Latest / We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism / Ep. 128: Not My Church

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Ep. 128: Not My Church · We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 0:26
  And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Hello, world. Good morning, Baltimore. Hey, Baltimore. How you doing? Every day is like an open door.
• 0:40
  Uh-huh. An open door. Every night is a fantasy.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: That's exciting for some.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Every sound is a symphony.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen that movie in a good long while.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: It has been a long time. I have listened to the music from it recently.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: It's it's a choice. There's a lot going on. There's yeah. We're talking about hairspray, if you if
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: you hadn't
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: caught on to that particular song. If you're not a weirdo like we are.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: It's a musical. It ages like it's it's intentionally supposed to be making a statement about several different things. Yeah. It is. But when you watch it, it does make you uncomfortable.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Particularly John Travolta in drag. Yeah. It's a strange strange sight.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. But not so off putting. It's like, this was meant to be this way.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: So how was your guys' last week? Brie and I went on a family road trip. Family road trip, girls trip. We went to Shipshewana, Indiana. If you have ever been there, it's a lot of old people, man.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think I wanna go back. I wanna go back and experience it more long term because I drove a bunch of people You did. It was exhausting. Yeah.
• 1:57
  After work. But I wanna go and really sit and people watch. Mhmm. I wanna have a long sit. The hotel we were at was so cute.
• 2:08
  Yes.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: It was like the whole town was super decorated for fall and Halloween. There were pumpkins everywhere. It's very festive. And then we ate at this restaurant, and it was all this home cooked food. It was so good.
• 2:20
  Mhmm. I actually okay, guys. If you know me at all, you know that I don't like stuffing. It's one of those things. Even as an adult and my palate has expanded, I just never I could not do stuffing in particular.
• 2:33
  And I tried the stuffing there, and I really liked it.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Welcome to the dark side.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't really know what happened.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I think you will like our Thanksgiving stuffing.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I think I will definitely try the Thanksgiving stuffing. I'm excited for Thanksgiving.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: I liked the amount of carrots in that stuffing.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It had good celery too. There was turkey in there.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It was good times. Oh my gosh. I would go back just for
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the food. It was good. We also went to a grocery store, and it's this was like a whole new life experience for me because, I mean, we live in not a city city area, but a relatively city area. This was a cash only grocery store. It was
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: a Cash bulk or food check?
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, yes. Personal checks were accepted, but only with proper ID. Mhmm. It was wild in there. I mean, was a Saturday, but it it was chaos.
• 3:23
  People were throwing elbows. It was the whole thing.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: It I almost got ran over Oh, yeah. By many an Amish folk. And also many a non Amish folk. Yeah. They were like, it didn't matter that I was standing there because they were going through me,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: in me, and through me. It was an exciting time. But it was super fun because we got to spend time with our cousins and our family and just, I don't know, chill for a little bit, which was nice.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: I just like being together. Mhmm. I would do pretty much anything. Yeah. Just to be together,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: which is interesting. We're as much as, you know, like, Brie and I are very unique individuals. And we have strayed pretty far from a lot of what we were raised in. But our family has remained so so close even in spite of a lot of that stuff and and in spite of all of us growing up and being different people anyway. Mhmm.
• 4:14
  And so as we get into the holidays, I'm sure you'll hear us talk about many family event. Yeah. The next one coming up is obviously Halloween, and everybody comes over to our house. Mhmm. So that's fun.
• 4:26
  My house is not that big, and my family our family is real big. So there's a lot of people in this house. We take up most of
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: the road with our vehicles.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. But it was just fun. I had a good time.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I wanna go back for the food and the people watching. Okay. We also saw a play called Love Come Softly. That was the time.
• 4:46
  And it was very much geared towards the older people. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right? And they made it into a musical.
• 4:52
  And it was just interesting. I listened to the conversations of the old people behind me, and they were very funny. I was having a good time.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I was sitting there eating chocolate covered raisins. And if you give me chocolate covered raisins, everything's pretty much okay. But they did take my bag. They let me walk in with chocolate covered raisins and a Pepsi. But they took my bag of stuff.
• 5:17
  They were like, no. That's too much.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: You bought this at the gift shop downstairs?
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: How very You can't
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: take it in.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No. Thank you. Anyway, so today because last week, we kind of, like, didn't know what we were talking about. Because frankly, we were exhausted.
• 5:31
  Right. And that's just how we are sometimes. But we talked about it, and we wanted to talk about some more of, like, I mean, current
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: news, I guess. Listen, I've been frequenting the TikTok lately. I need to probably stop because it's becoming a problem again. But I've been scrolling through. And these are just a couple of the things that are really hitting my algorithm hard.
