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.

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Actually,

I think we're closer we're we're pretty close to Easter. Right? Yeah. I'm honestly very unclear on what time of year it is.

It's March. Is it? I don't know. Quite frankly, I don't even know what year it is. Sometimes I write 2018.

Sometimes I write '30, '30 '7.

There are times where I thoroughly confidently will write things like 2013. I don't know why. Where does that year come from?

I don't know. And I'm so confused truly because I I was looking through a spreadsheet the other day at work. I was like, oh, I don't have to fill out this section yet because this is for the week of February 17. We're not there yet. We are well past.

Well past. And I I convinced myself for hours that I didn't have to fill that out. And I was like, Wait a second.

A second. I've done my job poorly.

Nothing new. No. Just kidding. I'm great at my job.

But here we are, well into March, nearly to April, frankly.

Ugh. Yeah. And

once we hit April, then I don't know what happens. Showers. Showers. Yeah.

For heaven's sakes, would love to take a shower.

Right after this, Brie. Right after this, you can take a shower. And frankly, you should. I stink.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I look it. Here's to all the girlies who just despise showering.

You just you actively despise it?

Respect. I don't like the time that it takes.

But anyway, we've had quite a long week. We both took Friday off. Yay. As you all know, we went and saw our bestest best friend this week.

Our bestest best friend. And I told her that we call her our best friend Beth. You did. Brie gets

I feel like we've referenced this before. When Brie sees people that, like, she

respects,

she highly respects, she gets real weird.

Yeah. But I that's who I am.

It is who she is, and we all love her for it, but I'm unashamed. Don't leave feeling I don't leave feeling great. I run away. I have to actively run away from these situations.

I think it's good to let someone know that you just love them so much that you are struck dumb. I think that it makes them afraid of you. No. They've never told me so. Yeah, because we run away!

We run away and they don't have the opportunity to do so!

Okay, so for reference, when we met Beth, I told her that we exclusively call her our best friend Beth, and also when she followed us on TikTok that I cried. You did. You did do that. When we met Catherine Tate, I asked her if she wanted to be my adoptive mother. You did.

All good things. All horrifying moments of my life.

I can pick out some of the most embarrassing moments of my life.

I just okay, you guys. I finished Beth's book the other day.

I feel like we should introduce this a little bit better, in case this is someone's very first episode with us.

Welcome to the We Are More Hot Kids. Where sisters talk, faith and feminism, yada yada yada. She's Alyssa. I'm Breanna. Okay.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way.

That's not what I meant.

Today, we're talking about Beth's book, Becoming the Pastor's Wife. It just came out March 18, which is why we know that it's March. And really the only reason. And recently, this past week, Alyssa and I went and saw her at Calvin College, my alma mater, and I fangirled. She did.

Did we get that out of the way now?

We did. Thank you. That was a good a good recap.

Thank you. Much appreciated. All of that to say, when I was finishing up her book, my worlds collided because she mentioned Katherine Tate in She did. And she was talking about Doctor Who and how her favorite pairing is Katherine Tate and David Tennant, and then I was like,

she sent me a highlighted picture on on Facebook Messenger.

Yeah. Because no one knows who they are.

Well, probably I mean, probably people in England do. Less people here.

Yeah. Katherine Tate had this variety show called the Katherine Tate Show.

Probably no one knows what that is, to be fair. Look it up. It's a national treasure. Not our nation. Other people's nation.

Yeah. But it it is so good. Brie and our brother Brandon had, like, this fangirl obsession.

Oh, yeah. Which is why we went and saw Katherine Tate. Yeah. Not because she was in Doctor Who. No.

No. No. No. Because way back in the day, she had a variety of times where she dressed up like a bald man.

But anyway, so we went and saw our best friend. So Brie and I drove out on Thursday.

Mhmm.

Because Beth's talk was on Thursday night. So, we drove out after work on Thursday and stayed stayed at Kelvin because they have a weird little hotel there.

That's so strange.

It was quite odd. But it it does the job. I'm fairly certain we were the only people there.

No. Because in the morning, I saw some businessmen.

There were, like, four people maybe in the whole entire hotel. Yeah.

I was really hoping that Beth was gonna stay

there. Yeah.

That didn't happen. Which to be fair,

she might have.

I don't know. I didn't see.

We definitely missed her if if she did.

Yeah.

But we did go there. We stayed there, and it was a great time had by all.

Great time had by all except for the DoorDashers.

Oh, yeah. We had a DoorDash tragedy, actually. We both ordered DoorDash separately, which was maybe our first mistake.

No. It was my greatest achievement. It was my

first mistake. Bree ordered boba tea

Yeah.

And random sushi crap. And a cheese dog that she is still convinced should have a hotdog in it.

Nobody needs to know all these details.

I think they do.

Nobody needs to know these details of my life. Him great. Anyways, my DoorDasher brought it right to the hotel door. I didn't even have to go down to the lobby. And her name was Krista, and I just wanna give her a shout out and tell her that I love her.

