[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Gravity Podcast, where we host conversations on developing a Christian spirituality rooted in love that fosters resilient faith in everyday life.

[SPEAKER_04]: Hello, party people.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's the Gravity Commons podcast.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's just Christy and I.

This has been and we're in the party people.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and and Christy Penley Matt is still on a hiking trip.

[SPEAKER_04]: As of today, and so we are the party people and we're here to introduce this episode of the Gravity Commons podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I just, before we even hit, you know, play, start.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I want to talk about happy things.

[SPEAKER_01]: Say can we only talk about happy, happy things?

[SPEAKER_01]: And the reality is, I think I'm longing for that because there's a lot going on in our world and I'm a little tired.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is that how you feel?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, yeah, friend of mine texted me the other day and just said that he was emotionally exhausted.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and looking forward to, yeah, just doing some normal things, he was going to play soccer with some folks, and he was looking forward to that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, I want to play pickleball and drink pumpkin spice latte.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, you're all right.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're all right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Pumpkin spice.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know that stuff.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, I'm with you, I think there's a just part of it's the barrage is intentional, you know, the barrage of bad news that it's intentional by nefarious powers.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I think there is, I found it interesting, I think, to be to try to discern the difference between numbing and ignoring.

[SPEAKER_04]: and like real self care in the midst of this where I think they can sometimes sometimes I'm not sure exactly what's happening but I think that there is a that we definitely can't just like stay plugged in to all of this stuff all that's gone and continue to be healthy people or even to be even to effectively resist what's happening you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: There has to be like an acknowledgment.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and obviously there's an awareness because there's just stuff is everywhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I definitely have had to be like, okay, limit my time on social media and, and like, honestly, like, purposely being outside and doing, like, some quiet, like, solo, solitude.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I need some space.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, [SPEAKER_01]: to just kind of breathe and see beauty rather than be bombarded with heart.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, um, yeah, I guess listener, if that's you, like I encourage you to like go for a walk or whatever the thing is that's going to actually give you life to do that and to really be intentional about that because at least for me, I've had to be intentional, like not just every day, but honestly multiple [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, to choose life.

[SPEAKER_04]: So anyway, no, I think that's that's wise for sure.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I'll just say a couple of other things that I think could be helpful for folks.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm I'm reading right now Hannah Ryshal's book for such a time as this an emergency devotional.

[SPEAKER_04]: which is just, it's all about sort of living faithfully when the world is ending and it's quite good.

[SPEAKER_04]: We're actually interviewing them for our podcast coming up here.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's next month.

[SPEAKER_04]: But I've found that to be really helpful, it's really helpful resource.

[SPEAKER_04]: I hope listener that you find this podcast to be helpful.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's the testimony that I hear from a lot of people is that it helps them feel like they're not alone.

[SPEAKER_04]: Especially if you don't have, like minded people around you, kind of in person in your real life.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then the other thing I would invite, I'm just thinking about an article that I read yesterday that I found so helpful and I'm going to put it in this coming Friday's curated links.

[SPEAKER_04]: So every Friday we send an email, a listener if you're on the email list, but every Friday we send an email with a list of links to resources or articles that we found helpful that week.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm always [SPEAKER_04]: I think on the lookout for things like that, and it's a really helpful article.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was really, really helpful for me, and I'm going to put it in the links this week.

[SPEAKER_04]: So if you'd like to get that email and you don't get an email for me every Friday, called the Gravity Weekly, I would invite you to join our community and sign up for that.

[SPEAKER_04]: Which you can do at gravitycommonz.com slash community.

[SPEAKER_04]: GravityCommons.com slash community.

[SPEAKER_04]: And it's a lot more than just an email.

[SPEAKER_04]: You can actually join us.

[SPEAKER_04]: We have an online network online, where this is where we host our book club, it's where we host our learning communities, kind of anything that we gather to do together on Zoom.

[SPEAKER_04]: There's a space in the community hosted for that.

[SPEAKER_04]: And then there's all kinds of other spaces in their resources in there.

[SPEAKER_04]: And you'll find connection with like-minded people [SPEAKER_04]: from all over the world really, who are asking the same questions and trying to figure out what it means to to be.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and if you want to dive deeper, like for a year-long in a community, I'm starting a new cohort, a gravity cohort, and so reach out if you're interested in that because that's another way of just being honest, processing, and being with people.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, more information about that is that gravity commons.com slash formation if you would like to know more.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we're talking with Beth Allison bar today.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love her so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's a professor at my kid's school.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I really, really appreciate her and her work and what she studied.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's so smart.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm excited for this interview.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I don't think I was on this one.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think I was away or something, but you were on this one, yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so talking about how...

[SPEAKER_04]: how marriage replaced ordination, right, as a woman's path to ministry?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's fascinating.

[SPEAKER_01]: She says she learned so much, doing the research for this, but I mean, I learned, obviously reading the book, I learned a ton, but then also just talking to her, there's just so much to learn.

[SPEAKER_01]: And these stories that we were not aware of, that she then makes us aware of, it's well worth the read and well worth the listen of this podcast.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, Beth Ellison Barr is James Vardeman and Dowd chair of history at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she specializes in medieval history, women's history, and church history.

[SPEAKER_04]: She's the author of the USA Today Best Seller of the Making of Biblical Womanhood, how the subjugation of women became gospel truth, which we've interviewed her about.

[SPEAKER_04]: Her work has been featured by NPR and the New Yorker, and she has written for Christianity.

[SPEAKER_04]: Today, the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, Sojourners and Baptist News Global, bar lives in Texas with her husband, a Baptist pastor, and their two children.

[SPEAKER_04]: Let's get into it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Dr.

Beth Elzambar, welcome to the Gravity Podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so glad you're here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's so great to talk with you all again.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, well, before we hit record, we're talking about Baylor and here on sabbatical and all things summer and all of that kind of stuff, but really we're here to talk about your new book.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I said it this way the other day.

[SPEAKER_01]: I said, becoming the pastor's wife is an extension of the research that we read in your book, the making of the biblical womanhood.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is that, is that how you would say how the research came here?

[SPEAKER_00]: I would say it is, and it's, I would say it's a more deep dive.

[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose on some of the things, it also hits a topic.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really actually didn't talk about in the making a biblical womanhood, which is ordination.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was like, to me, as a, you know, when you finish a project, when I finished the making a biblical womanhood, I was like, I didn't talk about ordination.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just didn't have time.

[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't really fit the narrative of that book because it was talking about, you know, this whole concept of biblical womanhood.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I kind of felt like that was a glaring omission.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I tell people the making of biblical womenhood was what I knew.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's what I'd been teaching in my classes for a long time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not know the history of ordination and what happened to women's ordination like in-depth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I also didn't know how it connected to the pastor's wife role.

[SPEAKER_00]: So becoming the pastor's wife is what I didn't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I didn't know either as I was reading it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I'm ordained, but I was like, this is, there was just so much history there that really helped open my eyes to like, oh, why has this been so difficult personally?

[SPEAKER_01]: In my circles and for me as a woman pastor and so I just appreciate, appreciate your work and that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And some Christian circles, the argument is made that women have never been welcomed [SPEAKER_01]: And they kind of point to the traditions of just ordaining men and priesthood and how the heritage continues today.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just as a way of just beginning, how would you engage in that argument from a historical record?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's wrong to say that women have not served in ordained roles that women have not served in pastoral roles.

[SPEAKER_00]: Women have always served in these roles.

[SPEAKER_00]: Women have always been ordained.

[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is is that how we define ordination and how we define pastoral positions are historically constructed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And those are the things that have changed over time.

[SPEAKER_00]: And [SPEAKER_00]: the, you know, the pressure points in history.

[SPEAKER_00]: Women have often ordination has often been redefined in a way that pushes what women are doing out.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not that women aren't ordained.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's that we keep rewriting the rules.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like 10 year.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm, you know, academia.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like 10 year rules keep getting rewritten.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is what has happened to women throughout Church history is the rules keep getting rewritten that leave them out.

[SPEAKER_00]: but they have to keep being rewritten because women keep coming back and I think that's important too.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, so you touch on, so one of the things I appreciate about history is how the more discreet you get the more particular you get.

[SPEAKER_02]: working from the ground or the person up, illuminates, I think, better than talking in abstractions and generalities, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: And you tell some stories of women in this book, women like, and I may be saying the names wrong, because I haven't heard of these women, but Kathy Hop, Willie Dawson, Hopi, Willie Dawson, Maria Acacia, Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Milberga.

[SPEAKER_02]: Would you be willing to pick one of those stories as an illist and tell us a little bit about how they've been erased or how what they did got redefined out of ordination.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm drinking from my milk burger coffee.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my God, so maybe I'll do, and this is for St.

[SPEAKER_00]: Melburger.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why they chose the parrot for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, nonetheless, I guess they were updating her milk burger is known for her miracles with geese.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the births correct.

[SPEAKER_00]: But so I'll talk about MoBurka.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really like her.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's a woman that I didn't really know either all that much.

[SPEAKER_00]: I knew in general about her, but I didn't know her story.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the reasons that I didn't know her story and that most people don't know her story is because she was in many ways erased because her monastery that [SPEAKER_00]: disappeared in the ninth and tenth century.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a lot of disruption.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you know anything about British history, this is the coming of the Vikings and the Dain law and there's a lot of disruption and the monastery disappears during this time, but it is rebuilt in the 11th and the [SPEAKER_00]: that takes over her legacy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this, so her memory, the memory of her in many ways is literally taken over and rebuilt over by this melanastic house.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in the seventh century, Milburgah was one of the most powerful women in England.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, she was ordained, you know, by the archbishop of Canabary.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so for people who come and say women have never been ordained, I'm like actually the archbishop of Canabary ordained women.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that usually stops people in their tracks, you know, even if they're not.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anglican or Episcopalian, they still understand the significance of the Archbishop of Canobary.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she was ordained by the Archbishop of Canobary.

[SPEAKER_00]: She ran a monastic house that included both men and women.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is something that I really tried to get across in this book because I think we have a way of compartmentalizing when we hear nuns.

[SPEAKER_00]: We think sound of music.

[SPEAKER_00]: we think these women walled up in this space that nobody else, you have to talk to them through gray.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody else can get at them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we sort of were like, oh, well, that's not really female, that's not religious authority.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or if it is, it's just women over other women, which I don't understand why that's not.

[SPEAKER_00]: seen as religious thorny, but that's another thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Milberga, like so many other women, during this time, ruled a house that had both men and women in it.

[SPEAKER_00]: She had spiritual pastoral authority over [SPEAKER_00]: The clergy women and the clergymen under her care and that pastoral authority extended out to the lay people in the community around her.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was also a really brilliant landowner and was very good economically and politically and so her monastery expanded.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as I said, became one of the most powerful monastic houses in England during the early medieval world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I just think that her story kind of fits what I was trying to help people see in this book is that women have always served in ordained and pastoral roles.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason that we don't know about them isn't because they aren't there.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's because their history has often been recast by male figures who have made them appear less important than they actually are.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and that's kind of the trajectory you trace in this book is, you know, from [SPEAKER_04]: from kind of like a woman's role in ministry has become the pastor's wife, is like, you know, kind of the highest thing that you can achieve, and so yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: And so you do talk a bit about that role and kind of how it's cast today.

[SPEAKER_04]: And oftentimes that role is assumed, you hire a man and you get kind of a two-for-one deal because the pastor's wife is expected to do certain things.

[SPEAKER_04]: I wonder if you, like if you can share what you've noticed about that role, pastor's wife, [SPEAKER_04]: And how that's evolved over time, and especially how you've noticed that in white conservative Protestant traditions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure, so for the people who don't know, I've been a pastor's wife for almost for 28 years now.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have to remember, my husband does a better job of keeping how long we've been married than I do.

[SPEAKER_00]: But somewhere around 28, 29 years, I've been a pastor's wife.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this was personal to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was, it was very interesting to me seeing what are the origins of this really strange role.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think that's something that we need to recognize, is that the pastor's wife role is an aberration in church history.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is no other time, you know, this certainly not something we see in scripture, we don't see people entering into [SPEAKER_00]: church roles are getting involved in Jesus' ministry through their marriage.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not something we see at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: We know very little about the spouses of leaders of the early church because they're not part.

[SPEAKER_00]: of their their mission of their ministry.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just simply not there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And even though there are leaders in ministry who are married throughout her history and as something else I want to stress to focus that the medieval world we often think about priests who aren't married, but that was never a settled fact throughout the medieval world.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were always married priests throughout the medieval world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody [SPEAKER_00]: fully embraced celibacy, except for monastic houses.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's something else.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there are always people married who were in ministry, but it is not until the post-reformation world that we begin to see the emergence of this particular role.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is, and in fact, it is at the reformation that it's the very first time we see Ministry identified by marriage because part of the reaction that Protestant reaction to catholicism was that [SPEAKER_00]: pastors priests should be married.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the way you knew that there was that it was a Protestant pastor priest was the fact that they were openly married.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is the first time we see marriage like a part become a part of that ministry role.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is at that moment that we begin to see the emergence of what is, what has become the pastor's wife role, although, you know, this was another one of the stories, I don't know if Matt mentioned this, but I tell a story of a woman named Delilah Morrell.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who's one of my favorite stories because she takes place not very far from outside of Waco.

[SPEAKER_00]: I stumbled up on her story because I went to a wedding at the church that she actually built.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's this fantastic story about this pastor's wife who got married to this very prominent Baptist pastor in early Texas history, a pretty problematic pastor now that we know more about [SPEAKER_00]: with missionary churches and Brazil, but nonetheless, and she divorced him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what is remarkable about the story is that she kept the church, and he got kicked out of the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so she remains, this, you know, this is a 19th century, late 19th century woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: And to this day, he's not even buried anywhere near this church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her tombstones, very prominent in the church yard.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's sort of like this, you know, and I think her story shows us that even as late as the 19th century, that the pastor's wife role is not this clearly defined thing, that women, some women, they have partnered with their husbands in ministry, but a lot of women didn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: some women even divorced their husbands and got to stay in the church is that they're patting you know that the pastor is one's pastor and just think about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's really not until the emergence of evangelicalism in the 20th century.

[SPEAKER_00]: That we begin to see this marriage, if I can use that word, of this two-for-one idea that the pastor's wife is actually part of the ministerial job.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and there are some roots with this, like in British history, if we think about the, um, you know, the sort of the more aristocratic idea of the lady of the manner.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is part of this, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: that if you marry a pastor, that that means that you are called to ministry with your husband and that your work is literally part of his job and expectations at the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's so recent in church history.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the irony then in what you're sharing is that women's ordination is often sort of denigrated as an innovation.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_04]: When, in fact, the pastor's wife role is the innovation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_00]: I should have written that somewhere in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's, it's this, and I still, I still see people, you know, some people are like, well, you know, yeah, you're talking about these women who are serving in leadership roles in the medieval past, but we're Protestants that has nothing to do with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, [SPEAKER_00]: Then why do you keep saying that the reason women can't be ordained is because women have never been ordained.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I'm not actually the one who introduced the historical element to this argument, you introduced it.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that you have been arguing is that, you know, and I'm thinking about like Al Moller.

[SPEAKER_00]: I quoted him multiple times as an example of this of how he harkens back and says for 2,000 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the way the church has always done that and that is a blatant.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would say it would be a misrepresentation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do think, however, that there are some people who know better and are simply lying.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'll just leave it at that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you are a pastor's wife.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm curious of just the decades of being [SPEAKER_01]: a pastor's life.

[SPEAKER_01]: What do you wish that Beth of today could have told Beth of first year being a pastor's life?

[SPEAKER_01]: What was the advice and encouragement perspective do you think you would have benefited from?