• 5:59
  Mhmm.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: There's just a lot of bad behavior for men, whether and a lot of the ones we're gonna talk about are, like, church men. But obviously, this is not a church specific issue. But boy, oh boy, has there seemed to be a lot of it in the news lately. Boy, oh boy. And I'm not sure if it's in the news because we're talking about it more or if it's in the news because it's happening more.
• 6:25
  I'm not I'm not sure which is going on. But what I do know is that right now in the world, especially in The United States but I think, honestly, I'm seeing it worldwide, where there's this sort of hyper conservative movement that's saying women are worth less. And if I believe that women are worth less, then I don't have to treat them as well. They're below me. They're second class citizens.
• 6:57
  I can stomp on them if I want to, and it doesn't really matter. And so we're gonna talk about a bunch of men that that applies to, I
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: guess. Mhmm.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: So one of the parts of this that I wanna focus on and ask a big question to begin with is, let's say that you believe in this, like, biblical manhood business. Right? Mhmm. This man is the head of the household. Woman should be submissive.
• 7:24
  Whatever. You probably don't out there. Because if you're listening to us and you've been around for a while, I'm gonna guess that's not really your thing. But let's assume that you do or your church does or whatever. You may say, okay.
• 7:39
  But we're not abusive with this. We believe this, but my church isn't abusive that way.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Not my church. Or what I've heard too from Pete Hegseth's pastor. Mhmm. You remember that, like, sixty minute interview with him and
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Doug Wilson.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Interviewed some other people in leadership at his church. They interviewed a couple and the man was like they asked the question to him, do you believe that you are the leader and you are the head of the household? And he was like, yes. Well, you know, we're all created equal in God's image.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: But
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: But Mhmm. We have different roles.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: And that's, I think, the big takeaway here is the but.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The it's the politically correct way to say it. Mhmm. Oh, equal but different. And of course, we all know equal but different is not equal.
• 8:34
  Mhmm. Equal but different means somebody has all the authority roles and somebody doesn't. Mhmm. And so your church or you may say, okay, I only take this belief this far. I don't use it to abuse people.
• 8:51
  I don't use it to assert power. But that same belief system of men are superior and above and are capable of leadership and women are submissive and not capable of leadership can be taken to the extreme that the men in this story take it to. Because if women are second class citizens, then they're second class citizens. And somebody is gonna take it more extremely than you do. And your boundary doesn't exist for everybody.
• 9:25
  So let's see. There were three stories that we planned for, and then Brie has another one that she wants to bring up if we've got some time as well. But let's talk about Caleb Flynn. He's the first one. So he was on American Idol.
• 9:39
  Interesting factoid. And he was also a worship leader. Now he's currently on trial, so all these things that we're saying are alleged. He has not been convicted yet. But he was accused of murdering his wife, Ashley.
• 9:56
  And he has pleaded not guilty. The prosecutors are showing messages that he sent back and forth with his very, very young mistress that said, hey, I wanna kill my wife. It Hey, was let's plan for it.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: It's a ridiculous case. If you go back and watch any of the trials right now, they're all over TikTok. But I think his mistress was 21 at the time, and I believe he's 37. And they both served on the worship team together. She was a
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: an intern or something or a volunteer or something like that.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Maybe. But, yes, they had a text message going back and forth, and they referred to his wife as douche. Sorry. Lovely. Trigger warning for you.
• 10:47
  But both of them together kept commenting on, I wish we could just kill her. I wish she would just be dead. And one of his texts said, I wish I could kill her and not go to hell. Mhmm. That was the kind of conversation they would have back and forth.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Right. And this is someone who is getting up on stage every week, despite having these conversations, despite having an affair with and it's obviously, she is over 18 at this point, but it's hard to call it an affair when clearly he's grooming this very young woman. Mhmm. And he's getting up on stage and leading people in worship. And Brie and I have had an experience like that where a worship pastor that we we were at that church for a very long time did horrific, horrific things.
• 11:42
  We've talked about it before. And it calls into question everything that you felt during that worship session. And I don't think that it negates anything. I'm not saying, oh, if you felt close to God in those moments that it But was it does call everything into question for people. It does.
• 12:01
  Because if he did this and he still managed to get up there and worship God, What does he think? First of all, he apparently doesn't think he's going to hell for planning her murder, for cheating on her. But he thinks that murdering her, that's what's gonna send him to hell. Like, all of these other things not that murdering her isn't horrifying, but, like, all of the other things are fine in the eyes of God? Excusable?
• 12:31
  Forgivable? Right.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. If if you watch the video that shows his 911 call Mhmm. He allegedly is saying that an intruder broke into their home. He accidentally, quote unquote, accidentally left the garage door open all night long. It just so happened to be a night where his wife asked him to sleep on the couch, not because anything was going wrong, but because he had a cough.
