“Purity Culture” with Kat Harris
Shownotes:
When it comes to sexuality, the Church has often stuck to a black-and-white structure that leaves little to no room for honest dialogue. So many Christians believe they need to compartmentalize their spiritual and sexual lives, thinking that God must be embarrassed of their sexuality. While a black and white structure is easy to preach, it is much harder to live. How do we faithfully navigate the sexual scripts we’ve been given in a way that releases shame and embarrassment, bringing hard questions into the light?
Kat Harris, author of “Sexless in the City” and host of The Refined Collective Podcast, is committed to releasing women from judgment and shame and helping them develop a healthy, Biblical view around sexuality. A single woman in her 30s, Kat openly shares about her experiences navigating the dating scene in New York City as a celibate Christian. Kat has received thousands of questions from women who haven’t felt permission to be curious about sexuality and desire. She talks to Eddie and Chris about how the Church’s narratives about sex and purity shape our expectations of women, God’s “very good” vision for human relationships, and how the Church can faithfully honor and celebrate single people.
Resources:
“Sexless in the City” is out now! Order it here.
Follow Kat Harris on the web:
Listen to The Refined Collective Podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Check out Kat’s online courses here:
https://therefinedwoman.com/shop
Follow Kat Harris on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/therefinedwoman/
Full Transcript:
Chris McAlilly 0:00
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 0:01
And I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 0:02
Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester 0:04
Very energetic, very energetic opening there, Chris. I like it.
Chris McAlilly 0:07
You don't have to make a commentary on my enthusiasm, man,
Eddie Rester 0:10
I don't have to do that every time?
Chris McAlilly 0:11
No, you don't have to do that. I'm just trying to meet your... I'm trying to get up to your level.
Eddie Rester 0:16
There you go. Well, today we've got an enthusiastic guest.
Chris McAlilly 0:20
That was a good transition.
Eddie Rester 0:20
You like that?
Chris McAlilly 0:21
If we're gonna comment on, if we're gonna make comments on...
Eddie Rester 0:24
Every sentence? Is that we're doing now?
Chris McAlilly 0:26
Today we have Kat Harris. She's based out of Brooklyn, and she is a photographer, and she's worked in kind of the social media world. But a few years ago, she began thinking about and writing and sharing about what it's like to be single and her 30s, dating in the church, trying to figure out sexual desire and intimacy and all of that stuff. And she found an audience for it.
Eddie Rester 0:53
What she's done is really brought a set of questions out into the light that people aren't talking about. She said, and this is one of the moments in the conversation she talked about. In high school, you talk a lot, and when you're in youth group, about sex and desire and a lot of it through the purity culture lens in ways that create a black and white structure. But then when you get to your 20s it's the subject no one talks about anymore at a time where you need the conversation. And so she really uses... She has a blog, the Refined Collective and a podcast and a lot of different things where she's just been having this conversation for years. She really wants to equip and empower women in particular.
Chris McAlilly 1:40
She speaks to parents as well, fathers and mothers of girls and young women. And she talks about being an older sister, and some of the advice that she would offer to her sisters. It's a good conversation. I think, you know, one of the things that I've been reflecting on since just wrapping it up is just how hard it is to be in your 20s in America right now, just in general. And then particularly if your life doesn't take the shape that perhaps the Christian scripts that you were given to live, if your life doesn't take that form--if you don't get married at a particular age, or you don't, you know, start having children at a particular age, you still want to engage your faith. What does that look like? And I think she offers some some really helpful perspectives. She talks about her biblical journey going back and asking the question, what do I believe about desire and sex and intimacy and relationships? And why do I believe that? What does the Bible say? What does Christian theology have to bring to the table?
Eddie Rester 2:49
You can find out a lot about her at her website, therefinedwoman.com. It's things that we did not talk with her about: her love for Beyonce and her love for ranch dressing. We didn't get to those things.
Chris McAlilly 3:00
You were trying to get that in.
Eddie Rester 3:01
And it just did not.
Chris McAlilly 3:02
No, the conversation was too good to bring. She is good enough. You don't need Beyonce. You don't need ranch dressing. You just need Kat Harris. It's a great episode. Check it out. Like it, share it. Share it with folks who might be in your life who are looking for a way into the conversation as well. Leave us a...
Eddie Rester 3:22
A recommendation.
Chris McAlilly 3:23
It's not a recommendation. It's a review.
Eddie Rester 3:25
It's a review.
Chris McAlilly 3:26
You're rusty. We're gonna have to pick your game up.
Eddie Rester 3:29
I've gotta pick the game up. You picked your game up. Now I need to pick my game up.
Chris McAlilly 3:32
That's right.
Eddie Rester 3:32
That's right. Leave us a review so that others will know that it's something important to listen to.
Chris McAlilly 3:39
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 3:45
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 3:48
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 3:56
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 4:08
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand. You're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 4:23
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Eddie Rester 4:26
Well, again, we're here today with Kat Harris. We're thankful for you to join us in the conversation, Kat.
Kat Harris 4:32
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to connect with y'all. And I found out about you guys through one of your other guests, Ashley Abercrombie, and was like, these guys seem awesome. I want to chat with them.
Eddie Rester 4:44
She was an amazing guest. I mean, that was one of the episodes that was really, I think, insightful and profound.
Chris McAlilly 4:52
Yeah, she was awesome. How did you, well, I was gonna ask you how you got to know Ashley, but I would love to know, maybe a little bit more about your story for those who may be listening in and don't know kind of where you're coming from and a bit about your work. Just give us the thumbnail sketch.
Kat Harris 5:09
Yeah, gosh, I feel like I answer this question enough that I should have a total succinct elevator pitch, but I just don't, so bear with me. My name is Kat Harris. I have been based in Brooklyn, New York for over seven years now. But I am a Texas girl. I'm from Dallas, Texas. I have been a full time editorial and lifestyle photographer for over a decade now. So that has brought me to New York, Los Angeles, different shoots and clients all over the world. So that's this part of me that still is very much there.
Kat Harris 5:50
And then, outside of my photography business, about eight and a half years ago, I started an online platform called The Refined Woman. And it has shaped and evolved over all of those eight years. And what initially sort of started as a style blog with myself and another friend has turned into a podcast. I have a podcast called The Refined Collective. I have online courses that I offer single women of faith and meditations devotionals. And my first book with Zondervan is coming out this spring called "Sexless in the City," sometimes sassy, sometimes painful, always honest, look at dating, desire, and sex.
Kat Harris 6:38
And so with all those different things, I just kind of realized, like, my sweet spot, my heart is women--is speaking to women, women knowing their worth, equipping women, and honestly men as well, but I feel like a lot of my tribe are female. But equipping people to really take ownership over how they're showing up in their lives, why they're showing up the way they're showing up. What do they believe about God, faith, spirituality, sex relationships? And why? Where did those beliefs come from? What are they rooted in? Are they rooted in fear? Are they rooted in freedom? If they're coming from a space of faith, what do they believe that God has to say about relationships, intimacy, sex, all of those things?
Kat Harris 7:34
And so my heart is really to equip and give tools to people to be able to navigate the sexual scripts that they have, be curious about them, and then figure out what in these scripts are not working. What's no longer relevant? What is actually not in alignment with the heart of God? And then to not just stay in that deconstruction, but how do we reconstruct? Like if the house of cards is falling down, then how do we build on a sturdy foundation? So I mean, if you would have asked me eight years ago, you know, you're starting this style blog. And eight years from now, you're going to be talking about intimacy and sexuality and sex and singleness all the time, I would have just laughed in your face. No way. No way that I'm going to be the girl for that job. That's... I'm just a photographer.
Eddie Rester 8:27
So when did you realize that some of those topics were really beginning to resonate with women? How did how did that kind of shift happened for you?
Kat Harris 8:36
I think the first shift and I think this is with... I know this is a strong statement, all, any person... Any sort of shift, before there's a public one, before it resonates with other people, before our message is to a stranger on the internet, it's my message. It's the path I need to walk. So I grew up in Southern evangelical culture at the height of the purity movement, even though I didn't grow up in a Christian home. Like Christianity and purity was the air I breathed.
Eddie Rester 9:16
Right.
Kat Harris 9:17
And so when I became a Christian my senior year of high school, and was learning things about, Okay, good girls, good Christian girls and good Christian boys wait until marriage to have sex or even subtle, subtle messages that were implicit, not necessarily explicit, but my body is bad. My body is sinful. And not only as a woman is it my job to maintain sexually pure, but my body is dangerous. And so I also need to, I also have to uphold male sexual integrity. And so I had all of these narratives that I was being given by the church and I didn't really question them. I just thought, "Okay, well, this is how it is. And this is the framework I've been given."
Kat Harris 10:04
And I didn't really question waiting until marriage to have sex or many of those scripts that I had been given until I moved to New York about seven and a half years ago, I guess at this point. And I started dating. I was falling in love. I was getting my heart broken. And in all of that kind of realized, okay, it's a lot harder not to have sex when you're actually dating. 'Cause I didn't date for a lot of years, because I was very afraid of rejection. I was afraid of my sexuality, my desire. And so it was really when I kind of came at an impasse on my own life of man, here, I was almost 30 years old at that point, in a relationship where I was really wanting to have sex, where I was going past certain physical boundaries in dating that I had always deemed sinful. But in the moment, I was like, I actually don't feel guilty. What do I do with this?
