To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. 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. Bonjour.

Oh, we're we're multinational now. Claude. Hello, Claude. I

could keep going if you want.

I would Brie took so many years of French in high school and college, and she knows about four key phrases. And one of them is I'm a chicken.

So

if we ever make it to France, if we, like, tour in France someday, you're gonna offend all of them.

I know how to say like, I'm a chicken. I like cheese a lot. Where's the bathroom? I need the library. I don't know.

At least two of those are mildly useful.

Yeah. Everybody needs to know where the library is.

That's the one I was talking

about. Primarily,

if we go to France, I need the cheese. That's what I want in life. So maybe you'll be helpful. Our poor French listeners, I'm so sorry.

Which I think is I'm sorry. I'm not a 100% sure. We went and visited our woman yesterday. Our woman? Our woman.

Well, I guess there's no specific one woman at the cheese lady. No. We have we have our ladies

at the cheese lady. We did we did a tour of our favorite spots yesterday.

Mhmm.

We started at Starbucks because obviously. Mhmm. And then we went to a fantastic chocolate store. And then we went to the cheese lady, and that rounded out our day. And it was a great day.

I think everybody should live that way. We're just surprisingly spazzy. I was thinking about this the other day. It maybe you know this when you're with your best friend or something like that, you know, And you just become a whole different sort of person with very few inhibitions, and you're just like, alright, let's live life on the edge. Yes.

Two days ago, did you guys see the land before time when you were children? With tree stars. All the little dinosaurs. There were, like, 50 of them. Okay?

Mhmm. But the first one was in the movie theater for some unknown reason. Sometimes they just do, like, older movies, and they just play them for fun.

And we looked and I was like, oh, hey. Tickets are $3. We should go. That'd be fun. And then we realized that it was the tiny theater, like the one that you can rent out for parties and stuff.

So it's like 18 seats, something like And tickets were $3. And I said, should we buy them all? And I no one no one that I know would do something like that. But I voice something insane. And then she says, absolutely.

And then we do the insane thing or vice versa. Well, because then we have the whole theater. It actually was great. I have a three year old, and he is not really ready to go to a movie yet without disturbing the general population. And so he was, like, up and down and going down to the front standing by the screen.

But no one could be bothered because it was just us and our parents. So it was great.

We bought every ticket. And we got like a weird amount of satisfaction walking in and seeing on the screen, sold out. Yeah. We did. Because we sold it out.

But, you know, it it didn't cost that much between the two of us. It was fine. Mhmm.

It was a good time. It was a memory. You know? And sometimes you have to do weird stuff to make a memory. I am a firm

believer in the fact that you need to do things day to day or at least week to week to, like, look forward to and to really enjoy your everyday life. Because I think you see so many people that live their lives looking forward to vacation or looking forward to a specific event or something like that and not really enjoying their day to day life. Mhmm. And I think you have to do things to enjoy everyday life. And sometimes it's buying all the seats in a theater, and sometimes it's buying a lot of cheese.

Both good options. If you have a spazzy thing that you do,

please do share it with us. Let us know.

We'd love to know.

And honestly, we'd love to participate.

Hey. Yeah, we would. We love any sort of adventure. We can

make going to Costco an adventure. You know, just like We can. We're good at that. Every day make your everyday life magical.

Find little things. Little things and big things and medium things. And I don't know. We all need something to look forward to in the way the world is today. Right?

Unfortunately, because the world is full of villains.

Right? I've had such a hard time this week. If you have been paying attention to the news, I know we have a lot of international listeners, so this may not be in your news cycle. But here in The United States, obviously, we've been having a lot of a lot of talk about immigration and a lot of talk about ICE, which is our immigration control group,

I guess. Mhmm.

Kind of kind of law enforcement. I hesitate to call them that, but kind of. And this last week, a woman named Renee Good was killed. She was murdered in Minneapolis by an ICE agent. And it's been all over my feet on everything.

And just I I bounce between emotions. Sometimes sometimes I'm furiously angry, and then other times I'm heartbroken. And then other times I'm scared, and other times I'm sad. And it's just

And sometimes you're numb to it, which is even worse because there's so many bad things happening in this world that you're like, of course this happened. Mhmm. Of course. Yeah.

And it's just it's truly horrific because the man that murdered her did so with impunity. The federal government our federal government has said, oh, well, he's not gonna be charged, and that we're behind him. It's totally fine. They've called her a domestic terrorist. She was just a person.

She was just a person who was driving in the car with her wife and had just dropped off their child at school. And for all of us out there in the world well, I

guess for all of us

out there in The United States, I'm sitting there thinking, what if this happened to me? You know? Because that she was just in her hometown.

She was just like you. Right? Dropping a kid off at school, going about your day to day life. And Alyssa and I were talking about this yesterday. The ICE agents, they're just masked men.

And a masked man and other men were coming towards her car and trying to block her off. And if you or I, Alyssa, were in that situation, I know, like, your gut instinct is to get away. Right. Because I don't know what that man is doing or what he has and why he's coming towards my car with intent and why he's blocking me from going the way I need to go. And I'm sure our dad would tell us the same thing, like, get out of there.

Yeah. And that's all she was trying to do.

That's all she was trying to do, was just get out of there. And he took her life. And it's just not right.

