Nadia Bolz-Weber: “Shame doesn’t originate in God’s voice.”
Madison’s getting a public sex talk from a celebrity pastor — but not the kind you might imagine.
This take on the birds and the bees is from Nadia Bolz-Weber, a tattooed, divorced Lutheran reverend whose speech is peppered with expletives and — get this — sex-positive statements.
“The amount of shame that people carry about having human bodies that are naturally developed to have certain desires — because of messages that religion has given them — is crippling,” Bolz-Weber says. “It ends up affecting even our sexual response systems in our bodies when we have that much shame.”
Her third New York Times bestseller, Shameless: A Sexual Reformation, preaches expression of sexuality as part of a godly life. The book shares stories — with consent — of straight, queer and trans parishoners at the House for All Sinners and Saints church she founded in 2008 in Denver. As children, these Christians were indoctrinated to feel guilt about expressing sexuality outside of straight, married relationships. They later found themselves in extramarital affairs and behaving self-destructively. Bolz-Weber, who admits to being no saint herself, will speak at 7 p.m. on March 12 at Bethel Lutheran Church. As of press time, the event had sold out (1,000 free tickets).
This passionate, real-talking preacher retells Bible stories in modern nomenclature. When Jesus met up with the apostles after his resurrection, she says, he asked for snacks. Bolz-Weber also dissects injurious theology. “If the teachings of the church are harming people, which they are, then the church needs to rethink those teachings and have a concern with the actual reality of peoples’ lives...rather than having a legalistic definition of what people should or should not be doing with their private parts,” Bolz-Weber says.
Bethel’s Pastor Mike Brown believes Bolz-Weber’s message is a welcome correction to the church’s history of creating taboos:“What [she] brings is affirmation and permission for people to be true to themselves and know that God’s intent for them is to live through their sexuality in a way that results in genuine connection and intimacy and a deeper spirituality.”
“[People] know the difference between Jesus and spoonfuls of nonsense that are fed to them, telling them it’s Jesus,” Bolz-Weber says. In a chapter of Shameless called “I Smell Sex and Candy,” the author discusses the porn addiction of a parishoner who was taught as a teen that the mere thought of sex was sinful. Rigid Christian rules surrounding sex, she says, seem silly when applied to another source of pleasure our bodies were designed to enjoy — chocolate. In both cases, she says, moderation is key; and judgement unhelpful.
“To be able to see clearly the difference between God and what was told to you in God’s name is the starting point,” Bolz-Weber says. “Shame doesn’t originate in God’s voice; shame originates in voices saying they’re speaking for God.”
There’s work to be done on that journey, but it can heal a lifetime’s worth of disconnection, she says. “It’s okay to take everything that you were taught from your religious upbringing and haul it out into the front yard for a rummage sale and ask,‘What’s helping me? What’s hurting me? What’s nonsense? What do I even believe anymore? What was I taught that really originated in the hang-ups from the pastor and not God?’”
