Java with Juli - Making Sense of God and Sex
Sex, Cancel Culture, and the Church: How to Pursue Unity When we Disagree, #520
29 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Job with Julie. I am Julie Slattery, and I'm so glad that you're here. Now this podcast is an outreach of authentic intimacy, and we are so grateful as we wrap up 2025 and think about all the things that God has done within and through this ministry. And as someone who joins me here on Job With Julie each week, you are part of that.
I get so much joy when I get to hear from you about how this podcast has helped you on your journey of making sense of God and sexuality. Now, you know, I believe we absolutely need to be rooted in a biblical understanding of God's design for sexuality. But as we talk about topics like that, we can't lose the heart of the gospel and what it practically means to be united as the bride of Christ.
In our conversations about sexual matters, there can be a lot of disagreement in the church, particularly over some of the nuances. We've hit on some of those this year, like whether you should use preferred names and pronouns, whether it's okay to use birth control, and what it looks like to be a biblical husband or wife.
Now, I want to clarify that pursuing unity doesn't mean that we water down theology or we ignore sin. You know, here on Job with Julie, we often live in this tension of really wanting to stand on biblical truth related to difficult issues, but also pursuing unity with our brothers and sisters. And I hope as you've listened to this podcast, you've heard that tension.
Now, the conversation you're going to hear today is all about this. It was accorded a little bit over a year ago, and Hannah Nitz joined me. But it speaks directly in how we hold those two things together, truth and love, conviction with humility. And as I thought about how I wanted to wrap up 2025, this is a conversation that God put on my heart.
There really is no greater challenge for us than to love God and to love each other well. And as you listen, if what you hear resonates with you, I'm going to ask you if you'll consider partnering with us as we continue to bring you conversations about God and sexuality that tackle honest questions and real-life sexual pain in ways that actually build up the body of Christ, not tear it down.
As we're closing out the year, we are so close to our annual fundraising goal. We're at about 95%.
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Chapter 2: How can we pursue unity in the church despite disagreements?
Will you help us get over that line? When you give between now and the end of the year, your gift is going to be matched dollar for dollar. And I'm super excited about some of the things that we're working on for 2026 that will make these kinds of resources more accessible for everyone. I can't wait to tell you about some of the projects we're working on,
for both individuals and to equip Christian leaders around the world. And if you want to join in that work that we're doing at Authentic Intimacy, please do so by giving. You can go to authenticintimacy.com slash give and make a donation today. And we'll drop that link in our show notes as well. Okay, let's head to the coffee shop and wrap up this year of Java with Julie.
Well, Hannah, thanks so much for joining me. This is an important conversation.
So right before you hit record, I got to let the folks at home know what you said. What did I say? You said, Hannah, I am very passionate about this topic. I am. Which, I'm going to be honest, I don't hear you say that very often before we hit record. No. You got some vigor. You got some passion with this one. I do. All right. Let the people know, Julie. What are we talking about? Oh, dear.
Oh, dear.
Yeah.
I mean, we're going to talk about, like, how do you love people well when you disagree, particularly on the topic of sexuality. We're going to talk about Christian cancel culture. Yeah. And I am really passionate about this.
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Chapter 3: What examples of disagreement in the church are mentioned?
Yeah. Let's kick it off. Tell us why. Why are you so passionate about this? And I don't think you would have said that five years ago.
No, like actually today I was reviewing a blog that I had written like four years ago and I changed a lot of the wording. Around the idea of cancel culture? No, it wasn't about cancel culture. But it was just, it was more combative. Oh, interesting. Not combative, but like more here's the line in the sand, like people who don't agree are kind of coming after us.
Yeah.
