Sign in Subscribe
Newsletter

Does 'Mormon soaking' really happen? (Semi NSFW)

Also, Christian ASMR is totally a thing

Rohan Salmond

• 3 min read

Just a heads up that the first story today in Modern Relics involves some mildly Not Safe For Work discussion about sex and religious sexual taboos. You have been warned!

Does soaking really happen?

Ok, so last week TikTok saw fit to show a bunch of people videos about ‘soaking’ - and they were horrified.

Soaking is supposedly a loophole in Latter-day Saint sexual ethics where penetrative, penis in vagina sex doesn’t count if neither partner moves their hips. Also, ‘jump humping’ is where a third person bounces on the bed to cause movement and friction.

Know Your Meme says soaking first appeared online in 2009, so almost certainly an urban legend. Still, if you repeat a story often enough, someone is bound to try it and I have no idea if it has subsequently became an actual phenomenon in young Latter-day Saint communities like Brigham Young University.

My colleagues at Triple J have written about soaking and jump humping as a real thing, but I don’t know. Ex-Mormon TikTok user exmolex swears it's “a thing that really happens in Provo, Utah every day“. For what it’s worth, Mel Magazine also has an unverified interview with a reddit user who claims to have done this with his Presbyterian ex-girlfriend, who called it ‘floating’.

I would ask the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints if they’re aware of this, but I can’t imagine they’d be keen to talk about it. Once I interviewed a spokesperson of theirs about why they don’t drink coffee, and they wouldn’t even give me a straight answer about that.

When I was growing up in an evangelical Baptist school, I would hear about students ‘saving themselves for marriage’ who would still have oral or anal sex because ‘that doesn’t count’ - although it’s impossible to know how common that really was. Soaking aligns with that kind of loophole thinking perfectly, but it’s much, much weirder and I still don’t know if I buy it.

Anyway, the Brigham Young Virginity Club (which probably also isn’t real, maybe) has made a statement on soaking which doubles as the greatest **youth pastor voice** joke I have ever seen in all my time online.

Know someone who’d have opinions on soaking? Consider sharing this post.

My boyfriend sent me this post

“You’ve heard of white Jesus, black Jesus and brown Jesus, but have you ever heard of WEINERDOG Jesus”

Christian ASMR

Religion News Service’s Jessica Mundie recently reported on ‘The relaxing and tingly world of Christian ASMR’, which is one of those “oh yeah of course that exists” kind of things.

The video above is a whispered prayer of repentance, which makes sense because I guess in a way prayer and ASMR have some overlap.

In a 2016 study, researchers at the University of Utah found that areas of the brain associated with reward and emotion were activated when devout Mormons engaged in devotional practices. When comparing this study to the ASMR brain scan research, similar areas of the brain are likely active during religious experiences and ASMR, said [professor of biopharmaceutical sciences] Craig Richard.

Other Christian ASMRtists read entire books of the Bible or do Christian themed role play.

Subscribe now

Some tattoos

A friend sent me this Instagram post of some biblically accurate angel tattoos (click through, there’s the wheely eyes one too).

Elsewhere on the account there is a rat pope!

Ever wonder how communion wafers are made?

I have never really thought about where the little wafers used for Catholic eucharist come from. TikToks don’t embed well on Substack, but a few people sent me this video of the bread being baked by a contemplative community Irish nuns. The proceeds from selling the bread to churches fund their life together.

This tweet contains a video from the same account of the little discs of bread being punched out. The sanctafamiliamedia TikTok account has a few short interviews with one of the nuns too.

Speaking of communion elements, check out this extremely cursed patent for communion-in-a-pill.