Brenda Marie Davies - On Her Knees: Memoir of a Prayerful Jezebel

Brenda Marie Davies brings important truths to the long, complicated history and intersection of sexuality and spirituality. She is a sex-positive Christian, and her journey in On Her Knees is a must-read for anyone struggling to reconcile their faith with their orgasm.

L IZ G OLDWYN
author, filmmaker, and founder of The Sex Ed

Brenda has the courage to talk about a topic that most others either wont touch or distort through the lens of purity cultureand she does so with strength, knowledge, vulnerability, clarity, and authenticity. Not all will cheer her on, but they will have to listen.

P ETER E NNS
author of How the Bible Actually Works and The Sin of Certainty

Daviess story reads like something out of our sacred text: a narrative full of humanness, complexity, and faith. By telling us about her life and what she has learned, she carves out even more space for a spiritual life in the grey, inviting us to see that no matter what we have been told there is room for the holy in our sensuality.

H ILLARY L. M C B RIDE
author of Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image: Learning to Love Ourselves as We Are

What Brenda does in On Her Knees is expose the all-too-common story of what happens when power corrupts faith communities. Its a hard look at how the bad theology inherent in evangelicalism is lived out in our actual bodies. And, better still, Brenda is showing us all a better way to be followers of Jesus in the here and now. Said another way: the bitch can preach. Read her book.

K EVIN M IGUEL G ARCIA
author of Bad Theology Kills: Undoing Toxic Belief and Reclaiming Your Spiritual Authority

In this honestand at times rawmemoir, Brenda Marie Davies leaves behind the god she calls Purity to rediscover the God of love. With searching candor and open-heartedness, Davies writes about the damages she suffered from purity culture and her path into greater authenticity, compassion, and faithfulness. On Her Knees is both a compelling read and a thoughtful companion to anyone on her own journey of desire and temptation.

N ATALIE C ARNES
author of Motherhood: A Confession

Theres a lot of imagined, wished for, regrettable, forgettable sexand body talk, and bawdy talkin this memoir, but its absolutely not sexy. Davies has a sexual story only a former fundagelical could writewhere body and spirit have come completely and tragically untethered from one another. Thats not what the church intended, but its what the church has wrought for lots of us. God help us get ourselves put back together. Stories like this should help.

K ATIE H AYS
founder and lead evangelist of Galileo Church and author of We Were Spiritual Refugees

Brenda Marie Davies has had an extraordinary life, and yet there is nothing extraordinary about her efforts to overcome the shame of evangelical purity culture. Fear of Gods punishment, guilt about sexual desire, and self-blame are themes that resonate for anyone who has struggled with the exacting toll of sexual purity. Written with candor and grace, Daviess unique story holds truth for so many of us who are seeking to find unity between our bodies and our souls.

S ARA M OSLENER
director of the After Purity Project and author of Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence

I used to think you were either happy or sad. There was right and wrong, good and evil, black and white. You were a believer or you werent. But then life happened. Brenda leaves the comfort of what shes expected to believe, who shes expected to be, and in the chasm between expectation and lived reality, and with a perfectly imperfect journey, she courageously steps outside cultural and religious norms and into the immense grey. In the space between, she discovers a God more loving, healing, and expansive than the flattened version she learned about in Christian purity culture. Davies boldly shares her story, shame free, and contagiously invites us to dig deeper into our stories, beliefs, and narratives about love, sex, God, and who we believe ourselves and others to be. No matter who you are, what you do or dont believe, there is an invitation for you in this book as you encounter God in the grey.

K AT H ARRIS
author of Sexless in the City and host of The Refined Collective podcast

As a fellow spiritual refugee of the religious abuse known as purity culture, I found Brendas memoir at times oddly familiaralthough at times notably much more star-studded and juicier than my own life. In the vacuum that remained after leaving her evangelical, patriarchal concepts about sex behind, she struggles to find a new morality, a new sexual ethic, that honors her convictions, her desires, and her sense of agency. Brenda deconstructs the toxic theology she inherited with honesty and raw humor and unearths for the reader something precious in its wake: grace.

E LLE D OWD
preacher, activist, educator, and author

Davies journeys from evangelical Christian purity culture to Hollywood at its hottestmaking pit stops at the Playboy Mansion and backstage with Marilyn Mansonas she struggles to reclaim a sexuality that has been squeezed, suppressed, used, and abused to meet the disparate desires of men. In the process, the young woman who spent most of her life on her kneesbe it for a rock-and-roll god or a religious onelearns to stand up for herself. Hers is a story with which many young women, forced to reconcile the worlds incongruous expectations for their sexuality, will identify.

L INDA K AY K LEIN
author of Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free

Behind the walls of fear, shame, and opprobrium, Eros always seeks a way through the cracks. Brenda Marie Davies is that rare brave soul who trusted the instincts of her desire. Now, with On Her Knees, she looks back on those walls and cleaves open those cracks, so that others, like her, might find their way out of the shadows and into a place of sexual authenticity and self-integration.

I AN K ERNER
sex therapist and New York Times bestselling author of She Comes First

In On Her Knees, Brenda Marie Davies exposes the lies of evangelical purity culture that have long crushed the spirit and ruined the lives of millions of faith-filled Christians. This brave and honest story exposes the experience of thousands like her who have suffered the debilitating shame of the patriarchal purity movement. In contrast, stubborn and resilient explorers like Brenda, who listen instead to the quiet voice of their hearts, offer an alternative. They hear the true loving voice of God. It is a voice calling them toward truth, calling them toward love, and calling out the abuse of power that has long been the tradition of patriarchal Western empire religion.

T INA S CHERMER S ELLERS
author of Sex, God, and the Conservative Church: Erasing Shame from Sexual Intimacy

On Her Knees is no flimsy summer beach read. No, its the kind of book that grabs you by the shoulders and makes you think. In this book, Brenda Marie Davies takes readers on a guided tour of conservative Christian purity culture that will leave them haunted. With the precision of a surgeon, she vividly explores the way purity culture distorts the way people view bodies, sex, and the Divine. From the carnage of an evangelical hellscape, Davies offers hope for self-acceptance, healing, and, dare I say, salvation.

J ONATHAN M ERRITT
contributing writer for The Atlantic and author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch