Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep936: Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: Aimee Byrd

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Aimee Byrd is a speaker, author, blogger, wife, and mom. She’s the author of several books including Why Can’t We Be Friends, No Little Women, her most recent book Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and the forthcoming The Sexual Reformation. Learn more about Aimee on her website: https://aimeebyrd.com Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. If you want to attend a Theology in the Raw Exiles of Babylon conference, you need to sign up soon because space is filling up. You can find out all the info at PrestonSprinkle.com. The conference is March 31st through April 2nd. You can attend live or virtually. And if you want to support the show, you can do so by sharing the podcast on your social media outlets, leaving a review, or if you want to financially support Theology in the Raw, keep the lights on in my basement, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. My guest today is somebody who I've wanted to talk to for a long time,

the one and only Amy Bird, author of No Little Women, Housewife Theologian, Why Can't We Be Friends, and the most recent, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which is the topic that we focus on in this conversation. She's also the author of the forthcoming book, The Sexual Reformation. I had such a wonderful time talking to Amy. She's so thoughtful and gracious and wise and curious. And we talk a lot about her journey in various conversations surrounding biblical manhood and womanhood. So please welcome to the show for the first time, hopefully the first of many future conversations that we will have with Amy. Please welcome to the show, the one here with Amy Bird.

First time meeting you, at least virtually. So thanks for coming on Theology in the Raw. I'm super stoked to talk to you. Yeah, me too. Thanks for having me on, Preston. So for those who don't know who you are, can you give us just a snapshot of who you are? And I really want to focus on, or at least start focusing on, your most recent book,

Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which, I'm sorry, that's such a cool title. I mean, it's provocative. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of the title of my life right now, too. Yeah, so who are you? And yeah, then we can get into the book. Yeah, so basically, I'm just a thinking woman in the church who was struggling to find agency as a thinking woman in my church. And what led me to writing, I never really had a ambition to be an author. But, you know, when I got married right out of college, 21 years old, my husband and I, both of us come from divorced families, and we're the oldest. So we were kind of the first to get married. And we didn't want

to end up like that. So I, you know, started to take my faith more seriously at this point in my life too. And I just thought, you know, I'm going to take this being a Christian thing seriously. In my adult life, what does that look like? If Christianity is true, like what can I hold fast to when I don't really want to act like one? How do I grow into maturity? Um, how do we have a good marriage? And so I start looking for resources in these areas. And, um, the council for biblical manhood and womanhood had, uh, all kinds of resources for women's ministries and all these things. And they had this book recovering biblical manhood and womanhood. Um. And so I just started absorbing all that, you know, reading it. And, you know, some of those teachers I'd learned a lot from and really

respected, but then some things I was reading in this book and some other resources, I just kind of stubbed my toe on. I just didn't get it. And I thought, well, who am I? I'm this newlywed with divorced parents. I want to be a biblical woman. But I really did struggle as a thinking woman in the church to find any kind of space to contribute, to ask questions, to grow in that way. Theologically, it seemed to be, you know, men's spaces where those things were happening. So my first book, I really, it came out of a place of loneliness. I was writing for other women in the church saying, hey, we're theologians too, you know, like I thought maybe offering a tool to get us to think about like how what we believe about God affects our everyday

living and these questions that we're asking throughout our daily tasks even, that there's a theology and meaningfulness and significance behind that. And that book gave me a lot of different opportunities. I was invited onto a podcast to kind of co-host with a pastor and an academic, and I was starting to get speaking invitations at different churches. And so, each book I've written has kind of been another layer of, as I'm seeing and experiencing this struggle, what are the theological questions behind these struggles that I'm experiencing? And I'm noticing now throughout the country, other women, many other women struggling in the same way. What was the name of the first book? My first book was called Housewife Theologian.

So I was kind of making an oxymoron type of deal to try to make a point. Can you tell us about your church background? What kind of church culture? So I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, and my family, we were pretty regular attenders, but we didn't plug into a lot of the community life in the church, I would say. My parents divorced when I was in high school, so I had a time of not being in church. Then I put myself back in church, I guess I would say my sophomore year in college. I had kind of been, you know, what those Baptists like to call backsliding.

And, you know, I just had this moment of, you know, in my head, I was thinking, yeah, I'm a Christian. I knew how to answer the Campus Crusade questions, you know, when they were setting up their little tables and asking questions. Check that off the box. up their little tables and asking questions, check that off the box. But I just really became convicted that, you know, if this is who I say I am, then, you know, I need to take my faith more seriously. And I need to learn a lot more than a couple of catchphrases that I have. So, you know, that's when I started to get more serious about learning about my faith and started, you know, I went to like a Baptist church there because that's what I knew. Wasn't really invited in the community there.

So there was that loneliness there as a thinker as well. My husband came from a Roman Catholic background. So, you know, we were just trying to figure out, you know, what are we as we were getting married and everything. And we started out at a Southern Baptist church plant. When we moved from the area, we started going to a PCA church, Presbyterian Church in America. We were there for about 11 years. And I wrote my first book when I was in PCA church and my second one. And then when we moved back to this area in Frederick, Maryland, we began going to an OPC church, Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

And that's the more conservative version, right? I mean, PCA is pretty conservative that this is to the right of the PCA. That's where I've been until, you know, this summer. you know, this summer. And so now we are worshiping in a community church, which I'm not even naming at the moment because I've just had so many people harass me and my place of worship, you know, gets intertwined into that too. What do you mean they harass you? And why would they do that? Well, this group of men and women, but it was led by some church officers, mainly in my denomination of the OPC, who did not like my writing and thought I was dangerous. They formed this group on Facebook.

They were coming after me with anonymous accounts on Twitter and stuff like that. But they started this group on Facebook where it grew to be about 1100 members. And it wasn't, it wasn't started because of me. They started it because they were angry with two other women writing. But then it became this group where, you know, there was just a lot of, the tone was very misogynistic and racist even. And they're just, you know, complaining about all these different Christian teachers. And I became like their number one target on there. So they, you know, as it grew over a couple of years, they were just like making memes of me. Then it escalated to like calling ahead of my speaking engagements and warning churches

and, you know, don't send your people to this conference. She's dangerous, you know, to a lot of name calling. I was, you know, Jezebel and a raging wolf and, um, you know, to picking apart my videos and saying that I look butch and, you know and I'm trying to be a badass now and things like that to plotting to sabotage my Amazon page with one-star reviews and just mailing the book around so that they don't have to buy more copies and helping one another give bad reviews. So that became a whole thing. How did you know that?

