Sheila

Welcome to season nine of the Bare Marriage podcast I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire. We’re from Baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy evidence based biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage and Rebecca, I think this is season nine. 

 

Rebecca

It is. 

 

Sheila

It is our first one back since the summer. 

 

Rebecca

That’s very exciting. 

 

Sheila

I know I hope people missed us.

 

Rebecca

I’m sure that they did. Yes.

 

Sheila

And I know, and I hope that they were reading all the fiction books that you talked about on the last podcast of the season at the end of June. And it’s now the beginning of August. And we’ve spent a little bit of time relaxing, kind of. But we’re also getting ready to move and do a whole bunch of stuff in our group.

 

Rebecca

There’s a lot going on in our personal lives, which means this has been the least relaxing ‘relaxing time’ of our entire life

 

Sheila

Yes. Yes. But as we are back here for season nine, and I think season nine is kind of arbitrary, like, I don’t even know when we began counting seasons.

 

Rebecca

I think we retconned it quite a bit. Like, Ahhhh that’s about a season. Right.

 

Sheila

Yeah. And so we are starting a new season and, and but I actually do have a bit of a plan. Okay. I have a theme that I want to talk about for the first few weeks of, of this season, which is “how do we change people’s minds?” You know, because so many people are deep into this idea that sex is primarily about men, that men have needs, that women have to fulfill, that men are in authority over women, that women can’t speak up and it’s hurting people.

 

Rebecca

Yep. Right. Yep. A very power hungry focus on how the world works, the idea that there is a right way and we have to make everyone conform to the right way, even if it’s hurting them because it’s the right way.

 

Sheila

Yeah. Because it’s what God says even though it’s not. No. And so, like that’s one of the things we’ve been trying to do with our books, with the Great Sex Rescue, with She Deserves Better, with The Marriage you Want. It’s like, how do we break through that and say, hey, there’s a Jesus way? There’s a better way, that that is in line with Scripture is in line with Jesus. But that actually helps you flourish. And it’s like, how do we break through and get people to see that. And so this is the this is like the $64,000 question that keeps me up at night. This is what we talk about in our staff meetings is like strategy and just what else can we do?

And so I thought for the first few weeks we could actually look at that idea of, of how do we change people’s minds. And I want to do something I’ve never done before in this podcast okay. I want to actually run through an entire book on this podcast that I am so excited about. So let me give you a bit of background.

I was on social media and people were talking about this book. I don’t even remember why. I think it was something to do with evangelicals and someone was saying, everyone needs to read this book, The Authoritarians. It’s free. Yeah. And I’m like, okay, I like free stuff. So I clicked and it was written by a man named Bob Altemeyer, who was a professor for 40 years at the University of Manitoba. I don’t know if he’s passed away now or if he’s retired.

 

Rebecca

I think he has, I think.

 

Sheila

But if you haven’t, Bob, I’m sorry. Sorry, but, you know, but he was he was at the end of his career when he wrote this back in 2006. And he spent 40 or 45 years studying authoritarianism. And specifically, what makes people, like, gravitate towards authoritarian leaders. Yeah. Yeah. And what can we do to stop it.

So let’s understand it. And what can we do to stop it. And in his book he, he goes through what authoritarianism is, how people become authoritarian, what it has to do with religion, which is what I really want to talk about. And then how do we get people out of it? Yeah. So I want to walk through each of those things. Before we start, Rebecca, do you remember what year I said this was written in 2006, 2006. So people as I read quotes from the book, and as we talk about the book, please remember that it was written in 2006. And nobody get upset because I’m saying things about…

 

Rebecca

All we’re saying is we’re reading a book about authoritarianism and about the rise of like, scary authoritarian systems. And so if you see anything echoed…

 

Sheila

Yes.

 

Rebecca

Maybe take note.

 

Sheila

Yes, but this was written in 2006. This was not written-

 

Rebecca

I hadn’t even gotten my first training bra yet.

 

Sheila

Yeah. Yes, it was written quite a while ago. And the University of Manitoba is near and dear to my heart. That is where my aunt and uncle met. That’s where my mother and father are both graduates of University of Manitoba. My dad later went on to Harvard. So they were… And they were actually there at the same time as this guy was teaching.

So it’s kind of cool. You know, I think my mom might have even taken a course by him. Wouldn’t that be cool? Yeah. Yeah. So this is Bob Altemeyer. The University of Manitoba taught there for 40 years, and he wrote this in 2006. Okay, so his basic thesis is that authoritarians are people who, because of their personality, submit by leaps and bounds to his to to authorities.

 

Sheila

Okay. And I thought I’m going to read it.

 

Rebecca

Interesting. Because we often think that authoritarians are the ones wielding the hammer, but actually the authoritarians, the ones yielding to the hammer.

 

Sheila

Exactly. Because the people, like the people in power couldn’t stay in power without people supporting. Absolutely. And so, you know, this was a huge area of study after World War Two is like, how did how did people support Hitler? How were people supporting Stalin? And the USSR was really big at this time. You know, like how how can we not in 2006?

 

Sheila

But when this guy was writing, you know, how do we how do we combat this? How do we stop people from following these, these ideologues? And he says authoritarian followers usually support the established authorities in their society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such people have historically been the proper authorities in life, the time honored, entitled customary leaders.

 

Sheila

And that means a lot to most authoritarians. Psychologically, these followers have personalities featuring won a high degree of submission to the established legitimate authority in their society. Two high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities. And three a high level of conventional-ism meaning like they want to be seen as this is the way we always do things.

 

Sheila

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

The traditionalist. That’s why that’s why he studies right wing authoritarianism.

 

Sheila

Yeah. And he, he explains that he was very right wing, because when we hear right wing, we think politics. When he says, right wing, what he means is the traditional definition of right wing, which goes back to the English word writ, right. So it’s like it’s like conforming to the law.

 

Rebecca

Yeah. Right. Which is also currently right wing politics.

 

Sheila

Yeah. So it’s like so it’s like you can have communist, right. So he, he developed the scale called the right wing authoritarianism scale. And you can have communists who are high on the RWA, and you can have conservatives who are high in the RWA. Okay. So what’s really fun in this book? And I will share a link to it in the podcast notes, is there’s several different tests that you can take.

 

Sheila

Okay. Okay. So there was this first one is this test that he developed. And he’s quite famous for developing it called the Authoritarianism Test. And it’s 22 questions and I took it and you took it. I don’t know what you scored.

 

Rebecca

No, I don’t know what you scored either.

 

Sheila

Okay.

 

Rebecca

I’m probably going to be higher than you, I imagine, because I answered a lot of things neutral when I’m like, I mean, I disagree with the exact wording of that. So I guess neutral. Yeah.

 

Sheila

So I scored a 60.

 

Rebecca

Oh, I’m 51. Okay. Yeah.

 

Sheila

That scored 52. So you’re both.

 

Rebecca

Of us are are all. I looked up the distribution online. 13.5% of Americans score 66 or less.

 

Sheila

60 or less.

 

Rebecca

66 or less.

 

Sheila

Okay, so very.

 

Rebecca

We’re in the the tent 13.5. We would be if we were American, we would be in essence in the 87th percentile for freedom.

 

Sheila

Okay.

 

Rebecca

And not and authoritarianism resistance. Okay. Yeah. We’d be in like the bottom 13% like percent of people when it comes to right wing authoritarianism. Right.

 

Sheila

Yeah, right. So super, super interesting. Now here’s something interesting. Here’s the thing I thought was sort of funny that he shared, is that people who score low on the want to score low. Yes. People who score in the middle tend to want to score in the middle. People who score high tend to want to score in the middle.

 

Rebecca

That’s really funny. They want to be seen as moderate. Exactly. But they’re not moderate.

 

Sheila

They want to be seen as the norm. Yeah. And I just think about that with, with and if we’re going to be getting into religion later on. But I think about that. Think about the way that, that Christians often call themselves like the Moral Majority we are, you know, we’re the we’re the quiet, the underground masses that all agree with us.

 

Rebecca

Yeah. It’s like, no, you’re you’re high on this buddy. Like you’re you’re scoring in the 97th percentile for authoritarianism. Yeah. You’re not the Moral majority. Yeah.