However, my DoorDasher and somehow Brie blames me for this. Yeah. It's your fault. My DoorDash just, like, kept getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back and pushed back until it was gonna be, like, thirty freaking minutes late.

And we had places to go people to see.

We needed to go see our bestest best friend. Yeah. So I ended up having to cancel it, and DoorDash would not refund my money. And so I'm all sorts pissy about it. And I still haven't chatted with them.

I have to do that.

That's, again, your fault.

Yeah. Well, that bit's my fault. But the first part is not my fault.

And after Beth's talk, we decided that we were absolutely starving and we got Chick fil A and a massive amount of tacos, chips, and salsa,

Which should really surprise no one. And then we went and watched swamp people in our room. And ate food in the bed.

Yeah. But let's talk about Beth's talk

because I feel that that's probably the more important section of No.

Everybody really wanted to know every single detail of our life.

That we ate Chick fil A and tacos and chips and salsa?

Yeah. The tacos subpar. Yeah.

But the chips and salsa were spectacular.

Yeah. Aren't you glad you know that?

Beth's book. Beth's talk. So this time, we're gonna focus a lot on Beth's talk, and I think we are gonna circle back to Beth's book after next week, we're gonna we're a little bit of a a train wreck at the moment because we're, like, circling back to a couple of different books.

We're reading. You're welcome. So you don't have to.

No. We want you to also read these books. Next week, we're gonna circle back and finish out Steve Besner's book, Your Jesus is Too American. And then we may, after that, circle back back.

And talk about Beth again.

And talk about Beth again and do a full review of Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Beth's new book. But mostly today, we wanted to talk about

Her talk.

Her talk about going to see her because while her talk was about the book Mhmm. It also expanded on some things. And we'll talk about the book as well. But, you know, kind of just talking about a couple things. We don't have time to go into the whole book.

It's it is an in-depth exploration. She apparently is doing a a trio. Yes. I was not aware of this. I didn't know that, but I'm very excited.

Me too. So as she was talking, as she was introducing this book, she's kind of I'm I'm gonna call it, like, a book tour is kind of what she's doing. Mhmm. Yeah. This was her first stop out of outside of Texas since the book launched.

Mhmm.

And she said that she's doing a trio of books, so it's her trifecta. She called it Star Wars. Yeah. She said the next chapter will be like the Ewoks, which Bree did not understand.

She said this was like the Emperor Strikes Back, Empire Strikes Back.

Empire Strikes Back. You got

so close. Listen, I'm not a nerd. Okay. Okay, I know that I mentioned Doctor Who, but I'm not a nerd.

I want to say that your Doctor Who reference was much deeper into the nerd dom than Empire Strikes Back.

The reason she's writing a third book she mentioned the first one of the first things that she said in her talk was that a colleague of hers was telling her, don't feel pushed to publish. Mhmm. Because so many authors now do. And she had her one she called it her one hit wonder was the making of biblical womanhood. And it is a wonderful book.

Oh, yeah. Incredible. A treasure. I'm looking at it on my shelf. But if you left something unsaid, now is your opportunity to say it.

Right. And that is where becoming the pastor's wife came from.

Right. And that's why she took a little bit of a break between the two. And it's funny because on the one hand, she kind of talked about it as though she took a break between the two to decide if she did want to write another book. Cause the woman is busy.

She's a professor. She's a doctor. She's a lawyer. She's a crazy

She's not a lawyer. I'm taking it all back.

She's amazing. But she serves on the

board of like 50 different things. She does all these research projects. She's a busy woman. Mhmm. And so it seems like she Busy woman.

It seems like she took a little bit of a break between the books, but realistically, like, I pre ordered The Making of Biblical Womanhood not that long ago. Like, I remember pre ordering that book.

Yeah.

Just a couple of years ago. So it wasn't realistically all that long ago.

And you think, like, the amount of research that goes into all of her books, like, just for this book, the Becoming the Pastor's Wife, her and, like, two assistants Two research assistants. Yep. Went through 150 books based on pastor's wives.

One hundred and fifty.

Think that Yeah. That's just the books. That's not including all of the other research that she notes in the back of this book as well.

And just her prior knowledge. Mhmm. Because she is a pastor's wife and a medieval researcher.

Yeah.

I was thinking that through. So between three people, that's 50 books a person, and you're talking about you're not talking about novels here. Okay?

Like,

I can power through 50 novels in my goal this year is 100 books. So that's six months of reading for me, right? Mhmm. Okay. Six months of reading.

But you're talking about research books.

You're not talking about, like, oh, I'm gonna enjoy reading this novel. No. You're talking about research books. And some that, like, she quotes in here. And they are truly, truly awful.

Misery. Truly awful.

And you've got to power through some stuff you don't want to have read.

But you need to read it because you need as much information as you can.

Like, get a full circle picture of what's going on, what's being told to pastor's wives. And

where did the role of the pastor's wife come from? Right. Because it's a fairly recent development.

Yep. And that was something that she talked about a lot in this talk. And I wanna I took quite a few pages of notes. Brie took some notes as well. I took a page of notes.

But I think, like, we'll talk through just seeing her there. It was just so cool to see her and hear her talk. Whenever you hear someone talk about what Lights them up. Yeah. What the passion that God gave them.

Yeah.

It just changes the room.

Yeah, it really does.

It sparks something in everyone. Like, you can just feel it. And I felt like that was what was going on in the room. So what happened in the talk is the head of the writing department at Calvin got up and kind of introduced her and talked a little bit. And if you're not familiar with Calvin College, they have an utterly incredible writing program.

Yeah, you're welcome. Brie was not part of that program. I was not. Remember, keep in mind, I was an art major.

And then Beth got up and talked for maybe like thirty ish minutes. Mhmm. Kind of about how she wrote the book. And then they did a little bit of a Q and A. And then they did a book signing, which is where Brie embarrassed us all.

Yep. Huzzah.

I I don't know that that Beth felt embarrassed. I did. But that's just me and my sensitive nature.

I think she didn't. I think she loved it. She gave no indication that she loved it, but I assume she loved it. Obviously. She signed my book From Your Best Friend.

She did. We posted that to our socials. So if you wanna see that, you can.

She did do that. Did I ask her to?

Yes. So one of the first things that Beth talked about was that The Making of Biblical Womanhood, her first book, part one Part one. Was actually started like, the concept of it was started at Calvin.

Yeah. You're welcome. Which I thought was really cool. I'm taking full credit for all things Kelvin. Obviously.

Obviously, you should. I'm paying them enough money.

You are. Seriously. She said it was in a presidential address that she gave in 2018. She started kind of talking about this concept of where the modern ideal of biblical womanhood came from. And that gave her the idea to start writing this book.

I mean, thank you, Brianna. Thank you for all of your hard work there. You're welcome. Were you you weren't even at Calvin in 2018.

No, I was long gone.

Long gone. Because we're so elderly. And she said that one of the big motivators for her is this feeling that she had throughout giving that talk and throughout as she talks and I'll get into this in a second. But throughout her travels, as she was researching for some different things, of this discomfort. Mhmm.

As she was thinking through the modern day concept of where women are in religion.

Mhmm.

This discomfort and this feeling of this is not normal. Yeah. She said that over and over again. I wrote This is not normal. Yep.

And so she talked about this woman whose name is Hilde. And this is not a woman that she necessarily references in

the book. She doesn't mention her at all

in the But this was one that obviously, she's a medieval historian. She knows so much more than what was put in this book, but you can only put so much in a book. So this was one that she referenced here. And she said that she was recently, I think in January, maybe December, pretty recently, she was in England, in Whidbey, England. And that was the city she said that inspired Dracula.

Yeah. Dracula's beach where he shipwrecked.

Yeah. Which I I was not familiar with.

I don't know anything about Dracula. I don't watch Twilight.

Yeah. That's the same. All all literary. They just turned it off. They just left.

They left the room. But anyway, so Hild was this woman who built a monastery in Whidbey, England. Mhmm. Now, the monastery stand there is a monastery still standing today, kind of the ruins of it. And it's not the same one that she built.

It's the rebuilt version of what she built. Mhmm. Because it was taken down, I think she said, by Vikings. Yeah. Which is interesting.

Mhmm. But they did rebuild it. But the original one was commissioned and built by Hild. I don't think she, like, built it with her own two hands exactly. It was called something that translated to lighthouse.

Okay. And Hild now, her story I actually just bought a book because while we were in Grand Rapids, we went to many a bookstore. Yeah. Because we have zero chill. We were on

a book tour of our own.

We did. We went on quite a book tour. And so I bought a book that dives into her history a little bit, and it's called The Mystics Would Like a Word. And so I'm really excited to look into her history a little bit more, but just based on what Beth said. So I haven't dug into her history as much as I would like to, but just based on what Beth said, Hilde was not born into Catholicism, but her and her family eventually converted into Catholicism.

And she felt this great pull from God to be part of the church. So, she was eventually consecrated. Mhmm. Which for those of us here in the twenty first century doesn't really mean anything. Like, if if you are a protestant and you're sitting here like, what the crap does consecrated mean?

Mhmm.

Not to worry. I also did not know what it means. But Beth said it essentially means ordained. Mhmm. She was ordained.

Which, again, if you are not super familiar with that, ordained means to the level of teaching and preaching. Mhmm.

Being the leader of the church. They didn't have the term pastor back then, but it would be considered higher than a pastor would now. It would be considered, like,

the level of a bishop. So she had this calling from god. She became a nun, but then she was like a teacher of nuns. She was

a teacher of all the people. Yeah, it said that this, what she built was a double monastery.

Mhmm.

But that means that there were men and women there.

Right. That she was the leader of. Yeah. She became so sought after that she became a leader.