Because that's not something... The history of it is so weird because the guy who started it originally was a fan of the podcast that I was a part of. And I followed my writing and liked it. Until he didn't. Until he invited a guest on that he didn't approve of. And then that was my fault. And, um, then not my rating became dangerous. Um, so in the beginning, and this was before, like you had to accept an invitation into a Facebook group, you would just get added into

all these groups. Um, I was added into this group in the beginning and I was added into this group in the beginning. And I was added into a bunch of groups that I just didn't pay any attention to until I got tagged. And I got tagged because someone wanted me to see what they were saying about me. And so I kind of entered into that conversation and said, hey, like, you can critique my work, but name calling, you know, you're a church officer. Why would you call me names? And a couple people stood up for me. And next thing you know, we all got kicked out of the group. And so I kind of, I knew one of my elders at my church was in there.

So I asked him, hey, like, can you keep an eye on this? Because, you know, I don't want to cause anything, but these are church officers and these are pastors. You know, this is crazy. But they lead congregations and shepherd people. So if this gets out of hand, you know, I'd like to know. He's like, sure. Well, then, and this was the most painful part of it.

About a year or so after that, a woman who was in the group came to me saying, who I didn't know. She reached out to me saying, I think you need to see what's being written about you on here. It's really concerning and troubling. And she starts sending me screenshots. And it was just like a pure obsession from morning till night. Hundreds of comments and multiple, multiple threads. till night, hundreds of comments and multiple, multiple threads. It was just enough to make your stomach turn that somebody would even spend this much time thinking about you, much less hating you.

And I was actually on my way to a speaking engagement where they had called ahead of, I see it all there on this screenshot that I was unaware that they'd caused all this trouble. I was going to go there under suspicion, you know, from the leaders now, uh, they were making jokes about showing up. Um, so that was kind of scary. Yeah. And come to find out all this time, my elder has been in this group. Oh, he was part of the one that you wanted to keep an eye on it. He was one of the instigators he was well he wasn't instigating but like there would be this thread like so i have a book why can't we be friends uh someone anonymously took the cover and there's a male and a female cartoon

character on there they took the clothes off of them and made it like fuzzy and then they changed to why can't we be naked and you know know, there's this whole thread about that. And my elder comments in that thread, answering somebody's random question about the OPC or something, you know, so he was not talking about me, but he's also like reading all this, not telling me about it, not defending me, not, uh, it was just such a violation of trust. You know, how did you feel? What's your emotional response going through something like this? Because this isn't just a one-off weird robot tagging you on Twitter. This is kind of bigger than that.

It's weird because logically, Preston, I know that, okay, there's going to be jerks on the internet. I've experienced plenty of that. And logically I can see how wrong this is. However, and I have pretty thick skin, like I've dealt with a good bit of criticism. However, this was a level of harassment that really is spiritual abuse because, you know, these men, a lot of them were church officers in my denomination and other denominations in Napark. And so to know the power that they have and, you know, how they're supposed to behave, it's actually very traumatic, um, to go through. I did not, uh, foresee how traumatic

it was going to be for me to go through that. Um, especially because like in the Presbyterian church, I felt like I was in this like safe system to where, you know, you have these multiple layers of accountability, um, within your church. Uh, you've got your elders who all have equal authority. And then if you find something wrong there, you can go above them to the presbytery level in your region that's a government. And then above that even, there's the general assembly for the whole country. So I realized now, and it unfolded as I tried to address this, which seemed pretty basic, just how that was a faux sense of security. And that the whole structure of the system, like there's a systemic problem in trying to address abuse.

Was this group addressed? Like, this is clearly cowardly behavior, clearly anti-Christian. Is there some higher authority that would say, hey, you're going to lose your ministry license or something if you keep acting like a pagan, a cowardly? I mean, it is cowardice, right? I mean, there's no other word for it. To create a Facebook page without going to the actual person, having a conversation like that's the epitome of cowardice.

And all these anonymous accounts. Yeah. So that's what I thought. Right. And that's, I think, um, how my elders were trying to address it as well, you know? Um, but, but what happened, you know, and there was a group of men, interestingly enough, so someone developed a website called the Genevan Commons Screenshot Website, I think is what it's called, because the group was called Genevan Commons. And basically, they cataloged a ton of these screenshots. And they weren't just about me. They were about a lot of people. Um, and when that website came out,

I put it on my blog and kind of took some of those screenshots and placed them next to like biblical verses on the qualifications for an elder, you know, and I just let it speak for itself, you know. And after that happened, a group of men in the OPC wrote an open letter, you know, calling for repentance, this kind of thing, and they asked me to publish it on my blog, and I did. And I think over 90 church officers in my denomination ended up signing it. Um, so, you know, at first you think, yes, you know, they're speaking out against this pretty basic, you know, we should, but that just empowered these men to like, you know, really sink into it. And, uh, so when you,

when we tried to address it on an ecclesial level, like actually pressing charges out of the, I mean, just so much, so much reviling things that they said, the only thing that two of them were only brought up on charges. Um, and it came down to one man being charged for calling me a raging wolf. And that was it. And he got like an admonition for that. And the only reason that charge went through was because,

so his presbytery was really starting to look pretty bad and all this. And so they're like, you know, asking him, can you, he literally gave a sermon as a guest preacher in a church. He gave a sermon on the perfect hatred of God. This was on Psalm 139. And basically in there, he's calling out the signers of the open letter because, you know, the thing that God hates the most is feminism. And he'd already written like a five part series on feminism, the OPC and how I'm the leader general of the army and all this other stuff. I mean, that sermon ended with like, if you are embarrassed by my sermon, then, you know, I hate you and God hates you. I shouldn't laugh. I'm just so ridiculous.