Kat Harris 11:04
So before it was me talking to other people, I had my own fork-in-the-road moment where I realized, I have no idea why I'm waiting until marriage outside of, I think the Bible tells me so. But I actually have no idea if the Bible explicitly says that. And so I went on a journey that lasted a few years of researching every single verse in the Bible that I could find that talked about sex and relationships and intimacy. And I became that person, wherever I was--at a bar, at a party, on the subway--asking people, Christian, non-Christian, atheist, agnostic, "What do you believe about sex? And where do you get those beliefs from?"
Kat Harris 11:53
And so the more I went on my own journey, and the more I started asking the questions out loud, it was like I had felt like I was in this dark room all by myself, and then I lit a match. And once I lit a match, everyone else started lighting a match, too. And I think I started asking questions that everyone was asking but didn't know they had the permission to ask them out loud.
Eddie Rester 12:20
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 12:21
I think that's really interesting. I do think that, at least the Christian culture that I grew up in was not one, or the youth group.... So my dad's a pastor. And so I grew up in and around the church and Christian camps and whatnot, and I don't really ever... I've been thinking in preparation for this conversation, if I ever remember there being space created for a conversation about sexuality or sex within the context of the church that allowed for some of those questions to live and move and breathe.
Kat Harris 12:55
Right.
Chris McAlilly 12:56
And I just can't remember ever having it. I think I would remember it, you know, pretty vividly. So what happens, though, I think, what is interesting is that your description of your own journey, I think that that's just a very common experience that people are trying to figure out their way around, you know, desire and relationships and whatnot, but they're doing that with whatever the resources are available. I think what's interesting, in your case, is that you explicitly take this journey back into the Bible, into what does the Bible say about this? Where are Christian ideas about this coming from? And I wonder if you would talk a little bit more about what you learned during that period. What, just for folks who maybe haven't done that deep dive, what are some of the things that that you learned?
Kat Harris 13:53
Oh, my gosh, so many things. And I think one of the big things for me, and I think why I went to the Bible, when I think what can happen in the fallout of purity culture, and the fallout of a very works-based, rules-based script that generations of us have been given is it creates such a wide backdoor for the church, and people want to throw the baby out the bathwater, and I don't blame them. I'm like, this Bible has been used to manipulate you. And of course, you don't want to go back to that same place
Eddie Rester 14:35
Right.
Kat Harris 14:35
to be curious about it. So I think for me, what was happening is, I think, I would go to the Bible, and I started seeing these things. So before even the questions about, you know, do I want to wait till marriage to have sex? I kind of started questioning, you know... Man, growing up in Christian culture, it seems like all the women I meet are quiet and mousy and quote unquote submissive and don't have opinions and that seems to be this archetype for what it means to be a godly woman. But then that's not what I find in Scripture at all.
Kat Harris 15:16
I find Queen Esther who uses her influence and voice to stop the genocide of the Jewish people. I see Ruth proposing scandalously to Boaz. I see Proverbs 31 saying that the woman of noble and godly character is business savvy and entrepreneurial and has multiple businesses. And her family and husband praise her publicly because of the wisdom and voice that she has in the home and culture. And then I see women funding the early church. So I think I have this hunch, before I even went on the sexuality journey within my own journey, I had a hunch that there was a breakdown. The message I was getting from the church was not the message of Jesus, or there was confusion or manipulation.
Kat Harris 16:10
I would like to think that I was not taught these things out of ill intent. I really don't think that, but I just think I, we, so many of us have been really misinformed. So a few, like I said, one of the big things that I discovered was from the very beginning of Scripture, we find that God is creating the world, the universe, the tectonic plates, our freckles, and calling it good. And there's a rhythm for that. Every, like, there is day, there is night, it is good. There is day, there is night, it is good. And then it seems as though it's building up this crescendo, this climax, of the creation of humanity. And God does something altogether different and says, Let us make humanity in our image, in our likeness, and it is very good. And so I was like, what does that mean, to be very good? Aren't I, isn't my heart deceitful above all things? Isn't my body bad? Isn't sexual desire bad?
Kat Harris 17:21
Well, the scripture said that God says that we're made in His image, and that we're very good. So that doesn't just mean my spiritual life or my mind or my hands and my feet, it also means that my body is good. It means that my sexual desire is good, that my sexuality is not who I am, but it's a part of who I am. And that even something in my sexual desire, in my sexuality, reflects the creator of the universe. And I think what I felt was that I feel like we're starting at chapter three, were, like, everything goes to crap and everything gets broken.
