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SMNTY Playlist: Religious Trauma, Episode 1 · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to.
0:07
Speaker 2: Stephan Never told you, protection of ihearted you, And today
0:19
Speaker 2: we are bringing something kind of new.
0:22
Speaker 1: We have done this.
0:22
Speaker 2: Before, but we're going to try some experiments with playlist. Yay. Yes,
0:29
Speaker 2: because we are at the end of the year and
0:33
Speaker 2: we were looking at a couple of series we had
0:38
Speaker 2: done that were spread out over a long time, and
0:40
Speaker 2: we were thinking how nice it would be to have
0:42
Speaker 2: them in one place, and in particular, the series that
0:47
Speaker 2: you really spearheaded, Samantha on Religion was one that came up.
0:52
Speaker 3: Yes, what ended up being what should have been in
0:55
Speaker 3: my mind, it's gonna be four episodes doubled and then
0:59
Speaker 3: some to nine episodes, I believe, and I was like, well,
1:04
Speaker 3: this is traumatic plus touch it as long as we can.
1:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, But it was a great series like that. We
1:12
Speaker 2: covered so much stuff and it was something that we
1:16
Speaker 2: were proud of, but it was spread out so much,
1:19
Speaker 2: so we thought like, maybe we can try to put
1:23
Speaker 2: it all in one place, yes, for listeners, and then
1:26
Speaker 2: maybe if you'd missed one or the things had been
1:31
Speaker 2: lost over the month for you, that it would be
1:34
Speaker 2: in one place. And then yes, yeah, it makes sense.
1:37
Speaker 3: And because we release a lot of content, it may
1:40
Speaker 3: be hard for you to find all of them, and
1:42
Speaker 3: there's no real easy way to search.
1:44
Speaker 1: No, we know this.
1:46
Speaker 3: We've been talking about this internally, just so you know. So, yeah,
1:51
Speaker 3: absolutely wanted to do that gather for you in just
1:55
Speaker 3: in time for the merriest time of year.
1:58
Speaker 1: Yes, we did do that for.
2:01
Speaker 3: We did.
2:04
Speaker 2: But yeah, so this was a mini series that was
2:07
Speaker 2: sort of specifically about Western Christianity and trauma and marginalized communities.
2:12
Speaker 2: We wanted to bring it all together for easy listening
2:16
Speaker 2: in quotes since it was spread out. We do talk
2:19
Speaker 2: about all kinds of trauma associated with religion, history, culture
2:24
Speaker 2: changes that are happening that continue to happen. There's been
2:28
Speaker 2: a lot of headlines since we did these episodes, yes,
2:31
Speaker 2: about further fracturing and big denominations. But we would love
2:35
Speaker 2: to hear back from you listeners if you enjoy these playlists,
2:40
Speaker 2: because we are also looking at doing another one with
2:43
Speaker 2: the fiction stuff and how you might prefer them, because
2:47
Speaker 2: we're trying a couple different things. But we hope that
2:50
Speaker 2: you enjoy this. We hope that it is helpful. This
2:54
Speaker 2: is just sort of an introduction to the series. But yeah,
2:59
Speaker 2: let us know, let us know, let us know if
3:01
Speaker 2: it's helpful, let us know what if you enjoyed it.
3:09
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
3:10
Speaker 2: And welcome to Stephan never told you your protection of iHeartRadio.
3:22
Speaker 3: Okay, Annie, Before we even start, I'm gonna go ahead
3:26
Speaker 3: and ask a big question because I know we've talked
3:29
Speaker 3: about our religious experiences before, but just kind of a
3:33
Speaker 3: reminder so we can kind of get on the same
3:36
Speaker 3: page before we start these episodes. And I said multiple
3:39
Speaker 3: by the way, were you super religious growing up?
