Ep. 11: ChurchToo: What’s Purity Culture Got to Do with It? with Emily Joy Allison

Show Notes

Episode Summary

Is it possible that most of what our evangelical churches teach about sex and purity actually prime us for abuse? In this episode, we chat with Emily Joy Allison, author of the new book #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing, about how purity culture, complementarianism, and male headship contributed to her abuse. She also offers some risk-factors or warning signs of abusive cultures, how to share one’s one story, and how to heal.

Content Warning: Spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, religious trauma

Bio

Emily Joy Allison is a writer, poet, and yoga teacher who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. She holds a degree in philosophical theology and apologetics from Moody Bible Institute and is currently pursuing a Master of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt Divinity School. In November 2017, as the #MeToo movement was going viral, Emily came forward with her own story of abuse at the hands of her church and launched the #ChurchToo movement overnight. She has been writing and speaking about religious sexualized violence and its theological underpinnings ever since, culminating in her brand new book #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing.

Follow Emily on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook!

Quotables

• “Survivors in general, and women particularly, are conditioned to sort of self-gaslight, telling themselves it wasn’t that bad or others had it worse.” (tweet this)

• “Theology is part and parcel of the basic constitutive problem of #ChurchToo. Our entire sexual theology needs to be upheaved.” (tweet this)

• “It’s not enough to say that if you are just simply not complementarian, you will have no abuse in your church, because we know this to not be the case.” (tweet this)

• “Women are pretty much discipled to not know when their boundaries are being crossed because they’re being told it doesn’t matter what they want, and that lays the groundwork for all sorts of violence.” (tweet this)

• “If people don’t believe you when you tell them about your lived experience as a marginalized person, they’re not going to believe you if you come to them with data.” (tweet this)

• “If a church can’t make the changes necessary so that it’s not being a force for net harm, then the world will be better off when it’s no longer there.” (tweet this)

• “Things like purity culture leave marks on our hearts and impact our lives going forward in ways that are virtually undetectable. It’s traumatic either way, and our bodies don’t know the difference.” (tweet this)

• “If it was traumatizing to you, it was traumatizing. You don’t have to justify it.” (tweet this)

• “Sexualized violence exists on a continuum, and it looks like a lot of different things, including purity culture.” (tweet this)

• “Every survivor needs to ask themselves, ‘What does justice look like for me? What would actually be reparative for me?’” (tweet this)

• “Your energy is sacred, so save it if you need to.” (tweet this)

Timestamps and References

• [02:47]—Why Emily wrote #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing

• [05:05]—How Emily went public with her story of abuse and thus birthed #ChurchToo

• [09:39]—What purity culture has to do with it

• [13:25]—How church culture and theology contributes to victim shaming and perpetuation of abuse

• [20:00]—How to have conversations with people who believe that oppressive theology comes from God

• [28:40]—Warning signs that a church has the potential to foster abuse (if it’s not already)

• [33:38]—How to determine if you’re the victim of sexual violence

• [39:46]—How to tell your story, despite being in a system that isn’t safe, and how to seek justice

• [46:48]—Where Emily finds hope for the future of faith

• [49:09]—Rapid Fire questions

• [55:58]—Emily’s spoken-word poem “Thank God I’m a Virgin” (special thanks to Emily for letting us use it!)

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Credits

This episode was produced by The Sophia Society. Music is by Faith in Foxholes, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge. Emily’s photo in the episode art is by Jenny Blake.