Eddie Rester 18:06
That's so true. I was talking to somebody about that recently, that the Bible doesn't start with the fall. That's not the opening lines of the story.
Chris McAlilly 18:13
I do think that if you're looking around at particular Christian teaching or you kind of are in the midst of the global pandemic, surfing the live stream offerings of the entire Christian world, I think you can pick up on, you know, not just that what is being said, but kind of the tone of it. And you'll know if that particular preacher or teacher or writer or whatever, really thinks the story gets going in chapter three of Genesis, or if they think it gets going in chapter one. And I think what you're saying is that there's a particularly around matters of sexuality, bodies,
Eddie Rester 18:56
Desire.
Chris McAlilly 18:57
desire, that those things really need the context of chapter one to get a... Because if you start in chapter one, and things are good, and it's very, if you read chapter one of Genesis, it's very bodily. It's very tactile. It's very, it's super earthy. And then there is a kind of turn and things do kind of deteriorate. And there are other ways in which, you know, desires of all kinds, not jus sexual desire, kind of gets turned in different directions. But it doesn't, that's not the place where it begins. It begins in a good place. How did that change that frame for you?
Kat Harris 19:38
Yeah, I think what changed, I think, what changed that frame then is that okay, so, sex, desire, intimacy is one of the most normal things about the human experience. In fact, it's God-designed. Like, when a person gets turned on, and like fluids start going through our bodies, like, God's not like, "Oh, crap!" Like, "I didn't know that was gonna happen." No God designed it that way. And so I think the first big shift was to normalize a conversation around sex, desire, intimacy, and sexuality. God's not embarrassed by it.
Kat Harris 20:23
I mean, you read the Song of Songs in the Old Testament, and Hebrew boys used to not be able to read it until they were 13 years old or older.
Chris McAlilly 20:34
We're still holding it back from Eddie.
Eddie Rester 20:38
[LAUGHTER]
Kat Harris 20:38
There's even some Jewish scholars that told their students not to read it until their 30s, because it's so erotic. Because there's so, I mean, you have a husband and wife that are experiencing beautiful, passionate, consensual sexual encounters. And so I think, for me, it felt like in the church, talking about sex was so taboo. Or if we're talking about sexual encounters, it's hush-hush, or in private, or behind closed doors, or definitely you should not be talking about it, thinking about it, pondering about it as a single person. So shut your entire sexual self off. Put it on a shelf in a box. Tie it with a bow. And then somehow, magically, when you have a wedding ring slide down your finger, you're supposed to open that box and flip a switch and be this, like, sexual person overnight.
Kat Harris 21:40
And I realized that's just not how it works. If God said from the very beginning that, like, we're very good, then that also means that we're not compartmentalised. So that means as a single person, my sexual desire matters. It matters to myself. It matters to God. And I don't have to hide that. So I think instead, a huge thing was like, I'm not going to be embarrassed about talking about this. And we shouldn't be embarrassed about our desire, or sexuality or any of it because I don't think it embarrasses God.
Eddie Rester 22:23
When I was in seminary, you know, I was raised Southern purity culture, went to school in the South, and then went to North Carolina to Duke for seminary, and one of the healthiest things that happened there, for Song of Solomon, the Old Testament Professor brought his wife in. They turned the lights down in the class, put a candle on a table, and they read the book to each other in class.
Kat Harris 22:48
Whoa.
Eddie Rester 22:48
And it was a very... It was like, a light went on. I was like, "Oh, that's what that book's about." It's not about all these other things that we try to make it We spiritualize it into other things. And so as you've begun to open up and have that conversation, what's the response been from other women, single women? What's been the kind of, maybe, the response in a good way, or even some of the pushback that you've received?
Kat Harris 23:18
Yeah, I would say, I think I thought I was gonna be just obliterated by talking about this stuff publicly. I was gonna be, you know, "this girl just needs to lock it up and stop talking about this stuff." But it's just not what I have found. I've just found literally thousands and thousands of women emailing me saying, "Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for asking this." Thank you for asking is masturbation a sin? Why or why not? Is oral sex, sex? What about orgasm? What about all these things? And so I think whether or not people have agreed with me, I think by me asking the questions, it's giving people the permission, even though they've had their permission the whole time, to also go there and be curious and ask. I think and that, hopefully, realizing that, like asking questions is not scary to God. And doubts are not threatening to God, if God is real, and I believe God to be, then his ego isn't so thin and frail that he cannot handle our questions.
