Episodes
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S10E1: How to Say Goodbye Well
Over the last four years, we've written podcast episodes about the sex education the church didn't want you to have. One of the most threatening things for a high-control religious system is a goodbye, which results in actual transitions away from these groups that are secretive, forced, and...
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S9E11: Ask a Sex Therapist: Does Body Count Actually Count? With Natasha Helfer
This summer, we've answered the most common questions that we receive as relationship and sex therapists. And this week, we answer one of the most common questions: Does body count actually count? We live in a culture that views your sexuality based on how often you access it. Men who are deemed…
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S9E10: Ask a Sex Therapist: What If I Think I Am (or My Partner is) a Porn Addict? With Dr. Eric Sprankle
This summer, we're reflecting on the ten most common questions we hear from our relationship and sex therapy clients. We often hear folks talk about their sexuality in negative ways, comparing their sexuality, consumption of porn, and masturbation practices to that of addiction. We self-diagnose…
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S9E09: Ask a Sex Therapist: What Happens if I Come Out Later in Life? With Dr. Joe Kort
This summer, we're reflecting on the ten most common questions we hear from our relationship and sex therapy clients. Growing up in a high control religious space means that queer people often have to repress their sexuality, and may not come out until their late 20s, 30s, or later, which has...
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S9E08: Ask a Sex Therapist: What Happens at a Play Party? With Ally Iseman, Founder of Passport2Pleasure
This summer, we're reflecting on the ten most common questions we hear from our relationship and sex therapy clients. In the last few years, we've increasingly heard couples asking about play parties, sex parties, cuddle parties, and the like. Opportunities to practice touch, sexuality, and play…
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S9E07: Ask a Sex Therapist: What if I Want to Have Sex with Other People? With Becs Waite and Jimmy Bridges of This Space Between
This spring, Julia and Jeremiah are answering ten of the most common questions they hear from clients, exvangelicals, and the larger cultural zeitgeist. One of the most common questions is "What if I want to have sex with other people?" In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah are joined by Becs Waite...
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S9E06: Ask a Sex Therapist: What Do I Need to Consider When I Have Sex for the First Time? With Erica Smith.
This spring, we are answering ten of the most common questions that we hear as sex therapists. This week, we're exploring the question, "What do I need to consider when I have sex for the first time?" We created six different scenarios that a person might have for the first time: A general first...
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Episode S9E05: Ask a Sex Therapist: How Do I Have My First Orgasm? With Erica Smith
This spring, Julia and Jeremiah are answering the ten most common questions that we receive as sex therapists. In this episode, they explore the question, "How do I have my first orgasm?" If you haven't had an orgasm before and you want to have orgasms, messages about "just taking it off the...
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S9E04: Ask a Sex Therapist: What Happens if Sex Hurts? With Dr. Camden Morgante
This spring, Julia and Jeremiah are answering ten of the most common questions they hear from clients, exvangelicals, and the larger cultural zeitgeist. One of the most common questions is "What happens if sex hurts?" In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah are joined by Dr. Camden Morgante…
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S9E03: Ask a Sex Therapist: Does Planning Sex Kill the Vibe?
This spring, Julia and Jeremiah are answering ten of the most common questions they hear from clients, exvangelicals, and the larger cultural zeitgeist. One of the most common questions is "Does planning sex kill the vibe?" In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah talk about the distinctions between...
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S9E02: Ask a Sex Therapist: Are My Genitals the Star of the Show?
This spring, we're answering the most common questions that we receive about sexuality. A lot of questions revolve around our genitals. How are they supposed to look? How are they supposed to function? What happens if they don't function the way that they're "supposed to function"? the In this...
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S9E01: Ask a Sex Therapist: Can My Relationship Survive Deconstruction?
Deconstruction is the process of re-evaluating the worldview and behavioral expectations of a specific community. Talking openly about sexual experiences that exist outside of purity culture dictates is one of the fastest ways that a couple from a high control religious context may begin...
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Bonus Re-Release: Loving, Living, and Leaving the Evangelical Church, with Sarah McCammon, part 2
We are thrilled to re-release part two of our conversation with NPR National Correspondent Sarah McCammon. Sarah is the author of the book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. In the age of a second Trump presidency, it's imperative that we discuss the...
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Bonus Re-Release: Loving, Living, and Leaving the Evangelical Church, with Sarah McCammon, part 1
Last March, we had the opportunity of interviewing NPR national correspondent Sarah McCammon discussing the strategy and implementation of rigid conservative values in her book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. We are re-releasing both our conversations...
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S8E09: Letting the Dust Settle: Finding Your Values and People
Letting the dust settle allows us to step out of the reactionary space and evaluate our own lives and relationships. In our final episode of the series "How to Practice Social Justice Without Being a Jackass", Julia and Jeremiah talk about how to make decisions based on values that are important…
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S8E08: Letting the Dust Settle: Grieving Following the Election
We close our series on How to Practice Social Justice This Election Season with a two part episode called "Letting the Dust Settle". We now know the outcome of the election. For many folks, there's an enormous amount of fear, anxiety, and dread about the behavior and decisions of the incoming...
