Voices In My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast) - Episode 535 -with Hank Spaulding - Iconoclastic Se

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad for all of you who could be here today. I know I haven't been on here very much lately. We haven't had very many podcasts just due to my tremendously busy schedule. But boy, I'm grateful for all of you who are listening today. We have a wonderful guest, and I'm so glad that he's back with us today. His name is Henry Walter Spalding III, but I just call him Hank. I think most people call him Hank. So if that's all right with him, we're going to go with that direction today. But first of all, before I do the intro, because I've been away for a couple of weeks, can you hear everything okay on your end, Hank?

Yes, sir.

And is it okay if I call you Hank instead of Henry Walter Spalding III?

Absolutely. I prefer it, actually.

All right. Well, I wanted to make sure of that, not because I knew— I knew you would— just me and you, we could call you Hank. But you have a new book out and we're going to be discussing blessing that today, and I'm very excited about that. And I want to say congratulations to you as we begin, because I know that's a huge endeavor to write a book. And then the heft of this book that you have written, I, I think it's really something that's going to, to challenge many people, myself included, as we dive in and read it. So I'm going to start with an intro today that doesn't come from me but comes from David Gushee, who is a distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. And I I have just full disclosure, due to a very heavy full-time graduate level graduate courses right now, I haven't had a chance to read the book yet. It's on my list of things I want to read, but since the beginning of December I've read about, I think, 18 books now just in preparation for my upcoming classes, and I just, I just haven't had a chance. But I'm going to read his intro. The, the book um, it's gonna, it's gonna be something everybody, I think, is going to want to go and find on Amazon immediately. It is there. It's called Iconoclastic Sex: Christian Sexual Ethics and Human Trafficking. And this is from the endorsement by David Gushee: a strikingly original treatment of sexual ethics which uses as its points of departure what the author rather shockingly describes as the interrelated problems of sex trafficking and purity culture. The book engages and is haunted by dominant evangelicalism's failures while retrieving and creating a richer, distinctively Christian theological vision. Those who understand this book will be either outraged or appreciative. Count me in on the latter camp. And that was David Gushee, and that— I'm a fan of his, and I think that's an amazing endorsement. So congratulations on that. But that actually is a pretty great intro to the book, I think, a good place for us to start. I wonder if you, as the author today— I'm gonna again kind of let you drive this conversation— give us sort of the elevator pitch of what this book is about. There are a lot of different books on topics of ethics and sexuality, but I think this one is unique. So tell us a little bit about it and where it came from.

Yeah, no, I, I agree. And thanks for having me again, Rick. It's so good to be back here on and be with you and be with your listeners. It's a lot of fun to just talk with you. But the elevator pitch comes— I mean, why do we need another book on sexual ethics? You know, that's like, there's so many out there, you know, why write a new one? Well, I realized kind of just almost by accident, because I have a lot of students or former students who ended up working with people who are survivors of human trafficking. And I, you know, after talking with them and kind of I'm hearing kind of about their work, I realized that none of the books out there on sexual ethics really talk about this issue. There are some that kind of came out during my writing process, which I'm really grateful for. But I mean, even within those books, there's only about like a chapter or so on human trafficking and things like that. And so I wanted to kind of start there because The books that were written kind of operate from a place of privilege is one of the things I mentioned, because it's a privileged place to not have to experience these things. And many academics don't. They just kind of talk about the traditional relationships of marriage and sexual acts themselves. And, you know, those aren't bad topics. Those need to be talked about. And I talk about them in the book, too. But, you know, speaking from the place of human trafficking, I think was something I was really interested in. I saw as like a gap in the research of sexual ethics and thinking through like, what kind of ethical commitments do we have to make in a world where human trafficking is a reality for so many that we don't even really quite see? So that's, that's kind of the elevator pitch is just to say that, you know, this is a gap. This is something I saw and this is something I tried to address within my own writing. I think it was Margaret Farley, who's one of my heroes in ethics, she writes that, you know, Christian ethicists rarely ever set their own agendas. They just kind of have to answer the questions that they're asked by the church and the community and the world, you know. And so this felt like a question I was being asked, and I wanted to try and answer it.

