Theology in the Raw - What Happens When You Say Women Should Have Agency and Influence in the Church: Aimee Byrd

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Aimee Byrd is an author and speaker, troublemaker, and a semi-empty nester going back to school. And she’s recently become an aspiring bartender. Aimee is the author of several books including Why Can’t We Be Friends? Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and the recently released: Saving Face: Finding My Self, God, and One Another Outside a Defaced Church. Join the Theology in the Raw community to listen to my "extra innings" conversation with Aimee about when you should leave a church.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and a Raw. Are you ready for an extra raw episode? My guest today is Amy Bird, who is an author speaker, troublemaker, semi-empty nester going back to school, and she's recently become an aspiring bartender. Amy is the author of several books, including Why Can't We Be Friends, recovering from biblical manhood and womanhood, and the recently released Saving Face, Finding Myself, God, and one another outside a defaced church. Really enjoyed this conversation. with Amy. We get raw and real about our experience with the church. And Amy tells a pretty, I guess, brutal story about her experience with her own church. So I think you will enjoy this

challenging episode. Please welcome back to the show, the one and only, Amy Bird. You have had a, if I can say, a complex journey with the evangelical church from what I can tell from a distance. Let's just start. Why don't you describe your upbringing? Were you raising a church? What kind of church was that? I was. And I was also like the product of a teenage pregnancy.

My parents were like 17 and 19 when they had me. My mom was a P.K. A pastor's kid of a very fundamentalist, independent Baptist church. You know, she wasn't allowed to wear blue jeans. So my parents landed in a Southern Baptist church. I was raised in that Southern Baptist church. I would say it was a more liberal Southern Baptist church than like how we see the SPC today. But yet it was still, you know, very conservative.

Liberal like they allowed you to wear jeans or liberal like they were denying the Trinity or something? Yeah, no, not, yeah, not theologically liberal like denying the Trinity or anything. But yeah, there probably were like I learned later that my pastor, I don't. think believed in the ineriancy of Scripture. So that was interesting. So yeah, theologically a little bit too. Kind of a stuffy congregation though. And we were just like Sunday churchgoers. We weren't super connected. My parents divorced when I was 15 and that just kind of rocked my world. I have two siblings, two younger siblings and thought we had a fabulous family going on. So that was pretty heartbreaking. And we took some time away from the church

then. The church was not there for us in any kind of way. And I think my dad saw a lot of disappointment in that and disillusionment with that. Then when I went back to college, or not back to college, when I went to college, I don't know. Like I was out partying with my friends, Preston. And it just hit me. I was like, what am I doing? Like I'm saying, you know, I knew what to say to the campus crusade people in front of the dining hall, you know, when they asked me, you know, the formula. I knew what to say. And then keep walking and, you know, feel good about that. And I thought, you know, when I'm a real adult, I'm going to, you know, find a church and get back into this whole Christian life thing.

But it really hit me that night that I'm living some different lives than what I'm called to be. And so that's when I realized, too, I don't know very much. I don't know very much about God. I had a good moral base, a Christian morality. but I didn't know him. And so that's when I started to develop, I think, a theological vigor and started taking myself to church and Preston up and stumbling ever since, trying to really connect in a church. But, you know, I'm really, as a woman, too, I think, with that theological vigor, found it very lonely.

And I ended up in Presbyterianism. My husband was Roman Catholic. He was raised Roman Catholic. And we're like, okay, well, what are we? And what attracted me to the Presbyterian denomination was this emphasis on education because I had that theological vigor. And I thought, well, maybe it's because we weren't taught a lot of theology. Maybe that's what, like, messed with my parents' marriage, you know, like not really having a solid foundation.

Even though they were both still Christians, you know, but I thought maybe that's what we need better to get closer to God, just to actually know who this God is that we're worshipping. And that became very important to me. But then as a woman in a Presbyterian denomination, who gained some influence as a writer and a speaker, I found myself really getting in trouble, getting into trouble talking about these issues. Wait, how old were you when you started writing? Let's see. I was probably in my early 30s, late 20s.

Okay. Yeah. Oh, so it's been a while, okay. Yeah, I've published my first book in 2013. Oh, okay. What number of book was recovering from biblical manhood to women, because I think that's your best-selling book, right? Yeah, that was number four, I think.

Oh, okay. Four or five. Yeah. So that one, I think before I published recovering, I was publishing with P&R, which is a very Presbyterian and Reform publisher. And I would say, like, my books are kind of of like a Bill Dongs-Roman of my spiritual life. And, you know, each one kind of addresses

another question, another layer of the onion as I was trying to live into these questions that I was having in the church. Why are women side-armed? Why is it so hard for me to get into the conversation, you know, and the creativity and the livelihood, theological conversation in church? Why is it when women, like, when I wrote housewife theologian, my first book, That's what it is about. Like theology is important for women too, guys. Like, and the Presbyterians were like, yeah, theology is important for women. This is fabulous.

And let's start asking her to speak to all the women's conferences, you know. And I then wrote into, after talking to so many women, why are the women's resources so horrible? Like, why are they full of actual theological error? And what are they telling us to do here? and why is the church satisfied with this? And I wrote no little women for that. Yeah, this is great. Amy's speaking into theological error for women, you know?

It was all fine and good until I started talking about like women's agency just as disciples in the church. But like I even found myself writing a book, Preston, I wrote a book about friendship between the sexes because as I'm traveling, as I'm, you know, becoming more intermixed and doing, you know, talks. at seminaries and universities and it's co-ed, I'm finding I'm being treated very oddly, very oddly as a woman, almost like men were afraid to just be normal. And I started hearing from many women in the academy that were struggling with us as well and in like ministry leadership positions. And I got to the point where I was actually at a dinner with people I worked with, men and women, But at the time, you know, my kids were school age.

