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...
Is marriage primarily about teaching you to be selfless and to grow like Jesus through suffering? I hope you would all say a resounding, “no!” We know that God thinks of marriage for our benefit–our emotional benefit, not just our character-transforming benefit. He...
How exactly do we judge something by its fruit? One of the things we’re adamant about here at Bare Marriage is the concept of “evidence-based” and “healthy” advice–meaning that you can judge things by their fruit. If we’re going to figure out if a teaching is healthy...
"The husband has to be prepared to die for his wife." One of the most bizarre arguments defending men being in authority over women is the idea that one day, he may have to take a bullet for you. A husband has to be prepared to die for his wife, but God doesn’t ask...
How do you have a Christian marriage? And is a healthy Christian marriage different from a healthy marriage of two non-Christians? A woman wrote in asking:You guys do a wonderful job showing what biblical marriage is NOT but sometimes I’d love just a clear and concise...
Does complementarianism lead to good marriage outcomes? I'm going to answer that question in this post, but I want you to keep something in the back of your head as you're reading this. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t...
When it comes to marriage, teamwork is associated with all the good stuff! Hierarchy, on the other hand, is associated with all the bad stuff. We explain today on the Bare Marriage podcast some of our biggest picture findings in The Marriage You Want, and how we...
I often get accused of just hating all evangelical marriage books. Surely there's SOMETHING you like, Sheila? Right? Or are you just trying to badmouth everything so that you can sell more books? The critiques often go like that. But here's the thing: It actually...
The idea that men want respect while women want love doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. We've studied it, as have others, and we can now definitively say that it's bunk. And I wanted a post that outlined some of it here on the blog--not just in our new book The...
It's the podcast where we finally get to disprove the love & respect thesis! Did God make men to need respect, while women need love? Do men prefer respect over love? We've been told this for decades, starting with James Dobson popularizing it, and then Emerson...
When evangelical teachers say “men need respect”, what do they mean? On both Facebook and Threads, I posted this question:“Men have a unique, God-given need for respect.” When evangelical leaders teach this in regards to marriage, what, practically, are they saying...
Focus on the Family thinks life was better in 1964. You know, when many minorities in the U.S. had few civil rights. When women couldn't leave abusive husbands. When women couldn't get credit in their own name, or get a mortgage. That was better! When Rebecca and I...
Why did we all get sucked in to toxic teachings about sex and marriage? Because here's the thing: Unless we understand the why, then even if we leave those toxic teachings behind, it's very likely that we'll get sucked into other forms of toxic teachings about...