Wow, that's fantastic. And I I wonder if, you know, because you have been working so close with students, um, is that something that you feel like, especially the human trafficking conversations, that's something that is really being talked about among young people like you? Because you're, you're kind of on the pulse with college-age students that you've been working with. Is that something that you really feel is important to them to, to dive in deeper and not only find out more about but finding ways to stop?

Yeah, and it's interesting because in evangelicalism kind of overall, there's been this huge kind of interest in human trafficking. It's really funny, one of the books I did read for this, um, she's a feminist philosopher, and she's like, it's very interesting, like feminist circles and like evangelical Christians have been two of the biggest predominant groups that have been engaged in this. And so, uh, like a lot of students come to campus and come to college thinking about this issue because they talk about it in churches a lot. But one of the things that students find very quickly is once they kind of dig into the reality, it's not at all like what they see on TV. So like a lot of the resurgence around human trafficking kind of came back into the fore, um, with the presidency of George W. Bush, but then also the release of the movie Taken by, uh, with Liam Neeson in it. Yeah, that kind of depicts human trafficking. Obviously it wasn't the first time there's there's been a lot, like, even the rise of, uh, like, uh, popular media, um, has really dovetailed with our understanding of human trafficking. So for example, I, I, the, the year is, I, is kind of escaping me right now, but there was a Chicago Tribune article years and years ago that covered this, uh, story of, uh, quote unquote, like, white slavery of this, uh, young woman who was kind of like, um, captive and being forced into doing sex acts for, uh, money for a particular captor. And that kind of exploded in popularity. And so this advent of kind of these really shocking news articles even has its origins in human trafficking. And there's just something about it that's really scandalous, obviously. Um, and so students, when they, um, hear about it, I think there's this real passion because when you look at human trafficking and, and specifically sex trafficking, Like, it's just, it's so clear how wrong it is that a lot of people get really passionate about it from a lot of different perspectives. I mean, ideologically across the spectrum, people are really interested in, in this issue. And I think that the ways they approach it are different, but definitely both share like a deep conviction of it. I think it's pretty bipartisan in that way.

Yeah.

And young people especially, like once they figure out or see about this issue, they want to get into social work, they want to get into counseling, they want to part of their church ministries. They want to work in neighborhoods as teachers where this is a possibility. And so, you know, this is— it's quite a shocking topic, but it's also quite a passionate topic in which people really want to engage in deep and rich conversations about, I found.

Well, thank you for sharing that. And I think you're right. I think that, you know, we're entering into this— I say entering into a political season, but we're just always at a political season all the time. And it seems like you're right. This is something that is unified. And I think people are interested in no matter where you stand politically. I think what's interesting, though, is so many people are running after different things that they feel the causes are. And sometimes those things that they think are the cause of it are not the cause of it. There was some controversy of the movie. I think it was called Sound of Freedom, which I have not seen yet. It's actually by Angel, which I think is doing some, some great media, honestly.

Right.

But the criticism I heard of the film was the person that the movie was about, for one thing, actually, he himself was recently brought up on some charges for some sexual impropriety and things. And there was just things in the story that were not accurate to the way that sex trafficking actually happens and that human trafficking actually happens. And so I think it's important to have these conversations, um, to actually have a way to talk about things accurately that actually do help and do not hinder, uh, because there were some things— the, the criticism I heard of films like that was if you took the approach of this movie takes, you're actually hindering the work of stopping trafficking, um, right? And if you had a deeper understanding of what was behind it— so I, I just think this is such an important topic for us to dive into today. Um, so what I'd love to start out with you, where I think your book seems to be taking a different tack than most, uh, that I'm hearing about or even have read, is you're making some connections with survivors of trafficking and people who grew up under purity culture. And I wonder if, just as we begin, just in case there's anybody who maybe that term is unfamiliar with— if you grew up in the church, especially in an evangelical church, you're going to understand what purity culture is really fast. But let's just say someone's listening and they don't understand exactly what that term means. How would you describe purity culture, especially as it pertains to growing up in the church?