Kat Harris 24:46
And so yeah, I mean, I think the biggest feedback I've gotten is by having conversations around orgasms, and, well, what about masturbation, and how do we actually walk this stuff out, and what are we supposed to do with our desires as single people? I think that has felt threatening at times to people. Because black and white is way easier to preach from the pulpit. It's harder to live. The reality about our lives is like, at least in my life experiences, I do believe that there are black and white truths. I believe God is real. I believe Jesus is real. The Holy Spirit is real. The Bible is true as the Word of God. But life in our human experience is really layered. It's full of nuance. We're constantly stepping into the gray. And I think it can feel scary to give each other permission to be on a journey and be on different parts of the journey. So if there's been any pushback, it's kind of been in like, Okay, so what are you saying? Like, do you still wait until marriage to have sex or not? Like people still want to know, what's the black and white stance here?
Chris McAlilly 25:58
I don't know if this has been your experience, Kat. But I think, you know, as I reflect on why is it that we haven't had this conversation in the church, I think it just kind of reflects on my experience in the church primarily. And, you know, Mississippi, Birmingham, Nashville, Atlanta, is kind of the places that I've lived. And most of Christian culture in the American South is really built around family life.
Kat Harris 26:25
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 26:25
You know what I mean? And not single life. And so there's,
Kat Harris 26:29
Right.
Chris McAlilly 26:30
You know, I think so that creates a situation where, when you're preaching on Sunday morning, you're preaching to mostly couples, and you're preaching in a room with children. It's hard to figure out how are we going to talk about these things, when there are children in the room? And I think what your... I just wonder, has it been your experience that church cultures in general, just have a hard time, you know, creating space for engagement with the questions that single folks have? And then I guess, have you seen that done well, in any church context? Or have you found that really, it's a conversation the church isn't prepared to have, and really, it's gonna have to happen in these other spaces?
Kat Harris 27:15
Yeah. Oh, those are such good questions. Okay, can you remind me the first question out of that stack?
Chris McAlilly 27:24
The first one is simply, you know, has it been your experience that part of the reason why churches don't do a good job engaging these questions is not simply because it's black and white, but because church culture is built around families and not single folks?
Kat Harris 27:42
Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Um, by the time we got to the last question, I was like, wait, I forgot the first!
Eddie Rester 27:50
This is what Chris is known for. This is his gift.
Chris McAlilly 27:52
It's my gift.
Kat Harris 27:53
Hey, listen, I do the same thing when I'm interviewing on my podcast. They're like, "okay, you just asked 50,000 questions. Which one do you want me to answer?" Answer all of them same time, please. Thank you. So yes, I think you tapped into something that is a huge, huge source of pain for single people, or for people who don't want to be in a relationship, is the church worships the nuclear family. Also, America worships the nuclear family. Which it's so interesting how the church is supposed to be a witness to the world and this countercultural experience, but we're actually not that different from culture. And so the church is set up to elevate married couples, and it's like, if you're single, you feel JV to the varsity. You can like volunteer in the kids ministry, but you have to only hang out with singles, and there's not a lot of cross-generational. And it seems, it's not even subtle. It's like, you need to get married. Like get married, get married. I want to get married. I'm 35 years old. I want to have babies, like, yesterday. I am, like, ready to settle down. I want those things.
Kat Harris 29:23
But my relationship status also isn't who I am. And God isn't holding out on me. If God wants me to be married, that's going to happen. However, we see it in our church structures. How many churches have you ever seen where there's a single person that's a head pastor?
Eddie Rester 29:47
Right. Yeah.
Kat Harris 29:48
I've never seen it. I've seen, the only church I've seen where there's been single pastors on the lead team is my church in New York, Church of the City. There's a single guy who's one of the teaching pastors. And so to kind of answer, so to answer your first question, the church worships the nuclear family. And it's like, we're supposed to be worshipping Jesus. That was the thing. And then I think second, I don't, I don't think it's done well. And I think the only place that I've kind of seen it done well, and also I can only speak to my own experiences. You know, I go to a church in New York, where it's 80% single people. And we're not in a college town here. It's not as though we have ten thousand 18-to-21-year-olds that are all single. No, we have 80% of a single congregation that are in their late 20s to mid 40s. And most of those people are single.
Kat Harris 30:50
And a huge thing that my pastor John Tyson talks about is radical honor and radical community in the sense of our culture, our churches revolve around celebrating the nuclear family. So we're gonna celebrate your engagement party. We're gonna go to your wedding. We're gonna buy you gifts. We're gonna throw you bachelorette parties. We're gonna throw you baby showers. We're gonna go to your children's one year birthday, and we're gonna go to their performances, but what do we have in place to celebrate and honor single people? What are the milestones? And so that I think has been something that my church community has really challenged, is how can we radically honor people regardless of their relationship status, and until experiencing that, in this church family, I had never experienced that before.