[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe some of our listeners could also benefit from as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's been one of the really nice things about writing this book is that it's connected with me with a lot of pastors' wives.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I've gotten to hear from them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this book is not a slam against pastors' wives.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's actually can be a very valuable role.

[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is, is that we have made it the primary role for women in ministry.

[SPEAKER_00]: and we have also made it where any woman married to a pastor automatically gets this job.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there are so many pastors' wives who were never called to ministry in this type of way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this was never their vocation.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was something, you know, and they would say this.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you, I read 150 Pastor's wife's books.

[SPEAKER_00]: I heard their voices screaming in this, you know, like this is hard, and I never wanted to do it, but apparently it's my job, and I've got to make the best of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just like, what if we just let those women do what God called them to do?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, let their husbands serve in the church and let them do what they, you know, it would have made [SPEAKER_00]: everyone's lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's so much better.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I wish for me, you know, in many ways I was lucky and all of this, I'm happy being a sort of background person in ministry.

[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of prefer that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I like kind of stepping in and helping filling gaps.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's something that I'm, you know, kind of good at.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the pastor's rifle kind of fit my personality, he was actually okay, and I also have a really good husband who when I say no, I'm not going to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, okay, that's fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he'll go to bat for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, but what I think I wish I had known though, is that.

[SPEAKER_00]: these were expectations that had nothing to do with either Christianity or even what God had called me to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: These were additional expectations that were placed on in a cultural context of North American evangelicalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would have experienced a lot less stress, I think early on in my ministry, where I would stress about how maybe I was hurting my husband's ministry by not doing certain things, making myself do things that I hated.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and, you know, and wearing myself out, wearing myself then, because I was trying to fulfill these expectations that I believed I was supposed to be doing, um, that actually had nothing at all, you know, that I wasn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I know that many pastors wifes who've read this book, they've walked away with that freedom, and I'm really grateful for that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Paul and I were recently at a conference where he was the speaker, he was the Bible teacher.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was sitting at this table and this person came up to me and they said, where has your husband passed her?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, oh, my husband's not a pastor.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they were like, oh, I said, but I am in their face.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I kind of did that just because I was feeling a little bit, [SPEAKER_01]: It was interesting to me that the conversation that then followed of, I think the person I was talking to, for sure, believe that it would have been better for me to be a pastor's wife than actual pastor, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: They would have respected that more.

[SPEAKER_01]: But reading your book made me think [SPEAKER_01]: because I've never been a pastor's wife.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like that role is different than where I am.

[SPEAKER_01]: But my husband deals with being a pastor's husband, which is super uncommon, right, in our world.

[SPEAKER_01]: And reading, [SPEAKER_01]: your book made me think, where has he felt the pressure?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like almost so it's right, where has he felt the pressure of being involved or going to this thing or whatever the thing is and have I contributed to that?

[SPEAKER_01]: Have I put pressure on him?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure I have.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so just thinking how many women have felt that to just being the pastor's wife.

[SPEAKER_01]: So have things really helpful.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and also a christian Christina you're talking that.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I've never met Mr.

I've never met Mr.

Bar, you know, Mr.

Beth Bar, but I do wonder if he would even have a book on becoming the endowed chair of history's husband.

[SPEAKER_02]: because they're just aren't expectations on him to perform any responsibilities or duties to the student, to the university.

[SPEAKER_02]: Academically, the way there is for Beth as a part of Mr.

Barr's congregation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, that's exactly right.

[SPEAKER_00]: There aren't any expectations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, he even lived on campus with me because we were faculty and residents for six years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was always interesting to me going to the faculty and residents meetings because you would hear the men, the faculty and residents, the men, they would be like, you know, my wife that really fills left out that she doesn't have an official role in that she's not, I actually think I don't know she really did fill left out or not, but whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, it's like, and she's doing all of these things like helping get ready for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, I, my husband never even expected to have an official for, I mean, it's really interesting these gendered expectations that we have.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that the pastor's wife role, you know, many of those expectations that women feel are not just isolated to the pastor's wife role.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually part of this bigger, constructive, biblical womanhood that we have put on evangelical women.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that, you know, that our identity is mixed up with our husband's job in a way that our husband's like my husband's identity is not mixed up in my job at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's really, you know, it's, I think when you stop and you think about that and you think about how that has limited what women are able to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because they carry these extra concerns about how what they are doing is contributing or not contributing to their husbands, you know, profession and, you know, I think about all these pastors, wife books, one of the reasons, and I actually, I'm working on a couple of academic articles from all of this research that I did because, you know, you don't waste research and one of the things that I am firmly convinced is that these pastors, wife literature.

[SPEAKER_00]: um, is what helped to build the biblical womanhood model and spread it throughout churches because these pastors wife, this is what they internalized and then this is what they went and they taught out to other women and so how did we get this really ingrained concept?

[SPEAKER_00]: That is so hard to get rid of within our churches and I think a lot of it is is through the teaching [SPEAKER_00]: and through the courses that they were taught and then they were instructed to go and teach this out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the pastor's wife is the embodiment of biblical womanhood.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's interesting.

[SPEAKER_04]: You mentioned earlier in the interview that women just kept coming back.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm just struck by, I guess, the fact that I think what has [SPEAKER_04]: What has caused us to have to reevaluate all of this is that women do have a sense of call to serve God in some kind of ordained ministry.