And she mentioned in all of the because these double monasteries were not uncommon. There was always not always, but it was common for men and women to learn in the same place. But the abbess or whoever was in charge of those double monasteries was always, always a female. Mhmm.

And that's what Hilde was. She was an abbess. And so when she got to that point, she would have had a lot of religious authority. She would have had a lot of political authority in her area. And this would have been unquestioned.

It's not like it was weird that she was a woman. Mhmm. No one would have been sitting there like, I'm not gonna take direction from her. Exactly. The men who were learning in her monastery that she built weren't sitting there like, learning from her because she's a woman, because she's got boobs.

Like, no thank you. That's not what was happening. It was unquestioned simply because she was a woman that she would have this authority. No. God ordained her.

God consecrated her and said, This is what I want for your life, Heald. Therefore, you have this authority now. Her family didn't question it. The people didn't question it. The men did not question it.

And so as Beth is standing, looking at this monastery, she said she felt this discomfort. This is not normal. What we're doing to women now is not normal. It's not historically normal.

Because in our churches today, at least what Alyssa and I have seen growing up, they like to say this is the way God intended. This is the way it's always been historically. Like, look back in the Bible. In Bible times, it was patriarchal. It was Roman society.

But that's not how it always was. Right. And our church came from the Catholic church. So this is our history. We just forget about it.

Mhmm.

Well, I think we love to split the concept of it. And I've I've been talking to Brie a little bit about this. We love to pretend that our history is not the history of the Catholic church. Because as Protestants, we split off from the Catholic church, right? But the reality is, the history of the Protestant church is also the history of the Catholic church.

Mhmm. Just like the history of the Catholic church is the history of the Jewish church.

Yep.

You can't split them apart because eventually, if you keep splitting them apart, you lose Jesus at the end of it too. Mhmm. You can't keep taking away all the history. Our history is the history of the Catholic church. These women leaders are in our history.

Mhmm. Even though technically we are no longer Catholic. We can't forget them. Nope. They're still there.

Another important thing about Hilde is that she taught at least five men who went on to become bishops. She would have had the same authority as those bishops, according to Beth. She was a political and spiritual leader. And then Beth said around between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries was when we saw women being pushed out. But she didn't expand upon that a ton in her talk.

I believe she does expand on that in the book.

She does talk about a nun, an abbess named Milberga Mhmm. In her book, which what a lovely name that is. Milberga. She was a local ruler in June. Mhmm.

And she kind of has a similar history to Hilde. But I think something that I really liked after she spoke about these women is like, you shouldn't describe them as extraordinary. Yes. Because that means that this is rare. This is something extraordinary that these women are doing.

And it's not. This was completely ordinary. Their leadership is completely ordinary. And to say they're extraordinary is to prolong this history and whatever of patriarchy.

Yeah. Actually wrote down her exact quote when she said She said, Describing women as extraordinary is a subtle way of reinforcing patriarchy. And then this is not her exact quote, but to reinforce something of what she said. She said, this maintains the fiction that women can't be pastors, and it gaslights us. Yeah.

Because these women if you've been in the Protestant church for very long at all, I've heard many a time from women and men. This is not just like you hear it from men. I've heard this from women too. If you hear that women can lead at all, you're often hearing, well, women can lead, but only if there's no good men to step up. Yep.

You'll hear this in reference to Deborah Yep.

For Wing Big Deb. Big Deb, yes.

And we have an episode on this. It's one of our earliest episodes. I don't even know what the title of it is.

It's probably Big Deb.

It might be Big Deb. But one of the big arguments that you hear about Deborah is that people try and explain her away. Mhmm. Because Deborah very clearly she was a judge. Mhmm.

She's in the the book of Judges. She was a judge, which means that she was a political leader of the Jewish people. She was a political leader of the Jewish people. She was appointed by God. And then she led the Jewish people into battle.

Because she was asked to by a man who said that he would not go into battle without her. Didn't she prophesy something? Yes. So a man named Barak, who was a military leader, came to her and said, We need to go to war, but I'm not going without you. I need you.

And she said, Okay. I will go with you. But if I go with you, then the credit for this battle will go to a woman. And he said now, and again, we have a whole episode on this, so you can go back and listen to that. It's a fascinating story.

If you hear about this at all, and I didn't hear about this growing up, but as an adult, when I would hear this story, was always that, like, he would have been ashamed of that.

Like, that was a slight to him.

The horror. The credit will go to a woman. And she's not talking about herself. She's not. She's talking about JL, which is a different part of the story, but there's no indication that Barack is, like, ashamed of this.

He's like, cool. Let's go.

That's something from our culture that we're putting on Exactly. And in that story, when there's no indication of of it.

He does not seem to have any shame here. I don't think he would

have gone to her. Exactly. If he was afraid of having the credit go to a woman, he would have thought women are too weak to do that. If it was someone from our culture right now, he wouldn't have ever gone to her in the first place,

but he did. There's every indication that Deborah was fully well respected here in her culture. Because otherwise, there's no way that she would have risen to this.

