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Welcome to a special edition episode of We Are More! Today, we're diving headfirst into the world of questionable commencement speeches, courtesy of Harrison Butker. He gave such a lovely speech that even the Nuns are mad at him! Spoiler alert: we've got thoughts. Get ready for a wild ride of laughs, rants, and reminders that women are capable of so much more.
We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
Welcome to the We Are More podcast. My name is Alyssa.
And my name's Bri. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.
We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His
Word. And apparently that's controversial.
Get comfy.
Hello!
Hello!
Welcome to our very first ever special edition.
Special edition! Read all about it!
I feel like the newsies. Should I break out into song?
Please, please do. As is our tradition.
Do you know any songs from the newsies?
Yeah, I do! But I'll keep them to myself.
Till later.
Till later. I'll probably listen to it in the car later.
So we have decided to do something a little bit different. We wanted to start recording
weekly.
You're welcome.
But based on our work schedules, it's kind of hard to do a full episode every single
week.
Because believe it or not, this is not our full time job.
Yeah, though we do seem very professional.
I think my full time job is just surviving.
That sounds right.
So right now we're posting every other week. So you guys heard episode 7 last week, and
then episode 8 will be coming up next week. And on the in between weeks, we've decided
to do something a little bit different, a little shorter. Yeah. And do like a half hour
episode if we can shut ourselves up.
Let's not give a time limit.
Oh, who knows what it'll be.
In theory.
We're just gonna talk as long as we want.
And then eventually we'll shut up.
But we do have to go to mom's for dinner. So...
Hi, mom.
And dad.
And dad.
They share a house.
They do.
So, but we're going to try and keep this one to more of like current events, I guess.
Yeah, just like our thoughts, nothing like super heavy, I would say.
But we're gonna try and keep it because our other episodes we record a little ahead. So
you're not necessarily hearing them in real time. But we're gonna try and do these a little
bit more in real time so that we can talk about things that are happening right now
in the world.
And right now in the world.
Transition. Has anybody heard of Harrison Butker?
I think perhaps they have at this point.
I don't know if it's like as, you know, how your TikTok algorithm is specific to you.
But it's like, is everybody else hearing about this as much as I am? But I think they are.
I think they are. It's everywhere right now. And to be fair, it's doing the same thing
to me. All of my news articles are about this on Facebook. But it's because I click on them.
Right. Right. It's like the shoes.
Yeah. Oh, I finally caved in about the shoes, everybody.
Here's the thing. Did you talk about that in episode seven or eight? Because otherwise
you'll be confused.
I've been trying to buy these shoes for months.
I think it's been like a week and a half.
I've been like, I won't buy them. I won't buy them. I won't buy them. I don't need them.
I bought them.
Sounds like your process for everything.
Yeah.
And I say that like it's not my process.
If you advertise something to me enough, eventually I'll buy it.
Good. That's a great message. The little AI box are already listening.
Yeah. They're like, that's probably why you get so many spam calls. They're like, well,
if we call her enough, eventually she'll give us her social security number.
All right. And Bri's social security number is...
Anyway, back on topic.
On topic.
The Kansas City Chiefs.
Yes. Because we are now a football channel.
We are athletes ourselves.
Oh, so much.
Honestly, I could be the kicker.
I think you should.
I should.
I think it would go really well for you.
I did get an A in my Frisbee class.
Yes. But what did you get a C in, Brianna?
A C minus in, Alyssa? Was badminton.
You can barely say badminton.
Badminton. Badminton, badminton, badminton.
Still badminton.
No. I was an art major.
Anyway, this is going to be a spazzy one. We're only four minutes in though. We usually
are spazzy until like minute 10.
Yeah, we can cut some of this out.
Well, but why though? We won't.
No, this is a short, snappy episode.
So if you haven't heard what happened, is he the kicker for the Chiefs? Is that what
he is?
He is the kicker.
So he is the Chiefs gave a commencement speech at a Catholic college, correct?
Benedictine, I think is how you say it.
And you've watched the whole speech. I've watched snippets of it and read a lot of stuff
about it, but you watched the whole speech.
I listened to it while I was in the shower.
That's strange.
That's when I had time.
So kind of elaborate on, since you listened to the whole thing.
Now I did listen to it a while ago, so I'm going to have to reach back into the cobwebs
of my brain to remember it all.
But I encourage everybody to go and watch it. It's like 20 something minutes of your
time that you'll never get back.
Essentially he insults everybody he possibly can in the name of God.
Don't you love that?
But one of the key takeaways is the way that he speaks to women.