[SPEAKER_04]: And oftentimes the only way they can see that happening is I guess I'm supposed to be a missionary or I guess I'm supposed to marry a pastor.

[SPEAKER_04]: Um, and that, you know, they've, they've been taught these things, but the, the energy, I think, that that your book is participating in is this energy of, you know, women are called, and that, and that's why they keep trying to find ways into this, you know?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Whether that, whether they realize, okay, I can blow up this pastor's wife model, or I feel like I'm supposed to operate within it.

[SPEAKER_04]: Um, and I'll do that even though it's really hard, I think it's a lot of times because women have said, but I'm called.

[SPEAKER_04]: I can't get rid of this.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's in my bones.

[SPEAKER_04]: I've got to do this.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, Kate Bowler says that the pastor's wife role is the safest role.

[SPEAKER_00]: for ministry and for women in ministry and that phrase I quoted I think in the introduction and that really, you know, stayed with me as I was reading all of this material and I was like, yeah, she's absolutely right and you know, I think about a lot of women who [SPEAKER_00]: you know, and so many who have told me since I wrote this book, who were like, you know, when I expressed a call to ministry, I was told that it probably means I'm too married a minister of some sort.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so women were told this from very early ages, [SPEAKER_00]: Um, that this is how where their call is sponult.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you can also think about the expectations that that puts on their spouses, who may not actually feel the same type of calling that maybe, you know, and but yet that the only way the wife can experience that call is through her husband's work.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and so I mean, that talk about it on healthy marriage.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I, you know, we could, whatever, but it's, and, but yet it, it also is a way, you know, if a woman, um, who is called to preach, [SPEAKER_00]: and called to maybe travel around to be sort of an itinerant, preacher, evangelist, whatever, if she is married to a pastor and if she confines herself to speaking through that lens of especially teaching and equipping other women, [SPEAKER_00]: Then she gets a free pass, you know, she can go and do those things and it's part of, you know, it's an extension of her husband's ministry.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so she gets a pass for not being at home all the time with her kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: She gets a pat, you know, it enabled her to do what she feels called to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the problem is is when a woman who feels that call either doesn't have a husband who wants her to do those types of things or [SPEAKER_00]: differs from those church expectations.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when she gets into trouble.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you talk a lot about, you know, the gendered hierarchy model that has been taught by men and women in the church, specifically the Southern Baptist, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: They believed and they taught that women are less than men.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're worse less than men.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was surprising to me how that lie gets in people's bones.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and it creates a culture that is really damaging.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just wonder if you could speak to that a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you know, this is one of the hardest I think pieces to unravel, to uncondition us from and this is something for women especially when you have been taught your entire life that your spiritual worth your spiritual maturity will never enable you to lead and teach in the same ways as men.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when you've been taught that your entire Christian identity really hinges on your role as wife and mom, and everything else should be secondary to that, then what happens first of all, if you never are a wife and mom, um, you know, this is [SPEAKER_00]: there is no space in the North American evangelical church for women who don't want to be married or women who don't want to have kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: No space for them.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Southern Baptist Convention just made this very clear where they said that intentionally childless couples are simple.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's one of, I was there when they passed that resolution, and I mean, it's just crazy, crazy to think about, or even just women who can't have children because of infertility, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that where is their worth if their spiritual worth is measured by what their bodies are physically able to produce, what happens when their bodies don't live up to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, you can just imagine the mental health issues, one of the things that I went to at this at this I was at the Southern Baptist 2025 conference I haven't written about it yet because it takes me a while to process things and I also don't like to write when I'm angry.

[SPEAKER_00]: I like to give myself distance, but one of the things I went to as I went to the pastor's wife luncheon that I actually wrote about.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote about the whole history of this thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I knew it was fascinating being there.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the whole thing, it was actually the best part of the SPC conference.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was the most, I mean actually, it was the best part.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the whole luncheon was actually on mental health.

[SPEAKER_00]: So whole thing on the reality of mental health for pastor's wife's and I was like this is so I mean, this is so helpful.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so glad they're doing this But this is so real too because if you are constantly being told you have to fit some way Or that if you feel like you should be a leader that that's sinful pride that you need to deal with in your heart And you constantly have expectations on you that you fail at [SPEAKER_00]: The mental health load is incredible, just tremendous.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet this is what we do to women every day in our churches.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I remember one of, I didn't write about this one in my book, but it was written in the 90s by the Southern Baptist pastoral wife.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it was called the confessions of being a pastor's wife or something like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But she tells this horrible story where, you know, I mean, she's probably in her early thirties at this time.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's in the middle of, you know, she has lots of small kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think she just recently had another baby and she was having challenges with her weight.

[SPEAKER_00]: which, you know, anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: And her husband had bought her a new dress that she was so excited about because she hadn't, you know, they didn't have much money that's the other thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're spiritually conditioned to accept poverty and in this pastress wife role.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, he bought her a new dress.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was her favorite color, which was orange, and she wore it to church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this lady told her that she looked like a balloon.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, and just, you know, and what, what I think was so awful, [SPEAKER_00]: Is that in her confession, she said, you know, I had to really take this to God and realize that my angry response was sinful and I was like, actually, that person was sinful in her coming up and telling you of stealing your joy and making a completely unwarranted comment on your body because people believe that [SPEAKER_00]: the woman's body, the pastor's wife, physically represents the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they feel like they can tell pastors' wives, all of these types of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I just couldn't imagine.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is this type of where she believed that her failings in this sort of way, that were what she perceived as her failings, that because God had given her this role where she was supposed to represent the church and her husband, [SPEAKER_00]: that she was sinful and needed to confess that and she couldn't even be angry about the way people responded to her and it just broke my heart.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that's one and can I give one more example?

