Pastor, Founder of The Love God, Love Sex Movement
Describing the Work
I consider myself a justice worker in the area of sexual liberation and sexual freedom for women of faith. The work my soul longs for is about empowering Black women, particularly Black Christian women, that their sexuality isn’t something they need to be ashamed of or embarrassed about, but it’s something that is God-given and something that they can embrace and express and honor and celebrate, all those good things. I say justice because there’s a lot of pushback. There’s a lot of false teachings. There’s a lot of toxicity in this space that I have to push against and fight against for the liberation of Black Christian women.
The Journey to This Work (Content Warning: Childhood Sexual Violence)
My own personal journey with sex and sexuality, I think, is a big part of it. I was molested when I was 7. I was introduced to sex at that age and was introduced to sexual activity in middle school. There’s always been shame associated with my sexuality for many, many years. And so, I know I needed to do the work to remove the shame from my sexuality based on my experience. And also, being an older woman who’s unmarried, I needed a space where I can kind of work out what that means to be single and saved and sanctified and also manage my sexuality in a healthy way. I put myself out there, and it turns out that I wasn’t the only one. That’s how that community was founded, with other likeminded women who needed a space to work it out without judgement, without being ridiculed. Now, I utilize my influence to create safe spaces for women to embrace their sexuality and work through the kinks of their sex ethics and work through just loving their bodies and reconnecting their bodies, because Christian women have a lot of repression, a lot of “it’s my body but I don’t really want to connect to it” because somebody told us that we weren’t supposed to. I think those two things: My own personal story around sex plus where I am currently has made a very unique background for me to continue or start this movement.
The work my soul longs for is about empowering Black women, particularly Black Christian women, that their sexuality isn’t something they need to be ashamed of or embarrassed about, but it’s something that is God-given and something that they can embrace and express and honor and celebrate, all those good things.
On Navigating a Space with Theological Difference
It’s about acknowledging that everybody is at a different level in their journey and being respectful of that and holding space for that. And as long as everyone’s respectful and compassionate towards each other, I’m okay with it because if everyone thought the same way, we wouldn’t be thinking. When you have different views of thought, it challenges each other to really think through what you believe. So that’s why in my mind, I always wanted it to be a hodgepodge of people, women, from all different backgrounds and different perspectives on sex, so that we can get a more holistic idea of what people are out there thinking and also have more respect and understand that not everybody believes the same thing, so let’s learn together, let’s grow from each other, let’s ask questions. I think it is a more healthy space to learn. Sometimes it gets a little hot, but for the most part, we learn from each other.
Challenges and Barriers: Doing This Work in a Ministry Context
It’s my ministry right now. Keeping it in a private Facebook group has been helpful because it would just be too much. Understanding that, I think it was Paul, who said, “I become all things to all people that I may save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). That’s kind of how I look at it as well. That this isn’t for everybody. It’s not for your average church girl or your church mother who may have been raised a little different. It’s for women of this generation who need these healthy spaces, who need these honest spaces, who understand the lingo and the language and are not offended by it. I think also just settling for the fact that my ministry isn’t for everybody and doing the best that I can to stay within the confines of my denomination without offending them. For the most part, I’ve been pretty good at it.
This isn’t for everybody…It’s for women of this generation who need these healthy spaces, who need these honest spaces, who understand the lingo and the language and are not offended by it.
Advice for Those Hoping to Do This Work
Connect it deeply to who you are as a woman. Let the reasons why you do it kind of come from who you are and what you’re about, which is all the more real and personal and people will identify with you all the more when it’s connected to your own story. Self-care: Take care of yourself because it can be grueling at times to go against the grain. It can be stressful, so you want to take care of yourself. You want to have a support system of people who understand you and why you’re doing what you’re doing and that can come from anywhere. It may not come from the spaces that you’re typically thinking. I would say, do a lot of reading, a lot of reading, a lot of reading, obviously, and a lot of writing too. We need more writing in this space. If you just google sex and spirituality, there’s a few things, but there’s not a lot of Black voices in this area. And there’s a lot of false, misguided information around sex, sexuality, and faith and spirituality and so write, write, write, whether it’s blogging on blogs or some way of getting content out there for the masses that paint a healthier sex ethic. Those are my things that come off the top of my head. Take care of yourself. Read. Write. And connect it to who you are; make sure it’s connected to your story. And also, do your own inner work around sex as well. The classes I’ve taken force me to shake, and I’m still growing, I’m still being challenged on a lot of things. Prepare to be challenged yourself and also be prepared that you’re not going to fit into every group around sex and sexuality. There’s a lot of advocates in our world right now and on social media, but not all of them may align with your beliefs. So, kind of be prepared for that. You may not get in with everybody who talks about sex. There are some that are just “Do what makes you happy,” and there are others that are like “do not open your legs at all.” I’m somewhere in the middle. Being in the middle means that there are others who may not be jiving with what I’m doing.
Deirdre Jonese Austin 