So one of the lines from his speech is like, now I know all of you women here are excited
about graduating and all the accomplishments that you'll have in your life and all the
promotions that you'll get.
But I think the biggest promotion or your biggest...
I bet you're all most excited for your greatest role, which is wife and mother.
According to a room full of women who have just received the exact same degree as a room
full of men.
Yep. And statistically with higher grades.
I believe he also said something about if you think that your higher calling is a career
or something you've been lied to.
So the quote that I think is the biggest summary of what he says, because it's all garbage,
but he says, I think it is you the women who have had the most diabolical lies told to
you.
Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess
that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will
bring into this world.
No.
I want to point out that he also talks about a lot of other things in this speech.
He insults everyone.
He goes on to talk about his wife and how she had dreams of her own.
But because her higher calling is to be a wife and mother, she did not get to achieve
those dreams.
And if you asked her, she would laugh in your face and say, ha ha ha.
No, this is good.
This is all I ever wanted.
Which okay, let me just point out.
If that is the path that you want to walk down, there's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with it.
Like your dreams can change.
If you originally planned to have some big career and then you had kids and you realized
that you wanted to be a stay at home mom and take care of them, that's fine.
There's nothing wrong with that.
The issue is turning around and telling every other woman on the planet, because this worked
for me, because this is what I decided that I wanted, now it has to be what you want.
Not just because I say so, but because God says so.
I think what's so frustrating too is this is the message all the time to women is, well,
your highest calling is to be a wife and mother.
So because of that, when you get married, your dreams mean nothing.
Put your dreams aside, raise up your husband's dreams, support him fully, support your kids,
and you just, you mean less.
Well everybody else in that scenario gets to chase after their dreams.
The husband gets to do whatever it is that he wants to do.
And you just have to sit there and say, go ahead sweetie, I've got things at home.
Don't worry about it.
You do whatever feels fulfilling to you and I'll sit over here.
Right.
It's just, again for me, makes marriage not sound very fulfilling.
I mean really, I can't blame you in that because if that is really what Christian marriage
is, I mean I feel like we harp on this a lot.
But if that's really what Christian marriage is, forget it.
I want nothing to do with that either.
It's not a good time.
I mean I can't say that for sure.
I've never experienced it, but it doesn't sound like a great time.
So we'll talk about a few of the responses from some of the football players because
quite a few people have now responded to this speech because it was well publicized and
very controversial.
I want to first, so... butker.
First I want to make fun of his name.
It's not a great name guys.
Butker.
So he has now responded.
It took him a good bit to respond, but this is one of the things that he said.
As to be expected, the more I've talked about what I value most, which is my Catholic faith,
the more polarizing I've become.
That's a decision I've consciously made and one I do not regret at all.
Now I was thinking about this.
So it's Sunday, we were in church this morning and I was thinking about this in church.
I want to respond to that and say, because I believe he goes on to say, and I do what
I do to make Jesus proud of me, not to make the world proud of me.
And I want to sit here and say, well, Jesus isn't proud of you.
And there's, you know, I don't want to put words in God's mouth.
But at the same time, so in church today, the pastor was talking about having the power
and authority of Christ.
And that Jesus gives you those things to go against what's in the world that God doesn't
want to be there.
And I sincerely believe that this, this speech, this attitude, this whole male domination
and stupidness is not what God wants in the world.
So God has given us as Christians the power and authority to speak against that.
So I'm going to say with the power and authority of God, that he's full of crap.
I think too, the Bible says the greatest commandment is to love one another and show God's love.
God is not showing God's love in no small way.
You're belittling over 50% of his creation and lying to the other 50%.
Well, I guess lying to everybody, but it's polarizing and rude.
And I think it, they say all publicity is good publicity or whatever, but this is not
good publicity for your faith or for God.
That's just another reason why people don't want to be Christians because they see us
as the traditional 1950s, like patriarchal society and the rest of the world is moving.
They're growing.
They're learning that we should respect everybody.
We're stuck in the past.
Well, and yeah, if you were not someone of faith, if you were someone that had intentionally
left the church and you hear this speech, the first thing I, in my opinion, that would
come to my mind would be, well, that's exactly why I'm not there anymore.
That's exactly why I don't follow God anymore or why I will never follow God.
Because if that's what you think of God, run away.
I mean, that sounds terrible.
And also I want to point out, maybe this is a little not on topic, but think of all the
historical women out there who have made incredible contributions to society.
We were just talking about Marie Curie and Barbara Streisand.
There are countless women through history telling them that, yeah, what you did is fine,
but that's not your greatest calling.