My husband was home watching the kids when I was doing this event. And some of them had their spouses with them at the dinner. And I was in Philadelphia downtown. I had to park in a sketchy alley, you know, to get to this restaurant. It's raining in night when we're all leaving. And I walk out the back door, because it was the front and the back door, with two male friends. And neither of them. gave me a ride to my car in the rain at night two you know three blocks down the road down

sketchy alleys and it wasn't because they were afraid something was going to happen to them you know sexually temptation it was appearances it's all about appearances and so i thought what is being sacrificed here my dignity and my safety and your safety for for your appearance and that's when i decided to write why can't we be friends and did a you know a whole theological treaty and like just brother and sisterhood in the church and that theology. And, you know, that's what Paul referred to us the most as the church, brothers and sisters. And what did that mean, you know, to ancient Near Eastern culture? What did that mean to Roman culture? How did they receive that metaphor, that name, that status in Christ? You know, my husband's a school

teacher. So he works in the secular world with a lot of women. Like, this was never a problem for him. But here I am as a woman in the church, really having to write a book to explain right, it's okay to treat me with dignity. How does that make you feel when guys, when you, when you can feel the kind of like distance or just that suspicion or like jumping out of elevators I've heard a lot of women are like, I'll get in the elevator and I like gets out. or, you know, like, what does that do to you as a person? It feels dehumanizing, you know? It makes you feel like a threat.

It makes you feel gross. But it definitely doesn't make you feel like this person is safe to be with because that also has shown me like they can't look at me holistically as a whole human being. I mean, I could imagine if the, if the unspoken, sometimes spoken reason is temptation, that says something about how they view you, but also how they view themselves, right? Is that what you're saying? Like, if they're lacking the ability to move above,

like, sure, we all have temptation. You know, I've been married for 28 years. I've never cheated on my husband, you know. It's not that I've never been tempted, you know, I've been tempted that somebody was attractive, but it's that, you know, immaturity, you move past that because of your values and your commitments

and your decency, you know? So I just feel like there's a lacking of maturity there to be able to move past those kind of things. I'm trying to think of the other side because I grew up in a very similar environment. In fact, one of the few things I remember about seminary, other than Greek and Hebrew and a few, I remember a lot. But there's one specific article we read about it was like a pastoral theology class. And it's like, what do you do when you're a guest preacher at church? and it's raining outside and you pull up in your car and you show up a little early, people are just about to arrive, you're right out front, and there's a woman standing in

the rain. What do you do? How in the world is that a question? Well, the answer, I love to, okay, so the response was a little creative. You know, it kind of go through the different scenarios like, gosh, if you pull her into the car with you, and then you're going to get out with this woman. and people are going to see you, all these things, okay? But they said, you get out of the car and you stand in the rain and let her sit in your car. I still think that's a mess-up message unless she doesn't feel safe either. But, I mean, I just know, like, I know what my husband would do, and I'm proud of him for that, you know?

Yeah. He doesn't have to think about that stuff. And you would say the perception. So, yeah, okay, guest preacher comes out with somebody who's not his wife. And would you say, like, who cares? It's obviously pouring down raining. You know what I mean? We can see that.

We're decent human beings, hopefully, and think, oh, good for you for letting her be in your car dry. Yeah. You know, that scenario was the exact same as what happened to me, you know, in the rain at night, you know, adding a safety element to it. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so another thing I often hear, you know, you look at the widespread problem of, you know, men and leadership, failing, having affairs, yada, yada, and they would all, a lot of people would trace it back to, well, yeah, you start spending a lot of alone time with your secretary. You started putting yourself in situations where emotional bonds were being formed. What would you say to that? Is there any legitimacy to that? There's definitely emotional boundaries that we need to think about and physical ones as well. I don't think it's a blanket statement to treat all women or to treat all men. But I do believe that we need to know ourselves.

We need to be in check with ourselves. We also need to be able to read other people, you know, who is safe, who is honoring of our marriage and our indignity and all those things. So I think it's a matter of developing actual personal maturity, spiritual maturity, and emotional maturity in ourselves, trusting our gut instincts about things like if you're finding yourself longing to be with somebody more than somebody else, you know, that could be inappropriate, then why is that? You know, work on that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So say, well, let's, let's, let's make it not about you. Yeah, if somebody was married and they have a coworker or maybe

a ministry partner or whatever, that they just felt deep down like, ah, there's an unhealthy, an unhealthy kind of desire for me to want to be around this. person, you know? And what if they kind of wanted to hold that in check? And for that reason, they did kind of maybe avoid certain situations with that person. That could still come off like the guys that failed to walk you to your, or drive you to your, like, okay, that's a bad situation. Because that, you know, but like, could there be a place there where somebody says, you know, I'm going to avoid certain situations with this particular person. Whereas maybe as somebody else, I'm going to be not maybe so guarded. Is there legitimacy? Right. And if you have that kind of

discernment and maturity with your own self, then you can also treat that person with dignity well. Okay. And you also would be able to give them a ride in the rain without making a pass at them. You know what I mean? Like, if, you know, if it came to it, you wouldn't leave that person stranded in the rain, I hope. Because since you had that gut check in your own self, you're aware of your, you know,

maybe attraction to that person. So you're going to be decent about that. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. So in your, when you, when you started to write and speak and get, you know, you were, you were in complementarian churches, right? Oh, yeah. And you yourself, were you, did you mean complimentary? Okay. I was complimentarian. I was complimentarian. I, I drank all the Kool-Aid. I was in it. It was a fabulous word, you know. And when I first got married, I got married right out of college. I was 21 years old. And my, husband and I both came out of divorced homes, and we were both like the oldest in the

siblingship. So I was reading all this biblical manhood and womanhood stuff because I wanted to do it right. I did find some of it a little wonky. I, you know, I wasn't like, okay, that's weird. But complementarianism, I felt like, okay, this is a way. It sounded like male benevolence, but. Can you expand out? What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, you know, this whole male leadership thing was presented as very benevolent, as in he is ministering to his family and for the sacrificing his own self for the good of his family, you know, putting his wife before him kind of thing. Yeah.