It's like my first response is to laugh but that's terrible and so for all these things that they were doing um i guess this presbytery was asking him you know can you be quiet online for now while working through this stuff and i went through some major kangaroo court stuff throughout this whole process so major what? Kangaroo court, you know, ecclesial system. And I documented that part of it on my blog. Um, so anyway, yeah. Um, ended up offending his presbytery by sending a letter to his congregation and kind of thrown his pastor under the bus and the presbytery under the bus. That's why he got charges filed against him. And he got two years suspension for offending the presbytery.

Okay. So I'm super curious, like what, if you can be super objective, like what are the things you are saying or doing that has created this? I am really, you know, they call me dangerous. Yeah. So what's, what's the, what, what are the things that are latching onto you? So, um,

you know, the recovering from biblical manhood and womanhood does challenge a lot of this teaching that is called biblical manhood and womanhood. Um, like masculine and feminine stereotypes or like, yes. Okay. But really the book,

it's an invitation and it has three different parts that break up the book. The first one is just the reciprocity between the male and female voice in scripture. The second one is the covenantal aspect to reading scripture and discipleship. And then what our great honor and responsibility and what that looks like in church life as disciples. So my focus is discipleship in all of my books. However, what they think is that I want women to take over the church. I mean, I wrote within the bounds of the confessions of the OPC. Nowhere did I write outside the bounds of my confessions. I wasn't even calling for male pastors., leadership's important discussion, but that's just not what my book is about. So you were arguing for like women in ministry or anything. I wasn't a focus. Yeah. I mean like, well, yeah,

but like female past or nation, nothing. I didn't write anything like that. Um, but yeah, it's just the agency of a woman as a disciple is, is what is really rubbing on the wrong way. And just as a little bit of background too, back in 2016, um, I don't know if you caught wind of the Trinity debate that happened, but, um, yeah, the council for biblical manhood and womanhood had published many books. And Wayne Grudem, who was one of the main founders in his systematic theology, they teach this errant doctrine on the Trinity called the eternal functional subordination of the son.

And they teach that in his very being, the son is functionally subordinate to the father's authority. And then they take that teaching to somehow say that, and this means that woman is in her being functionally subordinate to men. And I exposed that on my blog in 2016 by inviting a man, Liam Gallagher, a pastor in the PCA, to write against it. And a whole debate started after that. I mean, you can Google the Trinity debate. It all comes flowing out. And so, I mean, I think that there was already a lot of tension with me because of that then because, you know, patristic scholars weighed in with this debate, you know, saying that, yeah, this teaching is anti-Nicene, this, you know, subordination of the sun stuff. So it's not in line with confessional Christianity.

And then why are we applying this to men and women? And so there was a lot that unfolded from that as well. Okay. So you've been, you've been controversial for a while. This ain't your first road. Yeah. I mean, it's not like. Well, that should be controversial to say this. I hate confrontation and those kinds of things, but it's, it's, but yeah, it's just kind of ridiculous.

Like you don't, you don't want to be wrong on the teaching of the Trinity. And the crazy part is that, you know, it became, oh, well, you know, we have a wide umbrella of what we teach on the Trinity within Reformed evangelicalism. But what's really important is that you agree to the Danvers statement about women, you know, which is like, what? How has this become, you know, the test? Yeah, yeah. Can you summarize your book a little bit? So the Recovering from Biblical Manhood, what did you, let me ask this, like, how have you shifted in your views from, let's just say, 10 years ago to where you are now? How have you grown to what, not to put words in your mouth, but what you would probably say is a more biblical understanding of manhood and womanhood? Yeah. So, um, in my book, I'm kind of how my views have, have changed. It's interesting because, you know, I grew up in a

family that just wasn't hyper, uh, spastic about gender roles. Um, my father taught mixed martial arts in our home, you know, so me and my brother and my sister, you know, we just had equal expectations as far as, you know, what we could pursue and do. And there wasn't this weirdness. Um, so I experienced that more when I got more seriously involved in the church. So that was kind of a weird thing for me. And so I think, you know, from my 20s to now I'm 46, just, you know, growing and trying to understand then what is this, the meaningfulness behind our sexuality. And as I'm looking in scripture, it's pretty amazing. There's just so many sections of scripture that I never was taught, right? And as I'm in this book, one thing that was really

exciting to me, and one person's work I built off of was Richard Baucom from his book, Gospel Women. He talks about, and so he calls it gynocentric interruption, which is like, you know, all kinds of fun to use, right? So he's talking about how, you know, well, the Bible is this androcentric text and, you know, radical biblical feminists will say, oh, the Bible's put together, you know, by the patriarchy, you know, and to make women submit.

And, you know, we kind of balk at that and say, that's not true. However, the way that the evangelical church markets its resources actually does really send that message that the Bible is so male centered that, you know, us women need our own versions and our own pretty Bible covers and, you know, all of this to make it more palatable and understandable to us. So I critique that. And I even do a critique of like, you know, with the messages that we're seeing and, you know, why we even have men's study Bibles and women's study Bibles and what the articles in it tell us about men and women and who can contribute in them and things like that.