Yeah. And there's videos that show there's the federal government put out some edited videos that try to show her tires actually headed towards him and that being justification for him shooting her. But that is not the case according to most of the filmed videos that people were people were around watching this go on and were filming videos. And you can see that she was trying to get away. She was trying to deescalate.

She said, I have no problem with you, man. I'm gonna go.

And this is what happened. And so we're struggling this week. And what I find especially disgusting is the reaction on Fox News of the conservative people, etcetera, trying to justify her murder Right. By saying she was a domestic terrorist. Mhmm.

She was a homosexual. Mhmm. She was XYZ. And that justifies taking someone's life. I just don't understand it.

And what truly what truly breaks my heart is that Christians, the overarching church of The United States, is rallying behind this murder. Like, it was okay. Like, yes, this is what god would have wanted because this is what Trump said we wanted, I guess. Right. And that's a little bit of what we're gonna be talking about today is Christianity's move towards the MAGA movement, towards hyper nationalism, and against anybody who looks different than you.

Christianity was always supposed to be rooted in love. Mhmm. And there is not one single ounce of love in the general Christianity

Mhmm.

Right now. And this

is a hard topic for us to talk about. We've debated back and forth a lot on whether or not to say things about this because it's hard. And a lot of times we are a little more lighthearted on this podcast. And we don't wanna knock you guys down. This doesn't we don't want this to be an hour where you feel sad.

Right. But I think it's really important. At the end of my life, I wanna know that I spoke out about this

Mhmm. And it's important to be in informed. Yeah. A lot of times, you just wanna turn off the news or close your eyes or get off TikTok because it's so overwhelming. There's so much going on.

But in order to speak out against it, in order to know what's happening in the world around you, it's really important to stay informed about this stuff. So we're informing you because we're informed.

Yeah. Because we've watched a lot of content. But today, our specific topic obviously, that is an important thing that we wanted to discuss. But our really specific topic, we're gonna be talking about Mark Driscoll, who is a hyper conservative pastor currently at a church in Arizona. Correct?

Scottsdale. Yeah. Yeah. Formerly of Mars Hill Church, which was, like, a massive mega church that he helped found in Seattle. But they dissolved.

For a variety of reasons, which we will discuss.

A variety of really good reasons. So just a couple of highlights about him so that you kind of know who he is. So Mark Driscoll is, like I said, a a megachurch pastor. Well, he was a megachurch pastor. I'm not sure that his church is that mega anymore.

Personally, I would just like to call him what he is. He's a misogynistic, patriarchal, homophobic Christian leader. Can we

lop the Christian out of there? Garbage leader?

Self proclaimed Christian leader.

There you go. Love it. Mhmm. We'll put that on his on his Wikipedia. Hey.

We can edit it. That'll be fun. Yeah. He has a bachelor of arts in speech communication from Washington State University and then earned a master of arts in exegetical theology from Western Seminary in Oregon, which is like a theological degree exegetical. So, like, studying of the bible, things like that.

He was the cofounder of Mars Hill Church, which started in Seattle in 1996. It grew into a massive church. You may have heard about it. It's one of those ones that everybody's heard about.

It had a ton of different campuses.

Now he left Mars Hill, which we'll talk about in a minute why that happened. He was asked to leave. Very true. And then went to Scottsdale, Arizona in 2016 and founded the Trinity Church, which he kind of did so that he wouldn't have any oversight. So he pretty much rules there with an authoritarian thumb from what I've heard.

He also co founded other church organizations. So there's the ACTS twenty nine network, something called the resurgence, churches helping churches, the gospel coalition. He is also highly involved currently with Turning Point USA, which is the organization that Erica Kirk heads up currently. Her husband, Charlie Kirk, was the founder, I believe, and is very, very controversial. But that's just a little bit like, just a super quick overview of who he is so that you know what we're what we're about to get into.

Buckle up. Prepare yourselves. So in 2014 was when Mars Hill kind of started started to go downhill from for him.

Yeah. It started in 1996 with two other guys that he knew. So Mark Driscoll, I think his name's Leaf Moy, l I e f. Okay. That's a fun name.

And Mike Gunn. And they started it in like 1995, but it officially had its first services in 1996. It it didn't go well. It started out a little bit smaller. I think it started at Mark Driscoll's house, actually.

Oh, wow. And they had like a 100 people. And then in a few years, it grew to like 300 people. And then it was massive. They had multiple different locations.

And along that way, they also started the Acts twenty nine, which is a church planning network with a goal of planning a thousand churches. And so Mars Hill was kind of like overseeing all these other churches as well. And he said that this was a time in his life where it was very overwhelming because he was overseeing so many churches, because he was doing speaking engagements, he was writing books. Mhmm. So he was overwhelmed.

So he's doing things to make himself famous.

And oh, no, he's overwhelmed by it. Right. He also didn't wanna give up any power. Right. And his downfall at Mars Hill was because of his not wanting to give up power.

Mhmm. So he came to the church elder board with a supposed plan of saying, oh, they wanted to change the church bylaws for the leadership and say, you just have an indefinite amount of time to lead. You're never gonna be asked to step down. Mhmm. And two of the pastors said, Hey, maybe that's not a great idea.

