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...
Complementarianism is threatened when women see there are alternatives. I've got some quick new findings for you today, and then some birthday reflections I had yesterday (took the day off to celebrate my 56th birthday, mostly by building new garden beds, which was...
A funny thing happened last week for Mother’s Day. The Gospel Coalition, a rather mainstream evangelical organization founded by the late Tim Keller and having entirely male leadership, published a Facebook post. And what was their message for Mother’s Day? Was it...
I’m often accused of swinging the pendulum to the other extreme. Note: this article appeared on my Substack last week, and I wanted it here to to preserve it on my website! Plus I added some good stuff to it! I remember a commenter writing about how her husband was...
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...
It's impossible for Emerson Eggerichs' ideas in Love & Respect to work in practice. Because what he tells men to do and what he tells women to do are completely and utterly mutually exclusive. So something will have to give. And in Eggerichs' world, that's always...