In this episode, Tim talks with sex therapist and author Tina Schermer Sellers about the hidden legacy of religious sexual shame and the impact it can have on our relationships, our spirituality, and our sense of self. Drawing on decades of clinical experience, Tina explores how messages absorbed in childhood can shape the way we experience our bodies, desire, intimacy, and even our understanding of God. Together they discuss purity culture, embodiment, safety, trust, and why our bodies often hold onto shame long after our beliefs have changed.
Along the way, Tina offers a more hopeful and life-giving vision of sexuality—one rooted not in fear or control, but in connection, pleasure, mutuality, and belovedness. The conversation explores eros as a life force, the possibility of healing through relationships, and how we might begin to reclaim our bodies as places of joy, wisdom, and even divine encounter.
Following the interview, Tim is joined by his wife Hannah for a thoughtful and often humorous conversation about growing up with evangelical messages around sex, dating and relationships. Together they reflect on shame, intimacy, safety, eros, and what it means to raise children with a healthier relationship to their bodies, desires and sense of self.
Interview starts at 19m 08s
WEBSITE
BOOKS
Sex, God, and the Conservative Church
SOCIALS
QUOTES
“Your body is the pen that you write the poetry of your life with. You cannot love, serve, or celebrate without being in your body.”
“Christianity did a really unhelpful, if not harmful, thing when it decided that desire itself was dangerous. It’s not dangerous; it just needs to be managed.”
“Many people have been profoundly betrayed by those who spoke for God but did not have a heart for God.”
2 Responses
You might like this story from my past – probably early 90s; I was already on a path of deconstructing (not my generation’s word for it, though I know what you mean!) but my faith still had a good way to go (probably still does, come to think about it), but I was on the road and moving fairly fast.
I was asked to be on a panel organised by the youth group at my Baptist Church. I shared the floor with a couple of men. My teenaged daughter was a member of the group and was present.
The young people were able to submit questions in advance and surprise, surprise most of these were around sex and sexuality. One of my fellow panellists apparently came with a list of Bible verses, one for each advance question.
There were questions about homosexuality and about sex before marriage, of course. I’m afraid the two men were quite emphatic about right and wrong, like some of those described in your podcast. No other sins quite compared with sexual sins. And I was sitting there thinking, ‘Get real, most of these young people will have sex outside of marriage anyway and how does this outright condemnation help them in the long term? What on earth can I say that won’t be simply so outrageous that it will be ruled out of court?’. Eventually rather than suggest there might be less rigid points of view, which would probably have had me dismissed as a backsliding heretic, I simply talked along the lines that whatever happens we need to remember there is always forgiveness. I hope it helped.
I was very amused when my daughter told me that after I had given my compromised answer,
the friend who was sitting next to her had said, somewhat shocked, ‘Your mum’s very liberal, isn’t she?’!
That’s a great story, thanks for sharing that Patricia. Tim