3:42
Speaker 2: I went through I would say a two year face
3:47
Speaker 2: where I was very very religious, like donated my allowance
3:52
Speaker 2: money to the church. I was thinking about this because
3:56
Speaker 2: we have been planning these episodes for a while and
4:00
Speaker 2: here they are perfect timing, and they are they are
4:04
Speaker 2: a couple of them coming. But I was thinking about,
4:06
Speaker 2: like why why that is? And I think it's because
4:10
Speaker 2: I got kind of called out and embarrassed in front
4:13
Speaker 2: of all my classmates when I was younger because I
4:15
Speaker 2: didn't know what Christianity was. Wow, Like I went to church.
4:19
Speaker 2: I think I just didn't put together. So somebody asked
4:23
Speaker 2: me if I was Christian, and I like froze up
4:25
Speaker 2: in front of everybody, and I was like, oh, I
4:27
Speaker 2: don't know. And then that was such a sin in
4:31
Speaker 2: small town Georgia, right, like, oh God, she's not a Christian.
4:37
Speaker 2: So it was around that time I really became very
4:41
Speaker 2: very religious. I volunteered, I gave all my money and
4:44
Speaker 2: went to all the classes. But I think it only
4:47
Speaker 2: lasted two years. I did go until about eighth grade.
4:52
Speaker 2: I went to church, but then in eighth grade I
4:55
Speaker 2: stuffed going and never really went back.
4:57
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll talk about that more.
5:00
Speaker 3: Well, but your family wasn't religious either, right, not really.
5:04
Speaker 2: They became more religious after I moved out, actually, and
5:07
Speaker 2: as they got older, but as kids, I think we
5:12
Speaker 2: weren't super interested in it and it was just kind
5:14
Speaker 2: of a time suck for them. And I know how
5:17
Speaker 2: this sounds, but I think honestly, I think they were
5:19
Speaker 2: just kind of tired and we weren't into it. So
5:21
Speaker 2: they're like, you know what, we did the thing, right,
5:25
Speaker 2: let's just stop now. So we stopped going to church
5:28
Speaker 2: regularly when I was in middle school.
5:30
Speaker 1: Okay, did you were you the holiday church types? Oh? Yes, yes,
5:36
Speaker 1: we went.
5:37
Speaker 2: We went in the holidays, and I wasn't a couple
5:39
Speaker 2: of the holiday plays. Oh, of course, of course, yes,
5:44
Speaker 2: but that was more my excitement about, like wearing pajamas
5:46
Speaker 2: and getting to act.
5:50
Speaker 1: That's fair, That is fair. Yeah.
5:52
Speaker 3: I grew up, as we've talked about before, in a
5:55
Speaker 3: very super religious family. They are still very very religious,
5:58
Speaker 3: to the point that from my beginning in the United
6:04
Speaker 3: States in Korea, I did have missionaries visit my orphanage.
6:08
Speaker 3: I remember this distinctly, so westernized Christianity was a part
6:13
Speaker 3: of my past. So I have memories of that, and
6:16
Speaker 3: I remember these Christian people coming with guitars and singing
6:19
Speaker 3: to us. I remember this very clearly. But they were Asian,
6:22
Speaker 3: they were not from a different country. But of course,
6:24
Speaker 3: you know, that's a whole other thing. But I also
6:26
Speaker 3: remember doing Buddhist practices and ancestral practices, because we would
6:31
Speaker 3: definitely do the whole respect of the elders, bowing to
6:34
Speaker 3: the elders, making sure that we were doing all these things.
6:37
Speaker 3: So I remember these things pretty clearly from my time
6:41
Speaker 3: as an adolescent. So I came here when I was
6:43
Speaker 3: sevenish to the US. After that, I became a staunch Christian,
6:50
Speaker 3: and I hes they say the word Christian because even
6:54
Speaker 3: at that point in time at the church that I
6:56
Speaker 3: had gone to, they do not think theology and getting
7:03
Speaker 3: education like that is beneficial, and that they believe that
7:06
Speaker 3: to do this, to learn too much, takes away from
7:09
Speaker 3: the faith part. It was not holy Spirit, it was
7:12
Speaker 3: holy ghost. They did communion with wine that they made themselves.