• 12:58
  Sure. Sure. He was outside of their bedroom. The intruder came in, shot his wife oh, trigger warning. Shot his wife two times in the head, and then left.
• 13:09
  And that was it. Mhmm. So he called 911 frantically saying, I think I heard two shots. My wife is dead. My kids are still here.
• 13:19
  They're like, where are you? He said, I'm in the home still. I'm in my room. They're like, where are your kids?
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: How do you know the intruder is still not in your home? Right. Have you checked on your kids?
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: He's like, no. Oh, sure. Who cares?
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: And this man, by his own description, is patriarchal. Mhmm. He's fine with that word, apparently. And so she's not that valuable to him at the end of the day. And the next girl won't be all that valuable to him.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Which is insane because he works for the company that her father started, I believe. So he works for her family company. That's where he's getting money from. She has definitely helped him along his career. He wouldn't be anywhere without her.
• 14:09
  And what I get frustrated with is constantly the excuse from these men like him are, we're the protector. Mhmm. We're the protector. What do we need protecting from Mhmm.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: If not people like you? Right. There's a reason that like, I notoriously do not feel safe around most men. I just don't. And the reason behind that is because of stories like this.
• 14:35
  And you can say not all men all you want, but when a quarter of women in The United States are assaulted at some point in their life, when, like Brie said earlier when we were talking pre podcast, that every single woman knows another woman who has been assaulted, who has been hurt by men. Everybody. I mean, it's not like, oh, I know one person who is a friend of a friend of a friend. It's like, oh, yeah. That one and that one and that one and that one.
• 15:02
  Mhmm. It's a list. We all know. So But no men will say they know any rapists Right. Or anybody who's assaulted anybody.
• 15:11
  Right.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Or all their friends are good guys. Mhmm. Oh, he's a good guy. Mhmm. But stay away from this one.
• 15:16
  Right. Okay. Why are we staying away from that one?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: If you're the protector,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: why do I have to be afraid of you or say something? Right. If you know someone's a shady character, say something
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: or stop associating with them. Right. Or, hey, report it. Yeah. So let's talk about the theology behind how you get here.
• 15:37
  Like, how do you get to the place where women just are secondary citizens? And I think you start with with the concept of, like, god intentionally created men and women differently. Now that sounds pretty innocent in and of itself. I know many, many people who will be like, well, god made us different. Okay.
• 15:59
  It sounds okay until you come to step two, which says that those differences also come with different roles. Well, women are different. Women are weaker. Therefore, women can't have authority roles. Men are stronger, so men are in authority.
• 16:20
  Okay. Don't love that, but still very common belief. How about we rebrand strong like they rebranded love Yeah.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: And say, I don't think you're very strong because you don't have the capability to birth anything.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Right. My muscles are stronger than yours. Now, the third part of this is that then, okay, those different roles now mean the husband is in authority. He's the leader or head of the family. Okay?
• 16:48
  Really mainstream. Right? This isn't none of you are shocked by this belief structure. Most of us grew up in it. But then we get to the next one where a wife has to submit to that.
• 17:00
  Super common. We can talk about the Southern Baptist Convention. They officially say that the husband has a god given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family, and that a wife should submit to his servant leadership.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: I saw something on TikTok earlier too that was like, women were not naturally not able to provide for themselves. It's a rule that men made up that they need to be the provider and limited women's abilities to provide for themselves. Like, you're not allowed to have a job. You're not allowed to have a bank account. You're not allowed to apply for this credit card because I said you're not.
• 17:38
  Mhmm. Because I have to provide for you. Right. It's not that women can't. It's that women haven't been allowed to.
• 17:44
  Right. Well, and you have to ask
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the question, if this was what God wanted, then it would be a universal truth. It would be universally possible. Right? But there are many places in the world where it is not possible, even frankly in The US today, where it is not possible to have a single provider household. Mhmm.
• 18:04
  And if it's not universally true, then it's not true. It's simply it's not God. Because God wouldn't have said, yes, you must do this. But hey, over here, it's not possible for you. So you're in sin all the time.
• 18:18
  That's not how God works. And you go from that wife submitting to her husband to, okay, the husband has to have enough authority over his wife to control everything, to control the money, to control who comes in and out of the house, to control who she interacts with. And we'll talk about that in another case as well. Mhmm. But at what point does protecting your spouse become controlling your spouse?
• 18:52
  At what point for Ashley in this case did her husband start controlling things, controlling the situation, controlling who he was around and who she was around. And then allegedly taking her life because she wasn't as important as he was. Her needs and wants were not as important.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: I don't understand why he couldn't have just left her.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Because that would ruin his image. Right? He's a Christian man. Yes. He can't just leave his his wife Mhmm.