Maybe maybe we put a pause on this, and he immediately fired them. And he's quoted with saying, Yesterday we fired two of the elders for the first time in the history of Mars Hill. They were off mission, so now they're unemployed. This will be the defining issue as to whether or not you succeed or fail. I've read enough of the New Testament to know that occasionally Paul puts somebody through the wood chipper.

So this wasn't the first issue that the church had with him. They started realizing he was abusing his power. He was abusing the church financially also. He spent like $4,000,000 to buy a property and didn't tell anybody Fun. With the church's funds.

Sure. And the people are on record with saying, is Mars Hill a good church? And people will say, well, it's a good church to attend, but not to work for. Right. Which I think, if you wouldn't advise working for somewhere, you probably shouldn't be advising people to go there.

Or give their money to it. Or give

their money. So there was reports of abuse from like, the staff of the church, but also the church congregation was saying he's he's going overboard. He's abusive. The way that he's speaking is abusive. He's known as the evangelical bad boy.

Which is what you always want to be.

And they say he favors down to earth aggressive preaching styles. I love aggressive preaching styles. Which is amazing. That's what Jesus did, right? Actually, off topic, I was speaking to someone the other day who is heading over to Israel to kind of like walk where Jesus walked, do their like, pilgrimage, you know.

And they've done it before, and they were where he spoke to the 5,000. Mhmm. And on this tour, they take everybody out into a boat, into the Sea Of Galilee, I believe. Where you can see kind of like up into a hill where the 5,000 people would have been sitting and listening. And you can see over where Jesus would have been speaking.

And the acoustics,

you could hear it all. Oh, that's cool.

Where Jesus would have been standing, they had someone speaking, and just how nature and how however God created it. Mhmm. It was a perfect spot for him to speak so that Planned ahead. Yeah. All of those people could hear him perfectly.

Mhmm. And I just think about those moments, like Jesus feeding those people and preaching to those people. Do you think

he was shouting and yelling and judging? Jesus never had to shout or yell because his message was so powerful on its own that he didn't need the theatrics.

All he said was to love one another and treat each other well. And that, in and of itself, in the Roman time, was unprecedented Mhmm. And crazy. Yeah. To love one another, even though they look different from me, even though they're a woman or a man, Mark is not doing that.

Now Mark, while he was pastor at Mars Hill, was also writing books. And because once someone is in controversy, they're just always in controversy. Right? So one of the books that he came out with called A Call to Resurgence. After it came out, people started saying, oh, hey.

There's a

lot of plagiarism in this book. Something sounds familiar.

Yeah. This doesn't seem right. And his publisher backed him and said, no. It's not it's not really plagiarism. Just kinda light plagiarism.

You know? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And essentially what it boils down to is legally it didn't qualify as plagiarism because legally you really only have to I I'm speaking for images not necessarily for written works but I know for images you only have to change it like 20% for it not to be considered plagiarism in the eyes of the law. So I would assume that writing is probably relatively similar. But whether or not it's legally plagiarism, it's morally plagiarism.

Like, you've taken someone else's work and just changed a couple words around. It's still the same thing.

Yeah. There's a plagiarism expert that went over some of his books. Their name is Neil Holdway. They're a plagiarism expert. And they said Driscoll had not adequately indicated the extent to which he had borrowed Joan's work.

Additionally, he pay actually, Mars Hill paid. Not not Mark. Mars Hill paid a marketing firm called Result Source to take another of his books called Real Marriage onto the New York Times bestseller list. Now the New York Times bestseller lists are exciting, obviously, for an author to get your name there. Our best friend Beth was recently on the New York Times bestseller But you also can manipulate it.

And so that's essentially what they did. They went out and bought thousands of copies of this book because they're being paid probably a lot of money, probably a lot of the tithe money to ensure that this is on the bestseller list. Now explain to me how it furthers his ministry to be on the bestsellers. Do more people come to Christ because he got on the New York Times bestseller list, or does Mark get more recognition?

At the end of the day, people like Mark Driscoll and people like Paula White, they do not care about Christianity Mhmm. In my humble opinion. They care about power. Mhmm. They care about their business.

And they want Christianity to be a business.

Mhmm.

And they treat it like one. And they don't care about who they run over. Well, I mean, the way that Mark teaches, one of his major focuses, I

would say, you know, you'd hope that, like, oh, my pastor is really passionate about grace, about love, about acceptance. Now, Mark is really passionate about gender roles. Like, really passionate about gender roles.

He's a man's man. Yeah. And he wants those blue collar workers because Jesus was a carpenter and my daddy was a diesel mechanic.

Wow. Yeah. Now we're not only French, we're we're southern.

I don't know what it was. It was

exciting. But he very much focuses on on those gender roles and on masculinity and femininity and what men and women are allowed to do in the kingdom of god. And that's where a lot of his controversy comes from. He is very popular on YouTube and TikTok because he will jump on and say a ton of really inflammatory things. Just just nasty stuff.

Mostly, I would hope just to get attention, but clearly he also believes it.

He had an issue where he said something about there was a pastor named Ted Haggard who resigned from the church that he was leading because he had, like, a sex scandal

Mhmm.

Which involved a male escort. And Driscoll was quoted for saying about Ted Haggard's wife. Mhmm. He said, a wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the song of songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband's sin, but she may not be helping him either. But it's definitely her fault.

Right. It's such a politically correct way to say, actually, it's all

on her. It's all on her because she wasn't sexually available in the way that he needed her to be.