And you can't even say, Well, she rose up because there were no good men involved. No, she served right along two other male judges.

Right. But she's the one in this story. She is the one that God chose to lead the people here. But that's the argument is always, well, women can only lead if there's if there's no good men. If there's no good men, then women can lead.

But you see here, I mean, just look at Hilde. Yep. And Will Berger. There were good men. And frankly, it's insulting to both men and women to say, Well, women can only lead when there's no good men, because Hild was leading good men.

These were not bad men who wouldn't lead. She led five men, at least, who became bishops. I don't think there's any indicator to say that these were men who didn't want to lead, that they were bad men.

Mm-mm. They were going to her to learn how to lead. Right.

Because she had knowledge that they needed. Because she was a leader and they wanted to learn from her. It's insulting to sit and say, like, Well, there's no good men around, so I guess the woman can lead. I actually worked with a female pastor that felt the same way. She felt that she was only leading because there were no men leading in her place instead.

Mhmm. Because that's what we've been fed. Right. And that's what we're gonna spit out.

And it broke my heart. And it also questioned, like, you can't have a lot of respect to the men around you then, I guess, right? No. It's insulting to everyone. Patriarchy is not good for anybody.

No one comes out on top here. And she actually talks about that in she talked about that in her talk. Mhmm. The only people who win in patriarchy she talked about it a little bit like a pyramid scheme. She said the people at the very top of the pyramid scheme, they get all the power, right?

So I believe she was actually talking about the SBC, the Southern Baptist Convention. But the people at the very top kind of get all the power. Those few men up there. They have all the power. And then there's, like, a few little trickles of power that come down to the next people.

And so they're fighting over that little bit of power. And then a little bit of power that trickles down, and then those people are fighting over the little extra bit of power. No one wins here. Mm-mm. Everyone comes out looking bad.

When, really, who should be at the top? Jesus. Jesus. Shocking.

If all you're fighting over is power, you lose the beauty of life. Like, that might sound a little bit like, Oh, the beauty of life. What happens to your relationship with your spouse if you're fighting over power? Because I love my husband, and we get to have a deep and wonderful relationship. But if we were constantly fighting over power, like, I look at these marriage books because we follow Sheila Ray Gregoire does a lot on marriage.

That's her main topic that she talks about. And the the marriage books that she quotes all the time horrify me. Yeah. If you don't follow her on Facebook, highly recommend following her. Her page is under Bare Marriage.

And there's no universe where these people have good marriages. I just can't begin to believe it for one single second because it's all about power dynamics. And if all you can focus on is power think about any other relationship in your life. If all you focused on was power dynamics, would that be a good relationship? And,

you know, the quote, like, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Yeah. She kind of gets into that a little bit in her book when she talks about all of the terrible things that are going on inside the church right now.

Mhmm.

And how it's not uncommon to hear that, for example, someone put up a camera in the bathroom at church. Mhmm. Or a youth pastor did whatever. And she gets into this a little bit in her book about a pastor's wife from the sixties, I believe it was. And the church just hides everything that her husband did because they're like, Well, you know, forgiveness, forgiveness.

Let's sweep it under the rug. But it's because these men are in positions of power. Right. And they don't want to be questioned.

Well, mean, I can tell you, in Breeze in my community, this type of thing has happened twice very recently in major churches. In our county, like, very close by. Because absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is rot at the center someone told me this recently there's rot at the center of the Protestant church. And you have to dig pretty deep, and it's gonna hurt really bad to get it out.

Mhmm. You're going to have to do some really tough digging.

We're gonna have to do

a root canal, ladies and gentlemen. And it's it's all of the deconstruction that we talk about all the time. Rip it to shreds and see what's left.

I saw a TikTok earlier that was like, think about how Jesus came down and led his people. Did he come down as a political leader? Did he come down as a king or whatever? No. He came as you and I.

Right. You know, one of the people. Mhmm. And he led. That's what we need to be looking for in our leaders.

Not someone who's obsessed with power. Jesus was not obsessed with power. He was obsessed

with truth and love. Well, I think we're we're still looking for a king. Just like the Israelites were looking for a king, wanted that military leader. Mhmm. As a Protestant church, that's clearly what we're still looking for.

And you can see that in this concept of patriarchy. You can see that in these male pastors that get up there and call I I forget the quote, but we've quoted it before where one of the male pastors that is all over TV and everything said that, like, we've feminized Jesus and that this wimpy version of Jesus, he wouldn't follow because this lovey, hippie, whatever version of Morgan Stop Worn. Yeah, that he wouldn't follow. But Jesus, you're right, did not come down as a political leader, and we're still looking for that. That's still what we want to turn him into, but he very clearly didn't come here as that.

On purpose. He could have done whatever he wanted. But I think what the church is so scared of is that Jesus came down with what we would consider stereotypically feminine traits.

