The Sean McDowell Show - From Feminism to Faith (Amazing Story of Kelley Keller)

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

What would encourage a young woman to become a Christian, abandon faith, embrace Marxian feminism, go through a season of doubt, and then come back to faith? Sean interviews Kelley Keller, a lawyer by training, about her remarkable story of why she became a Christian. READ: Why I am A Christian? From Marxian Feminism to Faith: https://kelleykeller.substack.com/cp/139505127 WATCH: "How a Militant Marxist (and Atheist) Found God" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eti1TxLIxU8 *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Why would a Marxian feminist become a follower of Jesus? It's just a complete and total rebellion against, you know, husbands and fathers and that whole concept. But after a while, there's this thing called reality that gets you in the way. How does the gospel of Marx, Freud, and Darwin contrast with the gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Our guest today has a remarkable story that needs to be told and needs to be heard. Kelly, since the time we met in North Carolina, maybe six months ago, I've been really looking

forward to having you on. So thanks for joining me. My pleasure. My pleasure. I'm really happy to be here. Let's jump right into your story. We have an article that I'm going to link to below where you start off describing the kind of kid you were, which helps paint the picture of the story. So tell us about that. So I'll tell you in a word. My mom told me that most two-year-olds are no, no, and three-year-olds are why. I was the two-year-old with no and why all the time. I was very precocious and never stopped talking and have never stopped asking why. So I was high energy and

a lot to keep up with. I have two biological sisters and an adopted sister. And so my family has navigated just the beauty and goodness of adoption. When I read your article, it jumped out that a key part of your story and your identity was in fact being adopted. So tell us a little bit about that, if you will. Sure. My parents wanted six kids when they married in the 60s and my mom had two biological boys, but they were really, really big babies and she was very small. So the doctor said, time to close up shop. So they pursued the adoption route and adopted my older sister, who's two years older than me. We're not biologically related and then adopted me. And then after four, they were done.

So we were both adopted as infants. But I think the neat part is being adopted was a very special part of our life. It has never been weird. It has never been difficult. And there's a great book called The Chosen Baby. It was written by a woman named Valentina Woffin. And it's basically just talking about how special being adopted is. And I remember my mom telling me that the adoption agencies had always used the word

adoption and love in the same sentence. So we were chosen children. We were special. My brothers thought they got to pick us out you know even though that's sort of a little bit of a fiction but um it was never an issue um until i became um a little bit older and i started to have some questions but it wasn't about being adopted it was just about understanding a little bit more about where I came from. That makes sense.

Well, we are going to come to the time you reach out and meet your birth mom and how dramatic that was. But the funny thing is my younger sister likes to tell us, she says, you know what, you guys were just kind of a gamble. Mom and dad didn't pick you, but she chose me. And I love it. There's something just so fun about that. So your family was religious.

Tell us a little bit about your religious Christian roots, but then what started to change and quite literally fall apart when you were 12? Certainly. So my parents were, they were not saved when they married, but they were both saved in their 30s. I came along when mom was 35. We were members of a Baptist church in downtown Orlando, very Southern Baptist, and grew up going to church, you know, regular Sunday school and church and Wednesday night fellowship.

It was very, very standard routine. And when I turned 12, our church was moving from their downtown location to build a new facility. It was sort of like the rise of the mega church. And this is in the sort of early to mid 1980s. Yeah, around 1985, I would be turning 12. And I remember my parents, two things. They were very consistent tithers. And so they were, quote, good contributors to the church.

But also they held an in-home Bible study for the senior high students in their home on Tuesday nights. Well, there was a conflation of two things. My dad challenged the way they were going to use some of the funds in the new facility and thought that they were overspending. I think it was specifically an orchestra pit. And he was like, we don't need one that's going down and going up. And so that created some problems. But at the same time, the high school seniors were really, really enjoying the Bible study a little bit more than they were enjoying Sunday school. And a lot of, right. And so, but a lot of the fathers of the students were elders or deacons in the church so it was essentially

you will give up the bible study or you will leave the church so initially they gave up the bible study but it just wasn't sustainable and the preacher lived in our neighborhood so there was just a lot of a lot of politics and as we started to go to church less and less I didn't mind because I was tired and those teenagers on a Sunday morning anyway but we went across the street to the Presbyterian Church because they had a great youth group but it just it just never stuck and my parents were frustrated and I think when you have a you have a church challenge like that that has nothing to do with the gospel and you feel that things aren't

being prayerfully considered it just doesn't stick and around the same time my dad started to have some challenges he was a construction he was a sheet metal contractor had his own business there were some challenges with expanding unionization just a lot of things happening. And we just slowly stopped attending church consistently. And so by the time I was in high school, I'm the youngest of four, church just wasn't a part of our lives anymore. We didn't lose faith, but we certainly didn't go to church.

