Recovering From Purity Culture As A Person Of Faith with Dr Camden Morgante

Sam: 00:00:18

I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work, the Gundagara land and people. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

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Hey there, and welcome to this special bonus episode of beyond the Surface.

In these episodes, we take a break from the personal stories and I get to chat with experts on all things related to religious trauma, cults and deconstruction. These conversations are foundational and educational.

They provide deeper insights and understanding into the complexities of the experiences we hear in the stories.

Whether you're just beginning your journey, this is the first episode you're listening to, or maybe you're looking to expand your knowledge in general. These episodes are packed with valuable information that will help you navigate wherever you are. I'm your host, Sam, and this is beyond the surface.

Welcome, Dr. Camden. Thanks for joining me.

Camden: 00:01:46

Thank you, Sam. I appreciate you inviting me.

Sam: 00:01:49

I'm really excited about this episode.

I was just saying to you before I hit record that I really wanted to break apart, I guess, the Purity Culture episodes, bonus episodes, to give it the time and the energy that it deserves to try and pull that apart. And I really wanted to do an episode on navigating and recovering Purity Culture while still wanting. Wanting to maintain your faith.

And I love that that's what you speak to. And so before we get stuck into it, I'm just wondering whether you can introduce yourself who you are and where in the world you are.

Camden: 00:02:32

Yeah, sure. My name is Camden Morgante and I'm a licensed psychologist. I live in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the United States, in the South. And, yeah, that's.

That's who I am. Where I am.

I do writing, speaking and coaching on Purity Culture, recover and faith D and reconstruction, and then I have my own therapy practice here in Knoxville, too, where I see a little bit more variety. But my coaching is specifically focused on these topics and my writing, and we.

Sam: 00:03:04

Will reference it in a little bit. But you have a book coming out or by the time this has been released, I think it will have been out for a few weeks. But what is the book called?

Camden: 00:03:16

Yeah, it's called Recovering from Purity culture. It releases October 15th with Baker Books, is my publisher.

And it really focuses on diving into the myths of purity culture, the patriarchal roots of purity culture, and then how to heal from it, how to move forward in one's faith and sexuality, whether you're single or married or partnered or whether you're, you know, deconstructing and trying to figure out what you're faith is and trying to figure out what your sexual ethic is, whether you're parenting. I kind of address and hit on all those topics.

Sam: 00:03:51

Yeah. And so what is your own experience and story with purity culture and how did it shape, I guess, your view of yourself and the world around you?

Camden: 00:04:04

Yeah, my experience was growing up evangelical Christianity, pretty conservative, both politically, socially, theologically and all. All of the above. And. And yeah, purity culture was emphasized. I.

ons. So. And it peaked in the: 1990

And so I really got a lot of those teachings as a preteen. And in my early teen years, I signed a True Love Weights pledge. I had a True Love Weights ring. I read I Kiss Dating Goodbye.

Are these all familiar in Australia, too? Okay.

Sam: 00:04:56

Yes. Yeah. I. I'm not quite. I never read I Kiss Dating Goodbye, but I was heavily influenced by and the Bride Wore White.

Camden: 00:05:05

Yeah, me too. Yeah. Yes. That's so crazy. The far reach that. That had. That these books or the. This movement had even in other continents. Yeah.

But I was very influenced by. Yeah. Those teachings and I really bought into it. I was really a proponent of it. I wore my True Love Weights ring for an embarrassingly long time.

Almost 10 years. Yeah. Just. Yeah. It really gave me a sense of identity, purpose and worth, which I now.

I now have a different view on, you know, as a psychologist and as a person who identifies as more of like a deconstructed Christian.

And just in my age now, I really see that it made me very prideful and judgmental towards other people rather than giving me like this good and healthy sense of identity or purpose. Like, it became a very prideful and condemning thing of other people, which. Which I regret now. But. But, yeah.

So I really held on to it and believed in it, strong proponent of it.

And then I believed into this fairy tale myth of that I was going to marry my first love At a very young age, if as long as I stayed pure, you know, and didn't give my heart away and avoided casual dating. So I did all those things, had my first serious relationship in college. First love first. And it lasted almost three years.

So, like, a significant amount of time. And honestly and, you know, authentically believe that I was going to marry him. And. And we broke up.

And it was very devastating to me, you know, relationally, having a broken heart and that first experience of heartbreak.

But it also really devastated my faith because I realized that these false promises of purity culture just didn't come true for me, even though I had, quote, followed all the rules.

Sam: 00:07:01

Yeah.

Camden: 00:07:03

And it made me doubt, you know, the goodness of God, of, like, why is he not holding up his end of the bargain when I held mine? So it was many years of deconstructing my faith in. Although we didn't have that term really then back in my 20s, and.

But really questioning God and questioning my faith. And what's the whole point of all of this? Because I felt like all of my faith had been built on purity culture.

And I also got my doctor and became a psychologist during that time period. And. Yeah, so just many years of struggling with singleness and. And kind of struggling with my faith.