Are you kidding me? And the bible does not say, and wives, be sexually available to your husbands at all time. It doesn't. It's not in there. I understand that conservative men try to throw it in there out of context, but it's not in there.

And if she goes out and cheats, are you gonna say the same thing about him? Well, he wasn't sexually available to her.

So really, it's his fault. No. Absolutely not. I posted to our TikTok just a, like, a video clip of something that he said about women. And he said like, the number one thing that women want is safety and security.

And men need to provide that to women because women are naturally the weaker vessel and men need to protect them. And my question throughout the whole clip was, what are we protecting women from? Mhmm. Men like you. Yep.

And if men like you just didn't exist, we wouldn't need protecting. Mhmm. And nowhere in the Bible does it say, women are the weaker vessel. Everywhere in the Bible, it says, women are strong. Mhmm.

And here are some strong female leaders. There you go. Mhmm. And Jesus trusted and respected women. But Mark just chooses to ignore those chapters.

Yeah. You don't get to what conservative men really like to do is put themselves in both the role of the protector and the problem. You don't get to be both things. You can't cause the problem and also protect me from it. That's not how that works.

No. That's a great technique. If we create oh. It's like the music man. Yeah.

Where he creates a problem Mhmm. So that then he can sell his instruments.

Yeah. That's an old movie, if you guys haven't seen that one. I think they redid it in, like, the nineties. But it was an old one.

They did with Christian Genworth and the guy who played Inspector Gadget.

Good. That was helpful. You're welcome. Now there's a lot of quotes, and we'll go through several. But one of his most controversial rants I'm gonna call it a rant because it's not a sermon.

It's not anything like that. He called it, and I quote, the pussified nation. I would rather you never say it. I would love to never have had to say it. I would love for it not to exist.

But it literally like, that's how little he respects women. And you'll see it all through everything that he says. I mean, you could look up any clip from him. We have posted several of his clips just to say, like, what on earth. But that's how he speaks about women.

And here's another quote. And I didn't read it to Brie ahead of time because I wanted to see her reaction. Oh, fun. I will warn you. It's got some adult language in it.

So if that's not something you wanna hear

Jump ahead, like, twenty seconds. Yeah. Like, just a

little bit. It says, the first thing to know about your penis is that despite the way it may seem, it is not your penis. Ultimately, god created you, and it is his penis. Oh, wait. It gets so much better.

You are simply borrowing it for a while. While his penis is on loan, you must admit that it is sort of just hanging out there very lonely as if it needed a home, sort of like a man wandering through the streets looking for a house to live in. Knowing that his penis would need a home, god created a woman to be your wife. And when you marry her and look down, you will notice that your wife is shaped differently than you and makes a very nice home. I wanna puke.

You're borrowing God's penis. And a woman's vagina is a house? What?

What? This might be one episode that I

have to flag as adult.

I wish you guys could see Brie's face right now. It's truly spectacular. She's turned 40 shades of red. Not out of embarrassment, out of horror.

Like, what? I know. You're you have what? It's penises on loan. And it's Scotch taped to your body?

And apparently, God had, like, a lot of them. They're just on all the men. All the men around.

I mean, I would love this man to read the book, The Gender of God. And just I would love to hear his thoughts on that.

Yeah. I yeah. I just I don't have a way to justify this in any way because not only is the whole first part obviously is like hilariously horrific. But then the fact that women are simply a home for your penis. That's all women are.

It's the Bible isn't sexual. Okay. Like, maybe Song of Solomon. Okay. I'll give you that one.

But Jesus, let's move along and say, the New Testament, Jesus, it's not a sexual situation. So when you bring sex into biblical teaching like this, when a pastor gets up and says things like this, there's no biblical justification for

it. What's hard about this situation is he's supposed to be a leader. He's supposed to be the one who went to school to study the Bible, to not just study the words of our English translated Bible, but the Greek and the Latin and the original texts and be able to tell you the historical context and why this makes sense and how we can relate it to today. That's what a pastor is supposed to do. And when you have these messed up pastors who get up on stage and just say whatever comes to their head, you have people that trust and believe you.

You have people in the congregation and on the internet and out in the abyss. Mhmm. That trust that you went to school and you understand God's word. Mhmm. And you slapped God's name to something he never said.

Right. God never said, he let you borrow his penis. God never said that.

I mean, I'm I'm pretty sure. To be fair, I don't know the Greek. But I'm pretty sure.

But that's dangerous. Yes. It is. That's super dangerous. Anytime you slap God's name to something he never said, that's blasphemy.

That's wrong.

And a big part of the danger here is that this does attract a certain kind of person. The MAGA people. Exactly. And we'll get into his involvement in that movement as well. But it attracts people who want power for themselves.

Power over faith.

Right. And so you're seeing men, young men, being influenced by people like this because he's telling them you're all powerful. God made you all powerful. You get everything you want. You want sex every day?

Great. Tell your wife that's what she's gonna do. You want to control every situation? Cool. You've got this because you're a man.

You have to fall within these very strict gender boundaries. But it attracts certain people. And now we're at a point in history where women are leaving churches in droves and men are starting to come into the church, but there are no women there. Like, we're almost starting to see a flip. It hasn't quite happened, but it's starting to happen where there are more men in church than women, and that's never happened before.