Okay, so there wasn't like a sense of like anger and hurt at the church. It was just like, this just isn't that important to me and I'm doing other things. Not for me. It was obviously for my parents, but it wasn't for me. Okay, that makes sense. Now, another piece of story that you've shared, and I really appreciate this, is you've talked about since about ninth grade. So this is probably about two years after the story you were starting at 12, described when

you were 12, is certain weight issues that affected you and your self-image. Talk about that a little bit if you can. Certainly. So this is a really important part of my story. And I thought for many years how best to tell it because those who were involved, I certainly don't want to throw anybody under the bus or be disrespectful to what they were trying to do. They're trying to be helpful, but did it in the wrong way. Growing up in the South in the 1980s, body image is a really big deal the skinny girls are the popular girls and this is also the rise of jane fonda and aerobics and you know the the nutritionist for everybody i mean i think i saw my first nutritionist when i was 12. you know we all were you know all we wanted to do was eat candy all day long.

But apparently, in my biological medical file was a history of diabetes and obesity. And what I didn't know, until many years later is my birth mother apparently tried to find me when I was around 15. And my parents blocked it. But they learned a lot about the situation. And so it was sort of Kelly's a fat person by sort of biologically trying to live in a skinny person's body. So to avoid ever becoming fat and obese, we need to control it now. And so, and this happened to my sister too. And this was also something very common with the neighborhood girls. And there was a lot of pressure if you weren't somebody with a super high metabolism. I mean, I was 110 pounds soaking wet.

So I'm not really sure what, you know, what the concern was. But it started to be a differential between what the boys could eat and what the girls could eat. There was girls food and there was boys food. There were shells of, you know, boy cereal, girl cereal, you know, we got the great mess, they got lucky charm. And it started to create a deep sense of deprivation and a fear about what would happen if my body got fat. I wasn't fat, but what happened if I did go there, then nobody would like me anymore. And the guy certainly wouldn't want to date me. And so it created in me, my sister and I handled it very differently, but it created a very, very deep sense of insecurity for me, fear that food would be taken away.

So I started to binge, but I never purged because I didn't like to throw up. But I felt I struggled a lot into the whole focus of my self-esteem became my body, not my worth, not my brain, not how well I did, but it was all about how I looked. And I wouldn't be able to pledge a sorority if I didn't look a certain way, if I wasn't a certain size. I mean, this is like all about we go to college, we pledge the right sorority, you know, we get our MRS degree. And I just to be a doctor, or I want to be anything but that. I was very precocious. I was very interested and very curious in all kinds of things.

And so it created a lot of problems for me that would ultimately set me up to be right for the pickings, so to speak, for the feminist later on in my life. Thanks for sharing that. And this is before social media, which, if anything, just exacerbates that pressure nonstop. And that's a whole nother conversation. But your willingness to share and open up about that is powerful because it's so common amongst women today. But let's take that step you're talking about right for the pickings. So you describe

being radicalized into critical theories as a college student. So how did that process take place? And what do you mean that you were just kind of ripe? You don't mean just mean intellectually, but kind of emotionally where you were as well. Yes. So I'm going to take you this one stair step on the way to college that isn't an article just due to length. But I was so terrified of going to college and not being able to pledge the right sorority, I figured out how to skip it altogether. And I was a cadet at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs for a year. And if you're somebody who's remotely insecure, that is the worst place to go,

because they will, they will beat your personal, you know, your personal identity out of you, because the whole point is to become a part of the team. Well, after the first year, I just was like, this is a huge mistake. I didn't realize that you really needed to want to be in the military. Like a really, like a long commitment and i called my parents and they allowed me to move home and i moved back to orlando florida where i'm originally from and i went to i went to college and i went to pledge in the sorority and all the girls who were in high school the year before me decided they didn't want me in i got blackballed and so i was um persona non grata so i moved to pennsylvania my dad had sold his business gotten a job up north mom was planning

on moving up north but i went ahead so that i could find an escape very small branch of penn state called the barron's college in erie Pennsylvania. Signed up and in the spring of 1992, no, no, this would be the spring of 1993, excuse me, my very first professor was the first gay man I've ever met or the first openly gay man. And I was so fascinated by his confidence. I'm like, no, no, you're not supposed to admit this out loud. You guys are weird. You're like the weird people. But he was just confident and he completely lived who he was. His entire academic, you know, research was all around sexuality. I've never heard any of this.