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this one actually is not in the book because I was just at Harvard in May looking at the Dorothy Patterson papers, which [SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole story how Harvard has the Dorothy Patterson papers.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the beauties of it is that nobody can keep scholars out of it at Harvard.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's no gatekeeping on these papers at Harvard, which is fascinating to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why she chose that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But [SPEAKER_00]: In the late 70s, Dorothy Patterson wrote a book called something about it was she was responding to a book that was called the Sinshuist Woman that I think is part of that, you know, the total woman and all of those books that were being published about embracing women's sexuality, especially in the sense of satisfying your husbands.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she wrote a Christian version of this [SPEAKER_00]: the sensuous woman that focused on that part of a woman's sexual appeal is her submission, which is really disturbing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this woman wrote her letter, [SPEAKER_00]: and it's haunting me right now and she wrote a letter and she said I just wanted to thank you Ms.

[SPEAKER_00]: Patterson for this book because it really helped me understand the problems in our marriage and that the problems were me and she said I'd never totally embrace this idea of submission and my husband and I had our biggest fight ever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and because he asked me to do something I thought was wrong, she wrote, and she said, and I realized that my job wasn't to decide if it was wrong or not, but my job was to submit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so she said, I submitted.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know what he asked her to do, but she personally felt it was wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: She said she felt like she'd be a hypocrite if she did it, but she submitted.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she said, and it has changed my marriage that now I understand that that's my role.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh my gosh, you know, it's just heartbreaking.

[SPEAKER_00]: what women, what this concept has done to women, even where they believe it is better to do something wrong that there has been asks them to do, then to stand up for what they believe is right.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry, that was a very heavy one, but it's it's haunting me.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's some listeners who probably can relate to that story, that's who maybe have lived through that, or have loved ones who they know who are still living in that way of thinking.

[SPEAKER_02]: I remember being a young man in my early 20s, and [SPEAKER_02]: being able to word for the first time that what I wanted was a mentor and ministry that would treat me like a quote biblical husband was supposed to treat a biblical life like I wanted an older leader to just tell me what to do because I think I doubted myself so much and I craved certainty.

[SPEAKER_02]: I craved it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so there is an allure to this because it takes a lot of guesswork out.

[SPEAKER_02]: You turn over your decision making to somebody else so that you no longer have the anxiety of making the wrong decision or the responsibility that your choice is matter.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there isn't a Lord to this, but ultimately what you're naming is that it's disempowering and dehumanizing that women are not ontologically inferior to men, and that's not an innovation, but that's a reclamation of the biblical story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that's exactly it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, and thinking, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: On the one hand, all of the marital problems, this is something else I learned writing this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the women I remember you asked me about is Maria Acacia, which was a story I did not know.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the final chapter, well, chapter eight before my conclusion.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is a horrific story of abuse.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is, you know, and one of the questions, people come all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're like, why don't women just leave?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, you asking that question means you do not understand any of this this world, you do not understand any of these dynamics that are going on in this world.

[SPEAKER_00]: You do not understand, first of all, how women in this idea of this mel authority that many of these women do not have access to credit cards, they do not have bank accounts in their own name, none of their property is in their own name, and which makes it extremely difficult for somebody to walk out, especially if it, you know, they're mostly not working.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, how do you get out?

[SPEAKER_00]: How do you get out of this?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the other thing is that people don't realize is that mental conditioning, that these women have embraced, that they've been taught that they, that their job, that God created them to be this submissive helper and they read that back into the creation story and that this is what women are for.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so who am I?

[SPEAKER_00]: to not bear, this is the cross that God's given me to bear.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a language that you hear from a lot of these women is that this is the cross that I've been given to bear.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like in Maria's story, it's not until she's in her 70s that she divorces her husband.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's because of, I think the realization that if she stayed with him, she would not live any longer.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so but just the courage that even that took to do that and it took her of living with him for more than 40 years before she was able to come to that point and so that's what I think you know and I did a podcast with the pastor's wife's tell all which was actually a really sort of fun they were three pastor's wife's two of them were southern Baptist and one of the things that they said on there was that they get they had to open up [SPEAKER_00]: sort of or join forces within abuse counseling service because so many of the stories that they get behind the scenes are these women in these abusive relationships with their husbands who are the pastors and they don't know how to get out because if they tell anyone if they do anything get over in the ministry.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, it also is everything is tied up, you know, what their kid, everything, their money, their insurance, everything is tied up and there has been having this position as a pastor.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so if they knew the way that he was treating his wife, it would ruin everything, you know, they would lose everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, um, it's just, you know, it's a trap in many ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, that's not good for the flourishing of either women or men or children.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, maybe as a way of closing, can you give us a little hope?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what does a hope look like or can you share a story of co-leadership, and just giving our listeners kind of what it could be.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, you know, and I think, and that's what I tried to do at the end becoming the pastor's wife was a really hard book to write in many ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was heavier for me emotionally than the making of biblical womenhood.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yet at the same time, what I consistently see is that these [SPEAKER_00]: Women never give up and you know, and that it hasn't always been this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is really what I wanted people to hear and one of the stories I know this is another one of the women that Matt asked me about her.

