Four months ago I had never heard of Ballerina Farm. When someone–I think my oldest daughter–told me about her social media account, I still couldn’t understand the name. It’s a farm for ballerinas? But as I’ve been hearing more and more about trad wife content,...
A few months ago, I went viral on Twitter when I shared that atrocious clip of Josh Howerton telling women to "do what he tells you to do" on "his" wedding night. Many of Howerton's supporters, and Howerton himself, said it was "just a joke." Sam Jolman, who was on...
At the end of April, Mica Miller died in very suspicious circumstances. She had been married to pastor JP Miller, and there were what look to me like credible allegations of abuse. She had been asking people for help, and had recently filed for divorce and a...
It's Time to Revisit Love & Respect! It's three years ago this week that we launched our first series looking at the problems with the book Love & Respect. Since then we've received over 1000 stories of how that book made people's marriages worse, or enabled...
When it comes to marriage and the church, I believe the ground is shifting beneath our feet right now. As I'v been sharing all week as we look back on 2021, things are changing quickly. God is shaking things, and people are starting to understand God's heart for...
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month--and today I thought we'd take a look at what too many Christian resources are NOT telling us about abuse. It's another edition of the Bare Marriage podcast, and I wanted to make sure that we had at least one instalment for...
Sometimes the way that Christian resources talk about sexual coercion and abuse makes me want to cry. When writing The Great Sex Rescue, we read the 10 bestselling marriage books (we excluded 3 because they didn't talk enough about sex) and 6 iconic sex books. Of the...
How can you tell if your marriage is emotionally destructive, or if it's just a normal level of pain? I caused a firestorm on Facebook over the weekend when I asked whether we talk too much about how "marriage is hard", and then when people are truly in emotionally...
How can you tell if your husband has anger management issues, or if he's actually abusive? I'm starting a series on the blog this month on direct communication, and yesterday we looked at what hinders speaking directly. We'll also cover what direct communication looks...
When research is poorly done, and then that research is used to "prove" something in Christian circles, everything can go awry. Over the next few weeks, we'll be telling you some of the things we learned in our survey of 20,000 women last year, leading up to the...
I believe that we can eradicate rape culture from the evangelical church. In fact, I'm committed to it! And in this week's podcast we're looking at how to do that. But first, some background. Today marks the beginning of our debunking series, where we take one...
What happens when the church, which is supposed to be your safe haven, becomes the place where you are abused? Publisher's Weekly named Ruth Everhart's The #MeToo Reckoning one of their books of the year for 2020 in the religion category, and for good reason. The...
It's American Thanksgiving today, and I wasn't going to post anything because most of my readers are American, and I wanted a day off anyway.But over the last few weeks a number of things have happened that have made me worried and alarmed about what's going on in the...
A few weeks ago I deleted a podcast I did for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. In it, I told a story of something that happened to me when I was 18, and I was raged at in public. I tried to tell a story which was nuanced--I had done something wrong as well. I tried...
One of the most damaging and unbiblical "Christian" books on marriage is Debi Pearl's Created to Be His Helpmeet. Debi Pearl's view of submission teaches women to allow themselves to be abused, rather than teaches women to seek God's will, God's plan, and God's glory....