 

Sheila

So do you want to explain to people how you make a scale? Because that’s what this guy is famous for, is he was famous for validating the scale.

 

Rebecca

Yeah. So pretty much there’s a bunch of different things that go into it. It’s a very complicated procedure. But this is not just a test. It’s not just a a pop quiz. Right. So what happens is over years and years of research, you figure out core, concepts that predict future behavior and are very valid and reliable measures of whether or not you would fit into camp A or camp B.

 

Rebecca

So it’s easy to explain with medicine, right? So, for example, if someone has a certain type of mass of cells in their breast tissue. Right.

That means they have breast cancer. So a good medical test would be able to differentiate people who have those cells from those who don’t. So that we don’t give chemotherapy, radiation or mastectomies to people who don’t have breast cancer. Right, right. So in psychology it’s often a lot more complicated because we’re not dealing with is it there or is it not in the same way.

Right. So what ends up happening is you study people and you figure out, are they do they become part of a libertarian militia? Do they, try to overthrow the government? Yeah.

 

Sheila

We just had four soldiers in Canada arrested for that. Yeah, exactly.

 

Rebecca

But like they do, they have aggressive tendencies. Do they engage in very, power focused, authority, like, there’s there’s lots of different ways that you can validate these measures. And what they find is this question didn’t really differentiate between the people who we know run militias to try to kill mayors and these people who are like, free love hippies, right?

Answered the same. So this is not a very reliable or a very valid question. And over the years you develop these tools so that they tell you, in essence, where you fall on the distribution of this specific concept. The one thing I will say tools like this are not measures of what they are not measuring. So like you can’t use measures of for example, right wing authoritarianism to measure whether or not you are, you know, intelligent right.

Whether or not it doesn’t mean that you’re more or less educated than someone is about whether or not you are an authoritarian. Now we can then look at whether or not authoritarianism correlates with education. But it’s not, it’s not. You can’t use it to measure what it doesn’t measure. Right?

 

Sheila

Right. Yeah. And often in these scales, one of the reasons that it is a scale is like those things go together. They they correlate quite highly. Yes.

 

Rebecca

That’s that’s exactly the point. So all the questions that are on that are all different data points, so that we can get to this relatively nebulous concept of authoritarianism. You don’t have an authoritarianism gene, right? You don’t look at some like, well there well, sometimes you can look at someone and be like, they’re more authoritarian and this one isn’t, but, you know, you for the most part, there’s like.

 

Sheila

If someone does a Nazi salute, for instance, that’s.

 

Rebecca

You know, but like, no, but I think there’s, there’s things that, we measure that are not easy to always differentiate. And so you have to attack it from multiple data points. Right. So one question on its own is not enough to say whether or not you authoritarian. But it’s like, okay, but if we have all these questions together and you get within this score range, chances are you’re pretty low low on the authoritarian.

But if you’re a you’re you’re consistently ranking these high, you might have 1 or 2 outliers. But now you’re authoritarian right?

 

Sheila

Okay. So let’s go on as to what authoritarianism is and why we should be concerned about it. Because that’s that’s a big piece of his book. So he says that one of the things that really dominates among high, high authoritarians is that they think they are the righteous. Yeah. So basically everybody, whether you are a low, whether you score low on the scale or medium or high, everybody wants to think they’re a little bit more moral than most people.

Yeah, with the exception of high authoritarians who don’t just think they’re a little bit moral, they think, no, I am the righteous and they are the damned. I am like, yeah, I am. I am like major, major up here I am, I am a really well.

 

Rebecca

Everyone should believe that they are acting more morally than other people, because you should be making choices that you feel are moral and that other people are not. Making right. Like that actually is a healthy thing. We should all be like, well, I’m doing this because I know it’s the right thing to do and other people aren’t doing this.

You should be doing things that you feel like the right thing to do, even if others don’t do them. So yeah, there’s a difference between the, the, the, the authoritarians aren’t just like, well, I think I’m making better choices and I’m kind of a better person, but they’re still like valid people. It’s like, no.

 

Sheila

Y’all shall burn yeah, I and I will dance as you burn. Yeah, exactly. The other the other big difference, is that authoritarians tend to be quite aggressive in how they live this out. And he says, he says, I don’t read this. What he said, when I say that they’re aggressive, I don’t mean they stride into bars and start fights.

First of all, hi. Always go to church. Enormous more often than they go to bars. Okay. Secondly, they usually avoid anything approaching a fair fight. Instead, they aggress when they believe right and might are on their side. Right for them means more than anything else that their hostility is endorsed by established authority, or support such authority, and might means they have a high physical advantage over their target in weaponry, say, or in numbers, as in a lynch mob.

Yes. Right. So so they think that they are the righteous and they tend to be more aggressive about it. Yeah. And now I want to read to you about the the experiment. And this is what was shared on social media, which is what really made me curious. Cool. And get the book because this is fascinating. So what I want you to picture this university, University of Manitoba in the 70s.

Okay, so he’s starting to do this research on authoritarianism. They’re developing this scale. They think they’ve got it validated, and they’re able to identify which students are low on the low always and which students are high are ways. And at the same time, he’s in the psychology department. There’s another dude in the psychology department who’s doing an experiment.

Okay. And the experiment is called the Global Change Game. Yes. And and what he does is they get together and they decide they’re going to have low RWA take the global change game and high art and see what happens. So this had never been done before. So I’m going to read to you. I’m going to read to what the global change game was.

So this is from the book. The setting involved a rather sophisticated simulation of the Earth’s future called the Global Change Game, which is played on a big map of the world by 50 to 70 participants who have been split into various regions such as North America, Africa, India and China. The players are divided up according to current populations, so a lot more students hunker down in India than in North America.

The game was designed to raise environmental awareness, and before the exercise begins, players study up on their region’s resources, prospects and environmental issues. Then, the facilitators who service the simulation call for some member, any member of each region, to assume the role of team leader by simply standing up. Once the elites in the world have risen to the task, they are taken aside and given control of their regions bank account.

They can use this to buy factories, hospitals, armies, and so forth from the game bank and they can travel the world, making deals with other elites. They also discover that they can discreetly put some of their region’s wealth into their own pockets to vie for a prize to be given out at the end of the simulation to the world’s richest person.

Then the game begins, and the world goes wherever the players take it for the next 40 years. Which, because time flies in a simulation, takes about 2.5 hours. Okay. Now they had been doing this simulation for a years before Bob Altmire started sending groups of just low archways and just high art. Yes.

 

Rebecca

It’s always been kind of mixed groups.

 

Sheila

Yes, yes. So he sent a group of low waste, okay. 67 of them who had also got very low. And over the course of the game they cured poverty. They you know, there were still some mass starvation events in Africa, but like other continents came in and tried to help. Yeah, they fixed climate change. They invested in hospitals and education.

They lifted people out of poverty. And and by the end of the game, everybody was better. Yeah. Okay. Every time. Hi. Our ways played the game. Nuclear war broke out. Yeah. And killed everybody.

 

Rebecca

Yeah.

 

Sheila

Very very quickly. And when that happened the game people would stop the game and say, okay, here’s what happened. Because of the nuclear war, you have the chance to go back two years and change it. And they would keep playing. Okay. And what. And by the end of the game everybody was heavily armed. They were all hunkered down in their own regions.

There was mass starvation. There was mass climate catastrophes. And everybody had gone against their own interests in order to get hoard resources. Yep. So it’s like and when people started realizing this and this, this, they sent many, many different groups, okay, to play this game and this kept happening over and over and over again. Low people on the ways ended up with a great world.

Yeah. And high ones destroyed it because they were just after their own interests. Yeah. And so the question became, oh my gosh, this is dangerous. Yep. Like people who are high are was are actually a danger to society. Yeah. And so what are we going to do about it. Yeah. And I know that’s a harsh thing to say but that’s what this experiment showed.

And I want to read you I want to read you what he said about this. So he starts off by saying, you know, and people may dispute this. People may say, well, it doesn’t mean that authoritarians are always bad or anything like this, but here’s a here’s his comment. If you set up a fair and square experiment in which people can act nobly, fairly, and with integrity, and you find that most of one group does and most of another group does not, that’s a fact, not an opinion.

