Hey, hey y'all! Welcome back for a weekly mini-series episode. I am so excited to be talking

about this hot, hot, hot episode topic with you today. We are talking about legalism

and the culture of shooting and sexual shame. Yep, all the things y'all were going there.

And I'm personally going to be sharing some of my own story and how that's played out

for me in my life. This episode really coincides with Chapter 3 of my book, Never Have I Ever,

Writing Sexual Shame. Now, a few things before we dive into this conversation. I do not believe

that all purity culture messaging is bad or wrong. I just want to start out by saying that,

okay? I don't believe that people who started the purity culture movement or who were

purity culture teachers necessarily had bad intentions. However, some of the ways it

played out did have a really negative and harmful and shaming effect on many different

kinds of people. My friend, Kathleen, my older mate says this, she's like, if you step

on somebody's toes, you maybe didn't mean to step on their toes, but you should still

apologize because it potentially hurt them, right? So it doesn't mean that you had a bad

intention that you didn't mean to step on their toes, but it still hurt that person.

And so that's kind of how I feel in some ways about the purity culture, movement, and

some of the messaging. Now, the book Divine Sex by Jonathan Grant reveals some staggering

stats on sex and the church. One stat being that 69% of single Christian evangelicals

say that they have had sex with at least one person within the last year. So 69%, almost

70% of Christian evangelicals say that they have had sex with at least one person in the

last year. While the church might be offering a plethora of purity culture teachings, there's

clearly a gap between what evangelicals have been taught and what they're actually doing

when it comes to their sex lives. Now, if you read my book, thank you for rejecting me,

...