And that's what I thought at first, which sounded to me to be like, okay, well, that's what leadership does. Well, I mean, the best complementarian theological argument would say, just that as well, right? Ephesians 5 and other passages, like, it's not that he's like striving for power leadership as he's giving up of himself. Is that? Yeah, I mean, like, if they would take a Bible verse and say something, maybe, but I would say theological arguments they were making weren't that way, you know, when you're looking at internal, functional subordination of the sun, besides that the horrible, trinitarian error there, they're using that to

then say that women, you know, it became very much about women's subordination. Okay. Not actual benevolent leadership. And even a term, so I don't know if you know, but I just finished writing a book on women and leadership. Yes, I'll tell you offline. It's a big mystery where you land. I will tell you offline.

I will. Okay. So these issues are very fresh in my mind. And I try to do my absolute best, best represent. the best case for each side in every passage. I'm not, you know, I even had to go back to my manuscript and say, you know what, this quote from this person, that's not actually the bad. That's a, that's kind of a straw man or it's like a really terrible argument

that other egalitarians or complementarians will make better. So let's pick the best of the best. Anyway, the term, even the best complementarian reading wouldn't you, shouldn't even use the term subordination because that implies male agency and enforcing. female submissomis, which Hupato, as you know, and all the submission wives submit to your husband, it's all a voluntary act on the ascribing agency to the woman. It's never the man ever biblically, like subordinating the woman. So even that term, it may describe how certain complementarian churches function, but it's not a good representation of the best theological arguments

for a complementarian view. Would you? Yeah, you know, it's hard for me now. on the other end of writing, recovering, to have good faith readings, honestly, because I came from having the good faith reading thinking I could critically write into that and offer something maybe a little more rich to look at. And even if we don't end up in the same theological camp, I was hoping that there would be greater appreciation

and more of a spectrum, of where we would be in there, you know? But it wasn't just like at first I thought, okay, it's the fringe people who think this way, you know, the women's subordination, you know, the men are supposed to have the agency in that, like you're saying. And then, you know, there was a group of over 1,100 members who were coming after me for writing about women's agency as disciples, not in leadership. As disciples? Yeah, I mean, recovering from biblical manhood and womanhood is all about discipleship and spiritual formation, what a disciple can do. It's not even about women in leadership.

It's not tackling that. No. So the vitriol that came from me wasn't in the form of theological critique. It was in the form of character assassination in the worst ways, right? Like, I'm being called the Great Whore of Babylon for writing this book, and why doesn't she shut up and make me a sandwich? And these are pastors. in my own denomination.

What denomination is that? It was in the OPC and there were also PCA pastors and in some Anglican even and Southern Baptist in this group. So then I thought, still, I thought these are French, right? Like, this is the worst of the worst, but why are they in leadership? What's happening here? They're calling ahead of my speaking engagements warning, you know, the leaders of where I'm going. Beware, guard your families and your churches from this dangerous woman, you know? and that's what I'm driving into or flying into.

It's me in a very vulnerable position. The two-year process of trying to confront that using proper church order revealed to me that this isn't fringe, that this is completely okay. This is a deep down part of the system. And they do it because they can and they can because other people who are quiet and maybe talking about more benevolent. end of it are actually okay with them doing that. There's got to be a reason for that. One of my favorite memories was going deep sea fishing in Alaska with my son a few years ago. Now I got super sick on the boat, but we brought home like 20 pounds of fish, and it was amazing.

Unfortunately, I can't pop up to Alaska every few weeks to bring home fish, which is why I was thrilled to discover Wild Alaskan Company, the best way to get wild-alaskan company, the best way to get wild caught perfectly portioned, nutrient-dense seafood delivered directly to your door. Now, I love seafood. It tastes amazing. It's high in protein. But it has to be wild caught, not farmed. And if your seafood is pumped full of antibiotics and other additives, it's not actually healthy. The fish from Wild Alaskan Company is 100% wild caught, never farmed. And the fish is frozen off the boat to lock in taste, texture, and nutrients like omega-3s. And there are no antibiotics, GMOs, or other additives. Just real fish that's delivered straight to your door. I just got my first box

of fish the day and we cooked it right up. A little lemon, butter, salt and pepper, a sprig of rosemary. It was absolutely amazing. If you're not completely satisfied with your first box, Wild Alaskan company will give you a full refund. No questions asked, no risk, just high quality seafood. Not all fish are the same. Get seafood you can trust. Go to wildalaskan.com forward slash TITR for $35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. That's Alaskan.com forward slash TITR for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan company for sponsoring this episode. I mean, fringe. It depends on what I hope it's fridge. I guess someone could say, well, it depends on your sample base. Like there's lots of denominations

that would never, ever tolerate that kind of. of thing, but they're going to be more moderate, evangelical, broadly evangelical, not, you know, far right. But I even, like, I know lots of PCA people. Again, I don't know, I don't know the PCA. I know, I've heard some pretty horrific things said by PCA passages, but I also know some amazingly gracious. It would never say or tolerate or even think the vitriol you, you've received. But you, so you would say it's, you could say that about the OPC as well. Yeah. I don't know too much about they're just like all I know is they're like to the right of the PCA right basically yeah I mean you could say that

there's not very much difference and yeah it just but when you see what is tolerated who pays the price and why is that okay yeah how did that make you feel what how did you would that do to your soul going through that and are you still going through it or is it kind is that is I mean I'm not like going through there things happen um But it was devastating. It was so disillusioning. You know, I'm talking to you and using like reason and tough skin is what I think I'd have. But my body was, you know, reacting from trauma.