But then when you look in scripture, so yeah, it is Andrew eccentric. We see the male voice dominantly in scripture. It was written in a patriarchal time, right? By men. However, it's pretty amazing to think of the time that it was written, how much of the woman's voice is in scripture, and then what that reveals when we really look at it. And so Richard Baugham kind of talked, he calls it a gynocentric interruption, which whenever I use a new term in conversation,

my husband, Finn likes to use it a lot of other times throughout the day in wrong content. a lot of other times throughout the day in wrong content. A lot of fun with that one. So he calls it a gynocentric interruption because the woman becomes the center and she's kind of interrupting the text in a sense. And what she does is her voice functions kind of making visible the invisible, telling us the story behind the story,

what you wouldn't get from just the male voice. And so he uses the book of Ruth as kind of a model of how this works throughout scripture, because, you know, it's told really in the voice of a feminine narrative. And interestingly enough, at the end, you have this kind of patrilineal genealogy that almost is a complete shift of gears from what you've just been reading. It's almost like it's cut and paste on there. And he says that actually functions to show us, you know, this is the same story that we would have gotten in the male voice, but this is all that we missed out, you know, this whole feminine voice. So I kind of do a survey through the Bible. It certainly isn't comprehensive. I'm just picking some stories that stand out to me where we see this woman's voice

functioning in this way. And it's just so exciting. I think it really does change the way that you read scripture. So I do the first part of my book, I'm doing that. And the second part of the book, I'm looking at what discipleship even is and where does it happen? Because I think those are some of the big theological questions behind a lot of this. We have big parachurch organizations that are, quote unquote, discipling us. But discipleship really should be happening in the church. So I really kind of examine how, and I like parachurch, but I just say that I need one of those like DTRs with the church and the parachurch to find the relationship. Instead of coming alongside and helping, you know, Para, we see, you know, this big money industry where conferences are actually enacted to be like they are churches. have the modes set up like you have in church for protection and shepherding and accountability you have like board members and and and it even affects like especially in the complementarian

circles who can speak and things like that um it's mimicking church but it's not church right so i kind of get into that and um and then in last third of the book, I just really get into the nitty gritty of what did the early church look like? What are our responsibilities and our great honor as disciples, men and women, brothers and sisters, which is what I really kind of break down that sacred sibling relationship. break down that sacred sibling relationship and, you know, take a look at how women are in ministry in the New Testament, shoulder to shoulder with a lot of the men. So is it almost like revealing the agency that women have within the biblical story? I mean, not just the Bible story, but just the Christian story. almost would it be inaccurate to say within a complementarian framework or in a way that could obviously exist in a more egalitarian context? But even if you're like, no, I think 1 Timothy 2, women shouldn't be serving in positions of leadership, even still within that kind of ecclesiology, women can have a lot more agency than they typically have. Is

that kind of the underlying? Yeah. So I was trying to critique within my own circles, which my circles were complementarian circles. However, I did say, I do not call myself a complementarian. I think that it's the name of a movement. It's a movement that started 30 years ago. There's a ton of problem connected to the movement. Um, a ton of error and it's teaching like too much. So, um, but I don't think that you need to say that you're a complimentarian to be within the bounds of confessions of the OPC. So, um, and you know, there would be people who agree with me on that. And especially since none of that's written into our conventions. Um, anyway, so yeah, I was trying to critique from within and I, there was a sense in which

I wanted to frustrate in a good way, both complementarians and egalitarians. Um, and just to challenge us, you know, and to and to i use a lot i interact with a lot of egalitarian writers um and and thinkers i have really grown and been sharpened by them and i wanted to introduce some of those thinkers into the complementarian audience because we're just told hey they're all a bunch of liberals you you know, don't read them. So, like their arguments can't be taken seriously. And, you know, that's where I was finding a lot of the more rich and meaningful writing about women in the Bible. So, you know, that was something I was definitely criticized for. You know, I used a lot of Roman Catholic references

too, but strangely, no one was bothered by that. It was just the fact that I cited some egalitarians. of these insular thinking tanks and to try to meet and talk about these issues in a in a way to where there's humility um so you know i'm still growing in that area myself and and learning in all these ways but um that's that's a challenge wow i i yeah i love that there was an article written a while a while back. I referenced this in another podcast called From the Edge of the Inside. And it's kind of like being within a tribe and yet on the edge of it so that you're able to kind of see the truth. And be able to criticize it from within rather than being at the center of the tribe where you are more an advocate. Like you just have to promote the message because you're so ingrained in this echo chamber.

And I find myself in those spaces quite a bit, you know, where sometimes I raise concerns or criticisms of what I would consider. I don't even know what my tribe is. Right. Christian, I don't know. But, you know, broadly speaking, evangelical-ish circles or whatever, but being able to say, hey, here's some problems that we need to work on. And it's very much okay to recognize where we need to grow and correct some things. So I'm curious because your book, is it common for people to put your book in conversation with Jesus and John Wayne,

and then Beth Allison Barr's book, the making of, and then we've done, you know, we've done an interview together and things like that too. Cause they're like three recent popular books challenging. Right. I don't know what,

how would I would say it? Like, like I don't want to say patriarchy. I think that word is thrown around too haphazardly. But an unhealthy male-centeredness of traditional evangelicals, maybe. It seems like yours would be on the more conservative. I hate that word too. I know.

So mine came out before theirs as well. Okay. And yeah, mine, because they're writing from a more egalitarian side of things um where i was in the opc when mine came out um but we've definitely connected through that to like you know kind of having our books come out and and around the same time and the different reactions that we've had and the challenges with that. Um, I think it's been a little,

some of it's been a little more, um, reviling against me because, you know, the, the super ultra conservative side of things, you know, I was just too dangerous.

So, um, but yeah, I endorsed Beth's book. So, but you know, that's neat to have that opportunity to do as well. And, um, and Sheila, I'm just, you know, I'm excited that she's, you know,

still publishing and writing more on those things. But I, I do think that, uh, and Rachel Green Miller, who's someone else who's written within complementarian circles. Um, she wrote a book called beyond authority and submission um and she received a lot of you know misrepresentation as well of her writing um what's her name again it's just funny i don't know her rachel miller rachel miller all right rachel might get an email from me this is i mean yeah okay yeah yeah she had a you know a lot of groundwork she did leading up to the trinity debate as well and here she is like this homeschooling mom and the opc who you know sees trouble but she you know doesn't want to be associated with and yet she's you know pretty conservative and uh it just even to say beyond authority and

submission yeah like that right there is a no-no what are some ways recommendations for pastors let's just say a pastor is complementarian in a complementarian church so they're on the more conservative end and yet they want to create a church rhythm that doesn't devalue the agency of women like what are some things you could recommend for pastors leaders in those spaces who are like i'm not ready to go full-on egalitarian but man i want to make sure i'm representing jesus well like what are some blind spots maybe that churches have and that is you know something that i address in um my book because at the end of each chapter, really my target audience for the book is church officers. And if you don't reach the church officers, you're just going to have a bunch of people reading my book and be frustrated.