I feel bad for the women that are in those spaces, though, because they're being told from the very beginning, as soon as they like, pop out of the womb. Mhmm. They're being told, you're just a house. Yep. You are less than.

God made you only to feed and clothe and take care of this baby man. And that's all you'll ever be. There's nothing more to you than this. And God said so.

I'm gonna jump on our TikTok real quick because I wanna read you guys some comments. We've been posting live videos a little bit more on TikTok. Before, we were posting a lot of content, but we decided we wanted to do some more live content. And so we've gotten a lot more comments from that. And one of the comments I because I posted yesterday a video essentially saying you will, as women, if you're trying to please conservative men by submitting enough, by being quiet enough because we have people in our lives that are trying to do this.

To submit enough to make them happy. You will never win. And one of the comments that I got on that video, it says I'm gonna just read it to you. It says, I'm a conservative man, and I don't think women are any less important than men at all. We each have our own strengths, and people like you try to make it seem like we're bad when in reality we're not.

Now that sounds relatively reasonable, I suppose. But the reality is me pointing out your bad behavior doesn't make you look bad. You make you look bad. You're welcome. Mark Driscoll makes you look bad.

Because Mark Driscoll is telling me what conservative Christian men believe. Because the pastors at our local churches have said the same things. It's not like he's unique. He's the loudest voice, but he's certainly not the only voice. And so if you're telling me I associate with this type of person, I use the label conservative Christian man, then my brain says, well, here's what I know about conservative Christian men.

Because here's what Mark Driscoll told me. Or here's what the pastor of this local church told me. Or what I heard in a marriage sermon recently, you know, or whatever.

If those are the people that you're following Right. And listening to and say, aren't that bad. Those are your thoughts too then. And you are also bad.

Right. Now some more of Mark's quotes. I will go through them relatively quickly so that we can get into some more of the stuff that we wanna talk about. But one of the things that he has said kind of early on in his Mars Hill era because he's very anti feminist. He's, like, really violently anti feminist.

He says, I am not a feminist. I am a Christian. Oh. So really juxtaposing those two things. You can't be both.

You cannot be both. There is no overlap. If you are a feminist, you are not a Christian. And if you are a Christian, you cannot be a feminist. Mutually exclusive.

Another one that came from his unfortunately named rant that I won't say again so that Brie doesn't cringe Thank you. Says Christianity has become so feminized that real men feel unwelcome. We have raised a generation of soft churchy men who sit around singing love songs to Jesus.

As though that's like a negative thing. You should never sing a love song to Jesus. Does he not want any worship songs in his churches?

He wants manly worship songs about wood carving and taxidermy.

Something about a truck and Jesus.

The whole concept behind that is that, like, feminism makes men weak, I guess. So if women are strong, men cannot be. And I find that really sad. We also got a comment on TikTok that said, no, it's too late for feminism. We need misandry.

And essentially that means where women take over as opposed to equality having women be sort of at the forefront. And I understand where this commentary is is going to some degree. We have so much abuse against women that they're saying, like, nope. We need to fully do a one eighty. I get it.

I never wanna be the person oppressing someone

else. Mhmm.

But what he's saying is that two people can't be strong side by side. If one is strong, it forces the other to be weak. And that's just not true. Jesus surrounded himself with strong people, women and men. And the fact that Jesus was strong did not make the rest of them weak.

And it's proven time and time again if you just look throughout history and look around you, you can get so much further in life with other strong people beside

you. If

you are fully capable, and she is fully capable, how much further can you go? Mhmm. And we've talked about this before. There's a TikTok, and it's just like a visual representation about if women didn't have x y z, look how much further they could go. And it's a husband and a wife, and they're running.

And the husband all of a sudden has to carry all three of the children, and she doesn't have all three of the children, and she takes off. And she runs super fast. But that's just a visual representation of, like, what if you both shared the load? Right. You both could go far.

Right. Rather than one person way up ahead and your other person is just left behind.

You need people, but you need people who build you up. And if you tell your partner, I'm better than you. I'm stronger than you. You're weak. You were made to be submissive.

You were made to be nothing. That's not really a partner. That's not really someone who's ever going to build you up because they can't. That's abusive. Mhmm.

Full stop. Another one of his quotes. This was from his real marriage book. It says a wife's role is to help her husband, not lead him. And then another from his sermon on Ephesians, it says if a wife is acting independently of her husband, that's rebellion.

She cannot even get a glass of water without his permission. I act independently of my husband all the time. And it's not rebellion. You wanna know why? Because I am a fully formed adult who makes her own choices in life.

I just wanna understand what's going through his head that he thinks there's women out there that find that attractive. Now there are. Don't get me wrong. There are women out there who strap themselves down to men like this. Mhmm.

But in my brain, if you're trying to attract people to Christianity, this is not the way to do it.

But I don't think that's his goal. That's the thing. It's exactly what you said before. He's not trying to further Christianity. He's not.

I think I truly believe that Mark Driscoll and Paula White and people like them will answer to god. And them saying, hey, I accepted Christ into my heart when I was five isn't gonna do it because they spent their lives turning people away from God. His goal is not to bring people to God. If people hear his message and say, I want none of that, he calls them a heretic. He calls them a feminist.

He calls them soft and cusses them out. Like, he says awful, awful things. He doesn't need you to listen because you want to. He can rage bait you. He can do whatever.