It's very common where I live in the south and again in Christian conservative kind of circles to get married young. And I did eventually meet my husband, and we got married when I was about 30, and that's considered pretty old in this area.

I know that that is very normal age in other regions and in other cultures. And so some people are like, what's the big deal? But from.

For just the context I grew up in, seeing all my friends get married before me, you know, and struggling with that, like, jealousy and just like, what's wrong with me? There was shame with that. Yeah. So we. We got married when I was almost 30.

And then about a year after we got married, I started realizing, hey, purity culture was actually not this totally great thing. 100 great thing. Like, maybe there were some good intentions or maybe there were some good things that could come out of it for some people.

But I'm seeing in myself and in my clients that it's had a negative effect too.

Sam: 00:08:38

Yeah. What was it like for you to start looking at, I guess, the teachings of purity culture through the lens of being a psychologist?

Camden: 00:08:47

Yeah, I think that really gave me a different perspective, because being, you know, getting training as a mental health therapist, we develop so much more critical thinking, abstract thinking, nuance, which you just don't get in conservative Christianity and conservative religions. It's. Everything is black and white. At least my experience was.

And so being able to see it with that nuance was like, okay, you know, on the one hand, this had good intentions. On the other hand, this had a lot of unintended consequences that have come from it.

On the one hand, I don't regret some of the personal decisions that I made in my dating or sex life because they reflect my values and morals. And that's important for all of us to make decisions that are congruent with our values.

But on the other hand, those false promises just didn't happen for me and for a lot of the clients that I'm working with who are.

I was working at a college counseling center at the time here in the south, and the kids were getting married so young and just so wholly unprepared for marriage and sex and. Or just struggling with their sexuality in. In a way that made me realize, like, this is because of their.

Largely because of their religious upbringing and the lack of sex education that they got. And realizing that the only sex education I got was really from being a psychologist.

Like, it was from my human sexuality class in undergrad and then in grad school, my training in sex therapy. Like, without that, I would pretty unprepared too, for marriage.

And so I had the benefit of getting married after all that training and, and that kind of gave me this passion for like, hey, I have this unique vantage point as a.

Identify as a purity culture survivor myself, somebody who's been through it personally, but also has this experience as a therapist and has a lot of tools and techniques that, you know, many people don't have access to. And so that kind of fueled me. Like, I need. I need to share this with more people than just one on one with my clients. And I want.

. So that idea first began in: 2017

It's really propelled me through this mission and sustained me through writing this book and speaking out about it.

Sam: 00:11:14

As you started to unpack the teachings of purity culture for yourself, how did your faith evolve and change?

Camden: 00:11:26

Well, first it was a lot of disillusionment and doubt. It was a lot of anger towards God and that pride I mentioned and jealousy and shame and yeah, a lot of.

A lot of struggling there in the wilderness for several years.

And I think that combined with the more nuanced both and thinking that I was able to kind of cultivate As a therapist, and I was trained as a DBT therapist. So, like, dialectical philosophy, that ability to have both and.

And walk the middle path and avoid either or in black and white, I really attribute that to my ability to think differently about this topic and many other topics. So that really helped me to start to think differently about purity culture and to see, like, what is the. Both and here. And for me, it was important.

I wanted to hold on to my faith. It was important for me to remain a Christian and to have. Remain. Have a connection with God, a relationship with God.

And I saw that many of my clients wanted that for themselves as well. But.

And so it became this wrestling with how do we have both our faith and our relationship with God and this healing and recovery from purity culture. Because often it's easier to kind of pick either or. And for some people, that is the right choice for them.

But for me, I just didn't see myself in that. In that, I guess, that path. And I didn't. I didn't see that many of my clients wanted that for themselves either. So it began.

Got me thinking of, like, what's another way? What is the middle path here?

Sam: 00:13:11

Yeah. How. I'm curious how it impacted on, like, your personal relationship with God.

Camden: 00:13:21

Yeah, it's been a journey. It still is.

Sam: 00:13:25

Yeah.

Camden: 00:13:27

Yeah. Anytime you have some, you know, some religious trauma, it's. Yeah, it can be harder to walk that middle path because you're.

You're essentially trying to stay in. You might be staying in churches or Christian communities.

You might be maintaining faith practices like prayer or reading the Bible or things like that. The very things that may have caused you trauma in the first place. And that seems so counterintuitive of why.

Why wouldn't you just avoid that, you know, since it caused you trauma? And again, for some people, that is the right choice. But. But for me, it. Yeah, it's. It's tricky.

It's challenging to walk that middle path, you know, recognizing when I still feel triggered with certain spiritual practices or teachings or faith communities, recognizing that and really leaning more into a personal connection with God and experiencing God as more than just what people told me to believe or just a set of beliefs to hold to or set of rules to follow.

Like, that's really what religion was to me growing up, was following the rules and believing the right things, but really having more of this, like, heart, soul, personal connection with God, which I'm, you know, again, still working on, but. And experiencing God, like, within me too.