Chris McAlilly 31:47
I was doing a research paper a while back when I was in seminary, and one of the part of the research that I was doing was on just kind of life scripts for young adults, particularly folks that are in their 20s. And it was just talking. It was going back and looking post-World War II in America, what you had was the GI Bill. And then you had a lot of people going to college that had never been to college before. There's a lot more mobility, a lot more money that allow people to move from place to place. So people stopped getting married at age 20, 21, 22. And people didn't get married till 28, 32, 38, 42. And what happens is you have this long period of time at the end of adolescence, where you're just, you know, hanging out. It's not scripted. Kind of in the history of humanity, there's not been this extended period of time that just doesn't have a shape
Kat Harris 32:50
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 32:50
in the way that life in your 20s in America, right now, it just doesn't have a lot of shape And so what happens, I think, what do you with all that?
Eddie Rester 33:01
And so we discount it.
Chris McAlilly 33:02
Yeah, exactly. So we don't, so the church doesn't know what to do with it. We don't know what to do with it. I mean, you know, brands know what to do with that. And so brands have kind of come in to help shape desire. But I think it's interesting to imagine what it would look like to provide some shape. And I think particularly celebration moments and ways of radically honoring the milestones that are there within the individual lives of 20 somethings, 30 somethings in America that don't revolve around graduating from a program or getting married or having kids or whatever.
Kat Harris 33:40
Right. Well, and I think also on that, especially if we're considering--so again, I'm speaking to my experience--I live in New York City where the ratio for every college-educated male, there's two college-educated females. And that doesn't take into account is this person heterosexual? Does this person want to be in a relationship? Do they want to have kids? Do they share my faith? Do we like each other? Are we attracted to each other? And so I think in the church, even just in New York, but I hear this similar thread in women that I speak to all over the US of it feels like being in the church is being on an episode of The Bachelor, where there's one guy to twenty women, and most of the time the girls are like, "If we're being really honest, he's not even that great." But he's kind of like the option. So he's Mr. Big Man on campus.
Kat Harris 34:44
And so I think the reality as well is when we make the goal in life to be about getting married and the nuclear family, we're really dismissing a very real reality that many, many women, particularly, who long to be in a committed relationship and marriage, are likely not going to experience that. And when we elevate relationships, marriage in such a way, we're also discounting a person's calling and purpose and influence outside of a relationship status. So and it also begs the question, well, Jesus was single. Did he not live a fulfilling, purposeful life? The Apostle Paul, it seems as though Apostle Paul is single, and led a very purposeful life. And so I think it just does a real disservice to us. It allows us to be trapped in a small mindset of what purpose and calling and fulfillment can look like in the world and in the kingdom of God.
Kat Harris 36:08
Not to mention, as you were saying, celebrating milestones and 20 something-year-old lives, I was just talking to my 20-year-old sister, and she's about to graduate college. And I was like, girl, get ready. Like no one told me how hard 20s were going to be post-college. It's the first time in your entire life where you don't have structure, where you could be 25 years old and single as the day is long. And you could have a friend that is already divorced, a friend that has kids, a friend that's getting their doctorate. There's just so much transition. And I think, like, we aren't caring for people well in that when we're just saying the main goal is over here.
Eddie Rester 36:56
I remember reading in your bio that when you went to college, you thought that, I think you put it the MRS degree is what you thought you were supposed to do. And that's, you know, when I started in ministry, there were people who came, the consistency--this was back in the late 90s--consistent people that came for marriage were in their early 20s. And now it's very rare, very rare that I do any weddings for anybody in their early 20s. And that's been 20-ish years that that has radically changed in the deep South. And so that's, you know, again, rethinking, recalibrating how we think, you know, about the norms.
Eddie Rester 37:36
I've been sitting here thinking about the Apostle Paul the whole time, who, as far as we know, was single and from his personality, I'm sure it would have been real hard for him to find anybody to take him on. One quick aside, back in November, I got to hear John Tyson speak, and it was amazing. I really enjoyed hearing from him.
Kat Harris 37:59
That's awesome.
Eddie Rester 38:00
He talked about prayer and that's a different conversation. But it was great. You know, I want to turn the conversation just a little bit. I've got a 19-year-old daughter, sophomore in college. I've got another daughter, who is 17, a high school senior looking to, she's in the process of choosing college right now. And Chris is a little bit younger than me. So he's got a daughter who is two.