• 19:30
  And go live forever, happily ever after with his mistress. That would hurt his image. So a better image Mhmm. Would just be if, oh, he's a widower.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Right. Oh, no. Well, begs the question, what is a good Christian man? Because the church would have looked at him. That's why he was the worship leader.
• 19:51
  Right? They said, this is a good Christian man. And I guarantee you, this wasn't a no one knows what's going on situation. Oh, yeah. Because everything gets out.
• 20:00
  Yeah. People absolutely knew he was having an affair. Guaranteed. So what makes a good Christian man? The church may not say this out loud, but from my experience and from what I'm seeing here, the church says, okay, you're married?
• 20:18
  Checkbox. Okay. You have 2.5 kids? Checkbox. You show up at church every Sunday.
• 20:23
  You read your bible in front of the world. You take it outside and sit on a park bench and read it. You post about Jesus on Facebook. Okay. Now you're a good Christian man.
• 20:34
  And nothing nothing about that says internally, love God and love others. Externally, love God and love others. It's just what image can you put forth?
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Yes. And in the same way that they will protect, and we've talked about this before, protect the church. There was probably definitely people
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: That knew about his affair. But it was more important for them to protect the image of the church than call this guy out. Mhmm.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: And we've seen that. We've talked about many other church situations where that's been the case. I've been told that many times. Stop criticizing the church so much because you're look you're making the church look bad. And you just don't wanna come here.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: I'm not the one making it look bad. The actions of the church are the ones making the church look bad.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. So let's ask some questions about this theology. Because I think I think we have to ask some of these questions to say, when I say not my church, maybe I'm not being honest. So the first one is, if the husband has final authority, what happens if his wife thinks he's wrong? What happens if she has a different opinion?
• 21:51
  Because we've been at services like this that say a good Christian woman Mhmm.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Submits and follows her husband even if he's walking them off a cliff.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Because that makes her holy and better and Christian because she's following and submitting to her husband. Even if she knows what he's doing is wrong Mhmm.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Allow him to figure it out by himself. Don't hurt his ego. And if you are willing to follow your husband into sin, then are you following a person? Or are you following Jesus? Mhmm.
• 22:36
  Now the next question is, let's say you were to say, well, she only has to submit to him when he's right. Okay. But that's your interpretation. Right? And you're saying only when he's right.
• 22:52
  But he thinks he's right all the time. Yeah. So maybe that's not actually submission. According to many of these churches, that's not actually submission. So now that gives them an excuse to say, okay, more control.
• 23:08
  More beating you over the head with a stick so that you submit every time. And if she has to submit when he's wrong, then what prevents abuse? Nothing. Clearly not the church. She doesn't have a fallback.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: High control religion and this idea of submissive marriage makes a great environment for abuse. Mhmm. Sure. Not every couple that practices submission is in a quote unquote abusive relationship. Mhmm.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: But a lot are. Well, and let's talk about our lives. Now, my parents are parents. No. We share the parents.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: No. We each have parents. They are the same parents,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: but they're individually our parents. Sure. That makes sense. But it's really interesting with them because my mom was never submissive. Our mom I'm sorry.
• 24:11
  I'm losing my mind. Our mom was never submissive a day in her dang life. Okay? And our dad didn't expect it. It wasn't like, oh, he was pissy because she wasn't being submissive.
• 24:22
  That's just not how they lived their lives. They grew up in it. They watched it happen, but that's not how they chose to live. However, because they were raised in it, because that's what they heard every Sunday in church, they would have told you that's how they were living and that's how you should live their your life. So Brie and I grew up not seeing it happen, but hearing it.
• 24:50
  And both of us interpreted it differently than our mom did. So when you preach this stuff, you have to ask the question, who's hearing this and understanding it at a more extreme level than I am? And
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this makes sense, but within our parents' marriage, our parents' marriage, our dad was working a lot. So mom definitely handled
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: all three of her children
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: and the home and our schedules. And so in a lot of ways, she was making big decisions all by herself because she knew a lot more about what was going on inside the home because she was there all So the I think it's just an incredible statement to say that men are leading Mhmm. When they can't even not that this relates to our parents because dad definitely knows our birthdays, but many
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: men don't even know their children's birthday. Right. Right. You know? How are they leading that home?
• 25:50
  Right. Well, it's it's leading when it's convenient. It's leading when the decision is something they want to deal with, but it's not leading when the decision is, hey, I kinda wanna switch pediatricians, and we need to do some research on this, and blah blah blah. The mundane daily stuff Well, that's beneath me, but the big picture things that are gonna, you know, impact things. I'm going to decide that.
• 26:16
  And I think too, they will call this loving. That type of Christian will say, no, this is loving.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Love you like the Christ the Christ. Like Christ loved the church. Right. That's my sacrificial love for Right.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: They talk about that servant leadership. Okay. Jesus was a servant leader who literally gave everything. Gave everything for people. Washed their feet.