7:17
Speaker 3: They made unleavened bread themselves. There was foot washing every year,
7:23
Speaker 3: a revival every year. If you were a pastor, it
7:27
Speaker 3: was because you were called to be like you literally
7:30
Speaker 3: had the spirit move in you and you were told
7:32
Speaker 3: by Jesus that you were to speak the word of God.
7:35
Speaker 3: It was the ultimate gift. It wasn't because you went
7:37
Speaker 3: to get an education for it. That was almost blasphemous
7:40
Speaker 3: according to what I was raised by. They don't like
7:44
Speaker 3: other denominations, and that includes Methodists, that includes the Southern
7:47
Speaker 3: Baptist definitely no Catholics. It is a whole different world.
7:53
Speaker 3: I don't even really know what the denomination that I
7:56
Speaker 3: grew up in was. I've heard a primitive Baptist as
8:00
Speaker 3: part of it. I've also heard the term, and this
8:02
Speaker 3: could be just like a nickname for it, foot washing Baptist.
8:08
Speaker 3: We were not quite Pentecostals, and when I say Pentecostal,
8:11
Speaker 3: I meant I mean the kind that believe in tongues
8:15
Speaker 3: and all that. We did have pianos, so they did
8:18
Speaker 3: believe in instruments and music like that. Because you know,
8:21
Speaker 3: several churches that I knew in my small town did
8:25
Speaker 3: not have instruments. They thought that was blasphemous as well.
8:28
Speaker 3: Whole different thing. So I'll talk a little more about
8:30
Speaker 3: my experience, but that's what I grew up in. So
8:32
Speaker 3: believing in God and Jesus was a no brainer. Like
8:36
Speaker 3: I was told, the reason I was in the US,
8:39
Speaker 3: the reason I was alive, point blank, was because.
8:42
Speaker 1: I was saved by Jesus and God. And so therefore my.
8:45
Speaker 3: Life is dedicated to that purpose. So growing up, that's
8:50
Speaker 3: exactly what I believed. I believe that I was supposed
8:52
Speaker 3: to be a missionary. In the freshman year of college,
8:55
Speaker 3: I actually took off for a full year to go
8:58
Speaker 3: work in Oklahoma at a group home who actually specializes
9:01
Speaker 3: with Native and Indigenous people, And I'm sorry to that community.
9:05
Speaker 1: I knew what I knew now.
9:07
Speaker 3: Everything I did was with good intent, and I believe
9:09
Speaker 3: that for most people who are Christians and who do
9:13
Speaker 3: believe in this idea of missionary and saving people.
9:16
Speaker 1: Like that that's the idea, So I can't get mad
9:20
Speaker 1: at that.
9:20
Speaker 3: But looking back at it now, I was like, oh man,
9:23
Speaker 3: that was really damaging and I really regret that part
9:26
Speaker 3: of my life. So I did all of this, and
9:29
Speaker 3: it wasn't until I left college and kind of worked
9:33
Speaker 3: in the real world and then my own personality did
9:36
Speaker 3: not mesh with what the church, what I was told
9:39
Speaker 3: by the church, and I'm saying Capital C church, and
9:41
Speaker 3: that's how we're probably gonna be talking about it throughout
9:44
Speaker 3: this episode. That's like until I walked away that I
9:49
Speaker 3: was like, this doesn't this doesn't work, this is not
9:51
Speaker 3: this doesn't make sense. And then of course I think
9:55
Speaker 3: we're going to talk more about the fact that this
9:57
Speaker 3: is more common, even though it felled so isolating when
10:02
Speaker 3: you go through these things. But yeah, I had that
10:04
Speaker 3: moment and I can tell you almost exactly when like
10:07
Speaker 3: I can remember what like what was happening in things
10:10
Speaker 3: that were happening and as it was unraveling for me,
10:12
Speaker 3: essentially what that looked like.