And if you keep finding the same thing, experiment after experiment and other people find it too, then that’s a body of facts that demands attention.

 

Rebecca

Yeah, exactly. Because I think it is. We all want to believe that we’re the good guys, right? And the problem is, you have to ask, does the ends justify the means? Because that’s what a lot of like, right. Like right wing authoritarianism says, yeah, right. I mean, I think about the kinds of things that you learn about in, in Sunday school, right?

Where you, where you, even in a lot of these churches where they talk about the horrible things that happened with colonialism. I said, yeah, but they became Christians. Like, that’s not okay. Yeah. Like you can’t say, oh well too bad everyone was murdered and raped and like died horrible deaths and was like sold as slaves and all these horrible things that happened.

But at least they got to hear the gospel. No, the ends do not justify the means, right. This is this is what we’re talking about here. Say, well, we haven’t had nuclear war. No, but we have had a lot of these other things that the church has glossed over in the name of conversions. And that’s what this is measuring here, guys.

Like, if you are someone who you are able to say, yeah, but at the end it’ll be worth it. No it.

 

Sheila

Won’t.

 

Rebecca

But that’s the point.

 

Sheila

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

And that’s a sign that you, you may want to reevaluate why you think that way.

 

Sheila

Yeah. Yeah. So let’s continue this argument. So he’s saying right when authoritarians are actually dangerous we have to figure this out. So how do people become authoritarian okay. So he goes through a bunch of different scenarios. You know there’s some Freudian explanations which he ends up not liking because you can’t measure it and it’s too ambiguous.

 

Rebecca

And psychologists tend not to enjoy Freud.

 

Sheila

Yes, I. But one of the big things that he finds is that one of the biggest predictors of whether you’re authoritarian is how diverse experiences you’ve had in your life. Yes. So when you grow up in a bubble, when everyone is like you, you tend to be higher on the authoritarianism scale. And people who grow up in the same kind of family where it’s very authoritarian, but who have a more diverse group of friends end up lower on the scale.

Yeah. So the more you hang out with people who aren’t like you, with people of other races, with people of other religions, the more you travel, the less likely you are to be high on the scale. And so a lot of people just live in these bubbles, and if you think about it, is in the that what evangelicalism is tried to do.

 

Rebecca

Yeah. We even had our own music, our own t shirts, our own companies or own everything.

 

Sheila

Yep. Yeah. And you know we tell people that they need to go to Christian schools and then they need to go to youth groups and then they need to go to Christian universities.

 

Rebecca

And then they probably get a job in ministry because don’t you want to serve the Lord? Right. And I’m like, you’ve never talk to an atheist in your life.

 

Sheila

Yeah, exactly. And and that and that tends to be very highly correlated with this. Okay. So so you got people who are in these families that are teaching this stuff about how we need to submit to authority. And, and as I was reading this, I’m like, isn’t this interesting because and she deserves better. Before we even read any of the stuff we were actually teaching people how to do the opposite.

Yeah. Like we were teaching. We were saying, hey, if your daughter isn’t in this group and she’s being taught like, like she needs to be taught how not to just blindly follow authority. Yes. Like we actually showed you. And she deserves better how to do that and how important that was. If they’re actually going to develop faith in Jesus is that they can’t just blindly follow authority.

Yeah. So I just thought that was that was kind of funny.

 

Rebecca

Hey, you. Yes, you, who’s been listening to the podcast for a year or two already, who has not yet gotten the Great Sex Rescue or she deserves better. What are you waiting for? You know that they’re good. You’ve been listening to us for weeks. It’s time for you to understand what the fuss is all about. We hear from people all the time who say, listen, I’ve been listening to your podcast for two years, and I finally read, see, this was better.

And I had that breakthrough because it’s put together in a completely different way than these podcasts are. So, hey, stop putting it off by our book. You know you like us already, so why don’t you just head on over there and grab it?

 

Sheila

Okay, another big thing. And this one really got me. Okay, okay. Because I’m like, this is what we’re dealing with. Yeah. All right. Another big thing with high people, with people who are high on the RWA scale is that. And this is his words, not mine. Okay. Our ways don’t think the same as everyone else. Or rather, they don’t think much at all.

Yes. And he gave an example. Yeah. Okay. He said he gave he gave this scale to earn like this, this set of three premises. Okay. Or whatever it is.

 

Rebecca

Two people. Yeah. Logical.

 

Sheila

Yes. And it goes like this. All fish live in the sea. Sharks live in the sea. Therefore sharks are fish. Yes. All right. And people who are high on the RWA scale are far more likely to say that that is logical and that that follows.

 

Rebecca

Oh, that’s hard, that’s rough.

 

Sheila

I know it’s like, oh my goodness. And the reason as he and I was like, how can people not see that this is that this is. And as he dug down what he found that the commonality was that if people agree with the conclusion in this case, therefore, sharks are fish, they just assume that the argument is correct.

So and that’s what he founded by forming like all kinds of different ones. It wasn’t just this one.

 

Rebecca

You know he but the pattern was consistent. They didn’t care about the facts. They only cared about whether or not it proved what they wanted to prove. Exactly. Can you say he felt exactly, exactly every man’s battle and all of these things?

 

Sheila

Yeah, yeah. If the if the conclusion was what they were hoping to see, they really didn’t care about the argument, and they didn’t see the holes in the argument because they were just looking to validate what they already thought. And this happened over and over again.

 

Rebecca

And a really good way, I will say a really good way to, to make sure that you aren’t doing this is and I wrote about this in newsletter a while ago is when’s the last time you changed your mind. Right. So and I’m not saying change you might be something very small like I used to not be okay with a certain style of worship music, but I think I’m coming around to it.

Yeah. I’m talking of things that shatter your. Your idea of how something works, right? Like when is the last time that you change your mind on something that was a part of who you who you saw yourself as? Right? I am this person who believes X. When have you changed your mind? Because everything in the world has changed in the last couple of years.

So if you haven’t had large areas where your mind has been changed or where you’ve learned new things and you’ve adjusted your, worldview as a result, you’re probably not paying attention to the evidence. Like, I don’t care what your beliefs are, no one is 100% right. And so my question is, when’s the last time that you changed your mind about something big?

When’s the last time that you went from being fervently on side A to fervently on side B?

 

Sheila

Yeah, I mean, this is a more minor one, but one of the big things I changed my mind on was obligation sex. Yeah. Like I was I kind of taught that. Yeah. And then I saw our survey results for the Great Sex rescue. And I’m like, oh boy, we have to rewrite everything and take post down. And we.

 

Rebecca

Did. I mean, I’ve changed on virtually everything. Yeah, I flip flopped a couple times. That’s the thing to like. You change your mind like it’s like, where’s the evidence pointing right now? Like, I mean, I’ve had a couple things where I’ve been like, oh, I’m on this side. And I’m like, no, the evidence is definitely pulling me with this side.

Like, do you have a habit of changing your mind when new evidence is released or do you find yourself saying, no? I listen to all perspectives, but you haven’t ever changed your mind because that’s often what happens to. Right? Like they’re like, no, I looked at the arguments. The arguments are sound. No, because you looked at the conclusion of the arguments and chose the argument that fits your conclusion.

Yeah, right. When have you looked at a conclusion that you disagree with? But that’s a stupid idea. And then read the evidence and said, oh no, I was stupid.

 

Sheila

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

When’s when did you do that? Yeah. And if you can’t think about it, take the test.

 

Sheila

Yeah. And this doesn’t mean like I don’t want to shame people in this podcast. That’s not my that’s not my goal. No, but but we do want to say like there when we’re trying to break through to this group of people that are really hurting women especially, but hurting themselves too, like they’re hurting marriage.

 

Rebecca

So again, remember the women who are in these authoritarian systems and being hurt by them.

 

Sheila

Are always here.

 

Rebecca

We just get messages from people all the time. I’ll be very honest. We get messages to people all the time that it’s so clear. They are like the other going to get like 148 on the RWA thing. They’re like.

 

Sheila

So, so.

 

Rebecca

Authoritarian. And they’re like, you’ve changed my mind about obligation sex. But I’m still struggling in all these areas and all this stuff is bad. And I’m like this cause you’re not out of it. Yeah, yeah. It’s like, this is this is why we’re talking about this. Because you are. If you’re picking away at the scab that is forming over the giant festering wound that’s currently leaking out a liter of blood an hour, like you’re not like, good job.