Right. Yeah. And I think that, you know, people who especially grew up in the church who are, uh, of the Gen X, Millennial variety, they, they probably hit this a little bit harder. I think it's, it's, it's still around, but it's not as popular amongst Gen Z, um, even though they still very much have experienced it. I mean, from working with college students, I know for a fact that a lot of them have still receive this, but purity culture is kind of this new wave of teaching that kind of advents in the late '70s into the '80s that's trying to respond to the teen pregnancy crisis that's occurring in the United States. And so a group of Christian authors and thinkers like Joshua Harris among them, like he writes a book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye, in which evangelicals outline a, a standard for sexual ethics where basically each individual— and it really hits more heavily on women. I don't think that's universal. But what I've seen is the majority of cases, women have had to bear that more than men, that they have to preserve their sexual purity in order to give it to their spouses, their husbands, their wives on their wedding night. As a kind of gift, and that prior to marriage, any kind of sexual activity or even to the extreme sexual thoughts corrupts one's purity and thus one becomes damaged. So like the classic kind of example, I always tell people to explain it if they've never grew up on it, is that in churches it was common practice to do some type of like visual explanation of what happens when you have sex. In a purity culture teaching. So like a youth pastor would talk about sexual ethics, and he would be chewing gum or something like that, and at the end of his talk, he would take out his gum and ask, you know, the students in his youth department, um, who wants to chew this gum? And, you know, obviously no one wants that because of the, you know, it's gross and things like that. No one wants to chew already chewed gum. Well, then, you know, the— he would say, well, that's what happens when you have sex. No one wants to be with you because you're already chewed up gum. And, you know, there's tons of examples like the construction paper, um, example, the, the rose example where they take off petals and like, who wants this flower? Nobody wants this flower. And it kind of created this, um, you know, and obviously like this is connected to a more historic church teaching about marriage itself, but it created a new, um, perspective that in whenever your sexual whenever you have had any kind of sexual activity or had any kind of sexual thought, that you kind of lose a goodness or a kind of like, um, value. It's very economic in that sense. Like, you— like, you— the value depreciates in your body. Like, you're no longer as good as you were before. Like, that's, that's new. That's entirely, um, within an evangelical kind of cultural contexts within the decades that I described. And so, you know, I mean, obviously, that creates a lot of problems, because it doesn't develop, like, you're not allowed to really talk about sex in the church in that way. You're not able to ask questions and things like that, because it's impure to even do so, like many women, especially like, they were, you know, so had to be like, turn this switch, like in their minds whenever they got married, that they had to become this, like, sexually very active person very quickly without any kind of understanding of what goes into it. But then also just on top of that, one of the things we found that's really just devastating is the amount of women who were just taken advantage of because they didn't actually know what sex was. Wow. One of the women in a book that I read talked about how, like, she was taken advantage of by a coworker one summer because she actually did not know what the act of sex was, because no one had talked to her about it. And she was 16. And, you know, that's another thing, even inside of purity culture, like there is not even a way to talk about people who have not lost their virginity through their own consent. And so even people who have been sexually assaulted, then they are seen as impure. Wow. And so virginity is kind of this, this ultimate prize that determines one's worth. And that's, I think that's the Cliff Notes version of what purity culture is.