So I wanted them to lead the conversations. So I actually have discussion questions at the end of each chapter that, hey, you could lead groups in your church and discuss these things. You might not agree with everything in the book, but where are your stances? How are you thinking through these things? What can you come together as a church and address here? Because I kind of start the book off with this metaphor from a book that was written a while ago called The Yellow Wallpaper, a novella. And so I'm trying to do this like peel and reveal thing. And like what you're talking about, these blind spots, the yellow wallpaper represents these blind spots that we have in the church.

And so I think, you know, one thing is to actually be reading women, read women authors. actually be reading women. Read women authors. It's amazing. I think of how many times have I even heard a woman quoted from a sermon? You hear quotes all the time during sermons, usually by men. So one time when I did hear a quote from a woman, it was like, whoa, looking around, when I did hear a quote from a woman, it was like, whoa, you know, looking around, did you guys hear that? Did you see that? That was a woman. You never hear that. So, you know, just start reading more women, academics and theology. And I think lay women too, because, you know, I think we do need to have these conversations between lay people, pastors, and academics, because academia and theology wasn't formed, our biblical studies, just so they could talk amongst themselves, right? It's supposed to trickle down to us. And same with pastors and

seminary. So I think that's important. I think bringing women into the room is incredibly important. You know, if you have male leadership in your church and you went to seminary with mainly men and you were taught by men and you're just relying on your wife to learn anything about the women in the church, you're not shepherding your church. And so, I think women need to be invited in the room where decisions are made and listened to. So, you can see through their eyes as well, and other marginalized people. So, those are some just kind of basic things. But then I think, you know, looking at your ecclesiology, like how your liturgy goes, you know, in First Corinthians, we see, you know, the longest section of any kind of prescribed worship going on. And we see women who are prophesying during worship and praying.

So if your church doesn't allow for that, and if you believe in the cessation of, you know, supernatural gifts, like prophesying, well then, how would that translate today then, you know, reading scripture? If your ecclesiology doesn't allow for that, then how are you more complementarian than the early church in the New Testament? So I think there are some things in that way too, to look at. Are women, and here's where I got in a lot of trouble, are women allowed to teach in the church beyond middle school children or other women? You know, and you see like Wayne Grudem has this list of, you know, what should women be allowed to do in the church kind of thing. And he draw and it's all based on the level of influence she'll have. And so he encourages you to draw a line and under that line, women can serve and above that line, she cannot. And it's so interesting to see the order of things on the line.

And it's so interesting to see the order of things on the line. So like, uh, contributing to a woman's study Bible is above, you know, writing a book about biblical doctrine or teaching a woman's Bible study or below. I'm sorry. Teaching a woman's Bible study is below, um, teaching a high school Sunday school class. So, you know, it's just like, are you kidding me? This is a very dignity that we're talking about here. So, I mean, and this is what people are reading and listening to. I think so. I mean, complementarian churches would still have,

I can't speak for all of them, but like just theological problems with the woman teaching, right? I mean, that would still have i can't speak for all of them um but like just theological problems with the women teaching right i mean that would still although now i feel like more and more churches that would still consider themselves complementarian would say male only elders but women can teach that seems to be growing in popularity that i have several friends who are like i just still see some kind of male headship in the church, whatever, but they have women teach on a Sunday underneath kind of the authority. Do you see that view kind of growing in popularity? Well, I do. However, here's the thing. I see that view growing

and I felt like, you know, I'm writing within the space of, because you, I think a lot of complementarians, and I'm using air quotes here, would say that that's the dominant view. However, the loudest voices and the teaching voices, you know, in all the resources don't teach that. Or the ones who strongly don't teach that platform you they platform with all these guys and so um you're giving credibility to something very demeaning i think um very flattening um and and so i feel like if we're not going to speak out against it you become complicit in in the way that it's spreading you know where it's almost more telling is I've talked to several people who are in egalitarian denominations.

I'm not going to name them. I could, but I'd just rather not. But let me just say there's one denomination that's really widespread where I am in Idaho. The denomination is on paper, it's been egalitarian since its inception. But you talk to people in the denomination they say yeah but can you name me one single female pastor in any church here

in in the area there might be a couple but it's like to me that's almost worse when you have theological not just permission but like encouragement for women to be in ministry and it's still right 95 percent male let's just say 85% male senior pastors or whatever. To me, that's – because if you're like theologically, I can't get there. Then it's like, well, obviously, you're not necessarily being like misogynistic necessarily because you're driven by theology. And contrary to how most people might think, like I do think – I don't think I really – complementarians are misogynistic.

There are some really healthy complementarian churches i think um but it's don't you i mean it seems like worse when you have theological encouragement and still it's male dominated i've heard that a lot actually and i've even been um you know sometimes i get um asked to consult with different, uh, church leader governments and in local churches, um, to talk about that very thing. Um, and I have been for a church that was egalitarian. Um, and yeah, they were having these same issues, which was interesting because, you know, here I was then in the OPC, you know, and I was speaking at their women's conference. And yeah, they wanted to bring me in and ask me, pick my brain. Because I've also, I've written another book called No Little Women, where I kind of, you know, I felt like I really, it was an encouragement to invest in the women in complementarian churches. And even that one was received better than recovering.

I mean, recovery has been overall well-received, right? I mean, of course, it's always easy to listen to a lot of criticism, but it sold, it has sold well. And I've gotten, you know, tons of messages of, you know, how it's been edifying for different people. But, um, you know, the ones that didn't like it were very verbal about that. So one of the things I've seen that, uh, well, one complimentary in church in particular was, it was Cornerstone where I used to serve on staff with that Francis Chan used to be at.

When he, we used to have, I think it was on Tuesday or Thursday. Sorry, after Francis left the church, we went to a team teaching model as part of the team teachers. team teachers. And we would always have, I think it was either Tuesday or Thursday, kind of a two-hour sermon prep meeting where whoever's preaching that Sunday would have kind of a rough draft of where they're going with their sermon, maybe an outline or something. Here's some illustrations. And we would sit together and talk about it. All the teachers would be like, all right, let's fine tune this. Which by the way, I can't imagine like ever being in a consistent preaching rotation or rhythm where you're not, where you don't have some sort of small group airing out your thoughts ahead of time.