Like, it's not he's he or they is not just external of like what people told me or what, you know, they told me the Bible said, but also within me of how can I look within myself, listening to my body, listening to my intuition, listening to what I feel like God is speaking to me. It doesn't have to come externally. Does that make sense?

Sam: 00:15:15

Yeah, absolutely. Did you come up with any or come up against any resistance from the people around you or was it primarily like a.

Your own little bubble exploration for yourself?

Camden: 00:15:35

Yeah, I think anytime we change, there's that homeostasis. Right. And from family systems therapy of like, people are going to try to keep us the same. Didn't encounter too, too much resistance.

You know, when I was first going through this in my 20s in grad school, a lot of my friends and classmates were going through faith deconstruction too. I was in an APA accredited PsyD program at a Christian university.

So it, you know, integrated, you know, spirituality in an ethical way along with the psychological, you know, content and training. But yeah, I found that that really challenged a lot of our faith and caused a lot of us to go through deconstruction at the same time.

So there was some support there, but it was also like we were all kind of, you know, floundering and trying to find our way with like, my family. Sometimes people ask me like, you know, how have your parents responded to this book that you're writing? And like, what do they think about it?

You know, I know that we don't, we don't agree on everything. I know that they only see. Can see things from their vantage point.

And it's sometimes it's hard to put yourself in the other person's shoes and see that even though you had good intentions, that that didn't equal good impact all the time. Yeah, so there's, there's maybe some.

Not really, they're not really resistant, but maybe just like, you know, curious or just not sure what to think about it. Amongst, like, my friends, there's been good support and my husband, there's good support.

And then in like the professional community, often there's good support, but sometimes there's pushback from both sides. Like, I very much get pushback from more conservative Christians, whether that's churches or therapists.

And then I also get some pushback from secular or more progressive therapists or communities too, because I'm somebody who's kind of attempts to walk the middle path. Like sometimes there's judgment on both sides and I feel put into a box.

And that's difficult when you're trying to be both in instead of either or it's, it's difficult to feel put into a box. So that's probably what I deal with the most and you know, what causes the most struggles.

Especially as I wrote this book that you know, that's coming out. It's like very vulnerable, you know, to write a book that does share some of my personal story and personal beliefs in it.

You know, we wouldn't normally share that in a therapy setting. Like we normally wouldn't self disclose that much. So it is very vulnerable.

And it also opens you up to criticism because people literally can write reviews, you know, which they should, they should be able to.

But like that, you know, brings up a lot for me of just like, what is this, you know, how's, what's the reaction going to be and what pushback am I going to get? And yeah, so there's a lot of, yeah. Work for me still to do there with, with integrating my parts and yeah.

Sam: 00:18:36

It'S a tricky tightrope to walk, I imagine. I. I'm curious. I mean purity culture is like an enormous umbrella. And so I'm wondering what it was like for you to work out.

What do I actually want to talk about in this book?

Camden: 00:18:57

Yeah, I think coming up with the mission for the book or like the, you know, the thesis, like this is the key takeaway for people. And for me it was that you can hold on to your faith and heal from purity culture.

And that really the goal of my book was to give readers the how, how to heal, how to think, like rethink about your beliefs and your sexual ethic without telling them what to believe or what to do or even just what is wrong with purity culture.

I do some of that, of course, but like, yeah, like I felt like there, there have been so many good books that have come out, so many leaders that have spoken out about purity culture that have really done a great job of describing what the problems were, what the toxic teach, the connections with rape culture, things like that. But for me, I kind of wanted to take this step further of like now that we know what the problems are, how do we heal from those?

And that's where the mind body integration comes in.

The mindfulness practices and somatic practices that I share several in the book and the DBT concepts that I bring in to help people with that mind body integration instead of really purity culture and fundamentalism in general leads to a lot of disconnection between our mind and body and just a lot of body shame and just, yeah, feeling Completely unintegrated, I guess.

Sam: 00:20:23

Yeah, yeah.

And I think that's one of the biggest things, I think, for a lot of people to realize is that, like, we often think that purity culture is just rooted in no sex before marriage, or, like, abstinence and things like that. And. And we go, actually, it's so much more than that. It's so much bigger than that. And there is such a hu. Mind, body disconnection that happens.

What has it been like for you to bridge that gap for yourself between that mind body connection?

Camden: 00:21:02

I think. Yeah.

Another one of my goals for the book was to be able to show that purity culture is more than just the belief in or the decision to wait until marriage to have sex, because I honor and support people who make that decision for themselves. And I think, you know, that. I think that's the ethical thing for us as therapists to do.

But I also think, like, we should all champion anybody making decisions that they feel align with their values and that they feel reflect what they want for themselves in their life. So that's another both, and for me, of, like, how can we choose to hold on to that belief and also heal the mind body disconnection?

And that's also a work in progress for me. You know, the embodiment piece. I. I've learned a lot from Hilary McBride about embodiment.