That's insulting.
And let's again, and like I said, we've made this point before, but the women of the Bible,
you don't hear, no one in the Bible is saying women, your greatest calling is to be a wife
and mother.
Well, what about women who can't be mothers?
Right.
Are you telling them that they have no great calling?
I mean, he is, yes.
He absolutely is saying that.
Not only if you don't, if you physically can't have kids, but like what if you don't want
to too?
Well, then you, according to him, you're doing something wrong.
You are not fulfilling God's calling on your life.
And that's the issue here is like, I mean, again, you get to have the opinions that you
want to have.
I'm not going to approve of them, but you stick God's name in it and it becomes something
really terrible.
And I think you can, I mean, you see that throughout history, right?
Like anytime you have religious authorities ruling a country, things like that, and they'll
stick God's name on what they want to have happen.
Like well, I want you to do this.
So I'm going to say God told me I am ordained.
Right.
And it becomes extremely manipulative because you call someone's eternity into question.
You call someone's relationship with their creator into question.
Like if I don't believe that my greatest calling is to be a wife and mother, then I'm going
against God and the natural order of things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We would argue to say you are more.
And again, like if you want to be a wife and mother, and that is all you've ever wanted
to be, all the more power to you.
Oh, absolutely.
Follow your bliss.
Yeah.
But saying all women's greatest callings by God is to be a wife and mother, that's, it's
just not true.
Right.
And so we have a really wonderful cousin and she gave a speech.
We do have a lot of great cousins.
We have a really, we have a my big fat Greek wedding style family and we're all super close,
but one of our cousins, she is an incredible speaker and she's, I believe she gave this
speech last weekend and she had us read over it.
And one of the points that she made that I thought was so impactful was that even if
you decide to be a stay at home mom and that is what you want out of life, your greatest
calling still is not to be a wife and mother, it is to share God's love with the world,
to go and make disciples of the world.
That is your greatest calling.
That's everybody's greatest calling.
Exactly.
Not that your spouse and children are not important if you choose to have a spouse and
child, but that even within that, they are not your greatest calling.
God called you to more.
And you can see that throughout the Bible as God calls his apostles to go take his word
further as Deborah spreads God's love and God's, well, I don't know that she spread
God love.
She spread it.
She spread it.
She spread it.
Deborah didn't.
I don't know if love is what I would describe Deborah's.
She spread the rage.
I mean, yeah, a little bit.
But like, and Phoebe and, you know, all of these women of the Bible, that was their greatest
calling.
Some of them were wives and mothers also, also a large calling for them from God, but
not their greatest calling.
Who was Anna?
Anna, Anna, it might've been Anna who was widowed and then just spent her days in the
church.
Yeah.
That was her whole calling is to live in the church.
She spent her life dedicated to Christ.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaking of spending your life dedicated to Christ, the Benedictine monks, not monks,
I'm sorry, nuns, thank you.
They have made a statement about this.
I love a nun.
Okay, so they have kind of denounced his speech, which I think is funny because this was a
Benedictine college.
Yeah.
So the nuns are pissed at him.
Saying pissed does not mean I have to mark this as explicit.
Piss, piss, piss.
There's like a little button when I post like, is this explicit?
And the one time we said boobs like 12 times, I was like, maybe?
I don't think boobs is explicit.
Anyway, this might be.
So they said, instead of promoting unity in our church, our nation, and the world, his
comments seem to have fostered division.
That's good, nuns.
Nice work.
So they were not happy because, and I believe they, I'm gonna try and find it, they go on
to say that they, as a group, do not have a calling as wives and mothers.
Yeah.
They have dedicated their lives to God.
And are you really going to walk into a group of nuns and tell them you're doing something
wrong in God's eyes here as you've dedicated your entire life to God?
They're either going to beat you up or they're going to sing to you.
There's no in between.
I think we've watched them too many times.
We've got to remember that.
We'll save it as that.
So the nuns are pissed.
But I want to talk about what you said about Travis Kelsey's response.
So Travi, if you don't know him, Taylor Swift's boy.
That feels reductive.
Also is on the Kansas City Chiefs and he responded to Harrison's speech.
Speech.
Whatever.
Garbage.
Also, Harrison quoted Taylor Swift in his speech.
Yes.
Taylor Swift, who's brought so much money and fame to the Kansas City Chiefs and you're
telling her that her grade is going.
If you could just give up everything you're doing right now, Taylor, and go be a wife
and mom, give up all of your dreams and let him have his dreams, I think that would be
good.
I know that you're probably excited doing what you're doing, but.