But what happened is I did an independent study with him and he's the first person who listened to me and let me talk about everything that I was struggling with without trying to fix me. And he was raised Catholic. So he had a lot of challenges with being rejected and he had a lot of challenges with the church and with faith so we have that in common but he also was um he was an english professor and so he was deep into literary criticism which was essentially one of the first places that critical theory took hold in the academy so the person who validated me the most was the person I emulated the most. And I was so desperate for somebody to understand me. And I tried, and I know this is common today, I couldn't find any Christian who had any idea that there was anything happening in the world outside of their world. They weren't a part of, I mean, you know,

my parents were married in the 60s. I mean, they missed the sexual revolution altogether. So, you know, we were, we're Gen X, you know, I'm born in 73. So it gives a solid, you know, we just really are not brought up in all of that. We missed that. So our parents didn't go through all that, you know. So it was a really validating time for me, because it was also intellectually just completely, it was seducing, it was fascinating, it was interesting. It was an entirely different world where I could be accepted for whoever I wanted to be, not who everybody thought I should be. Maybe walk through a little bit of some of those beliefs because you describe yourself specifically as Marxian feminist. What do you mean by that in particular? Sure. So feminism, I think it's important just for a little bit of context that, you know, we kind of organize in

like these four waves. So when it first starts, it's just about making sure women have equality with men in the sense of, you know, it's going to book bank accounts and property, etc. So that's the first wave. Well, the second wave was when we started to look at sexuality and equality of the sexes. And so we, you know, if we say men and women are different, that means that, well, they're valued differently and have different roles in society. And that's a problem. So we need to make sure that we eliminate difference in favor of sameness. So this is where I come in. So feminists, all of them want equality across political, economic spheres of life.

But there's different kinds of feminists, and they differ on what's the source of the inequality. So Marxist feminists says, hey, listen, women are not the same as men in terms of their access to political freedom, economic freedom. You know, they're viewed differently culturally, you know, their roles are different. So the source of that, though, for a Marxist feminism is comes out a Marxist theory, which says, all the problems in the world are, you know, come from capitalism, because it basically keeps the rich rich, and the poor poor. So for a Marxist feminist, we say okay we're not equal and the reason we're not equal is because capitalism is an economic system that reinforces it reinforces patriarchal systems such as the family where you have a male authority figure and everybody serves him he goes out he makes all of

the money and then everybody works to support that so what happens is women can never break out of their roles as wives and mom moms to achieve economic independence so it was like wait a minute I can't be a mom and be equal to men. So the only way I can really be equal to men is if I have children and farm them out to daycare or to somebody else so I can work and have economic independence and have economic equality. So what happens is that Marxian piece is brings in the really political piece of, of economics, but primarily with capitalism and how it is the, the source of all evils. And it is what keeps women in the oppressed classes down. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah oppressed classes down, if that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, that's super helpful. So you have this professor who just sounds like a thoughtful, caring individual. Very. Who's meeting certain emotional needs that you have, giving you this worldview. Were there other professors that also play a role? Were there students that played a role? What are some of the other factors contributing to this radical worldview shift for you? An entire English department was at my fingertips. So it's very interesting because you had women who were, they were part of the Gloria Steinem, you know, generation. They were the ones who marched.

They were the ones who started to, they were the generation of the feminists who brought women and gender studies into the universities. And so they were teaching women and gender studies. And this was also at a time where you started to have lots and lots of discussion over the Western canon. So which, you know, the dead white men that we read, you know, all of all of the literature from then, but there's not enough women, there's not enough representation. So I'm taking classes on, you know, women writers, history is nothing but the

story of dead white men. And interestingly, I'll never forget because I don't remember any of their names, but the head of the humanities department called me in once because there was a white male European history professor up for tenure. And she recruited a bunch of students to spy on him and basically give her enough information to get him and he lost his tenure so i got caught up in that but i also i was living in a house of one of the professors and we were all these were all english majors and i mean we were reading all the feminists their poetry and their writing, the, you know, some of the big names, Kate Millett, Andrea Dworkin, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich. And the irony is all these people end up dying young

or committing suicide. And we're talking about that was the cost they had to pay, you know, that was the price they paid. They martyred for the cost. So I am like in this 24 seven all the time. I'm being recruited to ruin other people's lives. And I was, but I mattered. I was a part of a team. I had community until I didn't. So let's get to that part until I didn't. But when you're being brought into this, this was fulfilling. This was meaningful. Like that season was positive for you as a whole. Very. Right. Okay. Did you, are you having conversations with your parents about how you're shifting here or are they clueless to what's taken on, taking place in your life? I'm telling them, but they're clueless. So I'm from Orlando. So when I would go home, well, when I would go home before they ended up, I mean, there was some difference in moving,

