Protocol — Theological Coherence as Intervention for Sex-Guilt-Mediated Shame

Version: 0.1 — draft for priest conversations + IRB pre-work ASN: ASN-602 Date: 2026-04-24 Status: Pre-registration pending; IRB pre-submission in progress; clerical partnerships being lined up

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Research question

Does a structured theological-coherence course — teaching the historical accuracy of Augustine's actual doctrine + installing the sanctification framework + walking participants through personal moral-incongruence audit — reduce sex-guilt-mediated sexual shame in religiously-formed adults?

This is §K.5 of the Christianity literature map — the open intervention question no one has yet formally tested.

Hypotheses (pre-registered)

H1 (primary). Participants in the intervention arm will show greater reduction in Mosher Sex Guilt scores at post-intervention (week 8) and 6-month follow-up than participants in the active-comparison arm (secular CBT for sexual concerns), controlling for baseline.

H2. Reduction in Grubbs moral incongruence (religious-disapproval subscale) will mediate the intervention's effect on Sex Guilt. (Not just: shame goes down. Specifically: the moral-incongruence mechanism is the active ingredient.)

H3. Religious Identity Integration (SMRII; Etengoff 2024) will increase in the intervention arm without corresponding decrease in religiosity (DUREL). The prediction is not that participants become less religious; it is that they become more coherently religious.

H4. Sexual satisfaction (Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction; Lawrance & Byers 1995) will increase in the intervention arm, mediated by reduction in Sex Guilt (Woo et al. 2012 pathway).

H5 (open, descriptive). Tradition-arm effects: the magnitude of intervention effects will vary by participant's religious-formation tradition. Prediction: strongest effects in evangelical arm (because moral-incongruence levels are highest at baseline in purity-culture-raised participants per PCBS literature), moderate effects in Catholic arm, substantial effects in queer-affirming arm.

Design

Randomized controlled trial, pre-registered on OSF. Stratified randomization within each arm. Blinded outcome assessment where possible.

Arms:

Arm	Tradition	Intervention	Active Comparison
A	Evangelical / Protestant purity-culture-raised	8-week theological coherence course — evangelical theological content	8-week CBT-based sex therapy
B	Catholic / Orthodox	8-week theological coherence course — Catholic theological content (John Paul II Theology of the Body, Coakley)	8-week CBT-based sex therapy
C	Queer-affirming (any tradition of formation)	8-week theological coherence course — affirming theological content (Ruether, queer theology, Bolz-Weber)	8-week CBT-based sex therapy

Sample size target:

• Pilot phase: 30 per arm (90 total) to establish effect-size estimates and refine curriculum
• Full phase: power calculation based on pilot d; expected ~80–120 per arm (240–360 total)

Participants

Inclusion:

• Age 18+
• Self-identified as religiously formed (evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox, or raised conservative with current queer identification)
• Self-report of sexual shame / guilt affecting quality of life (screening: Mosher Sex Guilt score ≥ 1 SD above adult mean)
• Capable of sustained course engagement (8 sessions, 90 min each)
• English fluency

Exclusion:

• Current untreated severe mental illness (psychosis, acute suicidality, severe eating disorder) — not that the intervention harms them, but that it doesn't meet their primary need
• Active clergy abuse case (handled separately with trauma-specialized care)
• Current sexual dysfunction requiring medical workup (handled concurrently, not excluded, but flagged)

Recruitment channels:

• Clerical partnerships (Mike's side — priests and pastors)
• Clinical partnerships (therapists who see religious sexual-shame cases)
• Social media targeted ads (evangelical / Catholic / queer-deconstruction audiences)
• Snowball sampling after pilot

Measure battery

Pre-registered battery administered at baseline (T0), post-intervention (T1, week 8), and 6-month follow-up (T2, week 32).

Core outcomes

Measure	Citation	Role
Mosher Sex Guilt Scale (revised)	Mosher 1988	Primary shame outcome
Grubbs Moral Incongruence — religious/moral disapproval subscale	Grubbs & Perry 2019	Mediator (H2)
Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction (GMSEX)	Lawrance & Byers 1995	Secondary outcome (H4)
SMRII — Sexual Minority and Religious Identity Integration Scale	Etengoff et al. 2024	Integration outcome (H3)
DUREL — Duke University Religion Index	Koenig & Büssing 2010	Covariate + tracks that religiosity doesn't decrease (H3)