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S8E07: How to Have Relationships with People Who Have Different Perspectives from You During the Election Season, with Sarah and Nippy from the A Little Bit Culty Podcast
We've tried to hold two seemingly oppositional positions during our podcast series "How to Practice Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass". 1) We do not support fascism, most notably showcased by the 2024 Republican Party. 2) We support having relationships with people who...
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S8E06: How to Navigate the Tension Between Advocacy and Healing, with Sally Gary and Karen Keen of Centerpeace
For many Exvangelicals, there's an enormous pressure to move into spaces of advocacy for civil rights, especially two weeks before the 2024 Presidential Election. However, advocacy can easily replicate systems of criticism, moral superiority, and shaming, especially when there's un- or...
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S8E05: How to Do Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass: The Role of Project 2025, with Andra Watkins, author of How Project 2025 Will Ruin Your Life.
One of the biggest sources of stress this election season has been the publication of Project 2025. As we continue our series How to Do Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass, we recognize that many of the policies in Project 2025 are dehumanizing, as well as unwise. While…
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S8E04: How to Practice Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass: The Role of Social Media
A series called "How to Practice Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass" wouldn't be complete without an episode in which we talk about the scene of many crimes of jackassdom: social media. After all, the ways that we communicate in virtual platforms are quite different from…
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S8E03: How to Do Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass: When Charisma and Vibes Interfere With Healthy Communication, with Matthew Remski of the Conspirituality Podcast
Healthy systems, be they families, organizations, or countries, require healthy leadership. In our work as therapists, coaches, and cultural critics, we pay attention to the following question: How does one communicate to the larger system that they are a healthy leader? This week, we talk with...
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S8E02: How to Do Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass: Understanding Populism.
November's presidential election represents a comparison between two forms of government. One, a democracy, driven by the principle that many people have voices, and ideally a government that works for a large sum of people. Two, an autocracy, driven by the principle that few people have voices....
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S8E01: How to Do Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass: An Introduction
We are less than two months away from the 2024 Election. This Election season is a bit different, because rather than voting for separate political parties, we're voting for two systems: democracy and autocracy (specifically, a Christian Nationalist theocracy). Autocratic governments tend to rely...
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S7E05: Summer Series: Taking a Break From...Setting Goals
It's the first week of school for many students and families. The excitement of a new school year comes with new relationships, new beginnings, and setting goals. For many folks, especially those who grew up in conservative religious environments, setting goals can carry an enormous amount of...
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S7E04: Summer Series: Taking a Break from...Social Media
Social media has the capacity to bring out the worst in us as communicators. Julia and Jeremiah talk about strategies for communicating as effectively as possible on social media, which can include taking a break from it altogether. We explore: What Not to Do on the Internet (6:30): Jeremiah…
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S7E03: Summer Series...Taking a Break from the Performativity of Weddings.
Our work as relationship therapists invites couples to consider the variety of ways that their relationship could look, based on the values, traits, and preferences of the people in that relationship. Plenty of couples choose monogamy because it best aligns with these characteristics. However,...
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S7E02: Summer Series: Taking a Break from Sex
One of the biggest myths about sexuality is that the more sex you're having, the better the relationship is. Perhaps that's true, perhaps that isn't. But the myths around quantity place extreme pressures to perform sex, and a lot of panic around seasons with a lower quantity of sex. This week, as...
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S7E01: Summer Series: Taking a Break From...the Extreme Demands of Parenting
Happy first official week of summer! We recognize that for many folks, summer requires a reorganization of scheduling and routines for parents, who have three months in which they cannot rely on schools to partner with them in rearing their children. While some parents see these three months as...
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S6E15: Was Keith Green a Cult Leader?
This week, Sexvangelicals has teamed up with the I was a Teenage Fundamentalist podcast, to bring you their thought-provoking conversation with Tracey Phalen. She herself was a teenage fundamentalist, and details her experience as a member of the Last Days Ministries. The episode begs the…
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S6E14: How to Talk with Your Kids About Sexuality When You Grew Up in an Evangelical Community, with Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai from the Holy Ghosting Pod.
Many folks who grew up in the 90s and 00s grew up with an extreme amount of sex negativity. Regardless of whether or not they grew up in Evangelical churches, Gen-X and millennials were impacted by a culture and policy that reinforced negative messages about bodies, sexuality, and gender. And…
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S6E13: How to Navigate Co-Parenting Post Deconstruction, with Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai from the Holy Ghosting Pod
Mother's Day was this weekend, and is a complicated holiday for many folks. On the one hand, the celebration of women's expected unpaid labor for one singular day seems trite, at best. On another hand, women navigate a myriad of challenges on the pathway to motherhood, from obnoxious questions...