You know, I was feeling sick on my way to church. You know, one of my elders was in that group. So I had to deal with this on a very personal level in a small church of 175 people. I thought we were friends I was close to his wife Our whole church was being Turned inside out over it So this wasn't just like

A bunch of people on Twitter No I lost my job on the podcast I was doing Which is fine But it was just like one after another after another showing me over and over again That this is okay Actually we're going to follow with what the donors say and the donors are upset with your book or actually answer these nine questions and if you answer

these nine questions then we'll consider keeping you on what have you ever asked anybody to do that before you know what in the world read the book if tell me if you disagree with it write a review whatever you know nine questions you know some of them being about natural law and female submission and what are my thoughts on that that was question number one um questions about what my views are on women's submission and marriage. I haven't even written about that, but interesting, you asked me that question. I mean, just odd. I actually painstakingly wrote that book within the bounds of the confessions of the OPC. And they even had a statement on women in ministry written in 1988, you know, I wrote within the bounds of all that. So you didn't say

anything that went against that 88 statement? Yeah. So, are you still part of the OPC? No. Just in case, so I mean, you were, if you can say personally, like, were you personally still complimentarian when you wrote the book, even though you didn't deal with it? Yeah. I was personally, when I wrote the book, I was still complementarian.

I was definitely on a more liberal side of that, you know, a border walker, you could say, you know, as they call it. And I resourced a lot of egalitarian writers in the book. And I resourced a lot of Roman Catholic writers in the book. That seemed to be not a problem, but the egalitarians were a problem that I would use any of their work. But yeah, so much was revealed about what's really behind it is what I'm saying. Like, I think that benevolence stuff might bring people in. But when it came down to the leadership and what's up, like none of the,

those pastors were punished. None of them lost their positions. None of them were made to apologize for horrible character assassination that was completely untrue. I mean, my children at the time were teenagers and, you know, in the early 20s and seeing on Twitter their mother being called the Great Whore of Babylon and Jezebel and memes being made about me as like a transgender person and then picking apart my looks and saying she looks brute in this video. Like her femininity is withdrawn. And I mean, just it was a barrage that was all day and all night. So they couldn't.

What does that show them about benevolent male leadership? They couldn't address or critique your ex-ed-ed-Jus. Barking, birds, a barking dog. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. They were calling for people. Like, they put my pastor's picture in our church website and call. her pastor and make him stop her, you know, kind of, they wanted my elders to press charges against

me for like five untrue things. And your, your pastor didn't like shut that down saying this is sin, this is unchristian, this needs to stop. I mean, they were like trying to fight for me within the proper church order of the book of church order in the Presbyterian church, the OPC. But what that also revealed to me was the complete ineptitude of the book of church order. It is made to, protect male power. And also, I mean, I went to a regional presbytery meeting where I was openly mocked by the person in charge of the meeting. And he made mistrue, untrue statements about my book. He referred to me as that lady, like he didn't even say my name. And he made jokes about me. And people, elders and pastors in my region were laughing. And nobody stood up to say

it was out of order, and I was unable to speak. So dark. That is extremely dark. Yeah. What, so when did that start to, well, yeah, tell us the next stage in your story then. So you. Yeah. So I went through two years of, I really thought, because there were a lot, there were a lot of

older, more mature OPC ministers who were trying, who cared about my case. And we're really trying to get something done, not only about my case, but to, to, you educate the denomination on spiritual abuse. And that got shot down so quick. So quick. Because that is like liberal to learn about spiritual abuse. It's going to give women way too much power. So I actually was, had a, you know, my church paid for me to have a couple sessions with an expert in spiritual abuse. And he said to me, Amy, why do you feel like you need to be a missionary in your own denomination? Because I was really, you know, trying to make things right. That was so clarifying.

I was like, oh, yeah, like, church isn't supposed to be the mission field. Like, I'm asking, like, if I'm safe in here, which I wasn't. But I should be asking is my family, like, fruitifying in this denomination and in this church, you know? And that was easily answered. So, you know, I wrote about the hope in our scars. You know, I wrote a book on just trying to heal from all of it. But then I also wrote Saving Face, my latest book, that one is more, it accounts for our struggling to find a church, but it also is very memoir-like. It's more like a theological

memoir because I've realized that I'm sending here telling you this story and I could easily say, these are the bad guys, you know, and this was unjust and I'm a victim. But I've really had to do some inner work. What in the world attracted me to this denomination in the first place? How did it take me this long to leave? Why did I try so hard to make something work that wasn't every sign was showing me that I was unwelcome in church? So that book really talks about that kind of work, which I found, you know, when you go through that kind of severe disillusionment from spiritual abuse and, you know, one of the hardest things was just seeing the actual immaturity in leaders that you thought are there to care for your soul. And