She's been a great teacher on that and just learned from other therapists and authors about more of the somatic practices and how trauma affects the body. And I. I really consider purity culture a form of trauma for many people.

And for many of my clients, that's very validating to hear because they will say, like, I don't understand what's wrong with me. Like, it's like my body is reacting to sex in my relationship as. As if it's sexual trauma. And I've never even been abused that I know of.

And, like, I trust my partner, and I feel safe and comfortable with them. And yet, like, I'm reacting like this, and I'll. I'll say, you know, there's nothing wrong with you. Like, that is.

That is very common coming out of purity culture. In fact, you know, Dr. Tina Shermer Sellers, when she's a sex educator and.

And researcher and when she was teaching sexuality classes and having students write their sexual autobiography, she noticed that the narratives of those who grew up in conservative religious upbringings was very similar to those of sexual assault survivors, that there is a very similar bodily reaction. So, yeah, you were asking, how have I navigated the mind Body connection.

And I think that is a work in progress to trust our bodies and to learn to listen to them instead of looking at our bodies as projects to fix or work on. You know, and that's a society thing, not just a purity culture thing.

You know, looking at magazine covers and it's like five steps to a good beach body or to flatter abs or whatever.

And you know, it's like a project that I always have to be improving or working on or it's something I'm, my body is something that I'm in a battle against like, you know, trying to make her eat less or trying to make them suppress their appetite.

You know, rather than seeing your body as, as you, you know, it's, it's it you and, and your body are one and appreciating them for what they do for you instead of just how they look. And so that's been some of the work I've done on my body image.

And then the, my mindfulness, my mindfulness training from DBT has helped me so much when it comes to staying in my body, staying present in my body.

I'm very much somebody who can live in my head, very intellectual and you know, comfortable in the world of thoughts and ideas and, and sustain in my body and in the five senses and you know, present in the moment is hard for me. And mindfulness really gives me some good practice in doing that.

And that's become a big part of my therapy practice for clients with almost any kind of presenting issue, but also for clients coming out of purity culture because they're often not very present during sex or during intimacy and they're in their heads and that is going to inhibit sexual pleasure in the overall experience. So that's part of some of the skills that I teach them.

Sam: 00:24:47

Yeah. And I think that that's, it's encouraging for people to hear for two reasons.

One, I think because broadly people think that just because we're therapists, we have it all together and we've worked it all out and that's not the case. And, and it is, you know, everything is a work in progress. And also because it's not a five step solution to working it out. It's, I mean it's.

When you talk about like listening to your body, we use listening in terms of like relationship. Right. So like you're building a relationship with your body and that's not going to happen in a five step process.

And so I think that, I think that can be really encouraging for people to hear that like it, it's not something that, like if it, if they haven't managed to work it out yet, that that's actually okay because it's not something to work out, quote unquote.

Camden: 00:25:50

So it's really a practice. Yeah, it's like I, I, I practice yoga. I really enjoy that. And they always say like the practice is the purpose in yoga.

It's not to hold a pose or achieve a pose or lose weight or anything like that. The purpose is the practice of it.

And just noticing what comes up for me in my mind and body during the practice and being able to non judgmentally observe those feelings that come up, that is what really works to integrate my mind and body. And so I think the practice of embodiment is a practice too. It's not something that takes five steps to achieve. Yeah.

Or you know, one week or five weeks to achieve. It's, it's probably a lifelong practice for, for me.

And I think especially in a very like image conscious society where we're getting messages from purity culture and from, you know, media or whatever about how our bodies should look or how they should, what size they should be, things like that, it's probably going to be a lifelong process for all of us to be able to critically think about and deconstruct those messages to make peace with and be friends with our body.

Sam: 00:27:03

Yeah, absolutely.

And I, and I think, I guess when I think about that, I think that that's like a, a lifelong process because purity culture is rooted in patriarchy and that's not going away anytime soon. So, so it's like they're synonymous with one another. And so just as like humans evolve and change, so do our bodies and so does society.

And so we're always evolving and learning and, and shifting. And so I love, yeah, I love the purpose is the practice. That's really beautiful.

Camden: 00:27:39

Yeah. And yeah, you're, you're right that purity culture and patriarchy are one and the same. I mean, yeah, patriarchy is the, the culture we swim in.

Yeah, the, that's all around us.

And yeah, maybe there's some parts of our broader culture that have progressed a little bit more than religious cultures have when it comes to patriarch, although there's still plenty of work to be done.

But I, but I make the argument in the book that patriarchy is the root and that we really cannot deconstruct and heal from purity culture if we don't deconstruct patriarchy to some extent. Like, and it's so interrelated with some of these other, what I Call toxic cultures like modesty culture of.

Which quickly leads to rape culture of blaming people for their own sexual assault rather than blaming the perpetrator or the systems that supported the sexual assault or hit it. That's what I mean by rape culture. And so I think, yeah, all of those are patriarchal. They all work to support the dominant. Yeah.

The dominant gender and our gender expression rather than. Yeah. Supporting the survivors or the victims.