He's not trying to further the kingdom of God. And I sincerely believe that he will get to heaven and Jesus will say, I never knew you. Because you can't spend your life flying in the face of Jesus's main commandments. Love God and love others. And then expect the pearly gates to open up for you.

What if he gets to heaven and God's like, okay, you can't come in. But I'm not gonna send you completely to hell. I want a special mission for you, and you have to duct tape penises to people. And that's your job for here into eternity.

No one wants that forcibly done to them. It's a terrible idea. Make a note, God. Don't do that.

Because you were so scared. You're so scared of homosexuality, and you think that's weak. You're just gonna have to live your life with penises forever.

I also I wanted to do a little bit of a side by side of Jesus versus Mark Driscoll. I think there's

no comparison. There's not. There's not. But we're gonna look at that.

Because we're supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We say that all the time. Mhmm. We are supposed to be the living embodiment of Jesus.

He's not even a butt. He's gotta be something bad. He's like the toenail fungus. Like, something not good. The thing

that's hurting the body of Christ.

Yes. You're a hemorrhoid on the body of Christ.

Well, that's going on our year wrapped. Good quotes. I have several points. The first set is like power and authority. So what's Mark's view on power and authority versus Jesus's?

Their view of power, Marx is hierarchical male dominated, right? There's a hierarchy and manner at the top. Jesus was self emptying and servant led. There was no one at the top because everyone who, in theory, might be near the top is serving everyone else.

God's at the top. Right. And everybody else, it's a miracle that you're even there.

Their leadership model, Mark shows the pastor as, like, the unquestioned authority. And you can see that in what happened at Mars Hill.

He tried. Right. He tried, and it didn't work out.

We're at

the end of the day.

Whereas Jesus said, the leader is the servant. I will wash your feet. I will do whatever you need.

Have you ever had to wash someone's feet?

Yes. We did that in college. I went to a Christian college and I didn't actually have to wash their feet. They had to wash my feet. And I was the most uncomfortable I have ever been in my life.

I don't even particularly enjoy a pedicure, if I'm being honest. But my mom and I went through like, our small church at the time was doing a walk through of the church, and each room was a different scene of Jesus' walk to the cross. And there was one room where you had to wash each other's feet. And me and mom looked at each other, and we said, heck, no. And then we left.

And then everyone at

the church judged you for your lack of faith. Probably. Some of the key teachings in regards to power and authority from Mark are like, obedience protects order. So you must obey those in authority. So your pastor, your husband, those types of people in order to keep order, in order for things to be as Jesus wanted them.

Whereas Jesus taught that love disrupts order. Love changes the way that things work in a really good and healthy way.

Jesus said, don't be of this world. Right? And a lot of times Christians will take that to mean like, oh, I shouldn't cuss. And I should only listen to Christian music, and I need to go to church every Sunday, and that's not of this world. But take a good long look at the world around you.

He didn't want you to be like the world. Right. Outrageous amounts of love. That's otherworldly. Mhmm.

And that's what Jesus did. That's the example that he showed. He didn't sit there and say, alright. I'm not gonna, you know, read spicy books. He said, I'm going to love the world.

That's how he was different. Mark's teachings on the role of women show women only as helpers, supporters, and submissive. That is all that they can do. There is nothing more for them. They cannot be in leadership.

That is anti god. They can never say anything against their husbands. That's anti god. They can't divorce their husbands even in cases of abuse.

Do you ever think that god looks down and cries

All the time. When he sees

women were made in God's image. Mhmm. Right alongside Adam, Eve was made. Together, they represent God. And to look down and see, oh my gosh, they're trying to make my beautiful creation into this?

So sad. Mhmm.

Jesus showed women in a whole different light. Every time Jesus interacted with women, it flew in the face of the way that society was structured at the time. And unfortunately, it flies in the face of the way the church treats women now. He had women who were his disciples. They followed along with everything.

They were there for all of the moments that you read about. They weren't written about as much because that was the way the culture was at the time.

I know we talk about this frequently. Probably, I specifically talk about this frequently. But when Jesus rose from the dead, he turned to Mary Magdalene. And he said, hey, bestie. Guess who's back?

And go tell everybody else. Mhmm. Whereas men like this, if Mark Driscoll rose from

the dead Let's hope and pray not.

And he wouldn't. He wouldn't even bother looking at a woman. Mhmm. Right? He would be like, you're not capable of sharing this good news.

See you. Bye. I'm gonna go find a

man. Right.

That's important to note. Mhmm. And I think as women, it's important to note for us that Jesus turned to us first and said, guess what, bestie? I'm back.

And it's not just that one example. There are countless examples. There were women leading in the Old Testament. Jesus turned to women many times when he met the Samaritan woman at the well. She was the first person that he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life too.

Like, he said he was living water, and he sent her to then preach to the rest of her community about him.

Or the woman who had the most faith where she just touched his robes because she had this bleeding disease, and she couldn't stop bleeding. And she thought, if I can just touch him, I'll be healed. And he healed her. And the people scrutinized her. They're like, get off him.

What do you think you're doing? And he's like, no. She has the most faith. Right. I appreciate her.

Mhmm.