You got a Band-Aid. And that’s important. But let’s deal with the underlying issue here. Yes. Right. Like, let’s let’s deal with why we are so willing to doom other people to to ton of hurt and abuse because, well, is what the Bible says. And why are we willing to see other people suffering and see ourselves suffering and see our children suffering and do nothing because we want to be right, and we want to be liked by the people who are in authority.

Yeah. And why are we willing to verbally abuse and shun and condemn, and, and actively try to harm in many ways, the people who disagree with us, right?

 

Sheila

Yeah, yeah.

 

Rebecca

So that’s just the question.

 

Sheila

Okay. So they they look at the conclusion and they ignore the argument. Yeah. Okay. The other thing they do is they’re really inconsistent. Okay. So here’s how he measured this. He would present he would present two completely opposing ideas in, in a story or in a scale and ask people if they agreed with them. And as long as he presented them in like a folksy, homey way, people would agree with totally contradictory things.

So here’s here’s an example. Okay, okay. Here’s an example. He gives, he asked both students and their parents because often he would survey like students and their parents because then he could see like, yes. So it’s super interesting anyway, to respond to when it comes to love, men and women with opposite points of view are attracted to each other, and also birds of a feather flock together when it comes to love, that’s opposites.

 

Rebecca

Attract and.

 

Sheila

Birds of a feather flock together is hilarious. I always typically agreed with both statements. Yes, even though they responded to the two items within minutes of each other, whereas low.

 

Rebecca

In minutes of each other. It wasn’t even like at the end all. It was like right, right beside each other. Yeah. Oh my god.

 

Sheila

But low in medium did not. They would pick one or the other. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And but they don’t. And so here’s the thing that he says, so they don’t tend to scan for inconsistencies as much as other people do, and especially families in areas of hypocrisy. So he measured and he would give people like long case studies of you know, legal cases.

And in one case it would be somebody breaking the law in order to picket an abortion clinic. And in the other case, it’d be someone breaking the law in order to have an abortion. Right. And like, people who were low, always or medium always would, would have the same answer no matter what. Like, how do you follow the law?

Because it’s not about who does it, it’s about the behavior. Whereas he would only punish the person who was having the abortion, not the person who was protesting. Yeah. So it’s not about the behavior. It’s about the person’s viewpoint and who the person is. And they saw this like like they would, they would tend to punish poor people much harsher than rich people.

They would punish minorities much harsher than majority. Whereas low and medium or otherwise did not. They just look at the facts of the case. And this was this was consistent over all kinds of different experiments. Yeah. And then there was a really funny one where they asked about freedom of expression, like freedom of worship in school. So would you, would you let you know?

Would you let a school specifically teach about Christianity and have people pray and they said, yes, because it’s all about freedom of religion. But then if they said, would you if you were living in an Arab country and they wanted to teach your kids, your Christian kids about Islam, would that be okay? And they said, well, absolutely not, because.

 

Rebecca

Freedom of religion.

 

Sheila

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas our tutors would say both were wrong. Yeah. You know and, and medium I would say both things were wrong. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like and the other funny thing I thought this is just this idea that I think this was even in the notes because the what like I love this book.

One of the reasons I love this book is that it is so darn accessible. It’s funny, he’s got little jokes in it, but then half the book is notes. And so if you actually want the academic part of it, you just read the notes. So he’s written this specifically so that your average person can read the book and enjoy it and understand it. But but the notes are super funny. And one thing that he had in the notes was that, high RWA people tended not to. Like if there was a movie where you’re supposed to be rooting for the minority group, they wouldn’t root for them. So in Dances With Wolves, you’re supposed to be rooting for the the Native American.

Yeah. Oh, God. But they didn’t. Oh, no. Oh. So anyway, then in chapter three, he turns to politics, which we’re not gonna talk about too much, but I thought this was super interesting. Which is, low art was do not like it when politicians change their minds when they flip flop. Low art is like, no, you need to be consistent.

Or if you’re going to change your mind, you need to explain why you change your mind, and you need to have a principled reason for doing it. Yeah. Okay. Hi. I don’t care if you change your mind as long as you’re on my side. Yes. And so if you are a demagogue who wants to get power, it is so much easier to try to get the always on your side than the low is on your side.

Yeah, because with the higher, all I have to do is say slogans. Yes, and they’ll follow you. Yeah, because it’s not about consistency. It’s not about it’s.

 

Rebecca

About.

 

Sheila

Argument.

 

Rebecca

It’s about being part of the right group so that you can keep having power because it’s authoritarian.

 

Sheila

So he says this. So suppose you are completely unethical dishonest, power hungry dirtbag scum bucket politician who will say whatever he has to say to get elected and I apologize for putting you in this role, but it will only last for one more sentence. Whom are you going to try to lead? Hi. Our ways are low. Our ways.

Isn’t it obvious? The easy sell high RWA is will open up their arms and wallets to you if you just sing their song. However poor your credibility. Those crappy low archways, on the other hand, will argue warily when your credibility is suspect. Because. Because you sing their song so the scum bucket politicians will usually head for the right wing authoritarians, because the right wing authoritarians hunger for social endorsement of their beliefs so much that they’re apt to trust anyone who tells them they’re right.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

 

Rebecca

And I think that’s what we see in churches, too. Right? We see a lot of these big pastors will say the right things or they’ll, they’ll, they’ll, you know, endorse the right kinds of, it’s all this.

 

Sheila

This.

 

Rebecca

Group, what’s the word? Group signaling. Right. Like group signaling kind of stuff where it’s like, well, we believe in the gospel, and then they can tell you whatever the gospel is. That’s why you have all these all these, like, these crazy megachurches who all say they believe the gospel. You have people who will hop megachurch to make jokes out of wildly different theology and wildly different beliefs, and they don’t see Driscoll.

 

Sheila

Switched from reformed to charismatic. Like.

 

Rebecca

Those are very.

 

Sheila

Different. It was very.

 

Rebecca

Different, you know? But his followers are still like, yeah, that’s fine, because Mark’s on my team, right? And I mean, I know people in this town who have gone to the Baptist church, the Pentecostal church, and like, like the in and and also like the, the more authoritarianism authoritarian Presbyterian church and like and all of them have very different beliefs guys and they just don’t even notice that they they don’t care.

They don’t care. Because the only things that matter are about the in-group power structures. That’s the only thing that has to remain consistent, is that they get to stay better than other people. And I know that sounds harsh, but that’s what I realized about myself when I did my deconstruction ism was also realizing that I got to accept that being a Christian didn’t mean that I had to see religious people as morally superior to other people like.

And that was a really big and freeing thing, because I didn’t actually enjoy that. Because it always felt like a cognitive dissonance for me, because it’s like, I just don’t think that what we believe is what makes us moral. I believe that following Jesus and following the way of God is what makes us moral people, and that it’s important that our beliefs line up with our actions and that knowing truth is important for truth’s sake.

But it’s not like little meritocracy badges where it’s like, I’m a better person than you because I have the right theology. I just don’t believe that anymore. And I think that’s a much more biblical message. Anyway. Where it’s about like combination of knowing what is true and doing what is true, and the morality and salvation are different things.

And this is very complicated. But this is a big thing that I was always raised with at, especially the Baptist church and the Alliance Church that we were a part of. Right? Like, and this is not the same for every single one, but the ones in our. And it.

 

Sheila

Wasn’t every.

 

Rebecca

Leader, it wasn’t every leader in those churches. But this is a thing that’s very common in very missions focused churches especially, is this idea that there are the lost and we are the found, right? Right. And seeing people through that lens of people who are lost and need to be reached, who are sinners versus those of us who have the answer versus being versus seeing it much more humbly.

 

Rebecca

I think that can be really, freeing, actually, where, you know, your job is to, yes, be a light that shines, be the salt of the earth, be the presence ambassador of Christ on this world. And that doesn’t mean that you need to hand out tracts and tell people they’re going to hell, and they’re not allowed to have that food, by the way, unless they say the sinner’s prayer first.