you know, north, south, so to speak, but I would go talk to one of my aunts, my dad's sister, and regale her with all of this for hours. I don't think she had a clue what I was saying. I don't think she cared, but she just let me talk. I mean, I'm like telling her, this is hilarious. I mean, I'm a little girl from the South and I'm literally telling her, did you know that all sex is rape? Did you know that? I mean, Andrea Dworkin, look at this.

I had no idea. Of course, then I'd look at her. And if you looked at her, you'd be like, not exactly the icon of Western beauty. And you're like, well, I don't know what's going on. So I just, I mean, I, years later, I was like, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. But she would listen. But I asked my mom even even recently and she said kelly had no clue what's going on i didn't know what you were talking about it was just no idea no clue no okay so was the first crack more emotional and experiential or was it intellectual

it's a good question i think the intellectual started and then the emotional followed. And I'll tell you why. A Marxist worldview is inconsistent and incoherent. You ultimately are Marxist in your theory about the role of women in society. But all these professors go home to the homes that they own, see simple. And, you know, they're also being paid salaries in a free market economy. So it started to be like, does it really work in reality? The other piece that was happening is my parents raised me, you can grow up and be and do anything you want to be and do when you grow up. You can be a doctor, a lawyer, whatever. However, if you choose to have children, you must stay home and raise them. You cannot work and raise children. Period. End of story. So I felt like I had a mixed message. And so I always knew that these women who had children and were having others take care of them, whether they were in state funded daycare or private daycares, were bad moms.

And so I just started to be very confused. But I really, you know, it's kind of like the Black Lives Matter and they, you know, they have a mansion for their headquarters. And you're just like, something's not working here. You're talking about the need for socialism and the destruction of capitalism. And the only way women are going to be equal is to destroy capitalism. But you are living, breathing and succeeding and thriving in a free market economy so that was the first crack the second crack that was emotional one of one of the things that's an important part of the sexual revolution you have to

destroy the patriarchy that keeps women subjugated And the nuclear family is the core institution that serves patriarchy in the West, because that's how women learn to accept a father as an authority figure. So there's this passive acceptance of patriarchy from the time that you're very small. You also learn the role of a submissive wife or a wife who's nurturing, who's a mom, takes care of the house, cooks the meals, da-da-da-da-da. I mean, we all grew up with that type of family. You know, mom stayed home and dad worked. So there was this figure that many have heard of named Herbert Marcuse, who comes along in the 1960s, writes this book called Eros and Civilization. And what he says is we have to take the body, the body itself.

If we can turn the body into nothing but a source of pleasure, we can start to crack at the patriarchy because the girls who were going out and who were being promiscuous are violating their dad's command. They're making themselves unfit for marriage and so therefore they won't continue in that institution. So part of being a card-carrying feminist, especially a Marxian feminist, is extreme promiscuity. And that's a hugely important part, because that's you saying, hey, I'm just going to completely ignore everything you're saying, I'm going to take control of my life. And the way I control my life is through my body. And it's a giant, you know,

it's just a complete and total rebellion against, you know, husbands and fathers and that whole concept. So, but after a while, there's this thing called reality that gets you away. You hit the wall and you're like, there's nobody left. You know, you're graduating college. They're moving on. There's nobody there to, if you're not a part of anything anymore, you're kind of just, in a word, I mean, it's like even the feminists start to be like, you're just a slut. You're just gross. I mean, they even start to turn on their own. We see that a lot in modern culture. And then you wake up one day and you're like, there is absolutely nothing fulfilling about this.

It's not fixing anything. And I still need a paycheck. And it's a capitalist economy. And so I'm just, you feel let down because those who brought you along have no responsibility for the fallout when reality hits you're now inconvenient so they push you aside to get their next recruit and the idea is that you're supposed to be ruined but we know that there's nothing broken that God cannot repair. My father-in-law had Herbert Marcuse as a professor at UCSD in the early 70s,

interestingly enough, for Intro to Philosophy. Yeah, we've had some interesting conversations about that. But I want to get to when you started to investigate and consider Christianity. But do you think Marxian feminists and the others in your English department got certain things right? What can others, in particular Christians, learn from what they did, either emotionally or intellectually? Because clearly people follow it, so there must be something profoundly appealing about it intellectually or emotionally. What things do you think they have their finger on? They listen to people where they're at.