Chris McAlilly 38:28
Three.
Eddie Rester 38:28
Three. She's three?
Kat Harris 38:29
Aw, that's so fun!
Chris McAlilly 38:31
Sweet little baby Bo.
Eddie Rester 38:33
Baby Bo.
Chris McAlilly 38:33
She's not a baby, anymore.
Eddie Rester 38:34
But yeah. So as you think about two, if you're advising two dads of daughters, and I know a lot of the conversations that you have with women, you want to empower women. You want to let them know their worth. What are some of the things that you would say to dads, hey, these, or even moms, these are things that you need to make sure you're pouring into your kids so that you create strong, worth-knowing women or maybe mistakes that you've seen moms and dads make along the way in those regards.
Kat Harris 39:11
That's such a good question. Man. I would, I think one of the biggest things that I think about is, so I have an 18-year-old sister, and a 20-year-old sister. So I don't have my own kids, but in Texas, they could totally be my own children. And I think the biggest thing that I have felt just impressed on me to be constantly sharing with them is that no matter what, I accept them. And I love them, and I'm not going anywhere. And even if they end up not believing what I believe about who God is, I love them. I accept them. I am here. And I always want to be a safe place for them to process their life and doubts. Because I think, what can happen, or just in my own life experience, there are times where I felt as though I couldn't be completely honest with my parents about a struggle or a decision.
Kat Harris 40:25
I remember being post-college. And I just graduated with a Bible degree, I was working for a nonprofit in Southern California. And all my Christian friends were smoking weed all the time. And I was like, wait, what? I thought we weren't supposed to be doing that. And smoking weed and getting drunk all the time. And I had come from Bible Belt, Texas, where I had to sign a contract not to drink alcohol at my university or being staff at a church. And I felt there were instances where I was really trying to figure out, gosh, is being drunk something I want to do? Or I ended up getting drunk. What do I do about that? Do I want to smoke weed? Why or why not? But I felt that I could not process that with my parents. Because it was like, well, that's bad. Don't do it. Don't talk about it.
Eddie Rester 41:24
Right.
Kat Harris 41:25
Yeah. And so I think having just like an atmosphere where your kids know that they can talk to you, and that no matter what happens, you love and accept them. I think that is so profound.
Eddie Rester 41:43
Yeah. You know, as I think about releasing my kids into the world, one of the things, again, as I read some of your blogs and listened to some of your podcasts, just, I want to pass those to my daughters to make sure that they are hearing and knowing that there are people that are asking the right questions and wanting them to ask the right questions.
Kat Harris 42:07
Yeah.
Eddie Rester 42:08
So important. One other thing I want to, we've got just a few more minutes left, you've got a book that's releasing this spring, "Sexless in the City." So tell us a little bit about what led you to finally write the book? And who do you hope reads that book?
Kat Harris 42:28
Yeah. Gosh, what led me to write the book? Ah, I didn't want to write it.
Eddie Rester 42:36
How long did it take you to write it?
Kat Harris 42:37
Oh, gosh, um, I mean, well, I signed with my publisher in January of 2020. And the book will be out April 2021. So that whole process has been a year and a half. However, it took me six months to write the book proposal. And so let's add another six months to that. And then five years of living it privately before it became a public thing. So kind of what made it made me write the book is, you know, I shared at the beginning that I've been a photographer for over 10 years. I run a successful business over on that end of things. And then, because of that, because of the blog, I was being hired by a lot of brands and fashion labels to do social media marketing, brand strategy, customized social media plans for different companies.
Kat Harris 43:36
And I didn't really live a ton in the faith space publicly, like I wasn't writing Bible studies or anything. And I wasn't shy about being a Christian. It's just that's not the lane I was going down. And then I was on a podcast about two years ago, maybe two and a half years ago. And the woman was interviewing me talking about, you know, being a Christian business owner in New York City. And then towards the end, she asked me, oh, okay, so you're, you know, almost 30. You're in your 30s, you're single. Sounds like you're waiting till marriage to have sex. What's dating like? And I just shared my experience of dating is hard. And dating as a woman of faith in today's culture, with online dating and ghosting and bread crumbing and all the things happening, is there's not really a rulebook for it.
Kat Harris 44:35
And I shared you know, I got to a point in my life where I was really tired of hearing leaders and pastors who were primarily men who got married in their early 20s telling me what I could and couldn't do with my body and telling me to wait until marriage to have sex when they didn't abstain for decades like I am as a person in my 30s. And so that episode went live and I didn't really think much about it.