I feel so strongly about this, Hannah, because I've become convinced reading the New Testament that Jesus really, really cares about unity. That there's one church, there's one spirit. Jesus died on the cross it says in Ephesians to tear down the barrier of hostility that he would reconcile in himself us to God like the unity of there's one body of Christ and
We'll talk about in this podcast how theology is important, how discerning truth is important. But I think in our pursuit of discerning truth, we are just stabbing the body of Christ. We're just cutting off pieces of the body of Christ. So tell us how you see that happening.
Like what's an example of that or like where are we cutting people off or how is this happening?
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Chapter 4: How does the concept of cancel culture relate to the church?
Boy, I think there's so many examples. I mean, we're such a divided culture and we're such a divided, like even Protestantism and all of it, like religion. There's tons of examples, but the water that I swim in is around sexuality. And so you have...
people within this field of Christian sexuality that despise each other, that write books and have podcasts and blogs and the whole purpose of them is like, I want to tell you why this person is wrong and I want to tell you why not to trust this person and why this author is horrible and
And then I get emails and people coming to me and saying, wait, here's two people that I've learned from and I respect, and now they can't be in the same room together.
Both Christians.
Yes.
Both authors, teachers, something.
And not just Christians, but I would say committed to biblical truth. Yeah. They are followers of Jesus Christ. Yeah. So I see this happening in the sphere of sexuality related to how we nuance the LGBT conversation. And I see it happening in terms of how we address abuse within the church and divorce and how we talk about sex. And it's just, I think these conversations are hugely important.
I think we are on a big learning curve on diversity. all those issues, Hannah. And we need to have leaders and thought leaders and people who are searching the scriptures to have these conversations and discern truth. But the way it's happening is we're pursuing truth at the expense of learning to love each other well, learning to learn from each other. And it breaks my heart.
There's a lot of things I do in the ministry that I have an authentic intimacy that break my heart. And one of them is this topic. It's just how divisive we become. Like, I could just cry.
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Chapter 5: What role does humility play in discussing tough topics?
He put us in a body and created us as a body so that we would have to learn to be humble, to work together, to be gentle and gracious in the areas that we disagree in. I just feel like... It doesn't matter how much we can articulate truth well, if we're not living in a way that is drawing people to the love of Christ, it doesn't matter. So that's why I'm so passionate about it.
Wow, that was a good opening, Julie.
Yeah, it was a little deep.
It was a little deep, but it's honest, it's powerful, and it's, man, I mean, so at the beginning you were saying, this is the water I swim in.
Yeah.
Essentially, the visual picture I had as you were talking about that is if all of us are kind of swimming in the same pond, kind of what you see happening is like a group of fish swimming go into one corner and building their own little gate. And are like, we agree on Jesus. We agree on these other things. But if you talk about sexuality and you include this when you're saying LGBT... Yeah.
You can't come in. I can't learn from you. I can't endorse anything you're doing. Is that it? Like there's these firm lines that you see or also just like this combativeness towards each other.
Yeah. It's it's these firm lines. It's not a willingness to say, hey, you see this from a different perspective. I don't agree, but let me understand how you got there. And let me leave some room for grace and conviction of the Holy Spirit, even when I don't agree. And let me be asking the Lord, what does it look like to love you well in this space?
So I guess I would argue, though, that this doesn't feel new. This feels like this has always been happening. I mean, if we think about in denominations, isn't this kind of what happened with the church?
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Chapter 6: How can we engage in conversations about sexuality with love?
The religious leaders that Jesus was not happy with, they were the ones that had denominations. But if you read the New Testament, the churches were identified by their location. So the church of Ephesus or Berea, but they were unified. and we've just grown up so much with this idea of denominations that it feels like, oh yeah, of course.
Man, I'm trying to remember what book this was that I read, that I think it was, I can't remember the country, which doesn't make this story very good, that it was a country that someone had gone to seminary in, and they had written that churches in this country did not have denominations, and you just went to the church that was closest to you, and that was normal.
Like nowadays, this is still happening. And I remember reading that being like, huh, That's fascinating.
No, like with the persecuted church, there are not denominations. It's like, you love Jesus? Oh my goodness.