But that's not what God wanted for you.
So just quit now.
That's enough bedazzles.
And she is such a strong feminist.
So to use her words in that, I'm a little surprised we haven't heard more from her.
Or she just doesn't want to give him the time of day.
That's very possible.
He has gotten a lot of press out of this.
And frankly, so this is a slight side note as we get to 23 minutes.
I think all of this was very planned out on his part because you look at his quote from
Taylor Swift, like why would you do that?
What a choice.
This girl goes to all of your games.
Is that really the enemy you want to make?
He in my mind wanted as much press as humanly possible because Travis Kelsey has gotten
all of the attention for the last season.
I mean, for goodness sake, in my house, we've actually turned on a football game or two
because my daughter wants to see Taylor Swift at the football game.
Your nine year old daughter is like, let's turn on football.
And every time she hears Travis Kelsey mentioned, it's like, Taylor Swift, why?
For Halloween, she wants to dress up as Taylor Swift and she wants her two year old brother
to dress up as Travis Kelsey.
I'm not even kidding.
But he's gotten all the attention this season, right?
From people that don't watch football at all.
I mean, I know the names of these people.
I know.
Who am I?
I know.
What on earth?
I might know this is totally a theory, totally in Alyssa's own head.
But my thought is that he did this intentionally.
The man's 27 years old, okay?
He's a baby.
He's a baby.
His brain hasn't even fully developed.
He does not.
He's a baby.
He doesn't know what he's talking about in this realm.
It's not like he's sitting there researching this.
He didn't go to seminary.
Don't give me this crap.
He could go to the Catholic college.
He could.
I don't know.
I'm not talking about Christian college.
I'm talking about seminary, where you study the Bible.
And I think he brought Taylor Swift into it.
He brought all of these things into it, knowing full well that he's not going to get fired
because the NFL has a track record of backing people, whether they're abusive or not, whether
they're saying garbage or not.
Because it's all about the game.
Right.
I mean, the NFL has done this countless times.
So he knows he's not going to get fired, but he also knows he's going to get all kinds
of attention for this.
So that's my theory.
Little offshoot there.
Yeah.
But circling back.
Circling back.
Travis essentially said, I don't really agree with him, but he can have the opinions he
wants to have.
And he's a really nice guy.
I'm sure.
To you.
Yeah.
Sure.
Because you're a man.
So I had said, I think a while back, I want to change it up because sexism gets a lot
of excuses.
Well, it's just his beliefs and I don't want to disregard what he believes and blah, blah,
blah.
You can think what you want to think and I can think what I want to think.
Exactly.
But let's put this in a different context for a minute.
Now he put down a lot of other groups, but let's change this particular statement where
he talks about women and pretend it's instead of sexist, racist.
Let's say he's speaking to people of a different race.
And he says, essentially, stay where I've put you.
Follow the rules that I say you should follow.
Your highest calling is what I tell you it is and no higher.
Don't dream bigger than this.
And I'm saying this because I believe God wants that for you too.
This is on behalf of the creator.
You as someone of a different race than me needs to stay under my authority, under my
thumb, do as I tell you, your highest calling is what I tell you it is because God said
so.
And then someone's like, well, you're allowed to have your opinions.
If he had done that, that wouldn't be the conversation.
No, it would be all over the news.
He is a racist.
He is awful.
If you kick him off of the NFL, no one can ever speak his name again.
Throw him in the trash.
But because it's against women, we make all kinds of excuses for it.
Well, it's just his religion.
It's just his faith.
And I can't tell someone what to believe.
We need diversity.
We do need diversity, but we don't need diversity that puts down other people.
That's not the kind of diversity we need.
We need diversity of people, different races, different genders, different all kinds of things.
It really upsets me that the response to this has been, well, you know, it's his faith.
It's his religion.
He's a, I promise he's a really good guy.
This doesn't sound like a good guy to me.
And the thing is, if someone is kind to you, is nice to you, that doesn't mean that behind
closed doors they are that way.
Because to me, this speech says, I keep my wife under my thumb.
She does what I tell her to do.
She follows me wherever I want to go because I have big dreams.
And look at me go.
Right.
I'm barely even gonna say her name because she's not important in this conversation.
The only reason he brought her up at all was to tell women where they should go.
Well, because it seems to add some credibility.
If you can say, well, there is actually a woman that loves this.
Now it'd be a totally different story if she got up there.
I wouldn't agree with her either.
But if she got up there and was like, yes, your greatest calling is to be a wife and
mother, I know this because that's my life.
But instead, he's telling all of the women where they should go, what they should do,
what they should dream about.
