S5:E14 - A Recovering Evangelical Testimony featuring Mattie Jo Cowsert Katherine Spearing

New book on Spiritual Abuse available from the founder of Tears of Eden: A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts: The Subtle, Insidious Nature of Spiritual Abuse and Life on the Other Side

Mattie Jo Cowsert was a pastor’s kid and proud purity ring wearer before she moved to New York City and experienced an unexpected worldview and identity implosion thanks to Tinder and her Jewish roommate. When marriage equality passed in 2015, Mattie Jo decided to share how the queer community was one of the catalysts for questioning everything she’d been taught about this Jesus guy in her first publicly released blog post entitled: God and the Gays. This was the start of her popular blog, God, Sex, and Rich People. Before terms like “deconstruction”, “purity culture” or “Exvangelical'' became hashtags viewed by billions, God, Sex, and Rich People exposed the sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious realities of a young female Exvangelical navigating the diversity of the Big Apple, working for the 1%, and trying to have good sex without hating herself in the city that never sleeps (and never stops sleeping around).

Her book by the same name releases on September 10th, 2024.

Looking for a trauma-trained mental health professional to work with? www.traumaresolutionandrecovery.com/meet-our-practitioners

Sign up for Tears of Eden’s newsletter to receive updates on the release of Katherine Spearing’s upcoming book: www.tearsofeden.org/about

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Transcript is Unedited for Typos and Misspellings

[00:00:00] I'm Katherine Spearing, and this is Uncertain.

Uncertain is the affiliate podcast of Tears of Eden, a community and resource for survivors of spiritual abuse from the evangelical community.

So I don't think I've had the chance to officially announce, But in April of this year, I partnered with Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery to work as a practitioner for them. Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery is a online agency that works with survivors of spiritual abuse, religious trauma, purity culture, folks who are deconstructing, All of the things, and it's 100 percent online, so you can meet with a practitioner online.

So many folks are addressing the religious trauma that came from evangelicalism, from working in the church, and they're looking for good mental health professionals that understand this. I know that with most of the clients that I work with, they [00:01:00] have already worked with therapists before in the past.

But one of the main things that they struggled with in their therapy relationship was that the therapist didn't understand the nuances and the complexities of the subculture of evangelicalism.

So if you are looking for a mental health practitioner to help you navigate the complex and confusing and very painful journey of recovering from religious trauma and the trauma from spiritual abuse, I encourage you to check them out. I'm a practitioner there. I see clients one on one. I currently have a client.

Few openings for new clients and there are also several other practitioners that have openings for clients as well. So that is an option available to you. Another thing that I haven't announced yet on the podcast is that In April, also in April of this year, I signed a book contract. I am working with Lake Drive Books as my publisher for this book.

[00:02:00] And what do you know? The book is about spiritual abuse. It will contain a A lot of my journey, but my journey also entails working with clients, working with survivors through Tears of Eden,

there are some genuine quotes that are taken straight from some of the podcast episodes here. So you'll be in familiar territory.

One of the gaps in the current literature around spiritual abuse that my book is going to hopefully fill is addressing the reality that The theology and evangelicalism and in the modern day church actually has a massive impact on the rampant abuse that we are now seeing in the church.

I haven't seen a lot of that connection made in the current literature that's out there. Our previous guest from last week, Krista Brown, she made that connection really well. Like this theology actually leads to the abuse. So Other than that, I just really haven't seen that much happening. So that's one [00:03:00] of the things that's going to be showing up in this book as well.

That's just a little bit of a sneak peek. We'll probably do some sort of launch event through Tears of Eden when it comes out in 2025. The exact date is still to be decided, but subscribe to Tears of Eden's newsletter so that you can get updates on that book when it's coming out and all of the deets around that. The guest today is Maddie Jo Kausert. Maddie Jo was a pastor's kid and proud purity ring wearer, before she moved to New York City and experienced an unexpected worldview and identity implosion, thanks to Tinder and her Jewish roommate.

When marriage equality passed in 2015, Maddie Jo decided to share how the queer community was one of the catalysts for questioning everything she'd been taught about this Jesus guy in her first public release blog post entitled, God and the Gays. This was the start of her popular blog.

God, sex, and rich people. Before terms like deconstruction, purity culture, or [00:04:00] evangelical became hashtags viewed by billions, God, sex, and rich people exposed the sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious realities of a young female evangelical navigating the diversity of the Big Apple, working for the one percent, And trying to have good sex without hating herself in a city that never sleeps and never stops sleeping around.

Her book by the same name releases on September 10th, 2024.

Maddie is hilarious and super fun, so I'm very much looking forward to reading her book when it releases. Here is my interview with Maddie Jo Kausert.

Katherine: Well, welcome, Glenda, to have you here. I love the title of your book. Why don't you tell us the title of your book?

Mattie: I

Katherine: will.

Mattie: Yes. God's Sex and Rich People, a Recovering Evangelical Testimony.

Katherine: Fantastic. And you are coming from New York, where you work as an actor?

Mattie: Mm hmm.

Katherine: Actor.

Mattie: And now [00:05:00] author. Now author. Actor, writer, shameless overshare is what I say. Or sometimes I say actor, writer, babysitter for billionaires. It kind of depends on my crowd.

Katherine: Are you still a babysitter for billionaires?

Mattie: I am. I am a babysitter. You know, something of the, of the unexpected twists and turns my life has taken.

I did not foresee my being like solely raised to be a mom and a wife to be so lucrative. Incredibly lucrative in New York City. There are lots of, of, and I'm not saying this is true of my family, of the family I work for, but there are lots of families in New York that actually don't want to parent their kids.

So I'm great.

Katherine: Yeah, absolutely. I'm

Mattie: good at it.

Katherine: Absolutely. Absolutely. I had a life where I nannied. I enjoyed it. I like, Mm-Hmm, . I really enjoyed it. And there are times where I consider going back to it because .

Mattie: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm...