GOSPEL OF THE BODY
NATHANAEL L. NOVEROLIVING ARTIFACT | Anointed. Activated. Ascended.
DISCLAIMER: The artifacts featured here or in the GOTB Online Magazine and Community are NOT public-facing sermons or statements challenging belief. These are my personal film studies archiving my internal process — with myself as embodied muse or embodied editor — to model embodiment, transmutation through creation, and self-curation as empowerment; to EXPAND the conversation of spirituality and sexuality.
God lives in the body, not in the text.
Scripture is METAPHOR. The body is source.
- N / O
PURITY TRAILER | Study of Deconstruction
This video artifact is a study in deconstruction. I began by turning my camera to my religious roots—specifically purity culture—as a micro lens on the larger religious-sexual wound. This investigation evolved into TOUCHPODCAST.NET, a five-year campaign that led to live events and multiple documentary development deals that ultimately went unrealized. Our podcast became a key player during the purity culture fallout, about 25 years after its peak, exposing the overlooked crisis of disembodied intimacy within American marriage—cracks largely ignored by those in them.
Being with people with the same wound was important as my theology fell apart. I worked hard on this content, because it kept me from being alone. FIND YOUR TRIBE. DON’T HEAL ALONE.
This investigation revealed a long-term consequences of the sex-spirit split indicative of Western spirituality — spiritual disembodiment.
GUNS AND SEX | Study of America
This video artifact is a study of American psychosis around guns and sex. On March 2020, a white evangelical gunman killed 8 Asian women in an Atlanta spa associated with sex work. As an Asian American man, I remember feeling more empathy towards the disembodied Christian gunman than my Asian sisters, and this concerned me. I shared the shooter’s same life/death theology that shamed sexuality. But I felt no connection to my own ancestry.
In respect, I visited the location, and I continued my work in the erotic, and made an unexpected discovery. Working with the erotic to heal my religious-sexual wounds naturally reconnected me to my cultural roots; to Hawaii, the Philippines, and a profound spiritual connection to all indigenous people conquered by conquest. By reversing this arc, I saw what I can’t unsee: the Christianity of conquest spiritually rapes us, severing us from cultural and spiritual Source.
Suddenly, the contradiction of America’s celebration of guns while shaming sex became profoundly clear. Dr. Mark Schoen, a sex educator, mirrors my conviction in this artifact, a prologue to a Holy Erotica film screening. Here, I gently open the door into esoteric mystery through the contradiction of guns and sex.
PURIFIED TRAILER | Study of Story
This video artifact is a study of story. I was contacted by the producers of the NPR radio show Embodied. They heard about my Holy Erotica work and featured me with two women in a purity culture episode which became their top episode at the time. This inspired them to create a live story slam event around purity culture.
This was huge. I told our documentary producing partners this would happen. As a producer myself, I was hesitant to fake events. I didn’t want to manipulate or fake or call in favors, then embellish in the edit bay. This wound was too real. As the healing would be too. So I waited until it was natural and alive. This was it. Unfortunately, this was not enough to get our producing partners to send a camera crew. So I had to loose my storytelling slot to do everything myself—filming, directing, editing—to carry the scope and importance of this healing container.
I never got to tell my story from stage as originally planned. It was something I craved, to be witnessed. To feel something embodied and real. Not produced in the isolation of an editing bay. Again. I poured my longing into this, to make their moment shine. When the development deal didn’t pan out, it hurt. Why am I telling everybody else’s story but my own.
RECLAIMING THE HOLY OF
EROTICISM for a free world.
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