Well, and let's pull it completely out of women versus men kind of thing and just say,
nowhere in the Bible does God tell us as Christ followers to tell other Christ followers what
he's telling them to do.
Right.
Because I am not your intermediary.
You can talk to God and figure out what God wants from you.
And you should think if you think that I am a good Christian, you should assume that I
can also talk to God and figure out what he wants me to do.
Not that you need to tell me what God, like that's, that's just clunky.
I also think, I don't know if this is a fully formed thought or not, but in a church service
one time they were talking about if you really believe that something like another Christ
follower is doing is wrong, you're not just supposed to walk up to them and say what you're
doing is wrong in the name of God.
You're supposed to create a bond and a relationship with that person.
And then when God tells you that it's right, then you might be able to gently bring it
up to that person.
But you're not just supposed to walk up to them, slap them in the face and say, see you
by what you're doing is wrong.
Or get up on a stage and tell a whole bunch of people that you think what they're doing
is wrong.
Because that is not spreading the love of Jesus.
Well that's simply spreading judgment.
Divide.
Right.
Well, exactly what the nuns said.
It's creating division.
Because now the response from the Christian community has been interesting because you
have the people that are like, oh yeah, he's championing traditional whatever, you know,
a traditional livelihood.
And then you have the people like us sitting here saying, no, he's being super sexist and
terrible and we have no support for anything that he's saying.
And so now you've got division in the church.
Not division that wasn't there at all, but you're simply highlighting it is what's happening.
You're taking something that could have been a discussion between friends and turning it
into a fight.
Right.
And yeah, to some degree on this podcast, like we're starting a little bit of a fight.
But we're doing it, I hope, in such a way that's opening up conversations in families,
for women, in churches, wherever we happen to reach you.
I hope that it can start a conversation.
And I hope that we're providing some of the resources to in a very educated way start
that conversation.
You're slightly more educated than me.
I don't think so.
You're right, I'm brilliant.
But we're both learning as we go.
And I think we said that in the first episode.
We are learning all of this with you.
And the reason that we do it is because things like this have started a fire in us.
All week, Brianna has been talking about like, we need to talk about Harrison Becker.
So finally here we are after church recording about it.
But I think that's why we're here.
That's why we're doing this, because this all has made us super passionate about something.
And I believe that today, right now, sharing this with all of you and talking about this
with all of you is my greatest calling.
Because I think that God has asked this of me.
God has asked me to stop sexism from being a part of the churches that we're in.
And I don't think I can do that 100%.
I don't think Bri can do that 100%.
I can.
We do this together because we hope that it can affect just a couple of people.
Like the song that we sang in church today, Who Am I To Deny What The Lord Can Do?
Because what was the other song that we sang?
I can see that it was very impactful to you.
It was good!
They were all good.
So next week, because now we only have a week between episodes, hopefully we can stick with
this and make sure that we get some mini episodes up for you guys.
So next week is going to be part two of our submission series.
The biggest.
The big-est.
I was like when you were like, dot dot dot, it's submission.
I just wanted to be clear.
Before people thought we were cussing online.
So you will hear about another article.
So the last week we talked about a lot of the main points that get made to say that
submission was before the fall, so before sin entered the world and that it was God's
perfect plan for humanity.
And I hope you listened to that one.
If you didn't, definitely bounce back and listen to it.
It was great.
We had a lot of fun.
We had a lot of rage.
We had a lot of rage.
We need to work on that.
It's fine.
It's female rage.
The musical.
Right!
We're going to have to stop saying that once she copyrights it.
I feel like that is definitely, if you've ever driven in a car with me, that is female
rage the musical.
Because not only am I raging, but also the music's on.
And sometimes it's Taylor Swift.
Yeah.
A lot of the times.
So next week we're going to talk about another article and she goes into the passage in Ephesians
that talks about submission.
And she breaks it down and talks about... she doesn't sing.
She breaks it down.
No, she doesn't.
And talks about what it really means.
She breaks the Greek words out and things like that.
So we'll talk through that.
And that one's also really fun.
I'm super excited for that one.
Shout out to all the really educated, wonderful women out there who are...
I think they're making waves in this space.
Yeah.
And maybe that's us too.
Good for us.
Yeah, yes.
So definitely tune in next week.
If you haven't, follow us on our social media.
We're on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, all the places.
I think Bree has been filming some TikToks as I've been doing this, but I'm not sure.
I did.
Okay, good.
I have a pretty nice picture of myself.
I look good today.
Okay, guys.
We'll see you next week.