Yesterday I had a message from a woman being summoned in to defend herself to a toxic elders' board. She had been going to a very hierarchical, controlling church and had realized it wasn't healthy and had decided to take her family and go elsewhere. The elders' board...
What if pity is actually a good strategy? And what if pity reveals a bit of God's heart too? Let me tell you about something that blew my mind yesterday, and I was dreaming about all night. I saw a reel last night where Jameela Jamil was talking about our reaction to...
How do yo find yourself again after emerging from fundamentalism? Many of us have had religious trauma from our church upbringing, or a dysfunctional marriage where we've stayed because we thought God wanted us to. We've endured so much, and have been taught that our...
Sometimes Jesus shows up in weird places--like cleaning shows. I want to do something different today and let you in a bit on my personal faith reflections. I'm currently on Day 9 of a really bad cold (likely COVID) and my husband is on Day 11 and I think has finally...
Can you tell if a church is healthy using its website? Absolutely! Or at least you can make a pretty good start and eliminate a lot of obviously unhealthy churches. And you can do it in under five minutes! One of the big things we've noticed in our surveys of 40,000...
I've been thinking about the lectionary this Easter holiday. It's still a holiday here in Canada, and I'll be taking most of the day to relax and recuperate from a cold, but I thought I'd write some thoughts I had after all the services at my Anglican church this...
Teaching modesty messages makes church more dangerous for teen girls. That's what our newest paper, out in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, shows. It's based on our dataset for our book She Deserves Better, and the lead author on it (Nicole Gallego)...
I've seen so many social media complementarian messages telling women to take the initiative to fix things. One particular one accused women of pride if they saw a problem in the relationship, but then thought: "he's the leader, go fix it." Women were told to take the...
Preston Sprinkle's new book comes out in favour of egalitarianism! I'm honestly so relieved. I heard about From Genesis to Junia a few months ago, and assumed the worst. He claimed that he was going to take an unbiased look at the scholarship about egalitarianism and...
With thanks to Zondervan and the book To Heal or Harm for sponsoring this post.My husband Keith is in the middle of a 4-part series about why complementarianism has such bad outcomes. He started last week looking at the analogy that complementarians often use when...
Thank you to Zondervan and the book To Heal or Harm for sponsoring this post.My husband Keith and I talk a lot behind the scenes about the theology of complementarianism. It really bothers him that so much of the theology and arguments holding complementarianism up...
So much Christian teaching is dedicated to keeping men in power over women. I don't think that's of Christ. I know it bears bad fruit (we've measured it!). And I believe that it is pushing women out of the church and making marriages worse. And so I'm always ecstatic...
Pastors should not be writing books until they've dealt with their trauma. And even then, they shouldn't write the book based on how they dealt with their trauma. They should write it based on peer reviewed research, because one person's experience may be the...
How did we get to the point where Scripture is so easily weaponized? Thank you to Zondervan for sponsoring this post. I mean, I suppose it always has been. That's one of the things Jesus railed against the religious leaders for, and that the prophets railed against...
How did people fall for Love & Respect? Emerson Eggerichs' 2004 best-selling marriage book is honestly one of the worst books I've ever read. It's badly researched. It messed up stats. It states bizarre opinions as if they are common sense. It gets the Bible...