Curiously Strong Pod

We have talked a lot about the ways that our religious upbringing has hurt us but we do think it’s important to acknowledge that very few things are entirely bad and so we wanted to dedicate an entire episode to the good things we are taking away from evangelicalism. What did we learn from church? What opportunities were presented to us? Community always has been an important one and one we hear from lots of other exvangelicals and ex-religious people as well. Another facet is the charitable spirit of Christianity (when done right) and how it often changes lives for the better. Trish loves the Bible as wisdom literature and likes thinking about the good things we can get out of it. Jess has been taught that everyone has inherent value and no one is beyond redemption.April values the importance of not seeing people as objects but rather as full human beings.Listen to find out all the other redemptive parts we dug out from our memories even if they were sometimes hard to find as this season of identity comes to a close. 

From AOL chatrooms to Myspace to Instagram, we have certainly evolved in how we communicate with and to the world. It seems like embarrassing posts and status updates were a part of all our online lives but we were pretty lucky that it all happened when no one was really paying attention and we didn’t have to face the consequences for cringy things we may have said. It was meant to be there and then gone but now we realize that these posts are going to stick around for decades. The globalization of the world through social media is truly a double edged sword because of all the obvious bad reasons but also the opportunities to learn from others, having your perspectives changed, and meeting people we otherwise wouldn’t have.We discuss how, because of the compulsive need to share, it makes it hard to “be in the moment” without thinking of the different lenses for this situation. Are we just living for the end product? Or is it possible to actually achieve a balance of being present in a moment as well as capturing it for future memories? Our consensus is that it depends on the person but certainly possible.Context matters, so we also talk about how we recognize that we may not be entirely the same person online as we are in “real life”. We answer the question: Since becoming an exvangelical, how has your online presence changed? It turns out we all have very different answers.

A Canadian, an American, and a German walk into a bar to start a podcast talking about what privilege means to us and where we source it from. Whether it’s the colour of our skin, our respective home countries, or the religion we grew up with, we all had immense privilege in our lives despite our individual seasons of pain. But we never suffered because of what we look like and where we are from which is exactly what this whole conversation revolves around. Privilege is a beautiful thing when shared and made available to those around you. We try to be as honest as we can be with ourselves in this episode and acknowledge the things that have paved the way for us to succeed in this life (success looking different for everyone, of course). We also talk about the rarely discussed idea that growing up Christian gives you the unique privilege of being trusted within your community. There is an assumption of good character as a Christian that influences someone else’s decision to hire you since you share the same values, as we all have experienced. We share how we were introduced to the concept of privilege in the first place and how  Christians should be the first to acknowledge their privilege since their entire belief system revolves around them being the chosen people. Yet, there is still that persecution narrative that pops up all the time, but privilege doesn’t mean your life is good, it only means that you were given a headstart in the race of life. We do all still have to run but someone might get a bottle of water along the way and someone else doesn’t. 

How has the experience of leaving evangelicalism affected the relationships we have with the people around us? We need to be shifting away from an “us” versus “them” mentality because so much of conservative Christianity is defining yourself by whether you are in the in group or out group. Whether you are bad or good, right or wrong, saved or lost. So we don’t talk about camps anymore, everyone is an individual and nuanced. Christianity had taught us that everyone is our responsibility because we put them on a path to either heaven or hell purely based on our interactions creating an impossible burden and crushing weight of someone’s salvation. At the same time we were taught that it’s up to the Holy Spirit in the end and it all results in cognitive dissonance. But now we can say: “I can remember someone’s humanity but I don’t have to interact with it. Not everyone is my responsibility.” We also tackle topics like forced vulnerability in small/community groups causing psychological harm and how much we dislike it when people tell us they are going to pray for us. “You had to talk to god about me?” Some questions we consider are: How do we balance real vulnerability and sharing experiences while not having to justify and defend our life choices? How do we say no without having to explain ourselves and how are our boundaries with other people now that god is out of the picture?