 

Sheila

Right? Right. Yeah. No. Very true. Okay. So and I just want to reiterate to like what you’re saying is about religion. He’s talking about politics. Yes. Religion in a minute. But it overlaps so much.

 

Rebecca

All right. That’s why I’m flip flopping.

 

Sheila

Because because it does overlap. I want to read a few more quotes that I think are really important about the politics before we move on. But he said, and again, please remember 2006. Once someone becomes a leader of the high identity’s in-group, he can lie with impunity about the outgroups himself, whatever, because he knows the followers will seldom check on what he says, nor will they expose themselves to people who set the record straight.

Furthermore, they will not believe the truth if they somehow get exposed to it. And if the distortions become absolutely undeniable, they will rationalize it away and put it in a box. If the scoundrels duplicity and hypocrisy lands him on the front page of every daily in the country, the followers will still forgive him if he just says the right things.

Yeah, and this is and I think that there’s a tendency today to say, well, everybody’s like that because we’ve become so polarized and we both you just hunker down and don’t like and just believe whatever our side says. But that’s actually not what the data says.

 

Rebecca

No, it’s not.

 

Sheila

What the data is that he was. And as we’ll look at in a minute, there are some high a across the political spectrum, but they tend to be in one part of it. Highways don’t change their minds. Where’s the other ones do. Yeah. The other ones, like if you give them a a good reason to change their mind, they will.

 

Rebecca

There’s also, I will be honest, like when we look at the church, I’m sorry to bring it back to religion, but let’s bring it back to religion. There is a whole group of people who are in that group because they changed their minds.

 

Sheila

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

Like the deconstruction is more progressive, kind of moderate. Christian space is full of people who are there because they changed their minds, the people who haven’t changed minds. I won’t change your mind. And there’s all this evidence and they can see it. They’re hurting people. And people are saying there are people being raped and abuse happening elsewhere who still won’t change their minds are still in the conservative churches.

Like in the right wing churches, they just are like there is a self-selection. Yes. Bias here too, where it’s like people who change their minds are, are no longer welcome in one area but are still welcome in the other. There is so much diversity of thought in much more like expand jellicle spaces than people like to believe.

There is. There really is. There’s people who are from all sorts. We have people who are Catholic, who are Anglican, who are still Baptist, but just can’t find a church to go to who are like Mennonite, who are like, there’s a wide variety over here who believe very different things. And there’s a lot more uniformity, because there’s not a lot of things that are like, make it or break it.

Yeah. On on the lower authoritarian group, it’s like, okay, you can believe that. And I don’t agree with you. Yeah. But like you don’t have to like leave.

 

Sheila

Yeah. Yeah. So and I want to and I want to read two more things she says about politics. But as I’m reading it, please think of it not really in terms of politics, but in terms of evangelicalism, because I think it applies there, too. Okay. So he says, when you haven’t figured out your beliefs, but instead absorbed them from other people, you’re really in no position to defend them from attack.

Simply put, you don’t know why the things you believe are true. Somebody else decided they were, and you’re taking their word for it. So what do you do when you’re challenged? And this is what we see all the time with people debating complementary an ism and egalitarianism is people just say, well, the Bible teaches complementary in this way.

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

Or will you just need a tiebreaker.

 

Sheila

So yeah y yeah. And they and they don’t know how to answer. And so then he says well first of all, you avoid challenges by sticking with your own kind as much as possible because they’re hardly likely to ask pointed questions about your beliefs. But if you meet someone who does, you’ll probably defend your ideas as best that you can.

Parrying thrusts with whatever answers your authorities have pre-loaded into your head. And I’m just remembering all the youth groups where they taught you what to say. When someone challenges your beliefs. And like, we had to learn all these scripts, right? And most of them didn’t make a lot of sense. Yep. They were really shallow. They wouldn’t pass any logic tests.

 

Rebecca

A lot of them were that sharks example.

 

Sheila

Yeah. Like, if these defenses crumble, you may go back to the trusted sources. They probably don’t have to give you a convincing refutation of the anxiety producing argument that breached your defenses. Just the assurance that you are nonetheless right. But if the arguments against you become overwhelming and persistent, you either concede the point which may put the whole thing at risk, or you simply insist that you are right and you walk away clutching your beliefs more tightly than ever.

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

And that’s often what we see as people. And this.

 

Sheila

Is, this is what we’re up.

 

Rebecca

Against. That is.

 

Sheila

Yeah, this is exactly what we’re.

 

Rebecca

Up against. And that’s why it’s so hard. Because then and I also want to say, like, this is why I’ve had this conversation with a lot of people, especially our sweet patrons who, you know, talk to their pastors repeatedly about the stuff and they just don’t care. And they think that there’s a will if I just bring them the evidence.

They care. And I want this to be freeing for you. Yeah, if you like. Your pastor is just a super high authoritarian and they’ve been given the information. They don’t care. Yeah. And they’re and it’s not that you haven’t said the argument correctly. It’s not that you didn’t present them enough evidence. It’s that they have chosen that in the face of evidence, they’re just going to clutch on to their beliefs anyway and not care.

And we can pray that later that changes. But it’s not your fault if someone doesn’t want to look at evidence.

 

Sheila

It really isn’t. Because for a lot of people, being in the in-group is more important than anything to do with logic or than listening to Jesus words that a good tree can’t bear bad fruit and a battery can’t bear good fruit. They just they literally don’t care. Because to them, it’s all about my self-identity. As being part of this righteous.

And if that goes, everything goes. And that’s and that’s why people are so afraid of deconstruction-ism. Because you know that if you pull one string, if we pull the string of hey, women matter during sex too, that’s going to also pull complementary ism. And if we pull complementary ism, that’s going to pull the idea that church leaders were an authority over their people.

And if we pull that like, it just it pulls it everything, it.

 

Rebecca

Pulls it everything.

 

Sheila

Right. And so and so often people are afraid to even go to the hey, women matter during sex because it’s going to have all these cascading effects. Because because everything is not logically consistent.

 

Rebecca

No, it literally is cards.

 

Sheila

It really is a house of cards. And one of the ways that I often find that you can tell if someone is willing to change their mind is you say to them something like, what could someone do to change your mind about X? Like what would it take to change your mind about complimentary autism? Or what would it take to to to not go to your church anymore?

Like what would your pastor have to do for you to say this isn’t of God? And often they can’t give you anything? Yeah, there’s nothing they can do and they’re actually proud. There’s nothing they can do because no, I am standing. I am standing firm. I am, I am not going to budge. I am defending the gospel.

I am standing on God’s Word. And it’s like, okay, but what if it’s not? But they can’t. They can’t even imagine it. Yeah. You know. Okay. So then the book, the book turns to to religion. Yes. And this was so super interesting. So they had a religious fundamentalism quiz. Yes. It was a 12 question scale. Did you take that one?

Okay. What did you score 33 okay I was 44. Mom and dad was 43. Yeah. So I was I was the highest. No I thought dad was going to be the highest and I was going to be the middle and you were going to be the bottom in all of them. But I was actually the highest. So I don’t think that surprised me in that.

Yeah, she I’m kidding. It was just right there. Yeah. So the average American evangelical scores 93.

 

Rebecca

Yeah. That doesn’t surprise.

 

Sheila

Me. Yeah yeah yeah. And so we scored quite low. This was this is something that wasn’t in the text. This isn’t a note to. And I thought this was so interesting okay. So one of the things they were trying to measure in their scale was militancy. Okay. And here’s how they were trying to measure it. They were asking people if they agreed with the statement.

God’s true followers must remember that he requires them to constantly fight Satan and Satan’s allies on this earth. Okay. Yes. And what they found was that in Canada that was not related to the others.

 

Rebecca

It was so funny.

 

Sheila

He’s not an accurate. It didn’t go along with the others, but in America it did because there were pacifists. So they took it out of this scale because it’s mostly Manitoba. But yeah, so they couldn’t measure it because in Canada the militancy didn’t go along with religious fundamentalism. Yeah, it wasn’t an accurate predictor. Yeah. I wonder if that’s changed since like, I wouldn’t be surprised if it now is because I don’t think so.

You know, and.

I really still don’t think so. I think Canada’s culture is still quite different. Again, like we’re such a smaller area that to to go against people is to go against neighbors.

