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...
You've likely heard of the "Bear or Man?" Test If you were alone in the woods, would you rather come across a bear, or a man? It's been taking social media by storm, and women overwhelmingly have answered "bear", which has made many men angry. The reasons women have...
Some awfully bizarre things happened at the recent Strong Men’s Conference–and Jezebel made an appearance. I don’t even know where to begin, and I don’t want to talk about the conference itself because so many have already done a good job. To sum up, there was one of...
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....
The title of this post may sound corny, but do you remember that verse about awakening love in Song of Solomon? Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.Many of us have...
So during COVID, my husband and I, like many around North America, watched the complete and utter train wreck that is the Netflix series Tiger King. It depicts something so unbelievably awful that you almost can't turn away (although turn away I finally did. I only...