• 26:50
  Died for them, for heaven's sake, but lived every day in service to them.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: But you can't even get up to do laundry to wash your own socks.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Right. It's astounding to people that my husband does the laundry. It's just it blows their minds. I said something the other day. I was over at my aunt's house.
• 27:08
  And I was like, oh, yeah. I gotta get home. Nathan has dinner ready, you know, whatever. And my grandma was like, well, isn't that nice? And she was like, she actually and I loved this that she said this.
• 27:22
  She goes, well, I just I love how you guys do that. That works out so well for you guys and blah blah blah. And I like, yeah, it works out well for us. She goes, I think it would work out well for everybody if they just do it. She cracks me up.
• 27:34
  Yeah.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: And I look at there's another couple that I know, and they definitely don't listen to this podcast, and they don't know that it exists. So it's fine. It's a husband and wife. And his wife just gave birth seven weeks ago. Their baby is seven weeks old.
• 27:51
  They moved to a new country. She knows no one. They're in an apartment. She's just her and the baby 90% of the time, but he expects her constantly to do all of the laundry, to make all of his meals, to meal prep his lunches for him, make sure they're healthy too. Sure.
• 28:10
  And another girl that I know found out about this and kinda called him out on it. And she's like, Wouldn't it be nice if, like, you went home and just took the baby from her without trying to make a scene? Just take the baby and say, Go out and do your thing. Yeah. Have fun.
• 28:27
  For heaven's sake, take a shower. Yeah. Yeah. Because this is your child too. Yeah.
• 28:33
  And you're not just watching your child. This is your child. You're parenting. And so he did that, actually. And he reported back.
• 28:41
  He's like, thank you so much for sharing that with me. I actually went home yesterday, took the baby, and I told her to go out. And she was at Target for, like, two hours. And it was really good.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Well, that's great. I love Yeah. I wonder a lot about that too because people that grew up and I don't know if he grew up the way that we did, but people that grow up in the spaces that we grew up in sometimes just aren't exposed to a different way of life. Mhmm. Maybe their parents lived that way too, and that's what they saw, and that's what they expect.
• 29:13
  And they just need exposure to it. And that's part of why we do this podcast is to introduce the world to, hey, you can be a Christian, and you can be a feminist. You can be a Christian and love God and love others. That's an option for you. But back to these folks.
• 29:29
  Sorry. No. I think what you need to ask of yourself and of your church coming off of this story is, would my pastor say that women need supervision in their marriage, in church, at work, whatever? And then what theological principle does my pastor use to either say that yes, women need supervision or say that no, they don't? And that'll answer, is this a safe space?
• 30:04
  Or it'll partly answer it.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Speaking of supervision,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: should we jump to Brian? Okay. Let's talk about Brian. Not this Brian, who's standing right here. Sitting.
• 30:15
  I'm sitting. So Brian is a reformed pastor slash theologian. He's all over the Internet. He talks about now Brie knows a little bit more about this quote than I do, but he doesn't want women to have unsupervised access to each other.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: This is just something that I saw on TikTok today, actually. This Brian guy. Brian is it so Suave?
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: I would say probably Sauve. Sauve?
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't care. He's a self described reformed Protestant who is a patriarchal pastor. He's based in Utah. And then this lady that I watched on TikTok, and she was like, he has red hair.
• 30:59
  She goes, look at what this dumb gender says.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: We are sorry to all of you out there, more genders.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: He just went viral for on a video clip on this. It's called right wing watch. And he said that women should not have unsupervised access to one another. Mhmm. Because when they do, basically, he was saying they get ideas in their heads.
• 31:22
  Not ideas. This is bad. But it just made me really sad. Mhmm. Because I'm like, okay, this is an abusive man.
• 31:31
  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because what's the first thing an abusive person does? They isolate their victim.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: They don't want you to have access to other people. They don't want you to know that this isn't normal. Mhmm. They don't want you to be able to go get help because they also don't wanna think that what they're doing is wrong. And I think about all of the people sitting in the church listening to this person, who's supposed to be leading them,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: who's supposed to be their spiritual leader. Right?
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Whose words are, like, tied to God's. And this is what he's telling you?
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, he talks about he has full access to all of her social media. And he has blocked, he says, thousands of accounts so that she can't see or interact with them. And you're not talking about, okay, I'm on TikTok and someone's being abusive towards me or saying horrible things and okay, I'm gonna block them. You're talking about he doesn't want her to get ideas in her head.
• 32:30
  He doesn't want her to think for herself or think of anything outside of his bubble.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: And you have to ask,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: when someone says that, does that sound more like God? Or does it sound more like someone who wants power and control? Because God doesn't need power and control. He's got it. He's not fighting for it.
