If We Want Healthy Churches, We Need to Take Risks

by Sheila Wray Gregoire | Apr 24, 2024 | Faith

Sometimes finding a life-giving church means investing in building one. When our girls were tiny we lived in downtown Toronto, and attended an amazing Anglican church that was made up mostly of people who weren’t Anglicans. It was in a historic church building, with...

Feeling Responsible for Her Own Sexual Assault: A Youth Group Case Study

by Sheila Wray Gregoire | Mar 31, 2023 | Parenting Teens

I read a story about how a youth group culture contributed to a young woman feeling guilty about her own assaults. I’d like to share it today, because it fits in to everything we’ve been talking about with She Deserves Better, our new book that launches...

Do You Need to Get Angry at What Purity Culture Stole from You?

by Sheila Wray Gregoire | Nov 15, 2021 | Faith

Anger is not always a bad thing–and some of us would benefit from a bit of it! i’m just back from a weekend knitting retreat with my mom. About 60 knitters gathered at an inn close to where I live for some knitting classes and show and tell and just great...

What Youth Group Was Like Before Purity Culture

by Sheila Wray Gregoire | Apr 26, 2021 | Theology of Marriage and Sex

I remember a conversation with my husband around 1992 about how the church was totally on the right track! We had dealt with some weird televangelism scandals and they were largely behind us. Women’s gifts were being used. A lot of the things that culture made...

What Were You Wearing When Teenage You Was Harrassed in Church?

by Sheila Wray Gregoire | Jan 27, 2021 | Faith

Tragically, sexual  harrassment, leering, and groping behaviour is all too common in churches–especially evangelical ones. Why “especially evangelical ones”? Because evangelical ones often stress that “boys will be boys”, “all men...