Instead of the church’s lessons helping women to participate in loving, mutual relationships, they perpetuate singleness and unfulfilled partnerships because the men in our lives desire confident women who are able to play with the possibilities of sexual engagement.

Yeshua’s (Jesus’) very life and ministry demonstrate the mutual and respectful existence of divinity and humanity within each person.

Integrity is this sense of being true to self, true to G ~ d, and true to community. We were exploring where we were not in truth in those three areas. It’s not about permission to have sex with whomever we want. It is about the challenge of owning our truths with our faith, our G ~ d, and our community.

Shepherd further argues while conjuring the spirit of Alice Walker, “We need to reexamine the things we have been taught, the things we’ve been told are biblical, the terminologies we’ve had defined for us as sexual beings. We need to ‘peel the old white man from our eyeballs before we can see clearly, see ourselves and G ~ d.