Sam: 00:28:53

Yeah. And so I know that in the book you talk about some myths around purity culture. And is it right that you narrowed it down to five?

How did you narrow it down to five?

Camden: 00:29:07

Yeah, yeah, I think five's a good number. It is.

Sam: 00:29:12

Five's my favorite number, actually.

Camden: 00:29:14

Okay. I think I probably just distilled other ones, you know, down to.

And kind of lumped them together maybe, but because you might come up with more than five for sure. And surely there's ones that I left out or just didn't have time and space to address. But yeah, I got it down to these, these main five by.

By looking back at the books that I read, looking back at the teachings that I feel like hurt me the most reading what other people were saying, what other people were writing about it and listening to my clients and their stories and what they were saying about it. And these were the five that just kind of came up the most. And now we have some research even around some of those myths.

Myths and the effects of them. Yeah, we don't have a ton of research on the effects of purity culture still, and most of it is survey or correlational research. But we do have some.

And we have some peer reviewed research too. So I cited a lot of that in the book too. To say, like, this is more than just this. Not isn't just a memoir of my personal experience.

This is like my clinical experience too, and also the scientific research.

Sam: 00:30:24

Yeah.

And I think that that's really important for a lot of people to realize because, like, often we have, like the phrase, oh, well, that's just your experience thrown around. And. And it's not just your experience. Right.

Camden: 00:30:42

Yeah. I think certainly everybody who came out of purity culture had some unique parts of their experience.

And I hear things, you know, from my clients every day that I didn't experience. But there were so many things that were universal too. Like all of us, almost all of us heard modest is hottest. And almost.

Almost all of us heard, you know, don't date around, you should date to marry. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's courtship culture is what I call that. And you know, almost all of us heard if you have premarital sex, you're damaged goods.

And to.

To some extent, like whether you are a damaged and wilting rose or a chewed up piece of gum or a cup of water with spit in, or let's see, a torn up piece of paper. The latest one I heard was crushed Oreos.

Sam: 00:31:29

So I had a smash cake one I interviewed that was a more. It was an ex Mormon, though, so the cake might be Mormon specific, I don't know. But yeah, it was a smash cake. I heard the sticky tape one like.

Camden: 00:31:45

Okay, that one too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So almost all of us heard something like that.

Some sort of analogy that sent the message that you are damaged goods and no one's gonna want you. Which just directly is linked to shame.

You know, that just directly causes shame in the sense that I am bad, I am wrong, something is bad or wrong about me. Yeah. And I think even for people who.

Who didn't have sex before marriage, it can still lead to shame because maybe they went too far or, you know, just their sexuality itself is shameful. You know, they cannot make the switch to sex is dirty and bad and sinful and the worst sin to. Okay, now sex is great now.

You're supposed to enjoy it and always give your husband sex. Or, you know, that's kind of the message, one of the myths. So, yeah, it's. It's. Some of that is universal, I think.

But when people tell me they had a positive experience with purity culture or like, you know, no, no harm done, you know, I'm like, that's great for you. I'm happy for you. Yeah. I'm glad that you didn't have to suffer from that. And are you curious about the people who did?

Like, do you want to hear the other side of it and consider a different experience? Or maybe even do you want to dig deeper and see if there maybe are some unconscious ways that it affected you?

Maybe there is still a sense that your body is bad or wrong, or maybe there is still part of you that thinks sex is for your spouse or partner and not for you. Yeah. So those are just questions to consider for people who would say that.

Sam: 00:33:23

Yeah, was there? I mean, you obviously narrowed it down to five.

But I'm wondering, was there one of those myths that you were like, man, I really want to do debunk this myth. Like, was there just one that really grinds your gears personally?

Camden: 00:33:39

Well, I think the damaged goods myth is the most harmful one, is what I say that. You know, the one we just talked about because it's so shaming and because it just. Yeah, it affects people at such a deep, deep level.

But the one that personally affected me the most was the fairy tale myth like we talked about earlier. I mean, that's really what led to my deconstruction and led to, yeah, a lot of. A lot of pain and in my faith journey. So that was one that.

That chapter is the one I had to cut the most out of, you know, to get it. Get it down. But, yeah, I mean, I would say a lot of them.

Like, the flipped switch myth is the idea that sex is going to be great as soon as you get married, as long as you waited, and that it'll be terrible if you don't. Which it's like, that's basic common sense tells us that that's not true. So I wanted to debunk that one.

And also a little bit of sex education that they may not have gotten about.

Like, here's what really can lead to more fulfilling sexual relationships is education and communication and teamwork and mutuality and, like, those sorts of qualities, rather than just because you saved yourself, quote, it's going to be great. So, yeah, so there was that one, too. But the gatekeeper's myth is as a good one to debunk because that's the one that sets.

Sets men and women up against each other as.

Just really pits them as enemies because it tells particularly, you know, cisgender heterosexual women that they're the gatekeepers of men's sexuality and that they always have to serve their husband's sexual needs once they're married, and it leads to entitlement when it comes to men. Like, a lot of the heterosexual men that I. That I work with and the couples I work with very entitled about sex, or they. They have bought into that.