Mhmm. Well, mean, we talked about this in one of our very early episodes, where he calls himself an Ezer. Mhmm. Right. But he also called women, or Eve, was it?

Eve? Ezra Konegdo. Right. Konegdo. Yes.

You got it.

You got there.

Which, if you wanna go back and listen to that, awesome. But if you don't want to, that means, essentially, like, in a battle situation, when a soldier cannot go on, cannot fight anymore, he screams out for another soldier to come save him, Ezra Konegdo, and that's us. That's women. We're saving

them. A warrior. Yeah. Yeah. And yet that has been turned into this concept of like, helper.

Helpmeet. We said that with the same inflection too. It was frightening. But I think, yeah, like, because Jesus came with and I say stereotypically feminine traits because they're not feminine traits. We shouldn't be calling emotion feminine or masculine.

No. But we've It's human. Yes. We've turned them into we've decided that they're feminine traits, but Jesus came down showing love, showing care, showing consideration. Forgiveness.

Forgiveness. That he was not aggressive. I mean, there's moments, there are moments where he shows more aggression. There's moments where he shows more passion. There's moments of those things.

Because he's a human, and he shows a full spectrum of emotions. But he shows a full spectrum of emotions. And that's threatening to a culture, to a church, that's upholding patriarchy. That's threatening to a church that says the only person who can be a leader is a strong man.

Beth really dug into how this whole idea is gaslighting women. Yes. And it's something that's happened relatively recently within the church, I would say, like in the 70s and 80s, where they started pushing for like, No, no, no. Let's stop ordaining women. Let's give them less authority in the church, but then we're gonna lift up this new position that we're gonna call the pastor's wife.

Like a first lady. She can hold all this position of power in the church but not get any of the credit. And we're just gonna slide over all the tasks that, you know, the pastor doesn't want to do.

Unpaid tasks. Yeah. I think that is potentially one of the most fascinating things that she talks about because it is so recent in history.

Mhmm.

The head of the writing department for Calvin, she made this comment, and she said, We are an ahistorical people, which essentially means we are antihistory. Yeah. Now, I was not born in the 70s and 80s. I was born in 1992. But regardless, the fact that we can't see past the 70s and 80s in our church history says something huge.

It says that we have been gaslit to an absolutely insane place. The 70s and 80s.

They say that we are suppressing women now more than we ever have in the church,

which is insane to me. Like, even in the 1950s. We think of the 50s and we think, Leave it to Bieber, right? Like, that's what pops into my head first.

And

that, to me, says women's suppression. But if we're specifically thinking of the church, not necessarily society, but if we're specifically thinking the church, women were still being ordained in the church in the 50s. The role of the pastor's wife wasn't there yet. That's the crazy thing. Beth talks about that, I mean, that's the whole concept of the book.

Role of the pastor's wife didn't even exist. This whole concept of like, the pastor's wife who runs the Sunday school and does the church bulletin and cooks for the small groups and, you know, whatever, like all the little unpaid whatever things that the pastor's wife is supposed to do. It didn't exist.

Well, she goes into in her book kind of the history of how we got a pastor's wife. And I really encourage you to buy this book and read through it because there's so much dense information. I need to go back already and read through it. But five star book. It's incredible.

Yeah. But she goes into how, like, the clergy originally, they were allowed to have families, and then they decided, maybe you're not allowed to have them anymore. So some of them kept their wives and their families, but others of them had to separate from their wives and they would just consider them their concubines. And then a lot of them were really in to, you know, prostitution and And then they decided later on, no, no, no. Now you can have wives.

Now this is okay.

Church history is weird, guys.

People were so used to, like, them not being able to be married that they really looked down on these women who decided to marry these pastors or, you know, whatever the clergy was. So it's just interesting to hear how we got there, and then all of a sudden, now the role of the pastor's wife is kind of woven into all of Right.

And she does say that the role of the pastor's wife was elevated specifically as the church was trying to stop ordaining women, as we tried to, like, push away the ordination of women and to stop women from being able to teach and preach, we elevated this role of pastor's wife to kind of pretend it's like it's like when you take something away from a kid Mhmm. But you give them a piece of candy. To be like, No, no. It's still okay. It's still okay.

It's all okay. You're pacifying them. Mhmm. But you took away the thing that they really wanted. Because you can still do ministry, you just can't have the title.

You can still do all the same things, but you just aren't very important, really.

Right. They will tell women now, like, if you feel like you're led to ministry, if you're being called into ministry, that that must mean that you're going to marry a pastor. Because your calling is only completed through your husband. Right. One of the quotes I really liked in her her talk at Kelvin was, There was a time in history where God called women and women fulfilled their calling.

Period. Yes.

Not through their husband. Yes. Not having to be married at all. One of the quotes book is, From priest to whore to pastor's wife. Whoo.