If you're a preacher and you're just like single-handedly preparing and preaching on Sunday, I would highly recommend building some kind of team. But so very strongly complementarian church. Women did not teach on Sunday morning, at least back then. I don't know if they probably still don't. I don't know. But one thing we did do is we started inviting, maybe it's one woman, maybe it's a couple,

into that conversation. And that was mind-blowing. This is like 10 years ago, 12 years ago. And it just blew us away because we're like, oh, we're going to talk about this, this, and this illustration. And the woman's like, here's how a single mom's going to hear that. Profoundly unintentional misogynistic language you're using right now.

And all these guys were really humble. We were just like, I am so – I feel like I need to apologize for the last 15 years of preaching because I just didn't screen my thoughts with a woman present before I went and talked. This is something like you can be full on capital C complementarian. There is zero violation, as I see it, in the most stringent reading of – well, sorry, the most conservative reading of 1 Timothy 2 where you can't have a woman or women help you organize your thoughts around the sermon. Am I right? I mean, that's something I think... Well, I would agree with you, except for the fact that there are men who... Seminaries,

even teaching that, no, women can't offer input in that kind of way. Really? Okay. No, women can't offer input in that kind of way. Really? Okay. Yeah. But I will say that that is just, that is fabulous. I was asked once to give a talk, you know, related to this, to give a talk at RTS in DC in a preaching communications class on preaching to women. And the professor has said to me, you know, the reason why he invited me was because, and I'm, I live near the DC area, so it's only like a 45 minute drive for me to get there. But, um, he was saying that, um, he had been preaching for five years before he realized he wasn't preaching to the women.

Wow. So, you know, he was older now and I'd spoken at his church. So that's why he ended up inviting me. But, you know, it just really makes you think, right? But what you're saying, like you have one pair of eyes, right? One way of seeing things. But then you have all these other people in your congregation and we can divide it up in other ways too, like class and race and things like that. Yeah. But yeah, so it was, you know, I really appreciated that opportunity.

And that's a more urban area anyway. So these are men who I think are more hip to wanting to do that. But, you know, it was funny because it was some of the really practical things that I talked about that I saw them really writing notes on, which I found really interesting. And some of those things, and these are things that women notice is, you know, are you even making eye contact with the women when you're preaching? Because a lot of preachers are very uncomfortable with that. Really? That's so weird. Yeah. And, you know, men won't notice that, but women yeah and and you know men won't notice that but women notice it you know when you're never making eye contact with me you know it's

you notice it or how are your illustrations are do you have the typical stereotypes playing out in your illustrations you know those kind of things and wow what a neat thing to do though to have that that think tank group and be able to get feedback. I hate this. I mean, it's so embarrassing to even say this, but it was revolutionary for us. And it's like, why is that so? Like, it's almost embarrassing to say, wow, that was so profound. I listened to a woman's voice before I prepared my sermon.

But yeah, it really was. It was like, I have so many. And it opened up. I mean, you mentioned class and race. It opened up just so many other blind was. It was like, I have so many, and it opened up, I mean, you mentioned class and race. It opened up just so many other blind spots. It's like, oh my gosh. Like, yeah, this is where I just, yeah, going back to, I just, we need to be like developing sermons, I think in more community. We're coming up on almost 50 minutes here. I want to make sure I get to your forthcoming book, The Sexual Revolution. Reformation.

The Sexual Reformation. Reformation. Sorry. Sorry. Can you tell us – yeah. Where are you? Are you still in the writing process? Is it done?

Oh, no. It's actually releasing in March. Oh, right on. Sweet. Yeah. So it means you're going to finish it like two years ago. Exactly. I've got to relearn everything I wrote for my interviews. But yes, I'm really excited

about this book. I feel like my books kind of build off of one another. They open up the door to more questions as I'm writing those books. And my experiences that I went through with recovering really led me to the Song of Songs. I mean, it just ministered to me in the deepest way as I was, you know, cause I really went through about two years of, you know, friction in my, in my denomination and my church and, you know, working through all that, the Song of Songs just really deeply ministered to me. And so, you know, what I wanted to do was write more, and the subtitle is called Restoring the Dignity and Personhood of Man and Woman. And that's what, you know, I was really aiming to do is to get to the theological meaning behind

our sexed bodies as man and woman. And the Song of Songs is just telling this metanarrative of all of scripture of Christ's spousal love for his bride. And so I really, really enjoyed, and I'm writing this again, looking at it from the angle of a disciple, of what does this mean for discipleship in the church? So I get into the typology of man and woman there, which, you know, when you're looking at the song, you know, which is called the Holy of Holies of Scripture by, you know, the ancient rabbis and early church fathers. And it really is like, it's like you get in behind the veil and all of your senses are aroused in the song, you know, your taste and smell and touch. And it is an erotic book. Like, why is it like this? And I think that there is this sense in which you can't, when we're talking about God's

love, you can't just didactically teach, you know, these propositional statements about God's love and get it all. And so I think that this poetry and allegory is sweeping us in, in a way, and beckoning us and arousing us to, you know, really properly orient our desires. And we see desire restored in the song. And we see this playfulness in the voices. Like I really have a whole chapter on the man and woman's voices in the song. It's dominantly, you know, over 60% the woman's voice. and leadership and those kinds of things. Um, she bookends the song, she opens it and she closes it out and she closes it out, beckoning her groom to the mountain laden spices, spice laden mountains that her body represents, you know, she's beckoning him to Zion. So, I mean, I just, I'm really excited about this book. Um, it just,

it swept me away to write it and so i really hope that it just really gets readers um super excited about digging into the song once you dig into the song like it's all it's like a microcosm of all of scripture and there's so many echoes of the song throughout god's word so i just find it really exciting is it like a theology of sex or more sexed embodiment or both and, or, um, I guess you could say both and, um, because the song is,

you know, these enfleshed bodies. And I think that's really important. Okay. Wow. I'm excited. Yeah. I might email you.