Well, no, I appreciate that. And it's a very well-intentioned thing when you think about it. And I can think of, you know, growing up in youth groups and, you know, having similar talks about things, never thinking of the implications of what that might mean if a person had been, as you had just said, forcibly against their will, forced into a sex act. And in some ways it's giving this message of the image of God is marred in you now because you're less holy and you're not of as much worth for whatever the reason may be. And instead of, you know, I almost think of purity culture where it kind of went wrong is, you know, Jesus says if you're— if you were lusting to gouge your right eye out instead, you know, and instead of thinking in those terms, we think, well, that's too extreme. So you just need to put on a longer skirt, uh, you know. That's right. Yeah, you know, which, which makes it easier, I guess, in some ways. You don't lose your eye. But on the other hand, you're putting all of the, the blame on someone else and taking away responsibility from yourself too. So there, there's just so many dimensions when we look at that. So the, the premise in your book that I, that I really find interesting too, when we're talking about this, I think our listeners are already probably starting to see the overlap just in what you've shared with us, um, of people who are survivors of trafficking, and especially sexual trafficking, and people who grew up in purity culture and how they have the same view of sex. Tell me about some of that research and just some of the things you found about some things that are common shared beliefs about it and, and maybe kind of how, how we got here, so to speak.

And, and yeah, well, it's funny in terms of how this all came about and like funny in the way of like interesting, not in terms of comic, but I originally was just going to do this study among survivors of trafficking to kind of like see how their pictures of sex has changed over the course of their life. But someone very early on, because I'm not like a great qualitative researcher, but I know people who are, and one of my partners said very like astutely, well, why don't you do kind of a cross-study to see what happens and the difference between people who just grew up under traditional teachings versus those who grew up as, and are now, survivors of trafficking. And the goal was just to really have a control experiment to see like what it was like. But what we found when we got into the data was this really extreme overlap, which was shocking. Um, and so what happens is, in the main, the biggest overlap, the thing that we found is that sex for both people who grew up in purity culture and who are survivors of trafficking was means to gain access to, keep, and maintain social networks. And so, for example, it's a survivor of trafficking talked about very, like, early on in her life, like, her, um, her stepfather was a person who was, uh, you know, actively engaged in assaulting her on a regular basis. And as long as she kept quiet about it, she would get presents or gifts or chocolate or things like that. And she would also not get physically assaulted, like, you know, if she resisted and things like that. So there's the advantage of, like, the gift of, like, also not being hurt further. And then, you know, also, like, gifts. And so it was a way for her to gain access to something. And so when, you know, the tragic part about this is this woman, once she kind of finally did testify, against her stepfather, she was put in another home and the same thing happened all over again. So she was taught that sex was a way to kind of keep access to home, like she was able to stay in a home so long as she performed these services. And so when she started finding other social networks, that same expectation found itself right there. But, you know, the, the women who I surveyed and did the study amongst who are under purity culture teachings, the same thing happened, except instead of using sex as a way to like like, you know, actually having sex as a way to gain and maintain, like, communities of support. It was the absence of it. And so like, all across the board, one's purity was kind of seen as a way to maintain one's leadership within like a youth department or a church. And I had several, you know, of the participants say very explicitly that once they kind of, if they dressed like a certain way, like one time it was like, I think there's a concert and one of the participants mentioned that they wore leggings because they, they're very warm and something like that. And once that happened, like, those were more form-fitting and things like that, the church kind of changed their way of seeing her. And so she stopped— she wasn't allowed to sing on the praise team anymore, she wasn't on the youth council and things like that. And so those kind of social networks were removed from her. And so, you know, it's on a spectrum in a sense, like survivors of trafficking and people who grew up are under these, you know, purity culture teachings is on a spectrum. It's the same in the sense that like sex determines their status inside of a community. But on the one side, survivors, it's lots of sexual activity maintains it. And then on the other side, it's no sexual activity. And so in a certain sense, these participate in the same logic, namely that one's worth and ability to stay in a community is dependent upon their ability to have sex or use their bodies in a specific way, um, in order to gain or lose a community.

Wow, that is interesting and heartbreaking. So many things I could think to say about that right now. When, when I think about the title of your book, Iconoclastic Sex: Christian Sexual Ethics and Human Trafficking, explain to our listeners what an iconoclast iconoclast is, just in case they may not be familiar with that term. It makes sense with your book, but I want to make sure it's clear to everybody listening.