• 32:54
  He's not putting you down so he can get it. So if someone out in the world is fighting for power and putting you down so they can get power, that doesn't come from God. None of those words came from God.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: That's not sacrificial love. No. That's not love, full stop. Right.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: And if you limit someone's access to the world forget about just saying controlling, but what does she how how does she have access to the great commission? Jesus said, go out into the world and make disciples. Right? That's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to love God and love others.
• 33:30
  We're supposed to show the world Jesus. How can she do that if all she has is the people who are reflecting his ideas back to her? She doesn't even have access to anyone who's not in that bubble. So not only are you controlling her and abusing her, etcetera, you're not allowing her to fulfill what God has asked of her. Now, is there some responsibility there as a person to say, no, I'm I'm going to do what God wants me to do?
• 34:04
  Sure. But I also understand having grown up in a high control religion, how hard it would be to walk away from that. I just don't understand what the point of a marriage like this is. Mhmm.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: For him, it's a chance to exploit power. Mhmm. Right? It makes him feel really important and good about himself. Mhmm.
• 34:27
  Because I have control over my wife and my kids.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: But I don't think that's what marriage is supposed to be. No. Right? Marriage is supposed to
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: be out of love for each other. And I don't know. I'm not married. But it just seems like, okay, you could hire someone if you wanted if you wanted a housekeeper.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Right. If you wanted a nanny. Right.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: If you wanted kids, you can adopt them or find a surrogate. What is the purpose of being with this person?
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: You love labor. Free labor. And sex whenever he feels like it. Yeah. Because he's also controlling that.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaking of that's all really I know about that couple. But speaking of another abusive couple within this Christian world, as I'm sure that you've heard of the Micah Miller case, it's all over Netflix, and was very all over social media when it happened.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Right. This happened in 2024. So it was a couple years ago. But Brie and I were both in this Christian feminist space when this happened. So it was it was all over my social media for sure.
• 35:40
  Now in 2024, Micah Miller, who was the former wife of pastor JP Miller, died by suicide, allegedly. Now there was a lot of conflicting evidence surrounding that. She had said to friends and family, if I ever die, it's because of him. And he was abusive, extremely abusive during their marriage. He had actually groomed her to begin with.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: So she got married pretty young to another young man. Mhmm. I think they went to the same church. Not JP. And then she started working for the church, and that's where she met JP Miller.
• 36:23
  I think she met him when she was 13.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: She was very, very young.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: Yes. Very young. He was the pastor of the church at the time that she was I think she was, like, his assistant or working for the church somehow. Right. And he started sending her more and more texts, asking her to be there alone more and more often, and they ended up having an affair.
• 36:44
  Mhmm. And they were like, You know what? We did something bad. They confessed to the church. They lost a lot of members of the church because of that.
• 36:53
  But they were like, We're gonna go ahead and get married because we want something beautiful to happen out of our sin.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Our sin. Yes. Not grooming.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: So they did get married. Mhmm. But it came out later how abusive it was. He committed her to mental institutions, forced her to take medication that she didn't want to take, isolated her from her friends and family, always wanted control over where she was and who she was talking to and how long she was talking to these people for. And she tried to get out eventually.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: She did they did end up getting divorced after a while. And just to be clear, her husband, her ex husband, has not been charged with causing her death.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: He's been charged for a few different things.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Yes. So he is currently in court for cyberstalking. And let's see. In December 2025, federal prosecutors charged him with cyberstalking and lying to investigators. But he hasn't actually been charged with anything related to her death.
• 37:56
  Now by cyberstalking, he was texting her hundreds of times a day. He had a tracker put on her car. He had her followed.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: As soon as she left, yeah, multiple trackers kept getting on her car. So he knew where she was at all the time. He slashed her tires. Mhmm. She would keep getting, like, new phone numbers.
• 38:18
  And someone was giving him the phone numbers. And so he would be texting and calling her constantly.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: He also posted intimate images of her online without her consent. So we're like, I mean, we were headed to bad, bad places. And she her death is very suspicious and strange, like, timing of it. Because she had finally gotten out. The divorce was finalized.
• 38:43
  And I
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: think he got served with divorce papers.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I thought it was finalized.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: I don't think it was finalized. I think it was, like, the day that he got served with divorce papers. Mhmm. I'm not a 100% sure, though.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Now JP was very, very much women have to be submissive to men in all of his preaching. There are sermons about him talking about women as helpmeets. He also talked an alarming amount about sex.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: He forced her to take testosterone
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: don't to boost her sex drive
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Ugh. Because she wasn't available enough. He preaches still to this day, and we'll get into that too, how women need to basically be available for whatever sexual anything a man wants at any time. That is what she is there for. And we talked about a couple weeks ago about Mark Driscoll said that women are homes for penises.
