guilt about it, um, those are some common things that I see are just these negative, pervasive, negative beliefs of sex is for him and sex is dirty.

[00:20:44] Like those just don't turn off just because somebody gets married and now suddenly sex is supposed to be good and holy.

[00:20:51] Um, those can really linger in the effects in the person's body.

[00:20:56] Yeah, you, you hit on exactly what I, what I wanted you to touch on too.

[00:20:59] That I thought was really, um, interesting in the book where you talk about big T trauma versus little T trauma, which I think not only applies clearly to this subject, but also applies to a lot of the reasons in which we find ourselves on the path of deconstruction.

[00:21:13] In general, when it comes to religious trauma, I think there's clearly some instances where, I mean, we've talked to hundreds of people over the years who have explained what kind of pushed them onto the path.

[00:21:25] And for some, it was like this big, like identifiable, you know, traumatic event that they can point, point to and say, that was the moment that led to my deconstruction.

[00:21:35] And for some, it's just a series of little traumas, like little cuts that ultimately, you know, compiled into this thing that where they just couldn't not, you know, join the path, so to speak.

[00:21:48] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:21:50] Um, purity culture is very related to big T traumas, especially like sexual abuse.

[00:21:56] Like that can, that can be very interrelated.

[00:21:58] But for many people, it's, there is no identifiable big trauma they can point to.

[00:22:03] And so they might say like, it's hard to call it trauma.

[00:22:06] But then when I really ask them about the effects of purity culture in them, um, they feel, they can feel the trauma then.

[00:22:13] And in fact, um, some of the research I cite shows that when you compare like the sexual autobiographies of people coming out of purity culture with sexual assault survivors, they're very similar in the beliefs and in the, um, the way that the body responds.

[00:22:30] So it's, it's got a very similar reaction.

[00:22:32] And as we've learned from Sheila Rae Grigua's research, it causes like similar sexual problems too, like higher rates of sexual pain disorders and lower rates of orgasm and sexual desire.

[00:22:44] So, um, all of that is correlated with purity culture and kind of lines up with the research on the effects of sexual assault.

[00:22:52] Wünschst du dir jemanden, der dich versteht wie kein anderer?

[00:22:56] Jemand, der deine Wünsche wahr werden lässt und mit dir das schönste Abenteuer deines Lebens erleben möchte?

[00:23:02] Die Commerce-Plattform Shopify revolutioniert Millionen von Unternehmen weltweit.

[00:23:08] Mit Shopify richtest du im Nu deinen Online-Shop ein.

[00:23:11] Ganz ohne Programmier- oder Designkenntnisse.

[00:23:14] Dank der effizienten Einrichtung und intuitiven Social-Media- und Online-Marketplace-Integration kannst du über Instagram, eBay und Co. werben und verkaufen.

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[00:23:26] Shopify bietet auf einer einzigen, sicheren Plattform alle Tools, um dein Online-Business aufzubauen.

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[00:23:49] So, talk a little bit about, because you touched on this earlier and I thought this was really interesting.

[00:23:54] Let me pull it up here.

[00:23:56] And I love that you named it Deconstructing Myths.

[00:23:59] So, that's fun.

[00:24:02] So, you've talked about, you've mentioned a couple of them already.

[00:24:05] You've talked about the flipped switch myth, the gatekeeper's myth.

[00:24:09] There's a few others on there.

[00:24:10] Starting with the spiritual barometer myth.

[00:24:13] Talk through, like, what you mean by that.

[00:24:15] Yeah, that's the myth that we're better Christians if we are virgins before we get married.

[00:24:20] Or that our purity, quote, or virginity is a measure of one's spiritual maturity.

[00:24:28] And I feel like that breed bred a lot of pride for me.

[00:24:33] You know, when I was a virgin, it was like there was a lot of pride about that and a lot of judgment of other people.

[00:24:39] And it's just an ugly attitude to have.

[00:24:41] And also, not biblical, because there's more fruits of the Spirit.

[00:24:45] And there's more things that make someone a Christian and make somebody like a Christ follower than just what they do, you know, with their genitals.

[00:24:53] So, it made it just a very narrow definition of holiness and being Christ-like.

[00:25:01] But unfortunately, the other side of that myth is the damaged goods myth.

[00:25:05] That if you're not a virgin, or if you go too far, or even if you're sexually abused, that you're broken and damaged goods.

[00:25:12] And that one is, I think, is just completely unbiblical and full of shame.

