#CHURCHTOO with Emily Joy
We took this selfie just after Stacie finished reading Emily Joy Allison’s book #CHURCHTOO: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing. Jeff didn’t realize Stacie had started to weep. Find out why Stacie found this book to be so powerful and healing on this episode.
Understanding and confronting sexual abuse in the church. Our guest, Emily Joy Allison, is the author of #ChurchToo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing. She is a writer, poet, and yoga teacher. 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. Emily lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
We discuss her perspective on the various ways in which American evangelicalism’s way of thinking makes abusive relationships more likely, harder to address, and more painful for those who suffer from the abusive behaviors. Stacie starts out the show by sharing a moving testimony about her response to the book.
Content Warnings: sexual abuse/rape, spiritual abuse
We also discuss:
The Bachelor and Bachelorette and marriage and romantic expectations
Religious trauma
Purity culture
HPV Vaccine
Survivors and forgiveness (Matthew 18)
Tantra
The Danvers Statement
Yoga
Mind and body relationship
Opening music by Landon Mills. Music in the standard intro was written and performed by Aidan Mallinson.
Yoga with Emily Joy via Zoom:
You can catch older interviews with Emily Joy via Jeff’s old Virtue in the Wasteland podcast: recorded in Irvine and then recorded in Nashville.