they don't even have any emotional maturity themselves. That's terrifying. And it makes you ask, like, is God who I thought he was? Who do I think he is? You know, what do I think he asks of me? What story am I telling myself here about who God is and what he wants for me? And I realized all the striving that I was doing to be the good version of myself, you know, the one that was a good Christian wife who didn't get a divorce, who raised their kids not only to go to church on Sunday morning, but, you know, to be involved, to serve, to, you know, be in the youth culture and all those things, to talk not only about, like, morality and prayer before meals, but to really get into the heart of theology about who God is. Like, these were the good

stars I was giving myself, you know, the striving that I was doing. And it all came crashing down. And I had to realize that I have a lot of figuring out to do now that God isn't exactly who I thought he was. Like, I'd come to believe what was insinuated in my denomination that theological precision brought you closer to God. That, you know, that was sanctification and, you know, that and not committing sexual sin. So I had to ask some different questions then. And one book that really impacted me when I was in my 20s that I went back and in my 40s was C.S. Lewis's novel, Till We Have Faces. And this is like the retelling of Cupid and Psyche. And it's told by Psyche's sister, Orwell. And Orwell throughout the book is,

well, she was the ugly one. And she wore a veil to cover her ugliness. And she rises to leadership. And she's doing that. She's figuring out what her version of goodness is. And she's angry with the gods. She's angry with the gods for her fate as the ugly one and her mother being killed. her sister being taken away by the gods. So she is the one that is good. And so she's been writing her book of complaints to the gods throughout the entire book, entire novel. And at the end of her life, she has this vision.

And she stripped naked, veil off, completely naked, before the gods. And they're like, do you have your complaint? And she's like, yes, I do. And so finally, here's this moment. The gods haven't been answering her all this time. And she gets her journal and it doesn't feel as big as normal. You know, it seems a lot smaller and she opens it up and it seems like she doesn't ever remember it looking like a bunch of scribble like it does now. But, you know, nonetheless, she starts to read and read and read and read and she realizes she's like reading the same thing over and over and over again.

And then finally they interrupt her and say, do you have your answer? And she did. she had her answer and she's like, how can I expect the gods to answer me face to face until I have a face? Because all this time she thought she was some kind of version of goodness and it just was complete disillusion. So I really kind of work with that story in saving face. And another thing that really helped me was the philosopher Emmanuel Levinan. and his whole philosophy of the face and the naked face. And so he talks about the naked face

being the face that you get behind the countenance of another person in an I-Val encounter. And you get behind that mask that they're wearing that we're all wearing, right? And you, it's vulnerable. Like, we don't do this very often. We don't let people get behind that. And we don't do that in our encounter with others

because it's uncomfortable, it's vulnerable, but the other thing that it is, it's a demand to us because their weakness and vulnerability is also an authority. And that authority is from God and it's thou shalt not kill. Because you could liquidate that person in their vulnerability at that moment. And so it's a call for our own goodness. And then that call is really to join God and his goodness to bless you, you know, to say that you are good in your otherness from me. And it gives me a realization of my own otherness. It's like a mirror. It's where we meet Christ, you know, in the wounds of others.

And so I really talk a lot about this benediction that it is good that you are here and how our faces awaken one another and help us actually form our true face. Wow. That's, wow, that's provocative. The subtitle of your book, So Saving Face, Finding Myself, God and One Another, outside of a defaced church. Yeah. Can you open up that last phrase?

What is a de-faced church? Well, by saving face, the church has really lost her face. By trying to appear a certain way and protect the institution of the church, we have lost our true identity in Christ. We have lost our true goodness in our diversity. We look at scripture. And scripture is not all these narratives of shiny, happy people once they met God at all. Not at all.

It's quite the opposite. And so, like, God isn't, doesn't need a PR firm. You know, God isn't trying to paint the best version of, you know, this, God isn't saving face. He doesn't want us to. And I think church is the place that we. we should be able to come as our whole selves. And so often we don't even know what that is.

We need one another spaces to draw that out of ourselves because we're so busy striving and hustling, this version of ourselves that we think we're supposed to be, that we lose sight of, you know, our whole integrated selves, you know, integrating our longings and our emotions and our faith and our knowledge and our behavior and our relationships. You know, that's what finding our face is. It's about integration of these things. And so we come with our stories. They're so buried inside of us. And I think that our stories reveal our secrets. And I think that Jesus hides out in our secrets. And if we come and church is a safe place to come with our stories, then we discover like how they weave with one another into this whole

meta-narrative, the meta-story of the gospel, how Christ is me. meeting us in our faces as we tell our stories. And I just think church can be such a dynamic, transformative community in that way. And so saving face kind of has different meanings. There's that whole idiom of how we are saving face and it's defacing us. But then there's the work that we need to do to truly save our faces, to find our faces. And then there's Jesus Christ who is the saving face. And on that, that great day when Christ returns, and we behold his face, you know, who God is in the face of Jesus Christ, that's going to be like a mirror for us to see our own face, to see ourselves as he sees us. And I just think that is what we're called

to do as brothers and sisters right now in the church. Like we have this benediction. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. And I don't think that that's just for that last day. Or I don't just think it's for like, you know, God to bless me today. I think it's actually a call for us to be that for one another. Like as we're sent out to be the Lord's face shining on one another. And I think in that is where we really encounter resurrection. Have you, the beautiful vision you're painting of what the church should be, have you experienced that post serving as the horror of Babylon? Yeah. Sorry, I should have said that. But yeah, I'm trying to play with. So I'm not saying I'm in a community right now where it is that. You know, we're still struggling. But I have had beautiful glimpses of that. And, you know, not knowing where you are on your side of things.

where I am on my side of things, after a year of visiting different churches, I finally brought myself into a mainline church because I was missing the liturgy in all the non-denominational churches, even the congregational prayer and the benediction, they were all missing. And I wasn't going to be able to bring myself into a patriarchal church again. And so a pastor friend of mine said, well, why don't you try out a mainline church? like you might not agree with everything theologically, but you're going to be able to find Christ in the liturgy.

