Episode 018: Recovering from Purity Culture with Dr. Camden Morgante
Oct 08, 2024
If you grew up in church in the 90s and through the 2000s, it’s highly likely you were brought up in purity culture. If you’re here, it’s likely you’ve found yourself deconstructing and disentangling your thoughts and beliefs around sex and sexuality ever since.
Dr. Camden Morgante has done the work of identifying 5 myths around purity culture, and we get to talk about each them, the harm they caused, and how we can work to reform and reconstruct a sexual ethic that allows us to find healthy and authentic ways of embracing and expressing ourselves within the bounds of our current beliefs.
Join us as we discuss overcoming shame, bringing our full and healthy selves into healthier relationships, navigating singleness and dating in (and out of) the church, and more.
download Episode Transcript 📄
Quotes 💬
Purity culture was just an ethic of shame, a sexual ethic of shame, and it takes a lot of work to to heal from that.
When you’re just told it’s just automatically going to be easy because you waited, and that’s not reality that does lead to that cognitive dissonance, as you said, but also intense shame, because what’s wrong with me that I’m not enjoying sex in my marriage when I waited, when I held up my end of the bargain, where’s God’s end? You know that I’m supposed to have this easy, blessed marriage and sex life.
I think that’s an antidote to shame, is to feel like we’re in this together, whether that’s with your spouse or partner, or whether that’s with a group of friends or a group of other people who grew up in purity culture, who are working through it to know that you’re not alone, and it’s not it’s not a me or you problem. It’s an us problem.
Episode Resources and Links
- Pure by Linda Klein on Bookshop | Amazon
- The Great Sex Rescue by Sheila Wray Gregiore on Bookshop | Amazon
- RIFT by Cait West on Bookshop | Amazon
- Counting the Cost by Jill Duggar on Bookshop | Amazon
- Episode 5 with Cait West
- Rethinking Sex by Christine Emba on Bookshop | Amazon
- Stages of Faith by James Fowler book on Bookshop | Amazon
- Brian MacLaren’s Four Stages of Faith
Guest Spotlight
Dr. Camden is a licensed psychologist with nearly 15 years of experience as a therapist and college professor. She owns a private therapy practice and is a writer, speaker, and coach on purity culture recovery, egalitarianism, and faith reconstruction. Her first book, Recovering from Purity Culture: Finding Freedom and Reclaiming a Healthier, Values-Based Sexual Ethic, publishes October 15 by Baker Books. Dr. Camden lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with her husband and their daughter and son.
Website | Instagram | Threads | Facebook | Substack
Recovering from Purity Culture on Bookshop | on Amazon
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