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S6E12: Coming Out in Evangelical Families, with Singer-Songwriter, Adaline, part 2 of 2
Pride month next month is going to be especially important. Based on the threats from Project 2025 and the behavior of other religious nationalist groups, federal bills that prevent states from discriminating against queer folks are at risk. Coming out, already a stress-inducing process…
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S6E11: Coming Out in Evangelical Families, with Singer-Songwriter, Adaline, part 1 of 2
One of the most common targets of Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal (EMPish) communities in the 21st century are queer people. The moralizing of straight, married relationships places people who are attracted to folks of the same sex/gender and folks who are curious about sexual experiences…
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S6E10: Banned Books: Non-Toxic Masculinity, by Zach Wagner, part 2 of 2
What are the messages that we wish we learned about masculinity? What are messages that we'd like to teach younger generations about masculinity, and in conjunction, how we might do relationships more effectively, more collaboratively? We are thrilled to have Zach Wagner, author of Non-Toxic...
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S6E09: Banned Books: Non Toxic Masculinity, with Zach Wagner, part 1 of 2
Healing from Purity Culture involves conversations of how Evangelical communities have created undue amounts of anxiety and pressure for men as well as women. We talk with Zachary Wagner, author of the new book Non-Toxic Masculinity, about the importance of deconstructing simplistic, reductive...
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S6E08: Banned Books: A Well Trained Wife, with Tia Levings, part 2 of 2
Are you interested in writing a memoir? Then this episode is especially for you! We're excited to have Tia Levings, author of the upcoming book A Well Trained Wife, as our guest for Sexvangelicals this week. Tia talks with us about: Hero's Journey (4:30): Tia starts us off: "It's a way to...
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S6E07: Banned Books: A Well Trained Wife, with Tia Levings, part 1 of 2
"While this story is my own memoir, the situations in this book are far from unique. With me stands a choir of invisible fundamentalist women, too silenced to tell their stories for themselves." We're honored to have Tia Levings, author of the upcoming book A Well Trained Wife, as our podcast…
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S6E06: Banned Books: The Exvangelicals, with Sarah McCammon, part 2 of 2
There's a lot of memoirs, social media comments, and dialogue about leaving the evangelical church. However, as our guest, NPR National Correspondent Sarah McCammon, says, "you can't really understand the leaving without understanding loving and living the evangelical church." Sarah is the author...
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S6E05: Banned Books: The Exvangelicals, with Sarah McCammon, part 1 of 2.
It's been really fascinating to watch the ways that Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal (EMPish) cultures have begun to be deconstructed and discussed on a wider cultural level. While some still struggle to accurately name the direct correlation between EMPish cultures and the construction of…
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S6E04: Banned Books, When Religion Hurts You, with Laura Anderson, part 2 of 2
One of the most common relational processes that the deconstructing world talks about is boundaries. Evangelical circles encourage the elimination of boundaries. Sexuality is public, as Purity Culture invites people in leadership positions to make a variety of comments about people's bodies....
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S6E03: Banned Books: When Religion Hurts You, with Laura Anderson (part 1 of 2)
What is religious abuse? Dr. Laura Anderson, in her new book When Religion Hurts You, defines it as: "The improper use of religious beliefs, teachings, doctrines, and relationships against another person. This might include harassment, humiliation, mind control, psychological abuse, isolation,...
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S6E02: Banned Books: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, with Deesha Philyaw
Purity Culture is largely embedded within White social and political systems intended to dominate and control bodies through a hyper-moralistic, anti-sex landscape. However, in this last week of Black History month, it's imperative that we talk about the ways that Purity Culture has impacted…
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S6E01: Banned Books: A Brief History of How the Christian Publishing Industry Promotes Myths About Relationships and Sex.
Julia begins, "Unlearning the messages from the church archive is only part of the healing process. The next step is learning new ways to engage relationships and sexuality. So, together, we are going to begin creating a new library with literature that can support us in building better, more...
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S5E06: Kicking Off the New Year with Spiritual Abuse: Things to Consider When Disclosing Spiritual Abuse, with Sarah Stankorb
The Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptist Convention, and Acts 29 Churches have all had significant challenges with sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse in their systems, something that becomes even more pronounced when religious systems become intertwined with private and home schooling, sex...
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S5E04: Kicking Off the New Year with Spiritual Abuse: How Anger Can Be a Vital Resource for Processing Trauma and Beginning Change, with Sarah Stankorb
It's well documented that reporting abuse to larger systems is a daunting process. The Southern Baptist Convention is the latest organization to have been outed for the ways that it protects perpetrators of violence, especially against women and children, two categories of people whose stories…
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About this show
Sexvangelicals is a podcast about the sex education the church didn't want you to have, hosted by Julia and Jeremiah, two licensed and certified sex therapists.
Hosted by
Jeremiah Gibson and Julia Postema
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