Season 6, Episode 28: Rebecca, Danielle, and Jenny: Settler Colonial Sex and Purity Culture Stuff

About this episode

The episode explores the intersections of sexuality, gender, race, and religion through the lens of settler colonialism and purity culture.

In this episode of ARISE: Conversations on Reality, Danielle, Rebecca, and Jenny explore how sexuality, gender, race, religion, and empire are shaped by colonial and Christian nationalist frameworks. The conversation begins with the limitations of purity culture and abstinence-only education, especially around consent, sexuality, gender expression, and the freedom young people need to explore identity safely. Jenny names the way settler Christianity imposed racial, sexual, and familial norms on Indigenous and colonized communities, while Danielle connects that history to Mexico’s racial caste system and the sexual violence embedded in colonization. The conversation then turns toward the contradictions of Christian nationalism: the public preaching of purity, monogamy, and morality while historically relying on domination, coercion, exploitation, and racial control. Rebecca pushes toward nuance, distinguishing authentic faith or monogamy from the ways empire hijacks sacred language. The episode also explores how whiteness trains perception itself—how people are seen, mis-seen, categorized, and flattened through racialized eyes. From there, the speakers move into a deeper…

People in this episode

Hosts: Danielle S. Castillejo, Margalyn Hemphill

Guests: Rebecca, Jenny

Topics covered

• settler colonialism
• purity culture
• sexuality
• gender
• race
• Christian nationalism
• theology

Keywords

• settler colonialism
• purity culture
• Christian nationalism
• sexuality
• gender expression
• racial caste system
• theological reflection

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Christian nationalism, settler Christianity, Mexico

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