• 39:44
  We quoted that when we talked about him a couple of months back. And it's the same concept. It's just this idea that women are just here to serve men. And it's a logical leap from calling women helpmeets, from calling women submissive, from saying women can't hold leadership positions. Women shouldn't be able to speak at all.
• 40:14
  It just takes that a little bit further. Just because you put a limitation on this is where I'm going to stop this theology doesn't mean everybody does. And if you say women are secondary, if you say women don't have as much value as men, they are equal but different, but that difference means not that capable. This is the logical conclusion.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: I think it was Jamila Jamil who was on a podcast, and she's famous for saying, if women were naturally submissive, we would've effing submitted by now. Right. And then she goes on to say that men, she feels, are naturally more submissive because they tend to fall in line
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Behind their leader.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Well, you think women and it I I don't like to put it in any gendered expectations. But oftentimes, women are expected to pull everything together to handle all of the tough stuff. And men, if you think of the 19 family that all these people wanna go back to and, oh, it's so idyllic and whatever, those men went to work and came home. And that's all they did. And yet she's working from sunup to sundown.
• 41:37
  Well, tells me that she's leading. You can say whatever you want, but that tells me that she's leading. And, if this was what God wanted, wouldn't it be easier?
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: There would be some kind of sign. Right? Right? It would be like, okay, there's part of their brain missing that just makes them unable to do anything else. Like It's just frustrating to me that we are still in the year 2026, and women are still fighting to be seen as human.
• 42:12
  Mhmm.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: And almost more so. So I may have talked about this before. But I sometimes watch Love Is Blind. Not consistently, but I watched the first season, and I watched part of the most recent season. And the first season, as I was watching guys, because I went back and rewatched it, because I was like, I remember that one being good.
• 42:34
  And the way that the men talked to the women, you could say it was performative, but they were very much like, no, I want an equal partner. I want someone who, you know, I can I can go through life with and make decisions together and work together and build a life together?
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Because it's really hard when you feel completely alone.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Right. But then you watch the most current season, and there were a surprising amount of men, not all of them, but there were a surprising amount that were like, no. I want a wife who's submissive. I wanna be the breadwinner and the head of the household and blah blah blah. And I don't know if it's that more men feel this way because, oh, hey.
• 43:18
  Look at the MAGA Christians. Or if it's just because it's more socially acceptable now, and they feel like they can say it out It was sitting dormant for a long time.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: And now they're like, oh, I can say this. Right. Actually, this is a little bit off topic, but Obama just said he feels that if for two years there was a woman in at in the leadership position in the head of every government
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: That the world would be in a much better state
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: Than it is now. Then I watched an interview worse. I know. And then I watched an interview where this guy was interviewing like MAGA people. Mhmm.
• 43:58
  And this woman was like, oh, women cannot be in a position of leadership because they would just start so many wars if they just started their period or something. Boom. They'd start a war. And this guy goes, well, hasn't every war been started by a man?
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Pretty much. I mean, not quite all of them, but pretty much.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: And she was like,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Well, we train. We have to ask, what causes this kind of man? Because I don't think people are born like this. I don't think boys are born now, patriarchal Christians will tell you that they are. But I don't think boys are generally born aggressive.
• 44:41
  That they're generally born saying, I must lead or whatever. And I don't think girls are naturally born being quiet and subservient. We teach them that this is who they're supposed to be. And if you don't fit in this tiny box that we've created, then you better get in line or we are going to destroy you until you do. In the
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: same way as boys are raised wrestling.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: Boys are raised doing sports that are contact sports.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Parties.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: Mhmm. Girls are taught to be a little bit quieter. Mhmm. Girls are doing less context points traditionally. You're right.
• 45:25
  That's how we raise people to be. Mhmm.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: And it's hard to pull yourself out of that because it it pulls you back in all the time. Even, like, I I have a decent amount of tattoos. And I remember someone saying to me, where did you get the ideas that tattoos on girls are attractive? And there's so much to pull apart about that statement. But first of all, tattoos on girls.
• 45:56
  There are different rules for men and women. Even for me, someone who doesn't comply to those rules, there are still expectations about what's for men and what's for women. And one of the expectations for women is be consistently attractive to men. Now I was married at this point. I had already attracted a man.
• 46:19
  And yet I have to continue to be attractive to men. I have to fall in line in everything from the way that I speak to my spirituality to the way that I dress to the way that I treat
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: my body. What makes you think that I'm concerned a 100% of the time?
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: And my highest priority is to be attractive. But some of these people, like Brian, has said that women should be submissive to all men. Not just your husband. He has said he wouldn't allow his wife to get into an argument with any man. She can't even express her opinions to any man at all because she can't have authority over any man, which means again, take that as far as it goes.