Wait, you publish with Zondervan, right? Zondervan again. And they have the, um, the advanced reader copies out now okay yeah i'll reach out to them and get a copy yeah um what uh oh shoot i had a thought

just flew out of my head um hate when that happens yeah um well what would you hope to see? Let me see how I can word this. What would you hope to see in specifically like complementarian church? What does healthiness look like in your opinion in more conservative complementarian, complementarian-ish churches? Yeah. Yeah. What are some changes you would like to see made within that framework? Yeah. I mean, I think that's some of what I was writing about in recovering. Um, and I think one of the hardest things is to be a part of the conversation as a woman and, and it's extremely, uh, disheartening and, and frustrating. It's like, you know, the I don't know what part of me, you know, thinks I should write a book called Smoking in the Boys Room. Because that is pretty much what I discovered that I've been doing this whole time trying to be a woman thinking in complementarian spaces. You know, the reason why I can't get in into these conversations is because I'm in the boys room.

Right. Um, but, uh, so I think there are some real problems and I don't even know like now where I am. Um, I just want, I don't want to limit my audience to complementarian churches because I think

I just want to talk. I want to be in conversation with people who really care about this and whoever they are. And so, you know, I feel like, you know, I've written books answering that question and, and going into, for me, what really matters is the theology behind it all. You know, I'm not one to just take a Bible verse and then slap people with it. You know, like I want to get to the theology excites me. And so and I do think, you know, with, you know, with the book I'm going to have coming out on the song, it's just to me blows my mind that the triune God is a personal God who created us as people, persons, and that He is inviting us into eternal

communion with Himself. And, you know, this whole story of, that unfolds in the typology of man and woman of the Father giving the Son a bride. He loves him so much that he gives him this gift of the bride and that sharing in the father's love for the son and the spirit that's what it's all about you know so um our bodies tell that story uh woman's you know in her typology uh we're an eschatological marker we're created created second. We're not created from the soil. We are beckoning man to his telos as Christ's bride. And so we represent realm and people. You know, we see that picture in Revelation, the bride coming down the holy garden city, you know, woman. And we see that played out so much in the Song of Songs. And then man,

you know, typologically representing, you know, earth, we're going to have the union of heaven and earth, you know, new heavens and a new earth. And this union points to the union of Christ and his bride. And a man typologically represents the second Adam. You know, Christ is masculine. And he's the first to love and the first to give and the first to sacrifice. We see that in the story of creation. We see that in incarnation. Christ leaves his bridal Zion, or motherly Zion, home and father, to come down and cling to his bride and usher her veil.

Everything you're saying that you're, you're, you're, you're writing that balance between maintaining both equality and yet honoring sex, sex difference. And sometimes I feel like a lot of people get out of whack on to get equality. They try to downplay difference. People that seem to acknowledge or upplay difference sometimes fall into inequality. But that is a theological dance that's sometimes tough to maintain. I've always been a little bit troubled. Perspective roles, you know, and getting caught up in all these cultural mores. I mean,

I think that's a theology from below, really, and it only leads to shame. And so for me, I really want, and to answer your question, I just want to awaken this eschatological anchoring of our sexuality. And I think that's a theology from above, and that leads to glory. And to me, that's just super exciting. Can you unpack that a little more, eschatological anchoring? Because that's, I kind of know what you're talking about, but I can't imagine some people saying, I don't know. The very thing that I'm talking about is our typical symbolic representation as man and woman, which is pointing to our telos. It's pointing to where we're headed in a covenantal union with Christ in new bodies on a new heavens and a new earth. And the relationship that is

going to pass into this new world is brothers and sisters. We're brothers and sisters with one another. And Christ is our elder brother. So that's what I really think is having our eyes on where we're headed. And I think that's the whole meaningfulness behind our sexuality is it's telling this story. And it's a glorious story. And so like even Pope John Paul II, I build on his work some too, but he talks about the glory of God in the human body and the glory of the human body before God. And I think it's because of this story, you know, that our bodies speak. And so I really believe in all of this, you know, Christ is just preparing our souls for love.

Yeah. Wow. What are some theologians in light of all the things you're talking about right now, who are some theologians you've drawn on that you find helpful? JP2, you mentioned. Yeah, I definitely. Others? And, you know, I definitely was, you know,

looking a lot of the early church fathers commentary homilies on the songs, on the song, I should say, Gregory of Nyssa, Origin. I think St. Teresa of Avila, you know, she was an interesting one. John Owen, you know, his communion with God, really, he gets into the song there. Ellen Davis, she's one of my favorite commentaries on the Song of Songs. It's not a very big commentary, but I keep unpacking more and more out of that. And there are some more interesting, more academic theological books coming out on the song as well. I don't have the names in front of me of all of those, but I'm reading one right now on absence and presence of God in the song and in Esther, which is kind of dipping into that one here and there.

Or what about just the theology of male-female sexed embodiment and how to understand that theologically. Are there some theologians that have done good work there that you've drawn on? Yeah. So JP2 has been, I would say my, my biggest go-to, Timothy Tennant. He's a Methodist. He's written a book on that, but just came out with Zondervan not too long ago. I don't have the title. Yeah. I've read that one. Yeah, I forgot too.

Sorry, Timothy. That one's really good. Christopher West, a Roman Catholic who builds off of JP2's work a lot. I think that stuff got me ignited more into this. So yeah, off the top of my head, that's who I'mited more into this. Um, so yeah, off the top of my head, that's what I'm thinking of right now.

I've been excited. I, I wanted to explore kind of the, Oh, what term should I use? Like the teleology, the teleology or the, um,

yeah, the deeper theological purpose of our sex embodiment. So this, so the last book I wrote was called Embodied on the transgender conversation, which dealt a little bit with theological anthropology. And I made a distinction between the is and the ought. How deep do I want to go here? A friend of mine who's super thoughtful challenged me on something I said in the book.

