Are wives supposed to be more like Jesus than husbands are? Because that's sure what it can sound like, when authors like Tim and Kathy Keller tell women that Philippians 2--about Jesus taking the form of a servant and becoming nothing--is how women should act in...
Learning how the sausage is made is not always a pleasant experience. But ignorance isn’t always bliss. And knowing the truth is fascinating, and maturing, and mesmerizing even as it evokes horror and disgust. In the last few years there have been a plethora of books...
Fight, flight, freeze or fawn. Those are the common responses we have to trauma. When we face a threat, our body may go into fight mode. We may try to run away (or desperately want to!). We may freeze, feel unable to do anything. Or we may fawn. That last one is a...
"Sure it was harmful--but it was still an improvement!" Or was it? That's the pushback that I often get when I critique evangelical sex and marriage books. I'll show that the book contains harmful teaching, and people will say, "well, yeah, but it's still better than...
The strangest thing about watching Netflix’s Death of a Pastor’s Wife is how familiar it all feels. Our family has been attending an Anglican Church since COVID ended. We haven’t been in a typical evangelical church for over 7 years. We left because of trauma and...
One of the most common pieces of marriage advice you’ll hear in evangelical circles is “your husband comes before the kids.” It’s constant, and we’re always reminded that one day the kids will leave home, but your husband will still be there. He needs to be the...
Is the aim of complementarianism to give men leadership over women? Most complementarians would eventually say yes, even if reluctantly. They would say that God calls men to headship over women, which means that men have to be willing to lead their wives--which is a...
Ever noticed how much evangelical marriage advice treats men like little boys? And the solution that helps men mature and grow up is women? But then these same books turn around and tell you he's the leader? So basically men aren't capable of being mature and making...
I'm often surprised what sexist pastors will say in public comments on social media. This week I've been posting quite a bit on Facebook about the story I shared in Monday's post where the Navigators' material justified marital rape. We've had multiple posts and...
Let's look at how specific discipleship materials actually enable marital rape. But first, a bit of background. Last week on my Substack I re-ran a post I wrote a few years ago on this blog about the two kinds of marital rape (here's the Substack post and the original...
Evangelical marriage teachers are changing the meaning of “good fruit” when it comes to marriage teaching—largely because of us. We’ve successfully shown through our studies of about 40,000 people that many evangelical teachings on marriage and sex bear bad fruit,...
How do you actually measure the "good fruit" of marriage teaching? Over the last little while, we've been criticized for saying that it's good fruit if marriages are happy, while ignoring the more important things like whether people are obeying Christ. That's...
We had four lawsuit threats the week that The Great Sex Rescue was published. Authors were upset that we had quoted their works and showed them in a bad light. Our publisher pretty quickly talked them down (after all, you can’t sue someone for quoting your exact...
Let's react to pastors, influencers, and more! One of the things that we like to do periodically is play some of the horrid reels that get sent to us and react to them. Yes, the reels are interesting and there's lots of commentary to be made. But one of the biggest...
Is it necessary to critique complementarianism to help people have a better sex life? One of the critiques I get at Bare Marriage is that I'd be more impactful if we stopped critiquing complementarianism so much. I was talking last week about a big podcast that did an...