• 47:08
  Which means that you always have to be doing what men want you to do. You have to be dressing the way men want you to. You have to be speaking the way men want you to. Even if it's not your husband. Whoever you walk past on the street.
• 47:23
  Because when women are secondary, then we're secondary. We don't have value. And you end up
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: in situations like the Cornell issue. I don't know if you've been on social media lately, but Cornell University is being sued by someone who's going by Jane Doe. She was out with friends. They were celebrating. She was drinking.
• 47:43
  So she was inebriated at this point. A friend of hers who was from a fraternity, I think it's called Kai Fai. Could be Chai Fai. Heard it both ways. Invited her to come over.
• 47:56
  Long story short, they him and another guy enticed her to do some drugs and be even more drunk, brought her upstairs, assaulted her, and then sent out a group text to everybody within that fraternity on Snapchat and said, Hey, there's a girl upstairs, and she's available for you. And so seven people in total took advantage of that and assaulted her for hours. Mhmm. Until like 05:00 in the morning. And she after that, went to Cornell University and reported the situation.
• 48:39
  And they did an internal investigation. So helpful. And she also reported it to the police. And two of the seven were expelled. The others were not expelled.
• 48:51
  They were forced to write essays. Which to me, I'm like, okay, it's a written admission of guilt.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But none of them were ever arrested. Mhmm. None of them were really held accountable for their actions. And this is the kind of stuff that happens when you don't see women as people.
• 49:08
  Mhmm. My other question in this situation is there were at least 57 active members of that fraternity at that time. Maybe not everybody was on the group chat. This the message went out at 01:42 in the morning, so maybe some people were asleep. But some people got that message and did nothing.
• 49:30
  Mhmm. They didn't respond back and say, This is a bad idea. Or go up because now they know where this girl is. They didn't go up and help her. Right.
• 49:40
  They did nothing. And yet men are supposed to be the protectors.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. If what I need protecting from is you, you're not protecting me.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: And it goes back to the bear or the man. Mhmm. Would you rather choose the bear or man? A bear would just kill me.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: A man would do this. Mhmm. People ask us all the time why we feel the need to continue to fight for this. We're living we're obviously not living in the conservative space, you know, whatever. We're doing okay, etcetera.
• 50:16
  But it's because when women are second to men, we will always be second, and things like this will continue to happen. And things like what happened to Micah Miller will continue to happen because we don't say something. And I can't leave this life without having fought for something, without having said something. And I can't change every situation, but I can yell really loud about it. I can be really annoying about it.
• 50:51
  And I think we should all do that. I think we should all be so irritating about it. That we change the world.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: It shouldn't be acceptable. You should as a Christian person, you should be loving everybody and seeing everybody as a reason that Jesus died on the cross. Right? You have a soul, and you're a reason that Jesus died on the cross. And even if I don't agree with you, even if I don't find you attractive, even if x y z
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Mhmm.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna protect you. If something was happening to you, I'm gonna protect you.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: Right. Or I'm gonna say something. Okay. So I know this week was not, like, the happiest of episodes, but I do think it's important that we also talk about the harder things and talk about how we have to watch what we preach. We have to watch what our pastors preach because someone's gonna take that.
• 51:54
  And are they manipulating it? Sure. But they're gonna take it, and they're gonna use it for abuse. So make sure that you're careful about what you say and that we talk about crappy men because then maybe someone will hear it and decide not to be crappy.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Please. Hey, would you?
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Just this once.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: Hey, would you mind?
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Now, next week, we are gonna talk about we've done this before, but we're gonna talk about unhinged bible stories. And I'm not sure exactly what ones we will settle on, but here's a couple of interesting ones. Ezekiel's poop bread, naked Isaiah, Elijah trash talking Baal. There's a bunch of there's there's some weird crap in the Bible. Okay?
• 52:38
  And so we've talked about a few before. We're gonna talk about some more next week. And hopefully, it'll be a little bit lighter, a little bit sillier, and just like, hey, why did God feel it necessary that this stayed in the Bible? So join us for that. If you don't follow us on social media, make sure that you do.
• 52:57
  We are on Instagram and TikTok. If you just search the hashtag we are more, you'll find us. And we have a lot of fun over there and sometimes less fun. Sometimes we like to yell at people. But if you're nice, we're nice back.
• 53:09
  Listen. You get what you deserve. We match energies. Yeah.
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Don't be crappy, and we won't talk about you.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: How about that? But if you are crappy, we use you as content.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: So Yeah. So I guess thanks.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Alright. So we will talk to you about that next week. Thank you so much for being here with us. We love you all. Goodbye.
• 53:29
  Love you. Bye.