We now talk about what our sexuality means for our day to day mental space and relationships. Hear why Trish thinks it’s different coming out in Canada versus the US. We also discuss the idea that sexuality is fluid and can change over time. The question is: “Is it necessarily our sexuality changing or is our relationship to it changing? What situations am I putting myself in that are going to draw out these sides out of it?” Sexuality is very fluid and weird and nuanced and that is okay, because for every human that exists there is a new way of being. And as language changes, so can labels.We also really get into how sexuality relates to feminism, body positivity, and power. Lastly we talk all things sex and vulnerability and how important it is to bring these issues to the table. “It’s not about sharing the details of the mechanics of it but you can relate to people on the experience as a totality and what it brings up for you. We all have body issues we have to confront when we have sex. It’s a common experience.”

Today Jess, April, and Trish spill the tea about all things sexuality. The episode starts off with us explaining how we currently identify sexually and the complicated journey from childhood until now where we are finally comfortable with who we are. Sexuality is hugely influenced by a religious upbringing and can sometimes be incredibly damaging. They bring up the struggles of sexuality, the harmful purity culture, the idea of casual sex, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and why Jess read Every Young Man’s Battle. We realized that much of our sexual “sin” was pure thought crime (i.e. lusting) and how this ultimately leads to dissociation from our bodies. Surprisingly there are also some good things about growing up in a conservative sexual culture that come up. But then the conversation shifts back to the weird, heteronormative concept of virginity and how in actuality sex is nuanced, individual, and personal.

On today’s episode your hosts talk about our day jobs, what we love most about them, how they relate to our identity, and whether we find them fulfilling. We discuss what it means to be a millennial in the current work force and how the idea of careers differs so much from older generations. Work is such a big part of everyone’s lives because we spend so much of our time doing it so it is bound to influence us in a major way. But how much of our life is work, really? Does it consume us entirely or do we find a balance to enjoy it when we do show up? Some make their work their entire identity and that is their prerogative but you can certainly find additional identities to adopt. We should be seeking alignment, not have one thing take over everything. But we also recognize that having these choices is a privilege, an opportunity we are going to take and run with, even when some from the older generation don’t understand it.Listen to us answer the daunting question: “If you had to step away from work for a period of time, how would you feel/how would it affect you?” As structure and productivity prove to be essential for a fulfilling life, the idea of not having a work identity would be difficult for us.

Let’s talk about religion, the reason we are all here. You’ll find out what religious climate/culture everyone grew up in and what we would consider ourselves now. A big part of the conversation is how god was viewed in our childhoods and how that shaped our relationship with this god as well as other people later in life. A major discussion point revolves around reasons and catalysts for leaving the faith or making pretty big adjustments if not leaving entirely. While religion certainly has its positive parts, we have also felt the awkward, isolating, and even hurtful aspects of it that influence our thoughts and behaviours to this day. We have all felt the in-between of not belonging to the Christian group anymore but also not really belonging to the secular community and that can be a lonely place.We raise a lot of serious (and not so serious) questions such as “What the hell is flag-waving?”, “What is the age of accountability and should it be lower?”, and “What does it mean to have an identity as a changing human?” Prepare to either relate to a lot of the facets of Christian upbringing or be pretty weirded out by the stuff we used to do.

In this episode your hosts discuss everything Enneagran related: how we typed and mis-typed ourselves, how we got into it in the first place, how this relates to our evangelical and post-evangelical selves, and what we like most about our own types. April realizes that there is a type pattern in her friends/family circle, Trish has an ability to move from her type to her wing with ease when the situation necessitates it, and Jess is still working on not apologizing so much. Rather than having this be an explanatory episode about what the Enneagram is, we assume that the listener already has a basic knowledge of this typing system and discuss how it impacts us personally. Find out whether there can be a future for this podcast if two out of the three don’t like engaging in conflict (spoiler: there can) and what Trish said that made April respond with: “I’m going to get that tattooed on me”. 

Meet your hosts: Jess, April, and Trish as we introduce ourselves in this pilot episode of the podcast. Learn about how we met each other and how we got to the point of starting this project as we talk about growing up evangelical and ultimately what led into severing ourselves from that identity. How do people identify themselves nowadays and what does it say about them? Get ready for lots of questions, lots of (loud) laughs, and lots of fun stories about how we cope with the aftermath of a religious upbringing.