Touch my robe again. And even later on in the Bible, we see tons of examples, whether it's Phoebe preaching the book of Romans or Junia or Prisca or countless women that are named throughout the New Testament as well. So it didn't stop with Jesus. The church continued to be radical in its ability to elevate women. It happened again and again.

Mary. Mhmm. I mean Which Mary. There's so many Marys. Mary, the mother of god.

There we go. Just the fact that, like, God looked at women and he was like, God said, I can create life. Guess what I'm gonna give to women? Mhmm. The ability to create life.

Mhmm. And she is going to bring the savior into the world without the help of any man.

That's such a profound thing to think that is an aspect of god's character. God's character is that he can create life. And he did not give that aspect of his character to men and women. He gave it to women. I don't know if you're aware of this, but men, they struggle to create life.

That's huge. Because there are men and women out there saying women don't represent god's character, That we are not co heirs with Christ, as the Bible says. That we are not on the same footing. That we are less than they are. And yet, God looked at one of the most important parts of who he was and said, women, here you go.

Now he could have made it a little less painful and icky. But regardless, it's disgusting. I'm sorry. Mark says the ideal man is aggressive, dominant, and sexually assertive. And we can see that in lots of his quotes.

Whereas Jesus, both himself and the way that he expected his followers to be, was gentle, self controlled, and sacrificial. Jesus was not Mark's ideal man.

And Mark doesn't like that because he has a quote, and I think I put it up last week or maybe I'm putting up this week on our socials, that says I can't worship like the hippie diaper wearing version of Jesus. This is from a 2007 interview with Mark that he did with Relevant magazine where he described his image of Jesus as a prizefighter. So this is what he wants Jesus to be, but it doesn't mean that he is. Right. But his quote is, in Revelation, Jesus is a prizefighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand, and the commitment to make someone bleed.

That is the guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie diaper Halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. That is the exact quote. Which the cockiness, I could beat up Jesus of the

New Testament. I'm sorry. The god of the universe? You're, like, strong enough to beat up the god of the universe? Let's back that up.

Because what he's saying is, I like Revelation Jesus. Which Revelation is an allegory. It's not like, this is exactly what's gonna happen or anything like that. It's an allegory. It tells stories surrounding what the end times might be like, might feel like.

But it's not this has happened and this is what Jesus is. When Jesus was here on Earth, that's who he was. So he likes Revelation Jesus. He doesn't like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John Jesus.

And he thinks he could beat him up? I don't know if you know this. But Jesus died, and then he came back to life.

Also, it has the power of the universe. You know, there's that little bit. But sure. Yeah. I'm sure, Mark, your your once a week workout at the gym, that'll get it.

He raised people from the dead. He cured the blind. He took leprosy and said, see you. Bye. But you yeah, Mark.

You can beat him up.

Good job. Good on you. But there are people that listen to this garbage. There are. He's got a following.

That's the problem. When you have that kind of power and you slap God's name on yourself Mhmm. That means that anything coming out of your mouth, people assume that God said

Right. Or God agrees with. I just looked up his TikTok. Now I don't think he's as big on TikTok as he is on, like, YouTube and stuff, but he has 718,000 followers on TikTok, 19,700,000 likes. So that tells you the kind of reach that he has.

And and that's just one of his social media channels. That's not accounting for his books, his church, YouTube, countless other things. He does interviews all the time. He's very self important.

Or the other people reposting his. Exactly.

Yes. Now Mark is also this may shock you. A conservative Christian nationalist. Woah. Did you all gasp?

I thought I heard it. Hold on. Let's listen closer. No. Of course you're not surprised.

No one's surprised. One of his quotes is Jesus is a Christian nationalist. Sit with that for a minute. You got it? Okay.

The United States didn't exist when Jesus was on Earth. Now the the land did, but The United States as a country did not exist.

I think maybe he could be saying Jesus wants everybody on the planet to be Christian. But if that were the case now, I'm not saying Jesus doesn't want everybody to, you know, come to heaven. But God gave us free will.

Mhmm.

If God wanted everybody to think exactly the same way, he wouldn't have given us free will. Mhmm. He would have just been like, zap, you a Christian. Zap, you a Christian.

Mark is so so much a conservative Christian nationalist that a lot of news outlets have started calling him MAGA Mark now. Like, he doesn't get a a last name. We've just we've gone with MAGA Mark. And if you're unfamiliar with the MAGA term, it is an acronym for Make America Great Again, which was Donald Trump's campaign slogan both times, I think, because he's uncreative. But he's also become very involved.

It's not like he's on the campaign trail. You will see some pastors, people like that on the campaign trail. He has not done that, but he has gotten very involved with Turning Point USA, which, as I said, is Charlie Kirk's organization. And, like, he does speeches for them. And they're incredibly problematic because they're going after kids to tell them, you are the best.

It's the same thing that Mark is saying to men in his churches. You are the best. You are no one else deserves to be in your country. And he's not saying this to everyone. He's saying this to white Christians.

You are the best. You deserve to rule. You can do nothing wrong as long as you follow me and Donald Trump.

To young people whose brains haven't fully developed, who don't know how to handle their emotions, yeah, let's tell them they have ultimate power.

That's great. And one of the things that as I was reading through this and looking it up is, you know, he's not a politician. Thank heavens. Not that it could get any worse at this point, but he's almost more dangerous for us as Christian people because he's not a politician telling you god wants this. God wants America to be above everybody else.