That myth that they are sexual and can't control themselves and need their wife to give them sex all the time. So, yeah, so that one I see doing just a lot of damage in the marriages and relationships that I treat.

Sam: 00:35:40

Yeah, and. And I mean, on that because, like, purity culture sucks for everybody.

Like, realistically, it sucks for, like, all genders, but obviously it really sucks for women. But is the. Is the book primarily aimed at women?

Camden: 00:35:59

I would say, you know, I try not to make it a Christian women's book, you know, but there's enough of those. Yeah, it's not fluffy. It's. It's. It's pretty. It's a deep dive, and it's very nuanced. My early readers have all kind of said that.

But I would say naturally, because of my worldview, my lens, and because of most of the work and 90% of my like social media audience is identifies as women on the, you know, survey that Instagram shows me. So I would say for those reasons it primarily will speak to cisgender women. But, but I have some men that have joined my launch team too.

And, and I certainly use this with, with the couples I work with too. So I'm hopeful that it can be a good resource for other genders and other people too.

Sam: 00:36:46

Yeah, absolutely.

And I mean, if, okay, if we move into, I guess, the intersection of recovery from Purity Culture whilst still wanting to maintain their own faith, what, what do you speak to in that intersection?

Because like, finding that middle ground is like, like, I imagine would be incredibly difficult and would feel a little bit like walking a tightrope at some point.

And so I'm curious, like, I guess what, what thoughts and advice you have for those people who want to recover from the harm but still remain a person of faith?

Camden: 00:37:36

I think that dialectical both and thinking is one of the most important foundational skills to do that. And that's, that's the first tool I start out with in my book because it's really sets the foundation for reading the rest of the book. So.

Yeah, so being able to hold that both and, and then the next, I think foundational skill is being able to separate what is cultural and myth and lie and then what was true and is consistent with your, your beliefs or your theology or your worldview.

And that is, can be really mind blowing for some of the people I work with because they've never considered that what they could have been taught in church or from a pastor or a Christian author could not be biblical.

And they've never really done any searching for themselves on what, what they consider to be biblical or to be consistent with the faith that they want to carry forward with.

So doing that process for yourself, that's why I was big on trying to offer people questions to consider and tools to do some searching on their own without telling them what to believe.

Because I thought the last thing we need coming out of Purity Culture is one other book that tells people what choices to make sexually or what is true for them. And I mean, of course, of course I share some of my opinions or some things like, I'll say this was a myth and the truth is you're not damaged goods.

So I guess there I am asserting a truth. But when it comes to one's own sexual ethic and faith I really want.

Want them to make that choice themselves and do the process of thinking through it themselves. Because it's empowering to do that work yourself and to come to a.

Come to a understanding or a sexual ethic that feels really consistent with who you are and what you believe, rather than just taking what someone else says. Yeah. So I think examining your beliefs and being willing to challenge them is.

That's the deconstruction process to me, is just sorting through, like, what. What is true and what is not.

is a belief that Maybe it fit: 2010

Because sometimes I'll have clients come to me who say that they. They want to you. They want to keep their faith, they want to stay Christians, and they just need to find out, find all the answers.

Like, they just need to get answers to their questions. Maybe they need to read more apologetics books.

You know, maybe they need to read, you know, this pastor or this author or this, you know, book that tells you the case for Christ. But instead I'm like, what if. What if you can maintain your faith in the presence of questions and doubts? You know, what if you can have both?

What if you can accept not knowing? Because deconstruction doesn't provide all the answers. But the good news is that the peace and the.

And the path forward is found in accepting the not knowing.

I think being able to make peace with those doubts and questions, it doesn't mean we stop learning or looking or reading or, you know, considering things for ourselves, but it does mean that I feel like I've made peace with the fact that I'm just not going to know everything. And there are some doctrines or theologies that I just. I just can't. I can't do a deep dive on those right now, you know, and I just.

Just kind of set them aside. And I have some foundational truths that I.

That center me and ground me and that I can rebuild my faith on without having to know all the other parts of it.

Sam: 00:41:44

I'm.

I'm wondering what you would say to people who are trying to go through this process of asking all of the questions and sitting, I guess, trying to sit in the nuance, but they're still in a very conservative church community.

Camden: 00:42:06

Yeah, that is a Good question. And I've been there, too. And some people do stay to choose to stay in those kinds of communities for various reasons, and that's a personal choice.

And I made that choice to stay for a while. But there comes a time.

There came a time for me and my family where the cognitive dissonance of being egalitarians, you know, believing in gender equality and women's empowerment and feminism and being in a conservative and complementarian environment. Complementarian meaning men and women are different and men are the leaders and women are the helpers.

So being in that environment, the cognitive dissonance of that just became too much, and it became where I'm having to carve off parts of myself in order to fit in here. And Brene Brown says, if you cannot bring your full self, authentic self, it's not belonging, it's fitting in.

And it actually increases shame rather than decreasing it.

And I found that for myself, I was having to hide too much of myself, censor myself, you know, bite my tongue when somebody recommends a book or an author that I don't agree with, or when someone makes a sexist joke or something like that, and, you know, sometimes speaking up, sometimes biting my tongue, depending on the situation or the context, but it just became too much. And.

And so finally, we left the evangelical church we were members of for many years and have transitioned to a church that is more open and accepting and has a female pastor on staff who they don't call a teacher. She's a pastor, you know, and. Yeah. And is more of an inclusive environment where we can.

I can feel proud that my daughter gets to hear from this female pastor in church, because I was 35 the first time I heard this female pastor speak in church, preach on a Sunday by her, you know, by herself on stage preaching. And my daughter was five the first time she heard it. And that was really powerful and healing for me, because it's like, I'm not gonna.

I'm breaking the cycle. Like, my daughter's gonna see all types of people and all kinds of leadership and sit at the teaching of great female preachers and. Yeah.

And not have to. Hopefully not have to carve off parts of herself or box herself in. Like I felt like I had to.

Sam: 00:44:34

Yeah, I can see that. That's still, like, I remember, actually. I remember seeing you post about it.

Camden: 00:44:42

Oh, yeah.

Sam: 00:44:43

A while ago when she. When you first went to this church and. And I remember thinking, like, that's like. That's the dream. Right.

Is for, like, the younger generation and the young girls and the children and the teenagers to be growing up, seeing women up the front and also seeing that sexual ethic doesn't mean not having a sexual ethic. It's not like an extremity here. And I.

I'm curious whether in the book, I guess, you speak to the fact that, like, I guess, recovery from purity culture is going to look very different for a young single woman versus an adult woman who is married with children or, you know, all of those different dynamics and what that is like.

Particularly, I guess, the difference for women who might be married and who might come up against friction from their husband, trying to wade through some of this stuff as well.

Camden: 00:45:59

Yeah, it's hard in a book because you're trying to address such a vast audience, but, you know, you have limited space to do it.

So I do have a chapter on singleness, because singleness and sexuality is what it's called, because I wanted to acknowledge that single people are sexual, too. There's this term sexual debut that's used even in scientific research to refer to the first time someone has sex, whatever that is.

And I hate that term because I'm like, you don't debut the first time you have intercourse. You debut as a sexual being when you are born. Like, you're born with that sexuality. It's an inherent part of your being.

And so I wanted to acknowledge that single people are sexual and to address ways that they can affirm their sexuality and educate themselves and make peace and embrace their sexuality and still stay within their chosen values, whatever that looks like for them. Yeah, and I just tried to include various perspectives as I could.

I interviewed divorced and widowed women for the book to talk about their perspective as far as, like, well, you know, I'm not a virgin anymore. Like, so what does this look like dating now? And what kind of choices do I make and how do I date?

You know, all single people that I work with ask me that, you know, like, how do I even navigate this? And I interviewed a queer Christian woman to get her perspective on how purity culture affected queer people.

I interviewed a black woman who's a sexologist to get some of her perspective. So, of course, it's limited. You know, one person can speak for their whole group.

And that is a limitation of my book that I wasn't able to address or include as many diverse perspectives as I would have liked. But I think, yeah, there's. There's different concerns.

To answer your question, there's different concerns for people who are single, younger, and just starting out with dating and thinking about their sexual ethic and people who are older and married.

And there's a chapter on parenting because that's, that's a big issue for, you know, me and a lot of my peers is, is we know purity culture didn't work, but what do we teach our kids? And for many of us, it's like, we don't want to swing in the opposite direction. We want our kids to make thoughtful decisions about their sexuality.

We want them to consider. Know about consent, of course, but also, you know, trust and safety and health and respect, and there's many other things to consider, maturity. So.

Yeah, so that is, is. That's another challenge that, that many of my readers are probably facing right now. Yeah.

So the, the issues are going to be slightly different for all of us depending on stage of life and age and the road that we've walked. But, but yeah, I say, you know, we're all in this recovery process together. We, we may all identify as Purity Culture survivors.

And some people have told me, I don't know if I'm a survivor because I'm still who. I'm still living this. And I'm. And I'm like, I understand you can claim that title of survivor for yourself as you're healing too.

You know, that it's really, it's in your past and not that you can just choose to get over it or anything, but that you are choosing to, I guess, like, say goodbye to it.

You know, you're choosing to discard and shed the shame of purity culture and to walk forward in freedom and in healing and whatever that looks like for you.

Sam: 00:49:32

Yeah, yeah.

And obviously as a therapist, I know that, like, some people recoil at using terms like victim and survivor and trauma around these spaces, but I think it's just using the language that feels right for you, but also not shutting yourself off to that language as well. And just, I think in terms of, you know, deconstruction, you want a stance of openness and curiosity and.