 

Sheila

Yeah, right. And so okay. But here’s and here’s the point here, here is the major thing that I want you to hear is that evangelicals there is no difference between evangelicals and fundamentalists. Yeah. And B scoring high on the fundamentalist quiz is almost perfectly related to scoring high on the authoritarian. Yeah. So these things are all the same thing.

Yeah. Which is horrifying to me. Yep. Absolutely horrifying to me. Yep.

 

Rebecca

And it’s it’s just this again, this doesn’t need to be a point of like the idea of shame being like, you’re a terrible person as much as a hate. We are in a bad rut. Like you’re in a you’re in a bad habit here. You have like, our brains have been trained to be authoritarian, to be harmful to others, to be aggressive, to be the antithesis of the righteous.

 

Sheila

He taught self righteousness so much.

 

Rebecca

The antithesis of the fruits of the spirit are all present in in the outcomes of what these skills, predict. So if you take this, this scale and you’re like, oh, I got like an 87 on the religious, the religious fundamentalism scale, that’s just a really good point that you might need to start reading books. And, in theology takes from people who are outside of your camp of Christianity, like maybe read some stuff by more progressive Christians and you can live with.

But then I might I might agree with them. I like, but you don’t have to. But why are you so afraid of?

 

Sheila

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

I’m just listening to viewpoints that are different. Like if you’re if you’re read, read books that are put out by people who work with the homeless, who are from a more progressive viewpoint versus who are from a very right wing viewpoint, because you might be interested even just seeing how people are discussed differently and talking about systemic issues and stuff.

And again, you don’t have to agree with everything, but you do have to get used to the idea of hearing different viewpoints, actually weighing them, allowing them to influence what you believe and not being, closed off to evidence because you can still say, I think that I still believe in a more conservative approach to X, y, z.

However, I understand this. That’s different than you just think everyone should get a handout and think that.

 

Sheila

Yeah, that’s where I started from. Yeah, that’s actually how I started evolving was like, no, I still agree with the conservative political take on this. But you know, I can see why they’re saying this. Yeah. And then over time I’ve kept so my concern beliefs and some of them I have adopted these ones like I’m kind of all over the place.

I don’t think people could correctly predict where I am and multiple things, but I’m always reading about, okay, what actually works? Yeah. What policies actually work.

 

Rebecca

Yep. And same with and that’s what we do with the with religion too. Right. Let us what we’re doing with the church. It’s like okay these things didn’t work though. Like these didn’t work. And so how can we look at the data and change what we believe so that it’s more in line with what we see with where we see Jesus moving right versus us being like, well, this is what we believe.

This must be where Jesus is moving. Yes, exactly. That’s that’s.

 

Sheila

The difference. That’s the difference is like just because because, in authoritarian churches and in authoritarian spaces, they put belief first. You have to believe exactly these things, and then you will be doing what God wants and God will be happy with you. Whereas in other places we say, well, no, God says they’ll know us by our love Jesus, as done this, by our love.

So we need to put our actions first and then say, okay, which beliefs line up with these kinds of actions?

 

Rebecca

Yep. Like how do what does what I believe about God influence about how I treat my neighbor?

 

Sheila

Yeah, exactly. Because because it should go together. Right. And and do.

 

Rebecca

I have to rationalize away the way that I’m talking about a certain group of people, the way that I’m treating a certain group people, the beliefs and, the beliefs that I have about certain groups of people. Do I have to just hide things that I believe when I meet up with people in my community who are outside of my Christian in-group, because I know that it’s actually quite shameful and harmful to them.

Or can I very openly discuss what I believe? Because I know that they’re going to be able to respect where we have differences, but I’m not coming at this from a place of I am morally superior and you are the damned.

 

Sheila

Yeah. And that’s and that’s a hard place to be when you’ve grown up in a totally different.

 

Rebecca

Yeah. How do you just have your neighbors not be your enemies, even if they don’t look like you? Act like you think like you? How do you see them as not your enemies?

 

Sheila

Yeah, because Jesus didn’t Jesus did not see them as his enemies. So again, remember I’m going to summarize the book again, just so that, you know, the argument that we’ve made, he’s saying that, right wing authoritarians tend to end up doing they’re more likely to support leaders who will then harm people. And who will do global harm and who will hurt.

And so this is an ideology or a personality or whatever you want to call it that we do need to fight against and guard against. Yeah. And the problem is that evangelicalism and religious fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism, like evangelicalism is religious fundamentalism. Not all religious fundamentalism is evangelicalism. So you can have, you know, Hindu religious fundamentalist, you can have Jewish religious fundamentalists, etc.. Okay. But evangelicalism evangelicals tend to be religious fundamentalists and religious fundamentalists tend to be was the it’s all like one big circle. Okay. Not even a Venn diagram. Like it’s just one big circle. And and so what that means is like when evangelicals take that global test, you end up in nuclear war. Like, what is that saying about us? Yep.

 

Rebecca

And I think it really just comes down to do you see your neighbor as your enemy or your brother?

 

Sheila

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

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Sheila

Yeah. Okay, so I want to read, he’s talking about evangelicals down specifically. Okay. Because chapter four is about evangelicals, and he’s referring to a book that I’ve talked about on this podcast before, the scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which was written, I think, 25 years ago. So it was written before he wrote this, and he talks about it and he’s and he quotes the author saying, the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.

Noel observes that American evangelicals are not exemplary for their thinking, and they have not been so for several generations. He points out that evangelicals support dozens of theological seminary scores of colleges and hundreds of radio stations, but not a single research university in the United States. He writes, it is simply impossible to be with integrity, both evangelical and intellectual.

Modern American evangelicals have failed, notably in sustaining serious intellectual life.

 

Rebecca

Yet all the evangelicals who are serious about, like being intellectuals that that like, you have to get outside of the Christian area like you can you can become a renowned Christian researcher like Nancy Piercey.

 

Sheila

Yeah. Right. Without doing any proper citation, but.

 

Rebecca

Also without being able to do the bare minimum that is required at a secular.

Secular campus. Right. So this is this is the issue, right? It shouldn’t be this way, though. There is nothing about religion that makes you less able to think. Yeah, you know, but there is something about fundamentalist religion that actively rewards you for.

 

Sheila

Because logic, because what it’s trying to do is enforce the group, think, enforce power structures. And to do that, it has to make sure that you don’t get any information from outside. Yeah. And that’s what’s going on. And so when we did all kinds of different experiments and different quizzes with people who scored differently on even on religious fundamentalism quizzes, and one of the things he found was that atheists were really consistent.

Okay, so if you asked atheists if it was okay to legislate that schools teach that there is no God, 100% of atheists in his Manitoba sample said no. Yep. So atheists are like, no, you can’t teach my religion to children. Yeah, right. But evangelicals are saying, yes, it’s fine to teach my religion.

 

Rebecca

But it wouldn’t be okay to teach your religion.

 

Sheila

Yeah. And then when, when when they, they asked. Okay, so imagine there is, child from your neighborhood who is of a different religion, and they come over to your house and they have questions. Is it okay to tell that child that their parent’s religion is wrong? And atheists or people who scored low on, the religious fundamentalism on.

 

Rebecca

The front.

 

Sheila

Scale said no, that’s not okay. Yeah. But people who scored high says it is. And I mean that’s when we were all taught, right, that the most important thing is to save people. So how could that not be okay. Exactly. And it’s like, well, you know, we could talk about and that, that is, that is, is, a difficult thing if you, if you do believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life, how do we get away, get away from that?

But we need to realize that we think, well, we do this, but atheists do it too. They actually don’t believe there are actually consistent and more moral about this than evangelicals. If you just look at human rights. And so that is something that we need to grapple with, you know, okay. Then there was something that he called dogmatism, which is whether you hold on to a belief, no matter what.

And he he did this experiment where he would show students the different, different gospel accounts of one thing and how they differed from one another. And he found that evangelicals would consistently dismiss any differences and say that there were no differences, even if there were glaring differences in the accounts. And so he says this when confronted with different accounts of the same thing, they use the car accident or witnesses analogy a lot.