God wants men to be above everybody else. God wants white people to be above everybody else. Above everybody else. He is saying as a pastor that god wants these things. And that is more damaging because a politician, you can say, like, well, they don't really know the bible.

But a pastor's supposed to know the bible. And so he does have more influence in that space. As I sit here and read about Mark, and I wonder about him because he was he had to have been a reasonable person at some point. Right? But how did he get here?

How did he get to this hyper conservative, MAGA, crazy person? And the reality is if you look at his timeline from 1996 when he founded Mars Hill and he was this, like, anti establishment pastor, He started talking about feminism and soft Christianity and how that's terrible. And then as he moved through and started doing conferences, became a celebrity pastor, things like that, it's not like he developed into who he is today. It's that he always was this, or at least in his public persona, he always was this. And he finally found a home with the Donald Trump Christians.

Because that's where his beliefs fit.

He grew up in I think it was North Dakota Mhmm. To a Catholic family. And he later left and said that all of the men in his family were women beating terrible, terrible men. And there was abuse all over his family. And when he left, his family left and moved to Seattle, I believe.

That's when he met his wife in high school, and he turned to Christianity, and he felt like he was following what God told him to do. But maybe he was shaped by those men in his life, by that abuse in his life. And he thought that's what strong men are. And he took that everywhere he went. To Mars Hill, where they asked him to leave because he was abusive.

And then he went over to Trinity Church, and the people from Mars Hill reached out and said, Hey, you should not be in ministry anymore. Your abuse is everywhere. Stop it.

Abuse Mhmm. Usually perpetrates more abuse. In order to stop an abuse cycle, you have to stand there and hold that line really hard. It's difficult, and he chose not to.

And you have to be self reflective. You have to be able to look at yourself and say, my behavior is not okay. And someone who thinks they have ultimate power Right. And thinks that God gave them ultimate power is never gonna look at themselves in the mirror and say, maybe what I thought wasn't quite right.

Gee. Maybe I should apologize to every woman alive.

Listen to what he says here in this video.

For pastors that are wondering, what is going on, maybe this will help. The big event that shaped maybe a few generations of pastors was the Jesus movement, where a bunch of crazy leftist hippie kids showed up in the church. So pastors, to make room for them, needed to punch to the right, tell conservatives and traditionals, hey. Leave room for these kids to come in and meet Jesus and work out their eccentricities. And now seems like the harvest isn't on the left.

The harvest is on the political, cultural right, which means a lot of pastors are struggling because all they've been doing is punching with their right hand and punching to the right, and they don't know how to punch to the left. Because maybe the new MAGA kids were showing up in suits wearing red hats being a little loud and boisterous with eccentric thoughts and conspiracy theories. Maybe those are the new hippies. And, pastor, maybe you need to stop punching to the right. Maybe it's time to start punching to the left, having a little conflict with Democrats and progressives to make room for the new wine skin and the new wine that's coming from the right.

Please don't make room in your churches for abusive people. Church should be a safe place. Jesus created a safe space around him for people who wanted to know him.

What he's talking about, the Jesus movement Mhmm. I think there's a movie about this, but a lot of the quote unquote hippies were turning to the church Mhmm. Because of the love there.

Yeah.

And now the red hat MAGA people are turning to the church because there's power there. Mhmm. There's a difference. If you're turning to the church for ultimate power, you're looking in the wrong direction.

Unfortunately, though, I think you're almost looking in the right direction. Well, I

feel like, I guess, in today, you're looking in the right direction, but that's not where we should have to be. Right.

Yeah. It's not it's not what I want out of a church. And I've said this to many a family member at this point, but, like, I won't attend a church that doesn't represent Jesus. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of accepting churches like the ones Mark represents.

I'm tired of sitting there and cringing whenever they talk about women or hearing them say one or two bad things and thinking, alright, I've just gotta I've just gotta try and find the good

in this sermon. No. No. If a church doesn't represent Jesus, I'm out. We don't wanna eat a poop brownie at a church.

No. Not so much. Next week, we are gonna continue on this series and talk about a couple of musicians that have also aligned themselves with power, aligned themselves politically, including Matthew West, including Brandon Lake, and probably a couple of others. And just talk about how problematic that is as well when Christian celebrities align themselves with power. And we very well may do another one.

I have so many more people. There's such a long list. Unfortunately, today, especially with our administration the way that it is, saying that they're all Christians

Mhmm.

And acting not very Christian like. We have a whole list of people that we can add

to our hate book. This quite literally could be the rest of the podcast. We could just give up and keep doing this.

The entire year, we're just calling people out. You know, maybe.

We'll see. We'll see how it goes. So join us next week

for that. I hope you

all have a a lovely January. I don't know. January tends to be kinda yucky. It's pretty gross out.

I've been reading a lot of books, and that's been my January. Okay.

We're gonna go eat some of our cheese.

Oh, I'm gonna go.

I hope you'll join us

and do the same. And if you're lactose intolerant, did you know you can have Parmesan? And a lot

of goat cheeses. I learned that recently. Mhmm. And sheep cheeses. So go do that.

There is cheese for you. And there are some good vegan cheeses.

There are. Bring some cheese joy into your life is what we're saying because we all need it and maybe it'll help. Alright.

Love you. Bye. Bye.