So we went to a Methodist church and the pastor was a woman and she was on maternity leave. And so Christ was definitely in the liturgy, which was interesting because I was always taught that the Methodists have lost the gospel, you know, and it was saturated with the gospel.

So we decided, let's just kind of feel this out for a while and see what the pastor's like when she comes back. And she took a three-month maternity leave. And this was her second child. She had a toddler as well. And we stroll into church that day that she is back. And I see that she's got her little baby, Wilbur strapped to her chest. And she's talking to a congregant. And I'm like, oh, that's really cute. Like, I wonder when she's going to take the baby off so that she can, like, do her job. And the next thing you know, like, she opens the service with this baby still.

And I'm like, wow, she's brave, you know. And then we get to the part of like the children's talk. And she's like talking about how Jesus wept while little Wilbur starts squirming and weeping. And she just quietly rocks him and keeps on going. And darn if this woman doesn't get behind the pulpit with a baby strapped in her chest and preach a beautiful sermon. And it was so powerful to me because it made me really. even like a lot of the flaws in the egalitarian church as well, which you hear a lot of people say, like, oh, yeah, they'll invite women in, but we have to be like the men, right? Like, do it

like we do it. And here was just something completely different. It was a message of the power of femininity, you know, in that role. And motherhood. And I think it pointed to something about who God is, even, and who, what woman represents as Zion. And, you know, the whole typology there, which I've written a lot about, but you see men who have their wives watch the kids for them why they do that most important thing. And this was something very different. And then, you know, I thought about in history, you know, you've got women doing their jobs with their baby strapped to them, like, you know, even picking cotton in the fields. But this was different from that, too, because it was choice. It was complete choice. And it was so powerful. Another moment,

quickly was, while she was still out, we were, it was a communion Sunday, the first Sunday of the month. And the pastor that day was, you know, called forth the people who were going to serve communion after she instituted, or he, I can't remember that day if it was a year, he instituted the Lord's Supper. And whoever it was, wasn't there. And the mom in front of me looked at her, like, 12-year-old daughter and said, come on, they need somebody. And they got up and serve communion. And I received communion from this mom and the daughter. And the daughter's giving me the bread saying, this is Christ's body given for you. And I 100% believed it and felt just the power of the Holy Spirit there working through her and thought, how dare, you know, I even believe

before that this couldn't happen. You know, it was so powerful. That sounds, wow. First of all, that image of the pastor with the baby strapped to her. Okay. For those of my audience that are complimentarian, like assume for a second that egalitarian, the egalitarian view of scripture is correct. That's a beautiful. Like that, that, that, that's pretty powerful.

I mean, there's so, I just. And I got in the car and we were like, whoa. It was everything. And it didn't distract from the message either. Well, it just made me think there's so many scriptural images where God is described as caring for an infant, like a nursing child cares for her babe, you know, a mother hen gathering her chicks. Paul in First Sessalonians 3, you know, I was gentle among you as, I did some translation disputes, but like a, I think he says like a nursing mother or he uses like a nursing. You know, so that image of a mother or father, you know, caring for an infant captures a part of the face of God, does it not? That to see that displayed front and center in a church gathering, there's something theologically powerful about that.

It was. And just about, I'm so much more focused, too, on the power of the Holy Spirit. you know, particularly in worship, pointing us to Christ and giving us Christ through the faces and hands and feet of our brothers and sisters right there. And so, yeah, like we're not Methodists. We don't, we haven't joined the church. We don't feel that, okay, we want to jump in the Methodist bandwagon now, but I'm unlearning some things and I'm learning some other things. And I'm also feeling like before I needed to be

certain so much about all the fine points of theology. And now God is a lot bigger than that. And I'm so glad that this 49 year old woman is able to unlearn and relearn still. And because that's where wonder and surprise meets us. And the faith very much is full of that. So the older I get, the more I'm trying to pay attention to my health. And since I'm on the go a lot, I'm constantly looking for a healthy protein snack. This is why I was so excited when I came across Mosh bars. You may have heard about Mosh bars on Shark Tank. Mosh bars were founded by Maria Shriver and her son, Patrick Schwarzenegger,

with a simple mission to create a conversation about brain health through food, education, and research. So Mosh joined forces with the world's top scientists and functional nutritionists to go beyond your average protein bar. Each mosh bar is made with ingredients that actually support brain health like Oshuaganda, Lions, Maine, collagen, and omega-3s. Plus, mosh is the first and only food brand boosted with cognizin, which is a premium neutropic that supplies a brain with a patented form of cytokloin. And Mosh bars actually taste great. Okay, so some protein bars that are super healthy, you feel like you got to like choke them down. Not so with Mosh bars. It comes in nine flavors including chocolate chip cookie, hazelnut chocolate chip, and my personal favorite peanut chocolate chip.