[00:25:16] Like, so much shame for even people who didn't have sex before they were married can have shame from that myth of like, well, did we go too far?

[00:25:26] Or, you know, he went farther than I did in another relationship, so now our whole marriage is doomed.

[00:25:33] You know, like there's just a lot of shame that comes from that myth, too.

[00:25:36] And again, like back to what I said earlier about like purity culture is not biblical.

[00:25:41] Like when you really look at these myths and you really examine them, you can clearly see scriptures that are exactly contrary to them.

[00:25:48] You know, scriptures that talk about God's forgiveness and restoration and redemption of us and never calling us broken and damaged goods.

[00:25:57] So, yeah, so that's one of the most harmful myths in my work.

[00:26:04] And then the last one is the fairy tale myth, which I referenced earlier with, you know, what affected me the most was that belief that you're going to have a fairy tale marriage.

[00:26:13] And a lot of the single women I work with are deeply affected by that, but also married people, too, if their marriage turns out to not be a fairy tale.

[00:26:20] You know, when I've worked with women who were in abusive marriages and who are now divorced, I have some stories of that in the book.

[00:26:27] Yeah, so it affects not just single people, but definitely for the single people, there's a lot of grief about that.

[00:26:33] And also shame of like, what's wrong with me that I'm single?

[00:26:35] Am I missing out on some sanctification that can happen with marriage?

[00:26:39] Because marriage is to make you holy, so we're told.

[00:26:42] So, yeah, so there's just a lot wrapped up in all of these myths.

[00:26:45] Sometimes the response I've gotten from readers is like, how did you come up with just five?

[00:26:49] Like, you know, there's just so much that goes into purity culture.

[00:26:54] But these are the five that really stood out to me.

[00:26:57] And then I could clearly see like the ramifications of.

[00:27:00] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:02] And kind of connected to that is you name, I love lists, by the way.

[00:27:06] So this is, you have a couple lists in there.

[00:27:09] So what are the five toxic Christian cultures?

[00:27:12] Because I think that's important to talk about, you know, you've got, and they obviously directly connect to these myths as well.

[00:27:21] Mm-hmm.

[00:27:22] Yeah, I came up with this term toxic Christian cultures because they're actually not Christian, but they're just in the Christian culture.

[00:27:31] And they're cultures because they're so insidious and pervasive.

[00:27:33] And they're toxic because they're harmful and untrue.

[00:27:39] But purity culture is one of them.

[00:27:41] Modesty culture, which really goes hand in hand with purity culture of monitoring the way, especially for women, the way that they dress.

[00:27:50] And that feeds into the gatekeeper's myth of purity culture.

[00:27:53] And the next one is rape culture.

[00:27:55] And we hear that term like with the Me Too movement.

[00:27:57] So that's like something in our American culture too, not just the church.

[00:28:00] But definitely for the church, there can be religious undertones to that.

[00:28:04] Like, well, he's a man, you know, men need sex so he can't help himself.

[00:28:07] Or, well, what was she wearing?

[00:28:08] Because she caused him to stumble.

[00:28:10] She was tempting him.

[00:28:11] You know, we put that spiritual language on it.

[00:28:14] And then it like becomes spiritual abuse and even more so than just, yeah, the rape culture itself.

[00:28:21] And then courtship culture.

[00:28:22] We mentioned that earlier with I kiss dating goodbye.

[00:28:26] Because one way to avoid premarital sex is to not date or to have like a heavily monitored courtship process.

[00:28:32] And so I work with couples who like really didn't date, really didn't know each other, really didn't spend much time alone together or have like one-on-one conversations before they got married.

[00:28:42] That's just not a recipe for a healthy marriage, you know?

[00:28:45] Like that's just, yeah, just setting people up for those abusive, potentially abusive marriages or really unhappy or really mismatched marriages.

[00:28:55] So I interviewed several women who were divorced for the book because I wanted to include some of those stories.

[00:29:00] And all of them had gotten married at like 20.

[00:29:02] And all of them were like, you know, one person said, we were told that, you know, as long as we were Christian and we were saving ourselves, that's all that mattered.

[00:29:11] But frankly, that's not all that matters.

[00:29:13] Like in a marriage, she just realized like we weren't compatible.

[00:29:17] We didn't want the same things.

[00:29:19] So that's courtship culture.

[00:29:22] And then marriage culture is the next one.