Okay. And they do not try to fix them overnight. They are so committed to their own worldview that they are not threatened by somebody who comes in with a different worldview because it will deconstruct in time. And I think that's the big one. believe in why they believe it very profoundly, and they know why they don't believe in organized religion and Christianity specifically. They actually know Christianity better than most Christians know Christianity. I was able to have more questions answered by them than I was by any Christian I ever knew my entire life. And that's still the case today until I say until about the last two years. Okay.

There's a radical shift in the last two years, but that's a powerful answer that really is indicting on the church in terms of having answers and depth, why we believe what we believe. I've often said, what if somebody was hurting in life for whatever reason, and their first thought was, I need to find a Christian, because a Christian would just hear me out and listen non-judgmentally. And that's not the first thought that comes to most people's minds, in part because we're not confident enough in terms of what we believe to not be threatened by people who see the world differently. So I'm so glad I asked you that. That was a great response. Talk about, did you just, so you're

seeing the holes in this experientially, intellectually. Were you like, I'm going to check out New Age and Islam? Did you consider atheism? What worldviews did you consider and how did Christianity fit into that? stand at the time was materialism. But in order for me to follow the Marxian feminist line, you know, the problem isn't sin, it's class struggle, right? It's oppression of, you know, you have an oppressor class, an oppressed class. So oppression is the big problem. They just were completely incompatible. I never believed Jesus wasn't real. But in retrospect, I don't know that I understood enough about what it all meant to really own it and believe it. You know, I was saved at age five so to speak but i had no idea what it really meant to to trust the lord in anything or what it meant to have the indwelling spirit so on so what i did is i just suppressed it to say well if i believe in no god then as margaret sanger said there are no masters

there are no gods so then there are no rules and having grown up with nothing but rules it wasn't about the freedom at christ it was basically in high school don't drink and if you have sex before you're married i will kill you it was sort of those are the two messages that you get and then you realize that well i don't have to tell mom. And so she's never going to know. And so she didn't kill me. But it doesn't tell you why. And I think that why really, really matters. So I didn't know the why of Christianity. So I just kind of set it aside. But there was a whole lot of information coming at me about why it was horrible and why a girl like me, who was precocious and had a lot of intellectual interests, could never be fulfilled if she's serving in a patriarchal marriage. It was marriage and family or it was intellectual fulfillment.

You couldn't have both. You know this, but what's so sad about that is since 1988 is the amount of Americans who think that married people are thriving and fulfilled has taken a nosedive. At the same time, the data has shown that it's actually married people who are happiest and thrive the most so here's this group of people wanting to be happy wanting to be fulfilled but so entrenched in a world view cannot see the data that the traditional family is not oppressive it's not controlling it actually sets people free because it's rooted in reality. Now, what was it? So you looked at atheism. You, I think, maybe looked at New Age a little bit. What was it that made you say, okay, there's something to Christianity? Were you going and visiting churches? Were you talking with scholars? Were you reading apologetics books? Like what was bringing you over? Or were you just reading the gospels? What was bringing you back to Christianity, so to speak? So I think there's a two-part answer to that. The first part is one night while I was in college, we were out partying and I was absolutely wasted. And we were walking home. And, you know, precocious as I am, we just start

doing cartwheels in the middle of the street, you know, two in the morning on the way back to the professor's house, where I was in the attic, I was the mad woman in the attic. And, you know, I was doing cartwheels on the way back, and I broke my ankle. So all of a sudden, that was a little bit of a wake up call. And I just freaked out. So I'm like three blocks away from a church, which was called the Family Worship Center. I don't even know if it is there anymore. But it was a black charismatic church. So the next couple of days, or you know, whatever the next Sunday was, I make my way down on my crutches, because I was like, gotta give this is not okay. And I went and the sermon was on seven steps to demon possession. And I had decided I was at like number five,

you know, I self diagnosed. And a week before that, a friend of mine from one of my classes, who was 40, died of congestive heart failure as a complication from HIV AIDS. And none of us knew she was sick. But I went to her funeral. And I mean, it was basically the eulogy was Narcotics Anonymous. And I had this vision. And I don't know that it was real or if it was in my head. But it was like I could see her in hell.

I just saw her in torment. And then like a week later, I break my ankle and then I'm in church. And I'm like, okay. So now I'm like, I have to forget everything that I've learned in school. I kid you not, Sean, I drop out of college. I see a guy across the aisles who's very handsome. And I'm like, the cure to my ills is to get married and start my own family. So eight months later, I marry him. Complete disaster. Five months later, I'm in a police escort out of there. I drive from Erie to Orlando with my little car and what fit in it. More my fault than his.