[SPEAKER_00]: A woman named Willie Dawson, who I'm particularly fond of because I lived in the residence hall named after her for six years.

[SPEAKER_00]: as faculty and residents, and she was a southern Baptist pastor's wife in the first part of the 20th century.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, the pastor's wife of the year award is named after her that's still given out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I witnessed the giving of it out at the southern Baptist convention in this past just a couple of months ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: last month, I guess.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she was, she was a pastor's wife, but she also built her ministry through her own preaching and through her own work outside of what her husband was doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, when the pastor's wife award was originally developed, [SPEAKER_00]: it was intentionally not to recognize the wives of prominent pastors, but to recognize women who were involved in their own ministry.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, and this award was founded in the 1960s.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it is a [SPEAKER_00]: very recent shift even in the pastor's wife narrative that women are only supposed to do ministry through their spouses.

[SPEAKER_00]: That this recognition that God calls women differently and separately to fulfill their own calling is a live and loud part of Christian history.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there's rumors that you might be working on a final volume of this trilogy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is this true?

[SPEAKER_01]: What's next?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of true.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's true in the sense that I'm working on a third book.

[SPEAKER_00]: this book is going to be very different from the first two books because instead of being it's not defensive.

[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of me starting with the voices that have tried to silence women, I'm telling I'm starting with the women and it's my medieval history book and I'm really really excited about it and we're going to see an alternate, you know, if you want to see something [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I can't wait, and we will definitely want you back for that as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: So thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your work, for your writing, for your teaching.

[SPEAKER_01]: But also, I'm thankful for you and for who you are and how we get to learn and [SPEAKER_01]: and be encouraged by whom you are.

[SPEAKER_01]: So thanks so much for being here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, having never been a pastor's wife, but having been married to one for 25 years, I so appreciate this work that Beth is doing and kept thinking about my own relationship [SPEAKER_02]: to my wife as a pastor's wife and how it was only recently in the last, I don't know, maybe five or ten years that had even occurred to me to think about that.

[SPEAKER_02]: that was something maybe as a husband who wanted to be above average should be aware of and tend to about how my wife experienced the expectations, the applications, the pressures, a being a pastor's wife.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, just like I'm thinking about that.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, I think that's, I mean, it's partly by story as well, just sort of not realizing the kind of burden that that put on my wife for a long time that I didn't fully understand or.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that kind of a thing.

[SPEAKER_04]: Even though we weren't part of, it was still like in the air, even though we weren't ever part of churches or traditions that placed a huge emphasis on it.

[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't like it wasn't like there was this very defined prominent role she was supposed to take.

[SPEAKER_04]: But even though we were never in churches like that, [SPEAKER_04]: Um, that was still, it was still in the air in the water.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was something she picked up on that was, um, that she felt like she was supposed to do right, you know, and yeah, I didn't, I didn't take much stock of that until the last several years.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I don't know, because you were your thoughts on that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, I just was thinking right now like, oh, I forgot to tell her I have a book idea.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what was going on in my brain at the very end.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, shoot, I'm going to need a texture.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had this book.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I would say the making of biblical womanhood.

[SPEAKER_01]: She said this becoming the pastor's wife was harder, emotionally, for her to write.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think both of them are hard, because you just see what has happened.

[SPEAKER_01]: throughout history and how it impacts women and and so there's part of me that wants like a story a book that is full of hope, full of these more stories that I don't know where you see the empowerment and so I have a title for her it's super short little book idea but I'm like I should give it to her.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then I was like, maybe, I should just be like, hey, can you just write the forward?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll write the book.

[SPEAKER_01]: You write the forward, and then anyway, that's what was happening in my brain.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I like that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, but I'm thankful for her.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really respect her.

[SPEAKER_01]: She actually is one of those people that I get excited nervous because I'm like, I really love [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I learned from you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm glad that she was on.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm glad I'm glad as well.

[SPEAKER_04]: I have another thought that I was thinking about as, uh, as the interview closed that, um, just left my brain.

[SPEAKER_04]: But I was hopeful that if I started saying things, it would come back.

[SPEAKER_04]: It didn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry.

[SPEAKER_04]: It hasn't yet.

[SPEAKER_04]: Not normally.

[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, sometimes it works for me that way.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_04]: I can't remember what it was.

[SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I remember what it was.

[SPEAKER_04]: See?

[SPEAKER_04]: Good job.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, I'm scared with this.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I guess I guess I'm just like, I can't stop thinking about the fact that [SPEAKER_04]: that argument that women have never been ordained to ministry that this has always been the churches teaching for 2,000 years and it's this like recent innovation to ordain women to the priesthood or to be pastors.

[SPEAKER_04]: I think I've always just taken that as given and it's fascinating to me to just learn from a historical perspective it's just like that's just [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's just not true and to hear from her too.

[SPEAKER_04]: It's like some of the people who say that might be ignorant But some of the people know better and so they're lying Yeah, they're lying about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know there's a whole other there's a whole another as we say [SPEAKER_02]: a whole mother.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a hard as hot kid.

[SPEAKER_04]: As one of my daughters texted in our text chain yesterday and it was it was a typo and it said a whole mother one and that's now become parlance in our family.

