It's time to analyze some more terrible takes--and work at critical thinking. Rebecca and I wanted to start the new year focusing on our word of the year for 2026--SAFETY--and seeing how so much of what we see on social media in evangelical spaces for women works...
We're coming full circle for the last podcast of 2025! We started this "season" (I never know how to count the seasons really!) since we came back from summer break talking about right wing authoritarianism, and how it overlaps almost completely with religious...
Let's take on some common horrid evangelical talking points! I thought, as we're getting to the end of the year, that Keith and I could spend a podcast just reacting to some of the common things we hear pastors say from the pulpit, or influencers say online. Often you...
We need to listen to the stories of missionary kids. Holly Berkley Fletcher released an amazing book called Missionary Kids that I read all in one sitting. I was riveted. Holly grew up as a missionary kid. And she interviewed a whole bunch of missionary kids, some...
God is not just an angry magazine cover in the sky He's not there saying, "here's 7 ways you could smarten up so you don't disappoint me so much." But that's often how we picture God--so terribly disappointed in us! Today's American Thanksgiving, so lots of my regular...
Complementarians often use pretty words to obscure what they believe. They say things like "men are meant to be the protectors!", or "men bear the burden of responsibility" or "we are all equal, but we just have different roles." But when you break down what they're...
Thank you to Zondervan and For the Love of Women for sponsoring this podcast It's the second part of our conversation about Francine Rivers' And the Shofar Blew! (and you can listen to Part 1 here!) Even though I've mostly critiqued nonfiction books, I've had so many...
Let's look at fiction--something we've never done before! Here at Bare Marriage we've looked extensively at the nonfiction, self-help books about marriage and sex in evangelicalism, and how the messages in them actually lead to worse outcomes for women (and couples.)...
Thank you to Zondervan and For the Love of Women for sponsoring this podcast! Have you ever heard people say, "sexism is a thing of the past"? Or maybe been in a conversation where someone has said, "sure, women used to be treated badly, but now it's men who are on...
Euphemisms about sex just make everything more difficult. And we want Christian pastors and authors to stop using them! And thank you to Zondervan and Dorothy Greco's For the Love of Women for sponsoring this podcast! Today's got some funny moments, but also likely...
I can't believe we're 300 episodes in to Bare Marriage! We began the podcast in January of 2019, and for the first dozen or so episodes it was just me. We actually started two weeks before that fateful day that I read Love & Respect and changed the entire focus of...
Does the Bible say divorce for abuse is okay? Lots of churches, and denominations, say no. You can only divorce for adultery, they say. But is that true? I've been wanting to do this podcast for a long time, and was prompted again when Naghmeh Panahi (who has also...
Let's take a look at some new research on purity culture! Today Rebecca and I explain two new studies, and then Joash Thomas joins me to talk about his new book The Justice of Jesus. We take a look at how purity culture beliefs affect women's abilities to recognize...
It's like The Great Sex Rescue, but for parenting books! I'm so grateful that Marissa Burt and Kelsey McGinnis wrote this book, The Myth of Good Christian Parenting--so that I don't have to! I love how there's a community of people doing similar work in all aspects of...
We want our kids to grow up with healthy views of sexuality. We certainly don't want them to end up with the hangups that many of their millennial/Gen x parents had because of purity culture. But sometimes we can end up going too far in the other direction, and...