[00:29:24] And what I mean by that is this idolization of marriage or that the culture of the church just completely revolves around marriages and around family and single people are kind of pushed to the margins or they're like pitied or there's just no place for them.

[00:29:37] Married people are considered more spiritual or have more leadership potential.

[00:29:41] Yeah.

[00:29:42] So while there's nothing wrong with marriage, this idolization of marriage is what I see as the problem.

[00:29:47] And that's very inherent in purity culture.

[00:29:50] And yes, and all of these five cultures have patriarchy as the root of all of them.

[00:29:56] Like it all like seeks to kind of serve the dominant sex and to keep women in submissive and yeah, submissive roles.

[00:30:06] And what's interesting on what you touched on is the fact that I've seen this played out so many times.

[00:30:10] Like there are so many people that I knew within the, you know, sort of my church circle that, you know, got married super, super young.

[00:30:18] And now that we're all in our 40s, they're all divorced.

[00:30:21] So because they realized, you know, further down the road that like, my gosh, we aren't a good compatible match at all.

[00:30:28] And just got married when they were really like kids, you know.

[00:30:33] Because you don't even know yourself very well at that age.

[00:30:36] And so even though I went through that breakup that was very devastating for me and did not get married until I was later than what purity culture promised me.

[00:30:45] Like I'm thankful for that now because I was so much more ready to be a wife and eventually a mother than I would have been at 21.

[00:30:56] Like I just knew myself better.

[00:30:57] I had a more nuanced and robust faith.

[00:31:01] I was definitely just further along in my career, education, all those kind of practical things too.

[00:31:05] But yeah, I think it's made me just a better partner and a better parent having had that time.

[00:31:11] And of course, some people do get married young and it works out for them.

[00:31:15] And, you know, we're always happy to see long-term marriages that are happy and healthy.

[00:31:19] Like I will applaud those.

[00:31:21] I don't applaud all long-term marriages because you just never know.

[00:31:24] But when they are happy and healthy, I'm happy to see that.

[00:31:27] And I feel like that's the exception rather than the rule.

[00:31:30] And we really shouldn't be pushing young people to get married just so they can have sex or just so they stay pure.

[00:31:36] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:31:38] One of the things that you mentioned that you point out that I love, it's been such an emphasis on this podcast, I know, since 2016, is, you know, we're always cautioning people.

[00:31:48] Like everyone has their own sort of definition in terms of what deconstruction means to them, you know.

[00:31:52] And ultimately, at the end of the day, I just did an interview and I was saying like, look, we co-opted this term from a French philosopher that had nothing to do with Christianity or religion.

[00:32:03] But ultimately, you know, so that kind of gives this freedom to sort of define it as you like.

[00:32:08] And the way we've always defined it is sort of similar to the way that you mentioned in the book.

[00:32:14] And it's really just to examine your faith from the inside and really sort of take ownership over your faith for the first time.

[00:32:20] Think critically about it.

[00:32:21] And, but we also caution and we've said this so many times, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, you know, as the saying goes.

[00:32:29] And so, you know, at some point, originally, we didn't have brackets around the D and the E in our logo.

[00:32:35] And at one point we were, because we would run into folks that we'd interview and they're like hesitant.

[00:32:40] They're like, they were confusing.

[00:32:42] I always say they confuse us with destruction, not deconstruction.

[00:32:47] And so, we kept running into that and having to almost defend ourselves.

[00:32:50] We're like, that's not what we mean.

[00:32:51] That's not what we mean.

[00:32:52] So, finally, actually, Rob Bell was like, just put a bracket around the D and the E.

[00:32:55] And we're like, oh, yeah.

[00:32:57] So, it's D and then construction.

[00:33:00] And so, we've always made a point to emphasize that.

[00:33:02] And you talk about that in the book when it comes to both purity culture and just sort of evolving in your faith in general.

[00:33:09] Like, so, talk about that a little bit because I think that's hugely important.

[00:33:12] And then the other thing I want to talk about, too, that you mentioned that has always been an emphasis here is just the role of finding a safe community.

[00:33:20] Yeah.

[00:33:22] Yeah.

[00:33:22] When I was looking at the other purity culture type books that had been put out there, I really wanted mine to emphasize that faith piece more.

[00:33:32] And specifically, how do you hold on to your faith and what does that look like when you're healing from purity culture?

[00:33:37] For those that want to stay a Christian, want to stay in relationship with God.

[00:33:44] So, it doesn't have to look one way.

