As a psychotherapist and professor of marriage and family therapy and sexuality at a Christian University, Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD, has spent a career listening deeply to the often untold, most tightly held, shame-filled stories of people’s lives. Over the last 30 years in particular, these stories have revealed the devastating effects of abstinence education, the purity movement of the evangelical church, and the simultaneous removal of media regulations that allowed for an influx of sexual violence against women to enter all forms of commercial media beginning in the 1980s. This destructive tidal wave of events became our de-facto sex educator, and a sexually shamed saturated rape culture to become the result.

In this fascinating account, Dr. Sellers examines the history that brought America here, and the role the empire Christian church and capitalism have played as socio-political bedfellows. Evidence is presented to show how power and control was chosen over sexual health and wellness; and body suspicion and misogyny chosen over sacred sexuality and worthiness. In this investigation, Dr. Sellers reveals several beautiful mystic Hebrew stories demonstrating a relentless God who developed sexuality and bodies on purpose to give humans one of the most powerful and passionate experiences of love - but how these potent ancient narratives were buried out of view.

We find in this book written for clinicians and the public, that sexuality is meant to bless us, that we can heal sexual shame, find God in and through intimate touch, and that nothing can separate us from God’s love. We are radically valuable and radically imperfect - and always worthy of love.