Welcome to the Bear Marriage Podcast. I'm Sheila Ray Gregoire from Bear Marriage.com

where we like to talk about healthy evidence-based biblical advice for your sex life

and your marriage and you are joining us today in the middle of our

deconstruction series. We are doing a series of four podcasts and there's going to be a

couple more later this summer too. Looking at different people's stories of when they

just realized that some of the things they had been taught in church weren't right and what

they were going to do about it. We heard from Sarah McCammon two weeks ago,

author of the ex-Angelicals, we heard from Kate West last week, author of Rift, and today we have a different kind of story. Ryan George is going to join us and he

deconstructed out of a really fundamentalist church culture where he actually had to turn

his father in for sexual abuse.

But he found a healthy version of Christianity that he's been able to find

healing and that that's been something which has helped him deal with the

trauma that he went through. I am not saying that every person has to go through

this so this is always tricky when you're talking about deconstruction

because I want to honor people's journeys, but I just want you to hear different people's realities

so that we can start to understand what's going on in the broader church and how can we get back to health.

So I'm going to have Ryan join us in just a minute,

but before I do that, I just want to say thank you

to everyone who supports us on the podcast.

Those who listen, those who have joined our Patreon, when you join our patron, you just help us basically pay the bills.

To be honest, we have a lot of staff, we have a lot of expenses, just for graphics, for our website, upkeep, etc. etc.

And so your money helps us keep going so that we can do the research that we're doing.

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