"I realized something that I had never thought about before, which is Christian purity culture wants to create an America through the flesh of teenage bodies." I totally shuddered when I read this. Like Brown Shirts. Like Hitler Youth. 80s evangelicalism was where we watched this all happen. I have distinct memories of our evangelical church grooming us for purity and patriarchy in response to the "sins of the 60s and 70s."
Being a "child of the Jesus Movement", you've given me a new book that I am *very* interested in reading. It sounds similar to Kristin Du Mez's book Jesus and John Wayne, which really opened my eyes up to a *lot* of things I was kept ignorant of growing up in the 70s and 80s. Putting Brad Onishi's book on my (ever growing) to be read pile, and will definitely check out the podcasts mentioned. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!
This was so good. I especially appreciated the ideas of (1) finding your "one thing" in your community and (2) "the best of times/worst of times" balance. I'll be returning to this resource in the future. Thank you, D.L. and Brad!
Thank you for calling it “grief work,” DL! I’ve wanted to read this but been scared off by the intense title and how close to home it will hit (my mom’s family also moved from the Midwest in the 60s to church plant in southern CA!). But somehow labeling it as grief work makes it feel more accessible for me. Thank you to Brad for this work and to both of you for this excellent convo!
This was good! I just read Brad’s book and learned a lot, especially about California. As someone who used to listen to SWAJ a lot until I just couldn’t anymore, I appreciated what Brad said about that!
When Brad talks about doing this work so he can put his body in historical context, it made me think about something Pete Walker said about trauma healing. He said one sign of healing is being able to find coherence in your own story--like, your life and how you’ve navigated it starts to make sense. I was really challenged when I read that, because I felt like I had done a lot of trauma healing, but the story of my life still, by and large, did not make sense. A murky sense that “I’m just weird” was still filling a lot of gaps.
Anyway, the work both of you are doing is so helpful in that aspect of trauma healing. I am finally, at age 41, beginning to deconstruct the impact of purity culture on my own body. Like I’ve been able to agree with other people’s assertions that yeah, purity culture is bad, it’s damaging, but I couldn’t locate the damage in my own body until very recently. Now there are so many stories I want to tell. About the contradictions located in my PDA body--intense social thirst coupled with intense social recoiling--and how these contradictions pulled me into the fantasies of heterosexual marriage and church as a way of retaining hope. About how purity culture was written onto my asexual body, erasing and obscuring my actual, deeply disruptive social longings. About how becoming fat, and then becoming thin, and then becoming fat again varied my access to Christian spirituality and prayer (I felt a disquieting sense that something false was afoot when I was briefly thin again in 2020 could suddenly re-access the full wealth of Christian spirituality; then, in 2021 I regained weight, lost my faith, and plunged into the dark, toward a spirituality that could actually sustain me. I hadn’t fully recognized the fascist purity culture connection until now!)
It’s a wild, disquieting ride, and as I begin to share my stories, I find myself engulfed in overwhelming feelings of self-disgust and shame. I just want to name that. It’s not my voice, it’s fascist purity culture, and it’s making my life so hard right now. But none of us are alone in this, are we? The shame ministered to our bodies over a lifetime is so isolating, but here we are building alternative communities under the foot of Christian fascism. Here we are, sharing out stories.
"I realized something that I had never thought about before, which is Christian purity culture wants to create an America through the flesh of teenage bodies." I totally shuddered when I read this. Like Brown Shirts. Like Hitler Youth. 80s evangelicalism was where we watched this all happen. I have distinct memories of our evangelical church grooming us for purity and patriarchy in response to the "sins of the 60s and 70s."
Being a "child of the Jesus Movement", you've given me a new book that I am *very* interested in reading. It sounds similar to Kristin Du Mez's book Jesus and John Wayne, which really opened my eyes up to a *lot* of things I was kept ignorant of growing up in the 70s and 80s. Putting Brad Onishi's book on my (ever growing) to be read pile, and will definitely check out the podcasts mentioned. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!
This was so good. I especially appreciated the ideas of (1) finding your "one thing" in your community and (2) "the best of times/worst of times" balance. I'll be returning to this resource in the future. Thank you, D.L. and Brad!
Thank you for calling it “grief work,” DL! I’ve wanted to read this but been scared off by the intense title and how close to home it will hit (my mom’s family also moved from the Midwest in the 60s to church plant in southern CA!). But somehow labeling it as grief work makes it feel more accessible for me. Thank you to Brad for this work and to both of you for this excellent convo!
Thank you, DL & Brad. What a great conversation! So many good things, especially at the end. Rice pudding & mystery novels 🩷🩷✨✨
This was good! I just read Brad’s book and learned a lot, especially about California. As someone who used to listen to SWAJ a lot until I just couldn’t anymore, I appreciated what Brad said about that!
When Brad talks about doing this work so he can put his body in historical context, it made me think about something Pete Walker said about trauma healing. He said one sign of healing is being able to find coherence in your own story--like, your life and how you’ve navigated it starts to make sense. I was really challenged when I read that, because I felt like I had done a lot of trauma healing, but the story of my life still, by and large, did not make sense. A murky sense that “I’m just weird” was still filling a lot of gaps.
Anyway, the work both of you are doing is so helpful in that aspect of trauma healing. I am finally, at age 41, beginning to deconstruct the impact of purity culture on my own body. Like I’ve been able to agree with other people’s assertions that yeah, purity culture is bad, it’s damaging, but I couldn’t locate the damage in my own body until very recently. Now there are so many stories I want to tell. About the contradictions located in my PDA body--intense social thirst coupled with intense social recoiling--and how these contradictions pulled me into the fantasies of heterosexual marriage and church as a way of retaining hope. About how purity culture was written onto my asexual body, erasing and obscuring my actual, deeply disruptive social longings. About how becoming fat, and then becoming thin, and then becoming fat again varied my access to Christian spirituality and prayer (I felt a disquieting sense that something false was afoot when I was briefly thin again in 2020 could suddenly re-access the full wealth of Christian spirituality; then, in 2021 I regained weight, lost my faith, and plunged into the dark, toward a spirituality that could actually sustain me. I hadn’t fully recognized the fascist purity culture connection until now!)
It’s a wild, disquieting ride, and as I begin to share my stories, I find myself engulfed in overwhelming feelings of self-disgust and shame. I just want to name that. It’s not my voice, it’s fascist purity culture, and it’s making my life so hard right now. But none of us are alone in this, are we? The shame ministered to our bodies over a lifetime is so isolating, but here we are building alternative communities under the foot of Christian fascism. Here we are, sharing out stories.