Right. Yeah, it's an image that I kind of played around with in a Christian ethics class that I taught years ago, and it was— it's basically, an iconoclast is a person who's like a destroyer of images. So like in the Old Testament, for example, whenever a prophet would go into the temple and remove the idols to foreign deities, they would be an iconoclast. You know, the word kind of comes from the controversy in the 8th century around images of Jesus specifically, and whether or not the church could venerate images of Jesus or whether that was idolatry. And so someone who's against those images were the iconoclasts. And I think that it's such a fitting metaphor for what the book is trying to do, because in both the cases of the what I highlighted with these women and who I've surveyed, there are certain images under which they labor and toil, you know, and I kind of name it in the book as a dichotomy between what other authors have called the Eve-Mary dichotomy. It's on that same spectrum. Eve is kind of seen as this like sexually promiscuous person, which, you know, is strange because there's nothing in scripture to really indicate that necessarily something about her. I mean, she's a temptress for a lot of Christian literature, especially older Christian literature, as you see. And so women in trafficking are often put under that category. And then purity culture, where, you know, Mary, right, who's so pure, is able to even have a child without actually having sex at all.

Yeah.

And like, the ideal is this impossibility. Like, no one can live up to that. Um, and so we have to— if we're going to have a good, healthy, just, loving sexual ethic, we have to destroy those images. Images in order to actually bring life to the people who are caught under these images that they cannot ever live up to.

Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that, and I really appreciate that, especially in the context. I think it's going to give a lot more depth and a richer meaning to people listening today as to why you called the book that. And our time is getting short. We were shooting for around a half hour, but I'm really enjoying the conversation. So if you have a couple more minutes, we'll continue on as today.

Absolutely.

What was something that, that really stands out to you? I know there's— when you release a book, as a musician, when I release an album, all the songs are kind of my baby. You know, you put a lot of thought into the writing of this book. And there's been things that you, I'm sure, have, have learned and that you're trying to share with other people. I always like to ask authors if there's something that really stood out to them that like, oh, this is the thing I really want to make sure I talk about, about this new project that I have or this new book. And I have a feeling that that's no exception with you on this project because I know it's not just a work of ethics, but I think it's a, it's a passion of yours as well because you want to see people who are brought out of bondage in many ways that the, the iconoclastic image that we can break some of these damaging images you know, and, uh, and bring about some new life. So what would that be for you, sort of, in the writing process of this book? Maybe something that you just go, yeah, this is sort of maybe a new passion that I developed from the writing of this book.

Yeah, it's, it's— and I, I say this in all humility because I realize that, like, I don't think people who have committed— and I think you mentioned this too— like, committed themselves to teaching purity culture necessarily had the worst intentions in mind. I do think it got out of hand really quickly.

Yeah.

And the implications of what was being said really went awry. And I mean, away from probably what they did. So like even Josh Harris, for example, who really started this, has since repented of it and even kind of left the faith because he's— he realized the damage that he's done. And I think it's fascinating to kind of see his journey in that way. But for me, I think one of the things I've realized is that like like good, well-meaning Christian people, um, in their ethical lives, not just in terms of sexual ethics but in general, like, we, we treat ethics as this kind of almost like, um, measuring stick. Because there's nothing more, uh, that people want than to be judged as good themselves. They want to earn it themselves, um, which is obviously like the— you could talk about the rich young ruler and things like that. That's, that's kind want. And for me, what I realized is what happens is, is that we create this like posture with ethics where you have to kind of commit certain codes. Like, I've got this, this, this, and this— X, Y, and Z— and I am now good. I can check off all the boxes of the list. And one of the things I found is that what that does is it really closes you off to grace and closes you off the ability to actually see people, um, who may or may not have fit what you have designated as like the right set of codes to follow, um, which what's what makes it so heartbreaking to see because a lot of people, they don't realize that when they see someone who is, you know, selling themselves for sex, for example, they just see a person who's making a bad choice and thus to be condemned as, you know, those kind of things. But in a lot of situations, really, it's, it's, it is trafficking. I mean, the thing that keeps trafficking from being more in the public sphere is what it looks like is an abusive relationship. Like, we all— we have these narratives of capture, right? That's what, um, trafficking is. Like, I steal you from your family and I force you to do these things. But what really the majority— I mean, all of the women I interviewed, what happened in kind of their trafficking experiences was that they had a boyfriend or a relationship in which they were very much in love with this person, but this person was very much just kind of using them to get drugs playing different kinds of things. And so it didn't look like capture.