And he made a statement that could there be a built-in oughtness, meaning some sort of moral, moral, not mandate, but just like some moralness in our very existence as male and female so that our bodies are actually speaking to an ethic of sexuality. And yeah, anyway, it was something he said that I'm like, ah, I want to dig into that more. And I know this is more typical in Roman Catholic scholars who deal, I think, in a better way with like natural, like a theology of natural law, so to speak. And I don't know, a lot of stuff you're saying is exactly what he was saying.

And I'm like, I really do need to dig into this a little more. Yeah, I did find Roman Catholic theologians to have a lot more resources available in that line of thinking. Yeah, yeah. Well, goodness. resources available in that line of thinking yeah yeah well goodness said Ellen Davis she she gets into like the representation of of the woman in the song of you know her body is temple you know in there so sanctuary so she gets into that a little bit too which you know what's interesting is in Genesis 2, and this is something I mentioned in my book, that there's a mistranslation that she's taken from the rib of the man.

Right. But that's – the word translate, I forget what it is, but that word is – Ball. It's always used to translate the side of like a tabernacle or temple. I know. Isn't that so exciting? Oh, yeah.

So there's this profound equality there. Like she's taken from the side of Adam, not his head, so she's not over him, not his feet. She's not under him, but the side of him. And her body is sacred.

It's like a sacred tabernacle taken from the side of Adam. And you've got the woman in the song saying, I am a wall. Oh, is that the same word? And my breasts are towers oh wow interesting they're um oh uh davidson the flame of yahweh a sexuality in the testament did you because he's got a whole section on the song of songs and how it's related back to all like genesis one and two really fascinating yeah, it's definitely in conversation with the creation story.

Did you go to seminary? No, I'm just a lay theologian thinker. And that's the thing, I think, that's really kind of blown my mind from my whole quote unquote journey in this, is that, you know, I just, where does a thinking woman get discipled in the church? And that has to be like, the only answer is seminary. You know, like I just thought that this was discipleship. And yeah, so, and then it's like women who go to seminary, well, then they have to struggle with being a woman in seminary. Yeah, yeah.

So it's like, there's the is, where do women go to be discipled? That is a fascinating category. Because it's one thing if a woman goes to seminary, then you kind of assume they're probably egalitarian, you're going to try to go to ministry or maybe academia. But what do you do with somebody who hasn't professionally pursued a ministry career and yet is reading Richard Bauckham and JP2. And Christopher West and Ellen, I can't believe you mentioned Ellen Davis. I don't, most, most lay people are not going to know even who she is. Um, but profound Old Testament scholar. I get excited about too is, you know, uh, with my first,

recovering was my first book with Zondervan and they tried to do the end note thing, you know, when, when my first round of editing came and I'm like, and we all know there's no end notes on the new heavens and the new earth. Like footnotes is where it's at. But I also want them to be footnotes, even though she's like, well, we, you know, wanted you to go to a more popular audience. And I'm like, yeah, but I want the popular audience to look down and say, where'd she get that from? And lead them to like better thinkers than me right you know introduce these other um more academic authors i i i hate end notes in my last several books have all been end noted oh but they they did it for me they put them in the

footnotes really yeah yeah because of the the thing is like the the i don't even i think it's true i don't know like like anything that's footnotes just has a more academic flair to it 90 of people reading it aren't gonna look at the footnotes anyway it just looks less inviting one for the 10 percent i yeah it's yeah my my last book had i think 40 pages of end there was like um oh my the book was like 60,000 words and I think I had like 20,000 words in the end note so so maybe I don't know um maybe that's why maybe that's why yeah yeah but my next one I feel like I do want to go back to footnotes because I I just can't I don't I I can't stand it. I can't stand it. I love, I always, if there's footnotes, I will always, my eyes are bouncing up and down.

Me too. And I feel like as a writer, like, one, I want to bring these people into their regular world now and say, oh, here's somebody I haven't heard of. You know, maybe I should, you know, I like what you quoted from that person. But I also want to show that when you write a book it's you're in conversation with all these people right like your work is so connected to all these other people so i think it shows it better on the

footnotes i wonder with the concern recently of fact checking you know we have professional fact checkers and i don't know who's fact checking the fact checkers but i wonder if if that seems i wonder if footnotes will come back as more common with more and more people asking the question well wait where did you get your information from i mean this might be the one healthy by one of the only healthy byproducts of our extreme polarization today as people are like yeah but what study did you cite you know and will this study critique that do you think i mean i wonder more popular just audiences are getting concerned with fact checking i mean i guess i talked to more you know about this thing to people who are readers

and you know more serious readers but um and i guess that would be more of my following on twitter anyway but i remember tweeting when i had this conversation with my editor that oh yay i you know was able to change my editor's mind because we all know that there are no end notes on the new heavens and the new earth. That argument won. And I got so much interaction from that saying like, yes, we hate end notes. Thank you. Thanks for doing us this favor. So of course, that might speak more towards the type of people who follow me anyway i would you know i might do a twitter survey or something i mean it's it's comfortable it's it's a little biased like people that would follow me or you would probably be more on the intellectual

side and and i do understand that publishers have a tough job i mean they they you can't get around the fact that publishers have to pay attention to the market it is consumer driven they have to pay the bills they need to sell books and it's hard to and and as you know as a creator i'm like no i want to pay my own ground i want to do this i want to i want to produce good art and and good work and screw the masses i don't want to use a title that's gonna make everyone hate me. Yeah. But they're like, well,

you still need to sell the book. So, and I, I get that. It's a tough, it's a super tough balance, but yeah. Footnotes.

I'm going to, hmm. Might go back to footnotes. Yeah, do the survey. Yeah. Amy, I've taken you more than enough time.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. So again, just to mention the books again, um, recovering biblical manhood and womanhood is your most recent book, your forthcoming book, which you can preorder now on Amazon. All the links should be in the show notes by now.

Uh, the sexual reformation, Amy, you're awesome. Thank you so much. It was great getting to know you for the first time. I had a really good time. Thanks.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, me too. So we'll have you back on sometime for sure. Wonderful. Sounds good. I'm I'm I'm I'm