Plus, Mosh actually donates a portion of all proceeds from your order to fund gender-based brain health research through the women's Alzheimer's movement. So two-thirds of all Alzheimer's patients are women. So Mosh is working to close the gap between women and men's health research. So if you want to find ways to give back to others and feel your body and brain, mosh bars are the perfect choice for you. Head over to moshlife.com forward slash theology to save 20% off plus free shipping on the best sellers trial pack or the new plant-based trial pack. Okay, so that's 20% off plus free shipping on either the best-sellage trial pack or the plant-based

trial pack at Mosh Life, M-O-S-H-L-I-F-E dot com forward slash theology. Thank you, Mosh, for sponsoring this episode. The Exiles in Babylon Conference is back, April 30th to May 2nd, 206 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Oh, my word, this is going to be an incredible conference. Listen to some of the topics and speakers. We got Shane Claiborne and Dr. Paul Copan. They're going to engage in a dialogical debate about Christians in War. doctors Sandy Richter and Peter Enz are also having a dialogical debate about the question,

is the Bible historically reliable? We're also going to discuss the gospel and immigration with Matthew Sorens and Liliana Reza from World Relief. We're also talking about the gospel and mental health. We're planning, in addition to all this, a pre-conference on AI and the church. So, yeah, you know, we're going to tackle all the easy topics. Street Hems is going to be there again. Evan Wickham and Jason and Tanika Wyatt will leave. lead us in worship. We're going to have breakout sessions, after parties, and of course, a special gathering for the theology in the raw community. Check it out at theology in the raw.com. And we also have early bird registrations, okay, where you can get a discount on your ticket.

Okay, that's theology and raw.com. I cannot wait for this conference, and I hope to see you there. So it's a UMC church. It's not FMC, right? Okay. No, it's UNC. Yeah. And how long have you been there? there a couple years? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. Have you, do you still hear from your OPC friends?

Not really. That whole storm is it pretty much gone now? Until you write part two of recovering from biblical men. That title has never been so true. You know, the recovering, I thought, too, after going through all that spiritual abuse that, man, it's probably going to take me a year to really recover from this trauma. Yeah. And, I mean, I'm telling you, like, Saving Face certainly is working through that still.

And now I've realized, like, oh, no, that messes you up. And you have to do a lot of work. And I'm happy to be doing the work because I've come to some, you know, much more beautiful realizations, much more rich theology, I believe. But I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Like, that's horrible. Yeah. Have you, it sounds like, I mean, your latest book, Saving Face, it sounds like, I mean, your latest book, saving face, It sounds like the writing process and the whole publication process has been a means of healing, would you say?

Yeah. I mean, yeah. What are the ingredients for, I mean, for people that have been through spiritual abuse, maybe a different kind, but a similar thing. Maybe they're just have a, maybe it's just been really burned, hurt by the church. What does the path of healing look like? Yeah. The path of healing is extremely messy to use it for, over, you know, where it's gritty.

And I think it needs to be raw in that way because I'm one of those like good people as the oldest sibling and I'm always trying to present that way, you know? And I had to turn inward on a lot of that. It looked like for me moving from, you know, all these doctrinal statements to diving in the song of songs, you know, metaphor, allegory, being truly ministered to in that allegory of Christ and his people and, you know, the individual soul of every believer and even seeing how that stirred my own longings for him. And the woman who represents us in the song, it's the dominant voice. She opens and closes the song. She is passionate and immodest even

in asking for what she wants. She names her abuse. And so I can talk like this to God. You know, he invites us to do that. And even those words, you know, where he's calling her out of the clefts of the rock, and he says, let me see your face. Let me hear your voice because your face is lovely and your voice is sweet. You know, that really ministered to me, but it's also evangelical. He wants us to share what we see when we look at Christ. You know, I think about in Exodus, Moses asks to see God's face and he can't. He can see his back. And where does God hide him in the cleft of the rock?

And here we have Jesus, the incarnate Christ, calling this woman out from the cleft of the rock saying, let me see your face. And you seeing me beholding you. To me, that's so powerful. I learned so much about like the typology. of man and woman in that whole allegory. There's some really rich readings on it, you know. Not so much, there's some contemporary ones that are. But yeah, so that's where scripture really ministered to me.

I needed good friendships where I could just be real. And honestly, like, I started cussing. I was just like, I'm tired of, like, looking so good all the time, you know? Like, I just need to. figure this out, but I felt like I need friends who stay in the room. And I want to be that kind of friend to other people. That power of witness is so important. And so, you know, we've opened up about, you know, so much more in our friendships now. And they've grown exponentially because of that. Hiking is another thing I did, you know, especially with friends. To me, that's

extremely therapeutic. Going to therapy, another one. And, you know, I'm blessed to have a husband who is wonderful. You know, like, he's not, he never bought into all this stuff to begin with. He was raised by a single mother. So all this complementarian stuff, like he raised Roman Catholic by a single mother. He didn't buy into a lot of it to begin with. So that was helpful. When did you officially change from being kind of a soft complementarian to be being egalitarian? I mean, was it through all this? The day, you know, and it's like the word egalitarian still rubs me wrong a little bit, you know, because of all that is associated with that as well.

But I do think even when I went to that church with the woman pastor, it was a little scary at first. Like, mainly because I knew that people would say, I told you, I told you so, you know, and I had to shut out all those voices and do what I thought was right and my husband. And so that was maybe the beginning, but at the same time, over time, it's worked in with me. Like, I have complementarian friends, you know, and all of that. I'm still in both worlds. Yeah. But in my own mind, To me, it's almost like, why do we have to defend this still? You know, like, especially after studying the history and, you know, the early church and so many, you know, there's so many good works coming out now that are available to us, that it's helped to affirm that.