They—

it looked like they were there willingly. Yeah. So our inability to understand that the, the way we express our ethics is just as important as what our ethics actually are. So like, if we cannot in our like, uh, teachings on sexual ethics see those who are themselves marginalized by them, then we have missed, missed the game. In terms of what ethics is all about, because it should cultivate this really deep love and passion for other people instead of a kind of measuring stick in which other people either measure up or they don't. Um, and so that's something through the course of this that I found to be the most compelling, is the kind of ethical life in which the joy and grace of Jesus can itself be the guiding measure of what it means for you to actually live your life in this world instead of just trying to create in yourself the perfect, um, like, moral person, um, which I think is a crucial thing.

Yeah. Well, I want to thank you for the work that you put into this book. It is no small task. And especially as, uh, in my work as a hospital chaplain, uh, sadly there have been a few occasions where some of the patients that I've gone in to visit with, uh, have been people who were trafficked, and they were there in the hospital, uh, receiving treatment or just, just for various reasons. And it was always terribly sad. And one thing that I often found was that those kind of people, they, they don't need less grace in their life. They need more, you know. And I think that there is a power to helping us find ways to embrace people. And I think if your book does anything at all, I hope it will be a way to help us to love each other better. For sure. And, and to not just see sex as something, you know, evil, which is so oftentimes in church is, uh, is, is almost, uh, put out that way, but it would see as an essential part of our humanness and, and something that if we, if we misuse it, it can be very destructive. If we, if we use it rightly, it can actually help add to flourishing in our lives. So I'm grateful for you I'm grateful that we had a chance to talk about the book. I can't wait to read it first chance I get when this semester starts to slow down a little bit, for sure. Yeah. But thank you for sharing the book with me. I don't take that lightly at all. And I wish you so much luck in not only the publishing of this book, but in your endeavors in the coming days and with your ministry. So thank you so much for being one of the voices in my head here this week. Do you have any closing words as I, as I bring up the closing music today?

Uh, you know, just, uh, you can find the book on Amazon, on my publisher's website, and things like that. And I love to hear your thoughts on it. And this is a great book, I think, that has a lot, um, selfishly to offer.

All right, well, check out the book. And once again, we've been calling him Hank because that's what he goes by, but the book is called Iconoclastic Sex: Christian Sexual Ethics and Human Trafficking. And the book is, uh, by Henry Walter Spalding III, which you will find on Amazon and other places. We will try have a link to that here in the show notes. But for right now, thank you so much for listening to Voices in My Head. So glad for all of you who listen. I'm sorry that it's not coming out weekly like it was, but I'm in the last full-time semester right now of my graduate degree. So hopefully, in just a few months, I'll be getting back to regular weekly Wednesday shows. But thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. By By the way, March 10th I'm going to be opening for Jason Gray here in Springfield, Ohio, and it's going to be a fun night of music. I'm only just doing a couple songs to kind of start the night and kick it off, but it's going to be fun to hang out with Jason and see him again. So if you're in the Springfield, Ohio area, in about a week we're going to have the tickets go on sale at homeroadnaz.org. I'll try to put some links on my website too. The tickets are free and but they're only open to 300 people, so we're keeping it kind of small for that event, which I'm excited to be a part of. All that is to say, I could keep going on and on, but thanks for listening to Voices in My Head, and we will see you back here next time, whenever that is. God bless you, and thank you for being with us here today.