10:15
Speaker 1: But I still have small faith in things. I don't know.
10:19
Speaker 3: I couldn't call it necessarily Christianity and God and all
10:22
Speaker 3: of that, But there is a bit of me that
10:24
Speaker 3: still believes in not necessarily. We're not gonna talk about
10:29
Speaker 3: manifest destiny, but along the lines of, like, it's not
10:31
Speaker 3: always just coincidence. Again, I don't know what that looks
10:35
Speaker 3: like to me necessarily, and it's hard to let go of.
10:39
Speaker 3: Like several times, even like when I get into a situation,
10:42
Speaker 3: I automatically like it doesn't necessarily go into prayer, but
10:45
Speaker 3: it's kind of that level of meditation of like please
10:49
Speaker 3: help me, please help me, don't let me die, type
10:51
Speaker 3: of conversations in my head. Right, But yeah, it's a
10:55
Speaker 3: whole thing. And of course these conversations like this you've had.
10:59
Speaker 3: You and I have had this so many times. I
11:01
Speaker 3: think I have it with all of my friends. We
11:03
Speaker 3: just have a whole breakdown of this conversation. Is why
11:05
Speaker 3: we're talking about this today. There is a point I
11:08
Speaker 3: swear to God, and yeah, we're going on this journey
11:13
Speaker 3: on this Good Friday to celebrate it is April seventh,
11:18
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, Good Friday twenty twenty three. We're talking
11:23
Speaker 3: about I guess western nize Christianity and the marginalized people,
11:29
Speaker 3: and it is more than one episode because there's a
11:32
Speaker 3: lot to it. Oh and before we start, I probably
11:34
Speaker 3: should have said because for some of y'all thought my
11:37
Speaker 3: comments were probably traumatizing, and I'm so sorry.
11:40
Speaker 1: Content the warning. We are going.
11:44
Speaker 3: To be exploring Western Christianity, and I say western Christianity obviously,
11:49
Speaker 3: we're focusing more on what is happening in the United
11:51
Speaker 3: States in America and those who had these types of
11:55
Speaker 3: Christian beliefs here are which are different, obviously, and we
12:01
Speaker 3: want to talk about how this has caused trauma for
12:04
Speaker 3: a lot, for women and for the marginalized community as
12:07
Speaker 3: a whole. Yeah, and like I said, like we said,
12:10
Speaker 3: we've been dancing around this topic.
12:12
Speaker 1: But y'all this research.
12:14
Speaker 3: We've been working on this for three months and our
12:18
Speaker 3: contributor Joey, thank you so much. Joey has done so
12:21
Speaker 3: much research for us, literally found probably what seventy five
12:27
Speaker 3: different references and then more on top of that as
12:29
Speaker 3: we went along trying to pull out as much information
12:33
Speaker 3: as we can. There's articles upon articles, and trying to
12:38
Speaker 3: narrow down the information itself was hard, and of course
12:41
Speaker 3: there's lots and lots of opinions on the matter, and
12:45
Speaker 3: we're trying to not be so opinionated as much as
12:47
Speaker 3: we are looking at the statistics. It's kind of hard
12:50
Speaker 3: because it is personal for us. I guess that's the
12:53
Speaker 3: other Yeah.
12:56
Speaker 1: Learning for it.
12:57
Speaker 3: And again, yes, we're talking about religion trauma as a
13:01
Speaker 3: side note. We want to say right at the beginning,
13:04
Speaker 3: we're not trying to disparage or say that religion and
13:06
Speaker 3: spirituality is wrong in any way. Like I said, I
13:09
Speaker 3: still believe I am spiritual. There are things that I
13:12
Speaker 3: will still it's hard for me to get away from,
13:15
Speaker 3: and faith is powerful and being connected to spirituality can
13:19
Speaker 3: be powerful and can be really life saving.