Yeah, come on in.
Yeah, let's worship together. So why do we do this? Boy, that's a big question. I don't know that I have one answer. What's causing this?
That we don't think we need each other? Pride that we think we have all the answers?
First of all, I think... A fear that we don't want... I mean, I think it's a lot of that. I mean, first of all, let's take a step back and say we have the luxury of... of having denominations. Capital L luxury. Yeah, I mean, we do. We have the time to sit around and think about, what's my theology on baptism? Do I think we should use preferred pronouns?
We have the space and the luxury of that instead of, like I said, in the persecuted church or in places where there are very, very few Christians. It's just... Like, hey, let's link arms together. And I've been in places like that in other countries where it's like, there is no such thing as denominations.
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Chapter 7: What are the challenges of holding differing theological views?
It's like, do you love Jesus? Yeah. Okay, well, let's work together. So I do think it's a luxury thing.
I think, and I'm not a church historian, but the little that I know, with the Protestant Reformation, the scripture became so important, and it is so important, but we began to put all the emphasis on what is your doctrine, and not on our experience with God, and not on how are we living, how are we loving well. And so in the modern Western Protestant Church,
all the focus on whether or not you're a good Christian is what you believe. Yeah. Instead of some of those other avocations of what it is to walk with God.
So we've seen this in the Christian faith, and now you're saying more specifically in the last five, ten years, you're seeing it to a new degree when it comes to issues around sexuality.
Yes.
Why is that?
Well, because the conversation about sexuality is heated up. Just in culture, yes. And because it's heated up in culture, we've been forced as Christians to look more deeply at what do we really believe? Like, what do we really believe about God's design for sex? And what do we really believe sex should look like within marriage?
And what do we really believe about whether or not this situation lends itself to being free to divorce and remarriage? Right. What do we believe about gender and sexual attraction and same-sex relationships? So a lot of those questions really weren't in the forefront of people's minds until really the last decade. And now they've all come out if you look at
You know, the Obergefell decision, if you look at what's happening with gender and just our understanding of gender and transgender, you look at the Me Too movement that has brought out all this abuse. Now Christians are like, what do we do with this? We have no role models who can guide us through that.
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Chapter 8: How can we practically apply these principles in our lives?
Yeah. I mean, it just feels good when you feel insecure to surround yourself with people who agree with you.
Oh, it feels great.
Yeah. It feels very unsettling when you feel insecure to be around people who, again, are Christians who see some of these issues differently. It's like, wait, I don't know what I believe now. Yeah.
So it sounds great, but it also sounds messy to like fly back into this open pool and just be like, you love Jesus, I love Jesus. We cool with all the other stuff, you know? Yeah, and that's not what I'm suggesting. I know you're not, but I'm just... But it's like, how do we fight against this division while still...
having these hard conversations about what does God see in these important issues.
Yeah. You know, Hannah, it's doctrine is very important. You know, like when you read, I think it's in second Timothy where Paul is saying there'll be times in the end days where people warm themselves into homes and, you know, there'll be teachers that want to tickle itching ears and,
And Paul called out heretics, and he called out people that were teaching a false gospel, and he called out people that were using the gospel for personal gain. And now he had an authority that we don't have. But I do think we've got to take seriously that there are wolves in every flock. There are people who want to draw people away from the true faith.
And we're told to be alert and to contend for the faith. And so, yeah, all that is true. And it's true within the space of sexuality. You know that, like, you know how passionate I am about that. And we need to have those conversations. And there really are, when we have divergent views on some things, it really is a break fellowship situation.
You know, if somebody says, oh, I believe God created us to have sex with whoever we want to have sex with and whatever, You know, like it's all about satisfying your own desires. I'm like, okay, that's not biblical. You're departing from truth. But what I'm talking about, Hannah, is not those issues. I'm talking about the nuance of how we walk this out.
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