[SPEAKER_04]: A whole mother.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well that's a whole mother deal.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a corporate in this conversation.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there is a there is a subtle transgression.

[SPEAKER_02]: of a taboo by indicating what Beth did.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a violation to not give untrustworthy people the benefit of the doubt in white evangelicalism.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she didn't explicitly do this, but her the implication of what she says is that our molar knows better and he's lying.

[SPEAKER_02]: and she obliquely indicated that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, forgive me if I'm misunderstood, but that's how I took her, or people like Al Moller.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that is a transgression.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of the ways that supremacy cultures work and white male Christian supremacy cultures work is that wicked people demand the benefit of the doubt, [SPEAKER_02]: even when they prove to not be trustworthy.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you don't give it to them, you are the one who is committing the greater indiscretion.

[SPEAKER_02]: So then by Beth not giving a molar of the benefit of the doubt, she now becomes the person who's got the greater indiscretion than Al, who's lying.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Telling the truth about Al lying is a greater [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that that's how you know you're in a system that is harmful and abusive and supremacist.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: When there's when there's a cultural understanding that telling the truth about the powerful people is worse than the powerful peoples and discussions.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I have a lump in my [SPEAKER_01]: because because I'm a pastor, because of my female pastor, and the lie of telling the truth of people and authority in my past that [SPEAKER_01]: there's just there's there's so much fear there because it's in my bones because I have to fight I would say on a daily basis to not believe the lie that I am worth less than men and it's wild to me if I am fighting every day to not believe that [SPEAKER_01]: And that's my job, you know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how many other women are fighting that lie to?

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I just talked with somebody the other day who asked me for some advice, it's a acquaintance of mine who's a younger woman, she's in her 30s and she's part of a church that she just she told me she has some concerns about this leader in their in their church and their denomination that keeps kind of jumping around.

[SPEAKER_04]: and she has like two stories from people about him being like abusive like yelling at people his anger sort of out of control with people and she just was like I'm just concerned that nothing is being done.

[SPEAKER_04]: that this guy's just being passed around.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know what to do.

[SPEAKER_04]: I don't, she's like, I don't have any authority in here, but what do I do?

[SPEAKER_04]: And I just shared with her what I felt like was sort of, it sounds like according to your conscience, you should probably share this with somebody.

[SPEAKER_04]: Is there an author?

[SPEAKER_04]: Is there a superintendent?

[SPEAKER_04]: Is there a process?

[SPEAKER_04]: I know in the Episcopal Church, there's this whole process where there's always somebody that you can email if you have a concern about anything.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, I don't know if in your determination if there's a way to do that.

[SPEAKER_04]: And she just said, OK, I think I'm going to do that.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to think, you know, I was like, you don't have to accuse him of anything.

[SPEAKER_04]: You can just say, like, I have concerns here.

[SPEAKER_04]: I know two stories.

[SPEAKER_04]: And I just want to make sure that somebody with some responsibilities aware of this, you know?

[SPEAKER_04]: So anyway, so a short conversation, I didn't think much of it.

[SPEAKER_04]: But I was reminded of this dynamic that you're talking about Christy because she texted me right after the conversation and just said, you know, hey, I like I have never had a man in Christian leadership tell me that like what I'm noticing is important for me to pay attention to.

[SPEAKER_04]: and that it's wrong.

[SPEAKER_04]: She's like, I just never have had anybody.

[SPEAKER_04]: I've never had a man in Christian leadership validate.

[SPEAKER_04]: My concerns about other men in Christian leadership.

[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, I guess I just, I was grateful for that, but it just sort of broke my heart again, because I'm like, oh my gosh, never, never, has she had a conversation like that?

[SPEAKER_01]: for those two of you, like truly you have validated over and over and over throughout the decades with me.

[SPEAKER_01]: My husband has done that Jonathan and Pastor I work with at the church I'm at, has done that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so grateful for these men who know the truth and who treat women with respect [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just really grateful.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need more of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, I guess, listen to her, if you haven't been an environment like that, like this gravity commons environment, is that it is that, there is a hope.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're in a different environment, you don't have to be there.

[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I can't tell what you're up now.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, looking at you going like, like, maybe just just like a blessing of women.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that maybe that's what you need to do.

[SPEAKER_04]: Chris said, do you feel like right at the end there?

[SPEAKER_04]: When you were, when you were, you know, kind of bringing this home, I do feel like, and then maybe it's subconsciously in the back of your mind, you were like, I'm going to make it so Matt can't tell a joke.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to make it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't.

[SPEAKER_04]: But the mood is not going to be right.

[SPEAKER_04]: No, I'm just kidding.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Matt, if you have a joke, I wish I had a knock knock joke.

[SPEAKER_01]: I could tell you, but I'm not a Joker.

[SPEAKER_02]: don't have things in the top of mind you know a christie i think that one of the ways that one of the ways that maybe i show you how much i care for you today as i just don't tell you a joke oh wow wow my heart is full of that hmm yeah lumped up a little bit of throat of the christie this is like a little holiday a little joker [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm appreciating the vacation.

[SPEAKER_01]: So.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Listener.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we'd love to hear from you.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you have stories, something you want to share, we want to hear.

[SPEAKER_01]: So feel free to reach out.

[SPEAKER_01]: But until next time.

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[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.