Hi, we’re Jeremiah and Julia.
We are the hosts of the podcast Sexvangelicals!
Our podcast discusses the sex education the church didn’t want you to have.
While our podcast focuses on the influence of Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal (or EMPish) communities, businesses, and industries on the development of relationships and sexuality, EMPish churches are just an extension of a deeper cultural challenge:
The hyper-individualism of American and Western cultures.
Don’t get us wrong, relationships still play a significant role in individualistic structures. Relationships commonly serve a transactional function in our culture.
Let’s take Evangelical communities, our research interest. From the outside looking in, relationships are at the core of these communities. Publishing houses release books about how to have better relationships with your partner husband or wife, or most importantly, with God. Small groups are ways to talk about the Bible, Christian ethics, or navigating life together.
But relationships serve a purpose: The more moral and righteous life you live, the more likely it is that you get to heaven and receive eternal salvation. And by helping you get to heaven, I can also get in the good graces of God and increase my likelihood of getting into heaven.
Churches enact principles of capitalism like businesses do, replacing money, goods, and services with morality, righteousness, and rituals like baptism, testimonies, the bearing of spiritual gifts, and (in the 21st century) voting Republican. The more I can help you, the more I get rewarded.
Our hyper-individualism breeds some really interesting competitive power hierarchies, and ultimately, abuses of power. Few get ahead. Lots of people get left behind. (And not in the sense of the rapture.)
And yet, at the fabric of our society is relationships.
We have parents and siblings and cousins and grandparents. We participate in sports teams and school projects and community groups. We have besties and squads and crews. We have long-term primary partners, and a host of other relationships with varying longevity. We have sex. We play.
And these relationships require skills that the capitalist and competitive systems of religion and finance and education do not embody:
Collaboration. Mutuality. Teamwork.
Which brings us to our Substack page.
Our podcast, Sexvangelicals, discusses the sex education the church didn’t want you to have.
Our Substack page, Relationship 101, builds on this and explores how to think relationally in an increasingly individualistic world.
Julia and I bring the following skillsets and interests into Relationship 101:
We are certified sex therapists
We have a combination of 30 years of professional experience helping couples and families create relationship dynamics and family structures that work for them. We have our certification through the American Association for Sexuality Educators Counselors and Therapists (AASECT), the premier professional organization for sex therapy. In 2024, we will begin providing groups and coaching that helps folks who grew up in religious communities have thriving sexual relationships.
We are research geeks.
We are invested in reading and hearing how psychotherapists, sociologists, fiction writers, journalists, and religious leaders describe relationships and sexuality. Our Substack involves exploring these different voices and translating them into practical tools, stories, and processes for you to have the best relationship possible.
We are also up-and-coming authors
We are both in the early stages of writing books. Julia is writing a memoir that describes her process of navigating sexual violence within and outside of her fundamentalist community of origin. Jeremiah is writing a non-fiction piece about the impact of trauma on long-term relationships.
In order to do this work, we need additional funding.
Neither of us are connected with a university, or have access to grant opportunities to receive funding to fuel our research and writing projects. As such, we’re relying on creative strategies, such as Substack, to fund ourselves. In the fall, we will have a specific donation process, but we’d still love your commitment to donate to us!
Let’s heal together!