Tradition-specific supplementary measures

Measure	Citation	Arm
Purity Culture Beliefs Scale (PCBS)	Ortiz et al. 2023	Arm A (evangelical) — purity-culture internalisation
Sanctification of Sexuality Scale	Hernandez, Mahoney, & Pargament 2011	All arms — positive pathway tracker
Shame subscale from Tangney TOSCA	Tangney & Dearing 2002	All arms — shame/guilt distinction

Demographics + covariates

• Age, gender identity, sexual orientation, relationship status
• Childhood religious formation (tradition, intensity, duration)
• Current religious practice (frequency, self-identification)
• Purity-pledge history (if applicable)
• Pornography use frequency + distress (Grubbs CPUI-9 for completeness)
• Mental health screeners (PHQ-9 depression, GAD-7 anxiety — to flag need for referral, not exclusion)

Intervention curriculum — 8 weeks

Each session 90 minutes. Four participants per facilitated group (pilot) or self-guided with weekly asynchronous discussion (scaling phase). Facilitator is a trained clergy or lay theological educator familiar with the arm's tradition.

Weeks 1–2: Historical Repair

Goal: Separate the actual theological tradition from the popular caricature.

• Augustine's actual doctrine: sexuality is good but disordered, not evil (O'Donnell 2005)
• Peter Brown's Body and Society: pre-Christian asceticism as context, not Christian invention
• Kyle Harper's From Shame to Sin: the specifically Christian contribution was the transformation of honor-shame into interiority-guilt
• Medieval elaboration: Brundage on how canon lawyers systematised and intensified Augustine
• The key move: the tradition you inherited is more complicated, and in some ways more merciful, than what was handed to you.

Weeks 3–4: Theological Alternative Installation (tradition-specific)

Goal: Introduce the sanctification framework within the participant's tradition.

• Arm A (evangelical): Song of Solomon as positive textual tradition; sexual union in Ephesians as mysterion; Bolz-Weber Shameless; Schermer Sellers clinical model; Christian sex-positivity writers
• Arm B (Catholic / Orthodox): John Paul II Theology of the Body; Coakley God, Sexuality, and the Self; sacramental understanding of marital union; Orthodox teaching on marriage as theosis
• Arm C (queer-affirming, any tradition): Ruether Sexism and God-Talk; queer theology (Stuart, Cheng); affirming church networks; SMRII integration framework

Weeks 5–6: Personal Moral-Incongruence Audit

Goal: Apply the Grubbs framework to the participant's own life.

• Identify specific behaviors / desires / thoughts that produce shame
• For each, separate: (a) the behavior itself, (b) what the participant was taught about it, (c) what the participant now believes about it, (d) the gap that produces the shame
• Structured examination: which gaps can be closed by re-reading the belief vs. which require changing the behavior vs. which are genuinely appropriate moral friction
• This is not blanket permission-giving; it is coherence work. Some gaps should stay gaps. Others are the product of misunderstanding the tradition.

Weeks 7–8: Integration and Commitment

Goal: Articulate a coherent position that honors participant's religious identity and their embodied sexual life.

• Write (for self, not shared): a short personal theology of sexuality that the participant can actually hold
• Identify community: affirming pastoral support, partner conversation, spiritual-direction relationship
• Plan for ongoing moral-incongruence audit (monthly self-check)
• Book a 6-month follow-up check-in

Active comparison arm — CBT for sexual concerns

Matched to intervention on time, contact, facilitator training level, and group structure. Uses evidence-based CBT protocols for sexual shame and dysfunction (e.g., Brotto's mindfulness-based sex therapy adapted). Does NOT address theological content. The comparison tests whether the theological framing is the active ingredient or whether any structured therapeutic attention produces the effect.

Ethical considerations

• Consent covers sensitive-topic research, explicit discussion of sexual behavior and shame, and right to withdraw at any time
• Data: hashed participant IDs; raw responses never shared outside research team; exports as per docs/RESEARCH-PROGRAM.md §0 ASN-93 framework
• Content warnings on weekly material (some participants may encounter trauma triggers)
• Referral protocol: PHQ-9 ≥ 20, GAD-7 ≥ 15, or spontaneous disclosure of acute distress → referral to clinical care, continued participation optional
• Religious non-coercion: participants may continue, leave, or change tradition freely; the intervention is not covert proselytization in any direction

Analysis plan (pre-registered)

• Primary analysis: intent-to-treat. Mixed-effects regression with condition × time interaction, covariates = baseline Sex Guilt + DUREL + arm.
• Mediation analysis (H2): Baron & Kenny / Hayes PROCESS approach testing moral incongruence reduction as mediator of intervention effect on Sex Guilt.
• Effect-size reporting: Cohen's d + 95% CI for every pre/post comparison; d ≥ 0.40 as minimal clinically meaningful change.
• Per-arm analysis: intervention effects reported separately by tradition arm to test H5.
• Sensitivity analysis: per-protocol (completed ≥ 6 sessions) in addition to ITT.