And I think that sometimes that comes in the language that we use as well. And like, let's try it on. Let's see what that feels like and why. Like, I'm sometimes like, well, let's talk about why.

Let's talk about why that feels not so great. Great for you.

Camden: 00:50:25

Right.

Sam: 00:50:26

Can often give us a lot of information as well, I think.

Camden: 00:50:31

Yeah, a lot of people use the term purity culture survivor.

But when I started using it, I did get some, you know, pushback or discomfort from people, including, you know, as I was writing my book from, like, my publisher, you Know, like, I don't, you know, I don't know if we can call the chapter Purity Culture Survivors. We called it Surviving Purity Culture because that felt like, okay, it's a little.

A little more open ended, I guess, but really wanting to emphasize that this is a term that people can choose to identify themselves. Like, if that doesn't resonate with you, that's fine.

I would get curious about why, like you said, I think as therapists, we get curious about what does that bring up for you? Why does that feel uncomfortable? But yeah, for some people, it's a very empowering term.

And for me, it really validates the harm that I went through and the significance of it and that it does have a trauma response for many people. It does present as a form of religious trauma for many people. So I think it can validate that for people who choose to use that term.

And it's certainly shorter than saying people who grew up in purity culture, you know, so just like more shorthand for that when I was writing, but also making space for people who that. That maybe that title doesn't resonate with.

Sam: 00:51:49

Yeah, yeah, it's a. I feel like anything in the deconstruction religious trauma world, everything is just full of nuance, right? It is, yeah. Nothing is black and white.

There's lots of gray, there's lots of rainbow colors. There's just like nothing is sitting in the binary anymore. There's so much in between.

Camden: 00:52:15

And because we all have different experiences, like religious trauma therapists, we're a very big spectrum too. Like, you know, some of us are still consider ourselves religious. Some people don't. Some of us, you know, had that background, maybe some didn't.

You know, it's. It's just not one box to put us all in.

And we all kind of find these are the clients, these are my, you know, people that I really work well with or these are the people that I really speak to. So I'm glad to hear that you're doing more of a series on this topic so that you can have more diverse perspectives and hear from. Yeah.

People who've had a different experience than me or who work with different types of clients than me, because it is so vast and we want to try to address as. As many of those pieces as we can.

Sam: 00:53:03

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think, I mean, even if I, like, when I think about my storytelling episodes, I want such a diverse perspective because there is not one set way that this pans out for people. And deconstruction doesn't mean deconversion. And deconstruction doesn't always lead to reconstruction, but it might.

And that might even look really different as well. And so.

But I think, you know, when we talk about purity culture, it is such a prominent narrative that to recover from purity culture means that you almost have to, like, throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like, you have to abandon your faith because, like, that's what it's rooted in.

But I think, as we sort of said, it's like it's rooted in patriarchy, not necessarily faith, or it's rooted in church systems.

And so I really wanted to make sure that, like, when I'm talking about purity culture, that there are a significant portion of people who are wanting to dismantle what that teaching did in their system and in their world, but they still want to remain as a person of faith. And so both of those things can coexist together. And. And it doesn't have to be one or the other. Yes. So I think that's important for people to know.

Camden: 00:54:38

I appreciate you making space for these, for different perspectives too. And not, you know, often we're.

We're threatened by people who have a different opinion or perspective than us or that, I mean, even that can bring up a trauma response if it feels just like, threatening to me or it feels. Feel wrong, you know, but. So I appreciate you, like, really wanting to seek diverse guests and show different, different stories.

Thank you for doing that.

Sam: 00:55:05

I. I like to finish all of my regular episodes with like, a word of encouragement or a thought or a piece of advice for people who are deconstructing.

But I. I like to specify it more in my bonus episodes.

So what would you say to someone who is, like, right at the beginning of their journey of, like, dismiss dismantling purity culture in their world and they desperately want to hold on to their faith.

Camden: 00:55:35

That you can do both. That shame is not from God, and he doesn't want to keep you in this shroud of shame for the rest of your life. And he.

I believe God wants to see us set free from these lies, wants us to experience healing and freedom and integration in our sexuality and in our faith, in our relationships. And yeah, so I believe that's possible for you and for. For the person of faith listening. Invite God onto this journey with you. Invite him to.

To be with you and to comfort you and be there in your pain and any. Your healing too.

Sam: 00:56:17

So I love that. And go buy the book, which will. All of the links will be in my show notes.

But if they cannot wait, where can people find you and connect with you if they would like.

Camden: 00:56:35

Yeah, the best place to find me is Dr. Camden.com my website and I'm on all this all the social medias at Dr.

Camden and the book is the book is Recovering from purity culture released October 15th. Yeah. So I would love to connect with people on social media or on my website.

Sam: 00:56:53

Amazing. Thank you for joining me.

Camden: 00:56:55

Yeah thank you Sam. I love this conversation.

Sam: 00:57:01

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of beyond the Surface. I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did.

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Remember, no matter where you are in your journey, you're not alone. Until next time, keep exploring, keep questioning and keep moving forward. Take care.