So, you know, how how the whole thing about how well, if you witness a car accident, everyone sees something different. And so that’s what’s going on in the Gospels, right? Yes. And he says this, ultimately, true believers were saying, I believe so strongly that the Bible is perfect that there’s nothing, not even the Bible itself, that can change my mind.

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

I have yeah, we’ve run into that a lot.

 

Sheila

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s when people need to start listening to the Bible for Normal People podcast. Okay, I’ve almost finished what I want to say about this book, but I do want to read this long excerpt. Okay. Which is good. Okay. You will sometimes hear fundamentalists dismiss science because of its apparent uncertainty. They observed that today’s scientific explanation of something will sooner or later be replaced by a different one.

So why invest anything in it? Their religion already has the final word. They say the perfect explanation of everything. This view is three players short of a trio. First, it does not grasp that future theories and science will be accepted because they make superior explanations and predictions, which is progress you could not make if you insisted. The old theory was perfect as well.

Science energetically corrects itself if a finding is misleading, say due to methodological error, other scientists will discover that and set things straight. Every year, a new batch of scientists graduate, and many of them take dead aim as they were trained to do on the scientific establishment in religion, you might get branded a heretic or worse for challenging dogma, and science will get promoted and gather and gather research grants.

As you may, if you knock an established explanation off its perch.

 

Rebecca

Very true.

 

Sheila

Orthodoxy has a big bullseye planted on it. In science, a scientist who can come up with a better account of things than evolution will become immortal. Yes.

 

Rebecca

Let me. That’s why we got like. That’s why our paper was accepted so quickly into such a great journal, is because we actually disrupted the the status quo belief in sociology of religion. Yeah. About specifically complimentary and ism and pragmatic egalitarianism. Yeah.

 

Sheila

Because so the the belief that we request that we were, critiquing what came from Sally Gallagher, who did a huge study, in the early aughts where she said that the majority of, of evangelicals practice symbolic headship. So they say they believe in headship, but it’s more just a marker of, hey, we do marriage different from the world, but they practice egalitarianism.

 

Rebecca

They say they do marriage different than the rest of the world, but they don’t actually. And then. Right. And that’s been the reigning theory for a long time.

 

Sheila

We’ve shown that doesn’t apply with sex.

 

Rebecca

Yeah. They actually are doing some things very differently. And it’s very bad.

 

Sheila

Yes. Yeah. And that’s why we were accepted. Yeah.

 

Rebecca

Because we proved everyone wrong. They like being proved wrong in science friends.

 

Sheila

Okay. He goes on to look at how many people leave the faith he looks at when fundamentals leave, the faith tends to be about hypocrisy and they can’t believe anymore. You know, so people are starting to question their beliefs. Yeah. Yeah. And then there were two quick things that I thought were super interesting that he found fundamentally.

 

Sheila

The first is that fundamentalists tend to have little guilt when they do something wrong. Yes, that makes sense because.

 

Rebecca

We’ve been learned to.

 

Sheila

Rationalize, yeah, we can.

 

Rebecca

Do anything if the ends justify the means.

 

Sheila

And also all you need to do is confess and Jesus forgives you, which is true. Whereas atheists tend to say, well, how can I make amends? How can I and and how can I become a different person? So it’s kind of an interesting the other thing is he did he, fundamentalist don’t actually read another Bible. Oh very well.

So he does this test and the average score is 60% among evangelicals as super easy religious quiz. So for instance, and here’s to four question quiz. Okay. So in where in the Bible would you find the passage in that region? There were shepherds living in their fields keeping watch over their flock by night. Then the angel of the Lord shone around.

Yeah. And people would say, like. And they were given they were given the Gospel of Luke, the Book of Jeremiah, the Psalms or Genesis.

 

Rebecca

Oh, does he Jeremiah, what did they say?

 

Sheila

Yeah. Well, if that was one of them. Okay, here’s another one. Is the story of Samson and Delilah in Exodus? Matthew. Apostles or judges?

 

Rebecca

Oh my gosh, not judges.

 

Sheila

But like most people said, acts. Oh, okay. Here I’m just going to give you another quote. Okay? Okay. For God so loved the world that he came. I know this is the one people who were most likely to get correct. Okay, good.

 

Rebecca

Which book? John 316.

 

Sheila

And then this one, if I have if I speak in the tongues of men of angels. 13 one yes, but the average evangelical only got 60%. Oh, wow. On on tests like that.

 

Rebecca

That’s wild.

 

Sheila

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s only four there were there were other there were other questions that were like that. But the average evangelical only scored 60%. That’s wild. Yeah yeah yeah. So again it really is more about about being in the in-group and feeling righteous than it is about actually knowing God, actually knowing the Bible. Well.

 

Rebecca

And this is also what we found in, in various areas. Right. The people who are the staunchest who actually do the stuff, who actually do read their Bibles, who really study, who really care about this, often leave. Yeah, because they actually have enough information to see the holes in the argument.

 

Sheila

Yep. And because they actually fall in love with Jesus.

 

Rebecca

Yeah, a lot of times that what happens too. And and also because most people like I think I think it’s something if you want to keep someone in a cult forever, they just have to believe 80%, right? Because if you get if you believe too much of it, then you actually care enough that if something falls apart, it wrecks you.

Yeah. Versus if you’re like, well, I was like a little bit fishy. So I’m fine. It’s still working out for me. Like so it’s, it’s it’s totally different.

 

Sheila

Yeah. Okay. There’s two more chapters. That’s the final one I really want to talk about. Okay. But I do need to mention what the, what the fifth chapter is, which is, it is about the leaders. So he does talk about this because we’ve been talking about the followers so far. Leaders are very different because the whole point of a follower is that they’re going to be submissive.

Yes. To the one in leadership. Leaders do not want to be submissive. They want to be dominating. Yes. Okay. And so they’re very, very, very different. They believe that they are the best. They believe like they, they just want to dominate and have power over. It’s very rare that people score really high on both things. But when you do score really high on both things, guess what?

 

Sheila

You are pastor and evangelical.

 

Rebecca

Yeah. Okay. There you go.

 

Sheila

Right. So again, you’re getting.

 

Rebecca

Mega submission and high dominance.

 

Sheila

Yeah yeah yeah. So I want to be in power and I want to be in leadership. So very scary when you get these things together okay. Yeah. He calls them double highs. And they tend to be overwhelmingly religious. And he talks about playing that whole global thing game with double highs. And it was just it was absolutely. It was it was it was super bad.

It was super, super bad. So then this final chapter is like, so what do we do. And this is really where I’m landing is what do we do. Is there any hope? How do we get through to people who are highways. Yeah. And the good news is he actually has some ideas and which which has made me think that perhaps we’ve gone about this a little bit wrong.

 

Sheila

And I want to switch things up a little bit and how we talk about things. But one of them is that the more high our ways get to know people outside of their group, the more likely they are to change. Yeah, because it’s so based on being insular.

 

Rebecca

Yeah. Well, you talked about that a lot, right? You need to make new friends.

 

Sheila

And the good news is that I want to read this. People often think that low always are all atheists. And ignores agnostics, but they’re not 62% of the low. I was in my big 2005 parent study said they were members of some religion, typically liberal Protestants or Catholics. A solid majority of moderates are religious too, and often churchgoers as well.

Often people who believe in God and have religious inclinations are not high, are ways, and they are well positioned to broaden those who are. So this is up to us. If we’re going to get through to the high always, it has to be people who are not.

 

Rebecca

Scary to them because we’re also Christian.

 

Sheila

Right? And we know the Bible. Education plays a huge part. Yeah. So the more education people have, the lower they tend to score. So going to university tends to take you down by about 15 points. Good. Yeah. The that that may not necessarily be true for Christian institutions though.

 

Rebecca

Oh I highly doubt that it’s true for Christian institutions.

 

Sheila

So what do we do. Logic doesn’t always work. I still think it’s important to give arguments because we do give arguments. We do give data.

 

Rebecca

Our arguments work. I imagine for the people who have already had the who are already, leaving the.

 

Sheila

Who are you finding the cognitive dissonance?

 

Rebecca

That’s exactly.

 

Sheila

This is supposed to help me. You know, I’m supposed to have this amazing marriage because I’m a Christian and I’m not.