But then I realized that that wasn't the answer. So obviously, Christianity isn't the fit. And there were a lot of things that led to that decision. And, you know, not to belabor that point. But then I got a job working for retired law professor in Washington, DC. And the beginning of, you know, the end of Christianity began again, because, you know, there's no room for Christianity in the law, there's no room for Christianity in modern society, so on and so forth. So it would be another, it would probably be another 10 to 12 years before I even began to think about Christianity again and it was when my dad got sick and passed away in 2006 and I was with him when he took his last breath he had Alzheimer's and Parkinson's he was very young he was only 68 and I it's like I could see his his it was like

his soul separated from his body, like the life left him. It was nothing but a body. And that began the process back. So that was about 2006. And it was like, okay. But I was terrified to open the Bible and read it. Refused to read the Bible. So it was just this very weird fear that I would be ostracized if I admitted I was a Christian.

I had no idea what Christianity really was. I just knew that it was the faith of my parents, but I also knew that it would mean if I followed its rule, I wouldn't be having any fun at all. And you wouldn't want to have that. Okay. So you got this fear of being ostracized. You're triggered by seeing this happen with your father, understandably so. It's the faith of your parents, and yet you opened the Bible and you started studying it. So what happened? Take us on the next steps. So I met my husband on Match.com i've been in a real i've been in a relationship with a with an agnostic

you know for about three or four years while i was in law school and i knew when my dad passed away that he goes like 12 days without food or water my then boyfriend i'm in law school and i'm going to law school at night i'm working working during the day. So this is like a big deal. Like, you know, I'm out, like, three weeks of my life. And my boyfriend didn't come to Orlando, I was living in DC at the time, to be with me during the 12 days. He comes after for the funeral. And I thought, well, I don't need you now. I needed you the 12 days before my dad died. And then I realized in that moment, he does not believe that my dad is in the same place where I believe my dad is.

And so I knew that we were going to hit a wall. I continued to date him for another year because when I was in grief counseling, I got the best advice I've probably ever gotten as a practical matter, and she said, listen, just forget about him. Don't worry about marrying him. Just, you know, you're friends.

You have the same friend group. Just, you know, enjoy the relationship, and then one day you'll wake up and, you know, enjoy the relationship. And then one day, you'll wake up and, you know, decide that you don't want to be married to an atheistic alcoholic, and then you'll be done. So you know, a year later, that happened. And I was like, I need to get over him. So I went on match.com. And two days later, I met who's now my husband of 16 years and um he was a quote quiet christian raised lutheran and meeting him was the slow journey back to faith being safe again for me but it was very slow and it was and it was very methodical and it was very lutheran certainly not charismatic and you

know it's certainly not not anything that I was used to as a kid. So it's kind of a long, slow journey. So that makes sense. Now, one of the other pieces of your story you've shared and hinted at earlier is going back and meeting your birth mom and how that affected you. So unpack that for us. Sure. So when I turned 21, so this would have been 1994 for some context, my mother told me that she had tried to find me when I was 15. She said, it's your information. You're old enough to handle it now. Your dad and I blocked it because you weren't ready for that. So she gave me that information. Well, the precocious person I am,

I contacted the adoption agency. It was a closed adoption in Florida, which they all were at that time. I contacted the adoption agency and it turned out that Sean, she had kept her information up to date with the agency all the year. So if I ever wanted to make contact

it would be easy to do so amazing and more than that she had always sent in to the agency she was a singer songwriter kind of amateur i did not get that from her but um she would write all these poems and sort of set to music but she sent all of these to the agency so if i ever contacted them and wanted to know i would have to so i get called i get this package of love letters from her to me my whole life in the mail. And I'm reading them. And I'm in. I mean. Remember. I'm a hurting puppy from being younger. That I'm also.

Knee deep in my feminism. You know. Haircut and all. And. It's like. This. the way she wrote I it was like she understood who I was like you know my mind's worked the same way within three weeks I'm on the phone with her but you have to understand she was 13 when she got pregnant with me she was raped twice once at knife point by a black man.

She and her girlfriend were hitchhiking. And then the next month, she was the object of a game of truth or dare, and her brother dared my biological father, who I don't know exists, because he doesn't know I exist because he was 19, to have sex with his sister, and she didn't have a choice. So there was a second rape, and she never disclosed who the father was, because he'd be arrested. So she had no idea if I was going to be black or white, or who my father was.

