Too many have been taught horrible theology that sin levels. Believers are supposed to have a God who will comfort them when they are betrayed or abused or abandoned. But so much of our theology turns God into someone who doesn't care about our hurts, and is even mad...
Last week we learned that best-selling and beloved author Philip Yancey confessed to an 8-year affair. He announced in a statement he was stepping back from ministry, as he was now disqualified. His wife Janet issued a statement too saying that she was devastated, but...
How do you find the best Bare Marriage episodes? What if you're trying to introduce our podcast to a friend, but you don't know where to start? Or what if you desperately want your husband to listen and understand what you've learned, but it's hard to tell him to...
How do egalitarian and complementarian seminaries differ in how they do gender? Stained Glass Ceilings by Lisa Weaver Swartz is a fascinating book. She interviewed people at two different seminaries--Asbury Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary--to see...
The ESV is a sexist Bible translation. And they even said that when they were translating it! It was commissioned in order to counteract the TNIV translation, which tried to be gender neutral in all places where the Greek was gender neutral, replacing words like "men"...
Sin isn't the cause of all the bad or counterproductive things we do. And blaming it on sin does harm. When you have the wrong diagnosis, you're going to have the wrong solution. And that can actually compound the problem. One of the issues with Christianity over the...
What happens to marriage when a couple becomes egalitarian? On our October 5th Bare Marriage podcast episode (episode 208), I had a fascinating conversation with pastor Terran Williams and learned about how he changed his mind on complementarianism. He was working at...
Has modern Christianity become an echo chamber? And is that leading us to have super bad takes on many issues that are really important? Today we're taking a look at a theme that we've noticed in evangelicalism: anti-intellectualism, and a denial of science and...
Every Friday, 46,000 people receive our weekly email, linking to all of this week’s posts and podcasts, with a summary, so people can make sure they don’t miss anything they’re interested in. But the email also has a big thought authored by Rebecca–not me. And these...
Terran Williams is a pastor whose life was upended when he was assigned a "simple" task. He was working at a large church in South Africa when he was assigned the task of writing up their position paper on complementarianism. They all believed it, but they didn't...
Could the rose-colored glasses effect be masking marital unhappiness? Last month, one of our podcasts worked through some of the issues with claims that complementarian, conservative women had the best marital outcomes. We also wrote a long opinion piece detailing...
Has sex ever become super disgusting to you? I sure hope not, but as we’ve been talking about obligation sex in our current series, I’ve had several comments along those lines, and I’d like to talk about this one in particular today. A woman wrote:I have no idea how...
Biblical manhood can't be separated from actual biblical men. There's so much talk about "biblical manhood" and "biblical womanhood", and it's all rather crazy. Most of the things that we consider "biblical womanhood" aren't actually demonstrated by any of the...
One of the things we're passionate about on this blog is making sure the advice that is given about marriage and sex in the evangelical world is healthy. Over the last few years, our team has surveyed over 32,000 people, measuring how certain teachings common in the...
Do complementarian men make the best husbands? Last June and July I was really burned out. I had been engaging in a Twitter back and forth with Nancy Pearcey, the author of the new book The Toxic War on Masculinity. Her thesis is a simple one: "The happiest of all...