Randy Elrod's Blog, page 2

The Post that Cost Me Christian Readers (And Why I’m Not Sorry)

My friends, I am genuinely flabbergasted. This past week, I wrote about ethical non-monogamy—a thoughtful piece about honest sexual relationships—and watched as Christians unsubscribed. I estimate that practicing Christians compose about 5% of my subscribers. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a communion wafer. After eighteen years of writing about renouncing...

Sexual Honesty and Selective Moral Outrage

My friends, I am genuinely flabbergasted. This past week, I wrote about ethical non-monogamy—a thoughtful piece about honest sexual relationships—and watched as Christians unsubscribed. I estimate that practicing Christians compose about 5% of my subscribers. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a communion wafer. After eighteen years of writing about renouncing...

Protected: Wrestling with Ethical Non-Monogamy: A Late-Life Liberation

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

What Gave Me the Courage to Leave…Family, Religion, America?

People ask me this question constantly. How do you walk away from everything—a thirty-year ministry career, financial security, family approval, your entire social circle, and eventually your home country? What kind of person does that? What kind of courage does it take? Here’s the truth: it wasn’t courage. It was survival. When you’re dying inside,...

Book Tasting

La Sala de Purificación Cata de Libros La Whiskería 19:30-19:45 (15 min) – Llegada y Bienvenida Los invitados llegan y toman asientoOpcional: Los camareros preparan y sirven “El Primer Umbral” ajenjoMúsica de fondo: Jazz sutil 19:45-19:55 (10 min) – Introducción y Bienvenida del Autor Introducción por el Anfitrión del Local (2 min)Mi Introducción (4 min)...

Sex in the Seventies (And Every Decade Since)

  I first had sex on July 22, 1979—a sweaty, fumbling, hormone-driven encounter that lasted approximately thirty-seven seconds and left me convinced I’d discovered the meaning of life. I was twenty-one years old, full of Appalachian fire and Baptist guilt, with absolutely no idea what I was doing. This morning, forty-six years later, I’m still...

The Two-God Hustle: When Christianity Became a Trump Card

From my vantage point here in Barcelona—where ancient cathedrals stand as monuments to humanity’s complex relationship with the divine rather than political weapons—I’ve been watching America’s latest theological circus with a mixture of fascination and horror. Americans have become increasingly bewitched by what I can only describe as a borrowed god who brings particularly bad...

Protected: Gina’s 70th Birthday Photo Shoot: A Celebration of Embodied Beauty

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

My Barcelona Moveable Feast: An Eleven-Day Sabbatical in the City of Dreams

When Gina departed for Ireland, I found myself staring at eleven empty days—a blank canvas that felt daunting and delicious. My previous sabbaticals were mountain solitudes in Colorado, desperate escapes from the authoritarian evangelical mega-churches where I served as artistic director, always misunderstood, perpetually out of place. Those Rocky Mountain retreats demanded adrenaline—solo summiting 14,000-foot...

Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Great Sex

Phoenix Adams, the morning after (the morning after The Purging Room imagined) The question hits me like espresso on an empty stomach—sudden, bitter, necessary. I’m sitting in The Plaza’s restaurant, still wearing yesterday’s clothes, still carrying the impossible weight of a burgundy book that shouldn’t exist. The waiter assumes I’m another businessman nursing a hangover....