There’s something magnetic—damn near electric—about the intersection of sex and religion. Maybe it’s the guilt. Maybe it’s the shame. Or maybe it’s the undeniable fact that these two forces have shaped the way we see ourselves, our bodies, and our desires more than almost anything else in human history.
As a romance author, I didn’t originally set out to write a book that dove headfirst into the tension between spiritual devotion and sexual liberation. But Preacher Man had other ideas.
The story started with a single image in my mind: a lonely preacher, newly arrived in a small town, desperately trying to keep his faith together… right as he falls hard for a rugged, emotionally wrecked local man. That preacher—Ethan—wasn’t just fighting attraction. He was fighting the entire worldview he’d built his life around. And that’s when I realized: this wasn’t just a romance. This was about identity, shame, salvation, and how sex can sometimes feel like a kind of prayer.
Spoiler alert: things get hot. And holy. And sometimes both at once.
Why Sex and Religion Just Work in Fiction
From The Scarlet Letter to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” we’ve been exploring this tension for centuries. It’s not new. It’s not niche. It taps into something primal.
- They’re both about longing.
Religion teaches us to yearn—for purpose, for purity, for connection to something greater. Sex teaches us to yearn—for touch, for intimacy, for release. Put those two together, and you’ve got emotional TNT. In Preacher Man, Ethan’s desire for Jake isn’t just about lust—it’s about being seen. Being wanted. Being loved outside the bounds of rules and rituals. And that’s powerful stuff. - They both come with rules—and breaking them makes for damn good drama.
Forbidden desire is catnip for readers. And when you toss in the weight of spiritual consequence? Baby, you’re cooking with gas. Jake, the love interest in Preacher Man, isn’t just sexy—he’s the embodiment of everything Ethan was taught to avoid. He smokes, he swears, he questions everything. And yet, he’s the first person who shows Ethan what love without conditions really looks like. - They both deal with transformation.
Whether it’s a spiritual awakening or an orgasmic one (or, hell, both at once), religion and sex are about becoming someone new. Shedding shame. Stepping into your truth. Preacher Man is ultimately a redemption story—but not in the evangelical sense. It’s about Ethan finding freedom by stepping away from the expectations placed on him and into a life that finally feels like his own.
Art That Walks This Line
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t inspired by other artists who’ve danced on this razor’s edge.
- Madonna practically wrote the pop culture bible on sex and religion. From “Like a Virgin” to “Like a Prayer,” she’s constantly blurred the lines between sacred and sensual, iconography and intimacy. Her work doesn’t just shock—it asks why we’re shocked in the first place.
- Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s genre-busting masterpiece, gave us the “hot priest” and then ripped our hearts out with that final kneel. It wasn’t just about lust—it was about being spiritually undone by human connection.
- Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar brought rock-star swagger to the story of Christ, fusing performance with passion and questioning the line between divinity and humanity.
- And let’s not forget Tori Amos, whose songs often wrap erotic imagery in religious metaphor, asking listeners to sit with their contradictions instead of erase them.
Writing Preacher Man: A Personal Reckoning
I’m not a preacher. I’m not even religious anymore. But I was. And like a lot of queer folks, I spent years wrestling with the parts of me that didn’t fit into the box I was handed as a child.
So writing Preacher Man wasn’t just about telling a hot story (though, trust me, the heat is there). It was about telling the truth. About how desire can be healing. How love can be sacred. How the parts of ourselves we were taught to be ashamed of might just be the holiest parts of all.
And yeah… it was also about writing a love story so swoony and redemptive it made me cry a little when I typed “The End.”
Final Thoughts: Sex and the Sacred
If you’re a writer wondering whether it’s “okay” to mix sex and religion in your story, let me say this:
Do it.
Not just because it’s hot (it is), but because it’s real. Because so many of us live at that crossroads—where devotion meets desire, where we ache for both connection and freedom.
And storytelling? That’s where we get to rewrite the rules. That’s where we get to say: I am worthy. I am holy. I am enough.
Even if I moaned while saying it.
Preacher Man is the first book in the Divine Temptations series, and it’s available exclusively in my direct bookstore, Cruz Publishing, for the rest of June for only 2.99! When I publish the book to the other stores (Amazon, Apple, Kobo, etc) the price goes up to 3.99. Purchase your copy today at Cruz Publishing.
Ian O. Lewis and Luke Jameson 