But I didn't have, like, one single moment, I don't think. Yeah, but my confidence has built a lot more. in that. I would imagine it's inevitable that experience and exegesis play off of each other for every human being. That's just how interpretation works. It is. I would be curious and it's probably impossible to say, I'm sure you couldn't even really dissect that, I don't think, but how much of your experience of, I would say that a pretty dark version of Complementarianism interacted with your reading of the text? Absolutely did.

I mean, I, yeah, have looked at the same text completely, you know, able to see in a different way now. And I don't think because I'm wax nose bending the meaning. And I also don't think there's just one meaning. So I think we can get it at different angles. Yes. And you look at that in the narratives of scripture. And scripture is mainly made up of narratives. experience does change how we see God.

He uses our lives to teach us, you know, with his word and with his people. And also we interpret scripture as a community, not just in our local church, which is very important, but with the community of professing Christians, you know, for the last couple thousand years. So I think it's important to read widely in that way. And I would say we read very narrowly in the open. PC. And so I now encourage, you know, be a complementarian, feel strongly about it, have your theological argument, but read widely so that you understand that maybe the caricature of egalitarianism isn't what you've been taught that it was or the motives, you know,

like so many motives have been assigned to me. Yeah, experience of how I look at the complementarian church, it's not just my own story. You know, since I was writing and documenting what was happening at these public meetings, so many people have come forward, you know, to me even telling me to please keep writing. It's helping me name what's happened to me. And then they're sharing their stories and it's been healing for me. I just think, oh, wow, wow. Like, how do I hold all these stories now? And the part I just don't understand is that if complementarianism is real, where is the benevolence then? You know, why are there so many of these stories?

And even like, even like a lot of leaders who thought it was horrible what was happening to me, let me tell you how many private messages I got. Keep on going, Amy. Interesting. While you stay silent and I keep paying the price. There's, I mean, there's, yeah, there's no excuse for that. I will say it. Okay, somebody could say, well, yeah, you're a man.

Of course, you're blind, all this stuff. Maybe that's totally that very well could be true. But I do feel like I have, you know, like you, speaking to wide diversity of churches, right, 20 different denominations, big churches, all different denominations, commonitarian, egalitarian. And I have experienced, I would say, beautiful complementarian churches where women have, okay, the other, your leadership, you know, structure, whatever. But the pastors that maintain that, I mean, if you had a gun to my head, I would say they, they're compelled by an honest reading of scripture. And women have a tremendous amount of influence and agency within a complementary structure. I know some people think that it can't exist, doesn't exist, it's impossible or whatever. I just, I don't know.

Like, I feel like I've seen it. in many churches. Now, I don't swim in OPC circuit. They wouldn't have me in. I don't, you know, I think I've spoken up maybe like one Southern Baptist church. And, but even some Southern, even like an,

I've been at two different acts 29 churches, which is, you know, very complementarian. And you just, it's almost like, you wouldn't even think it was any complimentary in church. And, you know, they're all male pastors,

but there's so much. agency that women had in the church influence, talking to the leaders, talking to the women, like the leaders had mad, mad respect for an honor of the women in the church, you know? There's two in particular, I don't want to name them because, I mean, I could get a disgruntled church members says, no, it was a terrible church. I was there, you know, so I don't, you know, and my experience is limited, okay, so I, and again, I'm a man, so maybe I'm reading it through a certain lens, but I just, I don't know. I, I want to hope that your experience is not mainstream. I won't say that every complementarian church I've been in has been some terrible thing, you know.

And I know of a Southern Baptist church near me, like within a half an hour drive with a fabulous pastor, I healed. Our family healed in a Southern Baptist church that is very small, that was a church plant when we first got married that we were going to, you know, I came there and I knew the pastor and his wife very well, and I was like, we're not going to stay here. We're not going to join this church because what's going on in the Southern Baptist Convention right now, like I can't stand behind at all. But I felt safe to be there for a while to just listen to the word. It was a very small church.

And yeah, he hasn't caught up in any of that hierarchy stuff. And same with this other church. that pastor of the church I was saying about half hour from here has ministered to me as a pastor, like in a friend, you know, in ways my own pastors haven't. You know, we're good friends with him and his wife. And so I feel like that church, I was actually asked to preach a sermon. It's a complementarian church. Yeah.

It was the first time I really had to consider where I stand on all that, you know. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it's interesting that that's a complementarian church. and yet women can even deliver a sermon. That does seem to, I think it's a growing number of commentarian churches that are going more soft commentarian where they still have male elders or whatever, but women teaching and preaching underneath the authority of the elders.

I've got some pretty strong thoughts about that, which again, I can discuss to you discuss with the offline, but do you have time for a few more, do you have a few more minutes? Okay, I want to kind of change directions here. And this is actually, this portion is going to be part of what we call extra innings. My question is, it's a question I get a lot from people. Because I do seem to attract people that have had not the best church experience. And I get the question, I always get to ask, when if and when do I leave a church just recently, a couple days ago. If you would like to listen to our extra innings conversation, then head over to

patreon.com forward slash theology in the Ra to become a member of the Theology in rock community and get access to all the extra endings conversations and other premium content. This show is part of the Converge podcast network. Are you looking for news with a faith-based perspective? Then tune in to The Pour Over today, the podcast that delivers the world's biggest news stories through a lens of faith every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On The Poor Over today, you'll hear the same news and headlines as the major outlets, but interpreted in the context of God's sovereignty. I absolutely love that.

You can stay grounded in the midst. of chaos with faith forward, engaging summaries that connect current events with eternal perspective. Just search the pour over, okay? Spelled P-O-U-R, like the coffee, on your favorite podcast platform or find the direct link in our show notes.