Yeah. So one of the things that she does talk about, and she talked about this in her talk, but she also has it in her book, and it is in chapter one, is in the 1980s. So again, this is right as the Southern Baptist Convention, which is kind of the largest Protestant denomination in The US. I'm not 100% sure if it is globally, but it is the largest denomination in The United States. And this was right as they were really, really starting to push women out.

Now, they're still pushing. I don't know if you all are aware of this. I think we have talked about this before, but they very recently voted to In 2023.

Yeah. And she talks about that in her book.

She does. They voted to essentially stop all funding for any church that has female ordination that supports it, that has any women pastors, anything like that. So be horrified. Just go forward with that knowledge. But, so this happened in the 1980s, this particular situation I'm about to talk about.

And this happened in, let's see, North Dakota. And the woman was named Sarah Wood Lee. And her and her husband were church planter apprentices in the Southern Baptist Convention, and they were going through the programs together. They were about to be ordained together. They were doing all the classes.

They went through all of this process together as a team. They were a ministry team. They considered themselves that, both her and her husband. This wasn't like, Sarah considered herself part of the ministry team, and her husband, whose name is Sean Mhmm. Thought he was the leader and she wasn't.

Like, this was a together decision. Okay? And when they decided they I don't know exactly what the process is with the SBC to start a church, but they essentially applied to start a church and did so as a ministry team. Now they were approved to do so, but several of the SBC pastors did not agree with that because they applied as a team. Mhmm.

So letters were written back and forth with people being all kinds of pissy about that decision, even though they were approved. And so the Southern Baptist Convention decided to list her, instead of listing her as part of the ministry team, instead of listing her as ordained, instead of listing her as anything of any importance, listed her as church and family. Now that they did that to pacify some of the other pastors. It didn't, but that is what they did. It also didn't pacify Sarah.

Mhmm. So she wrote a letter, and I'm gonna read you that letter. She said, I am writing to you in response per your letter per August 13. In it, you said you are appointing me to the church and family category. I must insist that you do not categorize me this way.

Please categorize me as ministry team partner or something to that. If you can't, then don't categorize me as anything. I choose to be a minister and not a minister's wife. Her request was ignored.

Mhmm.

They just didn't categorize her as anything.

Which is insane. Because she has the same education, the same calling as her husband, but they just they cannot wrap their mind around that God might call a woman to this same ministry. She's also doing the same job. Yeah. Like, let's

just point that out. These women, these pastor's wives now and Beth does talk about this. A lot of this is propped up by women. You'll see plenty of books about about the role of the pastor's wife, about the role of women Mhmm. That are very anti feminist written by women.

Patriarchy only exists because Women support it. Women support it. It wouldn't exist otherwise. Mhmm. Men don't have that much power, even though they want to think they do.

Yeah. However, all of these women are still doing the same job. They are still fulfilling the same role. And yet, all we're not giving them is a title. And by the way, a title that the bible doesn't even really use.

It doesn't have

that role in the bible. It's not it doesn't exist. Think Paul's made up this role.

I think Paul uses the term pastor, like, once, maybe twice, and he doesn't actually assign it to anyone. Mhmm.

It's just sort of there. She goes through in here those three titles in the bible that they do use, and we did an episode on that. Mhmm. Diaconos and Episcopus and Presbyteros, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. She goes into that. Those are the words that they use in the Bible. They don't really use pastor. Right.

And they definitely don't use pastor's wife. Right.

And it's just such a silly a silly designation that we just decided on, that we just decided to take away from women. And I mean, I could go into other ones, too. We've done episodes on the term deacon and the term elder, both of which were given to women. But we've also decided that women can't have those in modern And it's just a silly it's just silly. And yet, as women, we've accepted it.

And that's what Beth is arguing against here in part two of her trilogy. And also part one, and

I assume also part three will be an additional argument. I liked in kind of her closing statements, she said that it's really important that we need to step out and let people see that we're not staying silent anymore as women. We're talking about the history that the church has and women have in their role in the church. Mhmm. But so many people talk about, you know, there's evidence of patriarchy in the Bible, but that's not the only story in there.

Yes. I loved when she said that. Mhmm. Of course there's evidence of patriarchy in the Bible. Of course.

It's the Roman world.

Mhmm.

It's the world as a whole.

Yeah.

But let's remember that patriarchy came from the fall. Exactly. The curse after the fall is where patriarchy comes from. You can go back in Genesis and read about that. Why are we holding on to this curse?

We don't hold on to the other parts of it. Like, when it says, You must toil, you know, with the earth. No one's cursing the farmers and saying, Hey, Christian farmers, you can't use all of these modern day equipments because you need to toil with the earth. No. And no one's

I'm sure.

Well, yeah. But that's a different thing. No one's telling Christian women you can't have medication because childbirth is supposed to be painful. Like, I mean, maybe some people are, but that's not a modern day thing that I'm hearing. We're not holding onto any other parts of the curse after Adam and Eve sinned.

Adam and Eve sinned. Cough, cough. And yet, we're holding onto this one for dear frickin' life. Yeah. Like it is gonna hold us together.