[00:33:46] And I kind of describe like it can be like a house remodel.

[00:33:50] Like if your faith is a house, like could it look like remodeling the house?

[00:33:53] Or could it look like remediation of a house that's gotten moldy and you need to take it apart?

[00:33:58] Or could it look like a restoration of an old house that was built in your childhood and now it needs to be updated?

[00:34:04] Um, so those are approaches other than the final one I call raising where you just take a wrecking ball to the house.

[00:34:11] And I think that's the one that most Christians kind of fear when they have this like bad, you know, bad rep for deconstruction is they fear like you're just going to like tear the whole house down.

[00:34:22] But it doesn't have to look like that.

[00:34:23] Um, and it didn't for me.

[00:34:26] For me, it was more of that remodeling and restoring and getting the house updated to what is true and what's working now in my life as opposed to, um, my inherited faith, as you said.

[00:34:39] So, yeah.

[00:34:41] So, I'm glad that you, yeah, have made the podcast open to people who have different approaches to deconstruction because it doesn't have to look one way for people.

[00:34:50] Um, but to your second point of having a safe community, yeah, that's, that's so important.

[00:34:56] And it can also be really painful and hard to find.

[00:34:59] Um, and I share like my story of leaving an evangelical church that I, um, had been a member of and how painful that was and just that loss of community and loss of belonging.

[00:35:11] And it, it's still hard, um, even, you know, a few years later, still haven't like fully found the right place for our family and a place where we feel that sense of belonging.

[00:35:21] So, I'm very much in this with others, um, that a lot of the community that I found has been online, has been with, um, other people, people who do podcasts and other writers and social media.

[00:35:32] That's not always as fulfilling as embodied connections can be, you know, so it's, it's helpful to find those in-person connections too.

[00:35:40] But, um, but yeah, that's, that's a very hard reality of deconstruction and something that we have to grieve too is that loss of community.

[00:35:49] And then what does community look like to me now?

[00:35:52] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:35:53] And, and we've talked to people over the years and it's just, it's, it's something that, especially depending on, it's very geographical too, you know, depending on where you live.

[00:36:01] We talked to so many people who live deep in the Bible belt.

[00:36:05] Yeah, that's me.

[00:36:06] Yeah.

[00:36:06] And it's like, you know, you're not really, at least to your knowledge around other people who are like-minded, um, you know, because either everyone else thinks very differently than you,

[00:36:17] or they're keeping it very quiet, which is the other, the other piece.

[00:36:21] But either way, it makes it incredibly difficult to go through this with others around you.

[00:36:26] And so it can be very isolating and lonely.

[00:36:29] And so you're, you're absolutely right.

[00:36:31] Thank God for technology because at the very least there are resources readily available on the internet and ways to connect with other people that way.

[00:36:38] But that in-person community can be very, very hard.

[00:36:43] Yeah.

[00:36:44] And when you're in the midst of deconstruction, it can feel like you're in this, um, place where you don't really fit into either group.

[00:36:51] Like I don't really identify as an ex-evangelical because I still consider myself a Christian and some of them may too, but just like that, that doesn't really fully fit me.

[00:37:00] But yet I'm not a conservative Christian anymore, which is like kind of the norm here in the South where I live.

[00:37:05] And so it's just, it's this weird gray area of where do I belong?

[00:37:09] Um, and so that's something, yeah, that I still wrestle with too and try to figure out for myself.

[00:37:14] So if listeners are in that place, just knowing that you're not alone, there are a lot of us, especially, you know, over the last few years, um, who are trying to deconstruct and reconstruct and figure out our faith now and separate it from politics and from cultural, um, toxic Christian cultures.

[00:37:31] So yeah, there's a lot of us in that space.

[00:37:34] It can just be hard to find in, in, in person, in real life.

[00:37:38] I found a business way to get.

[00:37:57] We built a church uncertainty that fears everything against it.

[00:38:09] Where the refugee suffers and the white man.

[00:38:27] Taking me too long to try to help the world.

[00:38:49] I sat myself in your pews every single day.

[00:39:01] I gave you my money so that you would tell me what to do.

[00:39:42] Take me too long.

[00:40:10] Take up your cross.

[00:40:13] Use it to build.

[00:40:25] So you can keep.

[00:40:44] Dipped our gift.

[00:40:46] Salvation from.

[00:41:48] Take a while too.

[00:41:51] Wade through the fear and the hurt.

[00:42:02] For us to love.

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