Kat Harris 44:52
And then within a week, I got three thousand emails from women all over the world asking me questions about how am I walking this out? What do I do with my desire? And what if I never get married? What if I die a virgin? And what if I love Jesus, but want to have sex outside of marriage? All of these questions. And so it was another fork in the road moment for me where I honestly was like, this isn't my thing. I talk about brand strategy. Like, I don't talk about this stuff.
Eddie Rester 45:36
Yeah.
Kat Harris 45:36
But it was, it just became more and more evident that for whatever reason, and I still don't really understand why, like, God has given me the opportunity to speak to people about this stuff. So that's how the book came about is, I kind of realized, like, there aren't a lot of voices out there of people, of women, of women primarily, that are walking this walk out now in their 30s and plus. And so I think I wanted to share the message that I needed in my 20s and help ask the questions that I didn't know I needed to ask in my 20s.
Kat Harris 46:22
So the book is for, honestly, it's for everyone, but I am writing to a woman who would consider herself a woman of faith, early 20s to 30s, high schoolers as well, I would think. But I think the young 20s girl who grew up in the church and is navigating, okay, I was told all these rules, but I have no idea how to actually walk this out. And I have no idea what the Bible actually says. And my book is for you.
Eddie Rester 46:55
And what it looks like, beyond just rules. I mean.
Kat Harris 46:58
Right. Right. Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 47:02
Yeah, I think what I hear kind of in the thread of your story is that, you know, part of it is for a person in their 20s, that is struggling with all those questions, a good place to start is just to go back to the Bible and, like, maybe for the first time, put your story within the context of God's story. And then within that you'll discover a number of things along the way.
Chris McAlilly 47:31
I think one of the things that I hear as well in your story is just that you need guides. It sounds like what you found is that you didn't have any. And I think that that, to me, is one of my takeaways from this conversation is how do we, as the church, make sure to have guides for folks at the different moments that they find themselves. And I think for that not simply to be the kind of thing that happens, because we have an internet and the ability to lift up a platform and somebody like you, who has a little bit of savvy with how to, you know, get a message out.
Chris McAlilly 48:11
How does the church identify and lift up guides and mentors, to whom we can apprentice ourselves as we figure out what to do with our desires, figure out what to do with our experiences that may or may not have been, we may or may not have been given permission to engage in the faith of our upbringing? I appreciate the work that you're doing. It seems like it's really important. I'm grateful for the conversation today. Great to talk with you.
Kat Harris 48:43
Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
Eddie Rester 48:45
No, you go ahead.
Kat Harris 48:46
I was just gonna say kind of one last line of thought in response to what you're saying is like, how do we as a church or how do we as humans approach this conversation? I think I just keep going back to being curious. You know, before we can... I think it's safe to say we have millions and millions of people that are sick and tired of the rules and the shame surrounding, you know, the fallout of purity movement. Or, you know, the church was very vocal when we were in youth group telling us not to have sex, but now in our 20s and 30s, it's pretty quiet.
Kat Harris 49:23
And so I think to have a posture of curiosity of before I can move forward, we have to look back. How did I get here? What are the specific beliefs that I believe about sex, about my body, about dating? What is sex? How do I define that? How do I know how to define that? And then from there, identifying, you know, what did my parents teach me? What did school teach you? What did peers teach you? What did culture teach you? What does the church teach me? And then what does God have to say about all of this? Like, yes, let's go to the Bible. And let's have a posture of curiosity. And I think when we release judgment and shame from the conversation, is when we're able to take the first step towards actually developing a healthy, renewed biblical vision around sexuality.
Eddie Rester 50:18
One of the words that has recurred is the word shame. And that is so damaging to folks when they live in shame. And I think a lot of times, the ways that we have tried to shape the conversation is in such black and white terms, that it's left people who, whether out of, you know, questions they've got, mistakes they've made, ways that they've explored, the shame has entrapped them from actually experiencing any kind of freedom or life or the ability to heal or have the right conversations.
Kat Harris 50:53
Mmhm. Yeah.
Eddie Rester 50:55
So thank you for your leadership in this. And thank you for just your time today. We've really, really enjoyed the conversation. And best of luck with with the book this spring.
Kat Harris 51:07
Thank you so much. And thanks for having me and being willing to just have nuanced conversations about this stuff. I think the more we talk about it, the more we give space and permission to have these conversations, the more freedom, hopefully, will come about, so thanks for having me. I really, really appreciate you guys and what you guys are up to.
Eddie Rester 51:28
Thank you. Absolutely. Have a great afternoon.
Kat Harris 51:31
Alright, you too.
Eddie Rester 51:31
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 51:36
If you liked what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe, and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 51:48
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com [END OUTRO]