And I think the most important thing that I am learning from Beth, from her just incredible wisdom, is that this is not normal. I have been gaslit. You have been gaslit. I'm sure all of you out there have been gaslit to believe that this really is what God wanted and that us modern day feminists are like this weird anomaly that popped up out of nowhere. Right.

We didn't pop up out of nowhere, guys. This is our history. Beth is talking about our history, our church history, our history as women, our history as what God built us to be.

I saw another TikTok that said, If female submission was normal, they wouldn't have to write so many books and force it down our throats for it to be digestible for us. Yes. It would be something that flowed natural from us.

But

instead, again, they're gaslighting us to make us think that it's normal. And again, it's because women support it. Nothing happens without women's support. So women need to start supporting other women and building them up with outrageous confidence and saying, Yes, you absolutely can do that. Are you called to ministry?

God called you into ministry? Awesome. Go do that. You don't need to be married to do that. You don't have to do it under the umbrella of your husband.

Or under the umbrella of the church that you've been at for Mhmm. Twenty years. Run into whatever God is calling you to do. Mhmm. Run towards the light, guys.

Run towards the light. Because this is not normal. Mhmm. This world that we're living in is not where God wanted us to be.

And I really, really encourage you to look at our history. Mhmm. Look to people like Beth Allison Barr, who have spent their entire life researching this and can guide you in

the right direction, you're not alone. Right. We've posted many a good book on our Instagram, but I will also recommend Tell Her Story is a great one. Also, She Deserves Better by Sheila Ray Gregoire is a great book. There are countless books, and yes, we need to do a book list.

She's a feminist by Sarah Bessie. All really good books. Like Brie said, you're not alone in this. If you're exploring this Christian feminist world, I felt so alone when I started down this path. I remember looking I I just googled Christian feminism, I think, was the first thing I did.

Which is a bad thing to Google.

Oh, yeah. It's a tragedy because you'll get the the first, like, 20 pages of Google are, Christians can't be feminists. How dare you go to hell?

No, H E Double Heck. Sorry.

Watch your mouth. But there are other people out there exploring this topic and understanding that God made us to be equal. God did not make this hierarchy. And as much as the patriarchal Christian structure wants to say and Beth talks about this, too, and I'm not gonna go deeply into this because we don't have the time. But the patriarchal Christian structure wants to say oftentimes that, like, It's not that men are more important or more in power than women.

It's just different.

And we give all the good stuff to the men.

Separate but equal is never equal.

No. And if I truly at my like in my heart of hearts believed that God created women as sex class citizens, you know, like an afterthought, I wouldn't be worshipping that God anymore. Right. Because what's the point? Why would you create me this way?

Mhmm. And why would you give women those callings?

Mhmm.

And say, nope. Just kidding. Yep.

Yeah. If you're gonna make people No, I've never made a person.

Well, no,

that's not true. Made two people. Made two people. What? I've never made people.

Anybody's soul, to be fair. If I was gonna make somebody's soul. And I was gonna tell someone, You can't be a leader. It seems awfully cruel to then give them the desire for leadership. To give them the skill set for leadership.

I was gonna say the ability to lead, absolutely lead and lead well. This isn't normal. This isn't normal. Think about

all those freaking amazing women out there leading, preaching, teaching. We've put ourselves in this tiny bubble, and frankly, I I don't even just think it's our little Protestant Christian Baptist bubble. I think it's also our North American Protestant Christian Baptist bubble. Yeah. Let's pop the bubble, and let's move let's move out, and let's explore a little bit beyond.

Let's look at the Catholic faith. Let's look at the Jewish traditions. Let's look outside of our country walls. Let's look further. Mhmm.

Let's look and see what else God has for us. Mhmm. Because the world is bigger. History is bigger. It's a

big, bright, beautiful world with happiness all around. It's peaches and cream. Is it? And every dream comes true.

Thank you. And on that really happy note, Brie really needs to take a shower, guys. Because she is traveling tomorrow. Yeah, when you listen to this, I'll be gone. Hopefully not.

Gone, gone. Like a freight train.

Next week, we are gonna do we're gonna wrap up Steve's book, Your Jesus is Too American. Mhmm. And I need to finish reading that book. She does. Maybe that could be your your plane project.

So we'll wrap that book up and then yeah.

Oh, we're gonna be doing a giveaway. Oh, yeah. We got a signed copy of Beth's book Becoming the Pastor's Wife. And I think we're gonna go through and highlight some of our favorite bits and pieces for you and maybe I'll sign it in a secret spot for you too but I want Beth's name to be the biggest and the largest and the proudest.

Obviously.

So we're gonna post about that on our social medias and how to win that. Yep. So if you if you search if you

just find that look up the hashtag, we are more on Instagram and TikTok, you can find us there. Mhmm. So we'll post that in the next day or two,

probably. Excited for you.

Yeah. So go find us over there. And we will talk

to you guys next week. Love you. Bye. Bye.