Preregistration

OSF pre-registration template to be completed before participant recruitment. Template adapted from AsPredicted + OSF registered report style. Preregistration includes: hypotheses, sample size justification, measures, exclusion criteria, analysis plan, stopping rules.

Partnerships required

Clerical / pastoral (Mike's side)

For each arm, 2–4 facilitators willing to:

• Review the curriculum content for their arm
• Adapt specific theological references to their tradition's register
• Facilitate weekly group sessions (pilot phase)
• Provide feedback on content fit

Candidate types:

• Arm A: progressive evangelical pastors, former-purity-culture pastors now in deconstruction (Jamie Lee Finch network; The Liturgists community); Nadia Bolz-Weber's House for All Sinners and Saints alumni
• Arm B: Catholic pastoral-theology professors with sex-positive orientation; Orthodox priests in the Orthodox Christian Studies Center network; Schermer Sellers' Seattle Pacific network
• Arm C: affirming denominations (ELCA, Episcopal, UCC), queer-affirming rabbinical voices if extension considered

Research operations

• IRB: Pitt / CMU if PhD-linked; Advarra or WCG if private
• Research coordinator (≥ 10 hr/week): manages recruitment, session scheduling, data collection, compensation
• Statistician (periodic): protocol review, final analysis
• Trained group facilitators: ideally clergy; otherwise theological-education M.Div. level with training in the curriculum

Funding envelope (pilot)

• IRB fees: $500–2,500 one-time
• Participant compensation: 90 participants × 8 sessions × $20 = $14,400 (lower end with volunteer arm possibilities)
• Facilitator honoraria: $500 × 4 facilitators = $2,000
• Measure battery licensing: ~$0 (most are public; a few have academic-use fees)
• Curriculum materials + platform: $500 (mostly Vela's existing infrastructure)
• Total pilot estimate: $17,000–20,000

Scaling phase budget to be scoped post-pilot based on effect-size estimates and retention data.

Timeline

Phase	Duration	Work
0 — Protocol finalization	4 weeks	OSF pre-reg; curriculum v1; IRB submission
1 — IRB approval + recruitment	8–16 weeks	Wait for IRB; recruit pilot cohort
2 — Pilot phase	10 weeks	Run pilot (8 wk course + 2 wk analysis)
3 — Analysis + protocol refinement	4 weeks	Publish pilot; refine curriculum
4 — Full RCT	12 weeks	Run main RCT
5 — 6-month follow-up	24 weeks	T2 data collection
6 — Analysis + publication	8 weeks	Manuscript preparation + submission

Total: ~18 months from protocol finalization to first publication. Realistic rather than optimistic.

Success criteria

• Pilot succeeds if: enrollment targets met; attrition < 30%; baseline → T1 Cohen's d ≥ 0.40 on Sex Guilt in intervention arm; mediation by moral incongruence is at least directionally present.
• Full RCT succeeds if: pre-registered H1 is confirmed with p < .05 and effect maintained at T2 6-month; H2 mediation is significant; H3 shows integration increases without religiosity decrease.

Deliverables once executed

• Peer-reviewed publication (primary target: Psychology of Religion and Spirituality; secondary: Journal of Sex Research, Archives of Sexual Behavior)
• Open-access protocol + curriculum materials on OSF
• Vela product surface (course or app) if evidence supports scaling
• Popular-press writeup for the Vela Magazine ("Can the Shame Be Undone? We Finally Tested It")

Next immediate steps

1. Mike: line up 2–4 clerical partners willing to review the curriculum and facilitate pilot sessions; decide IRB pathway (university vs. private); allocate pilot funding envelope.
2. Agent (next ASN): finalize curriculum content per arm (draft module outlines exist in this protocol; full facilitator guides TBD); set up OSF pre-registration; complete IRB submission package.
3. Both: initial participant-recruitment copy for the three arms (landing pages + targeted ad drafts).

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Protocol version 0.1 is the pre-engagement draft. The priest / pastor / theologian conversations Mike runs will produce substantive revisions to the curriculum content, likely requiring v0.2 before pilot launch. That is expected and appropriate — the protocol frames the study, but the theological content must be owned by the tradition-specific facilitators.