But she's 13, she turns 14, her mother says, you're starting to get sick, takes her to the doctor, the family doctor, measures her belly. Mind you, this is the middle of 1973. Roe is January 22nd, 1973. So we're just months after Roe. And he says she's due October 22nd. One month too far in gestation to have an abortion under Florida law under Roe. Sean, I came November 22nd, one month later, on Thanksgiving Day. She thought she was carrying a half-Black child from the rape. Turns out that I am. I was conceived when she was a pawn in her brother's game. And I came out lily white, so that's how she knew who the father was but had

the doctor not gotten the due date wrong I would not have been born holy cow so it took two months for me to be adopted I still don't know the whole story but because she never disclosed the paternity of the father but i met her like within a month of this and she's only 35 and i'm 21. i thought this was going to be the panacea i would finally understand who i was but the reality was not an Oprah show. She was very, she had later, she'd become a Christian, she got married, she had two other children. But, you know, I thought, I mean, it was so raw for her. I just wasn't prepared for the experience. She had had so many problems.

You know, she was a cutter. You know, she'd been through a lot of, you know, she was manic depressive, bipolar one. Her brother was schizophrenic. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm like legit crazy. But it was so shocking to what I grew up with as, you know, sort of a, you know, middle class Christian kid. And so I just could not reconcile. You know, if you're people who listen to country music, it's like the Reba McEntire song. I might have been born plain white trash, but fancy was my name. I literally was born plain white trash. And I was like, it was just so much for me to process and understand.

And it was too much for me. It was very heavy. And yet I understood who I was and why I was the way I was. And that created a whole nother level of complexity for me. Sure. About identity and who we are. Okay, so another piece of your story related to the topic of abortion is the overturning of Roe versus Wade, which is very recent. I know we're skipping over a lot in your story, but take us to that and how it affected you. So this is January, this is June, excuse me, of 2022, coming on the heels of COVID. And I was starting to kind of go back into the,

you know, equity of women, you know, having had a long legal career and i was extremely active on linkedin and wrote every day and then all of a sudden you know you start to hear i mean all this stuff about women and maternity leave and it was like it just was very weird about you know women are you know they are not paid for their labor at home and therefore they're suppressed. I start to hear all this sort of Marxian feminism coming back into my head. Roe is overturned. And for the next few months, the absolute shock of what women were posting about how important their abortions were for their own success. They would not have had the careers they had had they not had abortions. It was shameless, but it was vile, but it was different than it used to be.

And all of a sudden I'm reading these that, you know, women who were raped, women who, you know, anything from incest, which is it's rape or something very weird with consulting adults, but that they should never be forced birthers. You can't force a woman to carry a child from a rape. And I'm like, okay, we're hitting close to home. And then how it's better to kill a child and to terminate pregnancy than to put them in the foster care system or a life where they would be in poverty. And it just started to grow.

And I'm watching and I'm going, you're basically telling me my life doesn't matter. And in that process, I found a couple of people who were, is actually a friend of mine. He's a federal prosecutor and he's become a friend of mine, but he started to be very, very firm on pro-life conversations. And so I sort of messaged him and I was like, thank you for having courage to say this in this sort of sea of crazy. And it was through that process of talking through my feelings about it that I realized that this was a bigger deal. This was a religious level commitment. This was bigger. And a lot had happened in my life during COVID. There'd been a lot of breaking professionally, personally. And in this moment, I realized,

and I read Vati Bakam's fault lines, and I was like, I have to pick a side. I can't do this middle anymore. These people are telling me my life doesn't matter. And I'm going to show them how much it does matter and how much they wish I never was born. Like it was sort of this visceral feeling like you did not just go there. You are selfish. You are disgusting. And I also know that deep inside you are miserable because you are trying to live for everybody else's approval and you are living contrary to reality. It's just not real. But at the same time, Sean, I become pretty selfish as a wife.

I mean, I just looked and I was like, I care far more about myself in very subtle ways. Like, I just took my marriage for granted. It wasn't a big deal. You know, I did my thing. He was very supportive. He's a history professor. He's a brilliant man. Like, you know, we're just like, everything's fine. But this deep-seated feeling, knowing that I had to pick, I couldn't choose, I had to

pick a side. And that was the beginning. So what I did is I took all my books from college. I don't throw anything out. So I took all these books that I read, all the feminist, all the pro-abortion stuff, all of why we need abortion. And I started to read and I started to read and read. And then the other thing I did is I listened to the oral argument of every single time abortion has been to the Supreme Court, which is now approximately 25 times across since 1973. And I listened to the, it's usually Planned Parenthood,

the lawyers representing the pro-abortion side, argued for why we need abortion. And it dawned on me, they don't care about women. There is no such thing as choice. The only thing is make sure she has abortion. She can never choose to not have one because what would that do? That would go back to reinforce the reality of the nuclear family and the importance of motherhood. They cannot afford to give an inch.