 

Rebecca

Yes. It’s not going to help this is what I was saying earlier. It’s not going to help you with the pastor who has no reason to change his mind. It does help for the literally thousands of women who are listening who used to be.

 

Sheila

This is what I wanted to say. Yes. Not giving your pastor stats. If your pastor is a mark Driscoll, they’re just going to cut their hair. This is why we haven’t gotten through. This is why. Because I honestly thought, hey, all I have to do is show Gary Thomas and Shante Felton and Emerson all I have to show them the stats and they will change their mind.

But none of them ever did.

 

Rebecca

Nope. You have to wait until they start changing their mind and then you’re like, hey, I can offer you cognitive, right? I can offer you a freedom from that cognitive dissonance here, because I have the stats to to show you what’s actually going on.

 

Sheila

So it’s still important to share the stats, but who we share them with matters. And so if you share them with someone who just ignores them and you’re like, how can you build this off? This is so obvious. And you’re like, I just don’t get it. How to blow it up?

 

Rebecca

It’s because the authoritarian, they’re.

 

Sheila

Authoritarian and they don’t think in terms of logic like we do. They think in terms of what’s the conclusion that I’m supposed to believe. And then it really doesn’t matter what else you say. Yeah, right. But what really makes a difference is meeting people who aren’t like you, but who still share a lot of your values. So when people who are low are always can talk about Jesus, when we can talk about what Scripture say, when we can show, hey, I love Jesus, I follow the gospel.

But when I read Ephesians five, I see something different. And this is what I think. It’s actually a beautiful passage, but it doesn’t mean power and authority that is actually more likely to get people to listen often than some of the other arguments, because what they’re hearing is you still love the Bible because that’s what they’re so caught up in, is no, I am standing on the Bible.

I believe the Bible.

 

Rebecca

I think I would I would see it differently because I think that there’s enough dog whistle training in these areas that that would even feel like logic. Yeah, I think it’s much more about just showing them I disagree with you and then not arguing.

 

Sheila

Yeah, I think people.

 

Rebecca

Are not used to having people in their life who disagree with.

 

Sheila

Them.

 

Rebecca

Who openly disagree with them. Like, yeah, I completely disagree with you. I think that’s an incredibly dangerous and harmful way of thinking. I I’m we don’t need to talk about it because you’re not going to we’re not going to convince each other. But I just you should know I’m not on the same wavelength there.

 

Sheila

Yeah. And then just move on. Yeah.

 

Rebecca

I think that could also help for some people because, like, I know, you know, I, when I was in my very fervent, zealous evangelical self. Right. Like earlier on in university, a lot of the reasons why you have that RWA score or just knock down when you’re in university is you just get to know so many people who, you know, think completely differently than you, who just treat you wonderfully.

 

Sheila

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

Like I had the just most wonderful support system and friends and coworkers and co researchers in many areas where we saw things completely differently, you know, and I just was still loved, you know. And now to be fair, I was not spitting hateful, abusive, absolute pig poop. The apostle Paul used a stronger word in the Bible, by the way, than that, at them.

And I was not proselytizing and I was not being cruel to them. You know, and so we could have a respectful relationship. And then I found myself realizing that a lot of the stuff that I believe didn’t make sense.

 

Sheila

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

You know, and I, I think that a lot of that that happens for a lot of people. And so I’m not saying don’t call people out. I’m saying call them out, but don’t try to do logic with people who are trained to avoid logic. Yeah. Just let them sit in that discomfort of this person that I love and who likes me and who I’m friends with, thinks that this is a bad thing to think.

 

Sheila

Yeah. You know.

 

Rebecca

And it’s important that we speak up and it’s important that we call it you are not supposed to keep the peace with authoritarians. Like you’re not supposed to do that. You are not supposed to capitulate. You’re not supposed to pat them on the back, make them feel good about themselves. Like, in essence, we need to parent a lot of the authoritarians where it’s like, that’s not acceptable and then just move along.

 

Sheila

Yup. Right.

 

Rebecca

But punitive measures, they are trained to see that as proof that they are the other and that that you, that they themselves are proper.

 

Sheila

Right. So they get. Yeah. When people, when people cut them off, then they’re being persecuted and they’re on the right side. Yeah.

 

Rebecca

So it’s just it’s just.

 

Sheila

But I’ll tell you, there has been two moments on the Better Marriage podcast that were so powerful that I keep having people talk about and refer back, and it’s when we were doing something a little bit different. One was a recent podcast episode with Mark Maskell from Australia, and she just started talking about what Jesus means to her and what the gospel means to her.

 

Sheila

So she wasn’t she wasn’t really making scriptural arguments. She wasn’t, you know, trying to refute anyone. She was just sharing her heart about how much she loved Jesus. And it was really powerful. And the other was a couple of years ago now when I had Taryn Williams.

 

Rebecca

Probably Taryn.

 

Sheila

Yeah, yeah. And he was sharing and he, he actually broke down crying of when he finally realized egalitarianism was true. And he saw his wife and he realized what it meant that she was his equal and that it was like it was so powerful to him. And those are powerful moments because they weren’t based on logic, but they were just based on this is something that’s so beautiful.

And I think people respond to beauty. I think people respond to that yearning to be known, to be intimate, to to both with each other and with God. And so, you know, as we are thinking about how to be more strategic, I want to figure out how to how to bring more moments like that into the podcast where we do get excited about what God is doing, because sometimes I do lean more on the logic side, and it’s really interesting to hear how logic doesn’t work well with these these people.

 

Rebecca

Logic does work with people who are looking for a logical framework in which to build their belief system. Yeah, and that’s really what we do. Yeah. Like we collect the strays that are kicked out of Baptist churches. That’s what we do. You are all half straight kittens and you know.

 

Sheila

Yeah.

 

Rebecca

Here we have some data. But I think this is, this is a big, a big thing to realize is that people in different er, in different spots, people who are at different layers in the journey, are going to respond to different things. And so we’re going to try to figure out how to try to be not again.

And I want I can’t emphasize this enough. Not like not patronizing to authoritarians, not capitulating to them, not being like, you’re welcome here just as you are because you’re they’re not it is not welcome to be authoritarian here. You are welcome to listen. And you are welcome to to be a part of our podcast. We’re never going to see that.

That way of thinking is just as valid as any other way of thinking. It is not. It’s proven by everyone to not be. If you use even basic logic, it’s not. Yeah, but at the same time, you as a person, if you are someone who is authoritarian, are welcome to listen, are welcome to learn, are welcome to, you know, wrestle with what we’re saying and decide if you agree or not.

And we just hope that through listening, we can get these people to start engaging in logic in a way that they’re they maybe have been trained not to.

 

Sheila

Yeah. Yeah. So that’s that’s some of what I was thinking. So please, this book is fun. It is not incredibly long.

 

Rebecca

I mean, the guy is funny when.

 

Sheila

You look at the page numbers, I think there’s like 250 just remember, half of that is endless. And so it isn’t a long read. You can take the two quizzes on religious fundamentalism and and see where you fit in with, see where you fit. And then just yeah, comment wherever you watch the podcast, comment on YouTube. Comment on our post for this podcast, on Facebook or on Substack or on our blog and tell us what you think, what can help me get through to people who just aren’t there yet?

 

Rebecca

And if you have someone who was in the authoritarian mind space, what helped you get out?

 

Sheila

Yeah, because I would love to read some of those, some of those on future podcasts. Next week we have a special guest. We have Professor Neil, who is an Instagram TikTok personality who does stitches, especially of some Christian pastors, and shows how what they’re saying is completely bonkers. And so we’ll talk about how he’s trying to change the conversation.

Let me have some a lot of interesting podcasts coming up, and we are going to talk about menopause. I think in September. So many people have asked me to talk about menopause. I’m getting some panels ready. We’re going to have some fun with that one. So that’s what’s coming in season nine. Thank you so much for joining us.

Remember, please check out our books. The Marriage You Want, The Great Sex Rescue. She Deserves Detter. SheDeserves Better is such a good, good book for helping your teenagers not get pulled into authoritarianism. In their church. You know, go through the it’s got it’s got exercise at the end of each chapter that you can do with your kids, things that you can talk to your kids about.

And it can help prevent some of this stuff in your own family. So check that out and we will see you again next week on the BareMarriage Podcast.