And to listen to these women argue for why a child should not have parental consent to have an abortion because it would deny her access it was so vile and so then becomes the you know the philosophy the apologetics and the next thing you know I'm like I have to go to seminary it just became but that's what it was. And it was through that process. I've been so broken over the years. And I'll leave it, you know, and I'll cap it with this. My mom and I had a really hard relationship. It was really tough because I was a tough kid.

What she saw was good for me and what I thought was good for me were very different. We struggled a lot. And in the summer of 2023, my mom was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and given six to nine months. And in that moment, everything shifted for me. And I said, nothing matters that has happened before I have a short amount of time to enjoy my mother and we began to she's now very mature Christian we've long put everything to bed and I said to her I said you know Lord just help me heal this figure out a way since that time, she has been helping me grow in the Lord. And she said to me, I now know why.

Two things. I know why you were placed with your dad and me. So that I could go before you and learn. This is about the things of the Lord. And then I could go before you and learn. This is about the things of the Lord. And then I could teach you. And I know why he allowed your whole life and everything you've been through to happen. For this moment so he could use you. Because he uses the broken.

So that you could share with others. And so my mom is still with us. But she's nearing the end but it's like it just has come full circle and I am so so passionate about helping people understand there's no shame in recognizing reality and living your life in accordance with it and Christianity is real it is the story of reality and it's the in accordance with it. And Christianity is real. It is the story of reality. And it's the only way to live a peaceful life.

So that's sort of the big, a lot in a nutshell. So I've got a ton of questions for you. You've only got a couple minutes. But have you gone back to some of the professors, if they're still there, who are so open and accept people where they're at and had this conversation or if they moved on and that just hasn't happened yet? I stayed in touch with Dr. Champagne from Penn State Erie and he's still there. We have not, he knows I'm conservative. We've not confronted it directly, but we have stayed in touch and I've always appreciated him for who he has been in my life and for listening to me. I haven't been in

touch with the others, just I didn't have that level of relationship and they certainly, most of them have moved on. But one day I intend to have a follow-up with him, but he taught me that gay people are not crazy. They're not weird. They are image bearers just like everybody else is. And so he's been enormously influential because I respect that he has pursued his passion and his worldview more consistently and more vigorously than most Christians that I know, generally speaking. But we can agree to disagree,

but God has used him mightily in my life, and we never discard people who've been important in our lives. Amen. Well said. So last question. You described Christianity as reality. And this obviously is a huge question, but why do you think Christianity is true? Why are you a Christian? I am a Christian because, well, let me step back.

Once I understood that Christianity does not begin at the cross, it begins at Genesis 1. I understood that Christianity is the story of how the world began, how humans came into the world, and also how the world will end. And once I understood that everything that has happened historically and everything that will happen in the future, how God's programs are laid out, how he has dealt with mankind over time, and how, I should say, he has explained it to us and given us a written word that he has promised to protect, that is true, that we can prove is true. And he has given it to us through specific, he has given a specific revelation and he has also given us a general revelation. That once I started to look at every other worldview, they have to borrow from the Christian worldview in order to get to human dignity, to human value, and that nothing else was consistent. So as I started to

build from the beginning, if we're just advanced animals, then the world makes sense because everybody's acting like an animal. But if we're something special and different, how was it that I didn't wind up in an abortionist office? Something bigger was there. But it was the consistency. You can't get to human rights. You can't get to human value. You can't get to dignity. And looking on the abortion side of it, when I was looking at the law, you also in the best sense of the term interviews I've done in a while. Thanks for your vulnerability, for your honesty to come on. And just may God bless these moments with your mom that they're just meaningful and rich and your studies through this time. I think God's got his hand on your life and I look forward to so much more yet to come. So really, really appreciate you coming on.

Thank you for having me, Sean. It's a real blessing. I appreciate it. Those of you watching, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got a lot of other fascinating stories and interviews and content coming up. And we would love to have you join us at Biola University. I teach in the apologetics program there, and we have the top-rated apologetics program. And think about information is below.

Think about joining us, and we will see you soon on the next episode that airs. Kelly, this has been great. Thanks so much. Thanks, Sean.