13:22
Speaker 1: I really think that.
13:23
Speaker 3: I think part of what I went through growing up,
13:26
Speaker 3: if it had not been for the faith the practices
13:30
Speaker 3: that I went through, I would have been in much
13:33
Speaker 3: more dire situations.
13:35
Speaker 1: I will say that.
13:36
Speaker 3: And what we're talking about specifically, I guess we're building
13:40
Speaker 3: up to and having a conversation of what is happening
13:43
Speaker 3: in the US today, what it looks like. When we
13:46
Speaker 3: talk about the movement of deconstruction. We're going to explain
13:48
Speaker 3: what that is a little bit and then talk about
13:50
Speaker 3: it more in another episode, as well as how our
13:56
Speaker 3: country looks like it's going towards a Christian national government,
14:01
Speaker 3: and we want to talk about why this should be
14:04
Speaker 3: a cautionary tale for us and that we need to
14:07
Speaker 3: be aware and educated on that subject.
14:11
Speaker 1: So with all of that, let's be good.
14:14
Speaker 2: Yes, let us do it, and let us start with
14:17
Speaker 2: an overview and history of Western religion, because, as you said, yes,
14:22
Speaker 2: we're going to be focusing more so on Westernized Christianity
14:26
Speaker 2: and the evolution of what it is today and how
14:28
Speaker 2: that affects the marginalized communities. So we aren't necessarily doing
14:32
Speaker 2: a Bible lesson, which I did go to.
14:37
Speaker 3: How about that you're going to one up me throughout this?
14:41
Speaker 2: I feel we are not talking theology, although theology does
14:47
Speaker 2: play a lot into today's societal views on gender and
14:50
Speaker 2: reality roles, which we do talk about throughout these episodes.
14:54
Speaker 2: We have several episodes related to this where we've talked
14:56
Speaker 2: about it as well. But let us start with some
14:59
Speaker 2: facts and statistics. So, religion is a large part of humanity.
15:05
Speaker 2: It shapes beliefs, it shapes values, it shapes behaviors. It
15:08
Speaker 2: plays a crucial role in developing an individual's perspectives towards life, society,
15:14
Speaker 2: and the world around them. However, studies suggest that there
15:17
Speaker 2: are significant gender differences in religious beliefs and practices. So,
15:22
Speaker 2: for example, American women are more likely than men to
15:25
Speaker 2: say that religion is quote very important in their lives.
15:29
Speaker 2: According to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center, sixty
15:32
Speaker 2: percent of women in the US say that religion is
15:35
Speaker 2: very important to them, compared to forty seven percent of men.
15:38
Speaker 3: Right, and the numbers actually higher than that. Again, so
15:42
Speaker 3: some of these research surveys came from twenty sixteen, twenty eighteen,
15:48
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, so we've tried to pick from h one.
15:50
Speaker 3: This is one of the bigger ones that happened, I
15:52
Speaker 3: believe in twenty eighteen, and it was saying that sixty
15:55
Speaker 3: percent says is highly very important. There is also I
15:59
Speaker 3: think another like twenty percent or even say eighty percent
16:02
Speaker 3: of women in that point timeframe would say it was
16:04
Speaker 3: moderately important.
16:05
Speaker 1: So it's pretty high. The numbers are high.
16:07
Speaker 3: So on the same lines, American women are more likely
16:11
Speaker 3: to pray daily than American men. In the same survey
16:14
Speaker 3: show that sixty four percent of women in the US
16:17
Speaker 3: pray daily versus the forty seven percent of men. And
16:21
Speaker 3: American women are also more likely to attend religious services,
16:25
Speaker 3: with around forty percent of women in the US attending weekly,
16:29
Speaker 3: while only thirty two percent of men attend. And if
16:33
Speaker 3: we take the numbers down by race, the studies show
16:37
Speaker 3: that the Black community are more likely to pray daily
16:40
Speaker 3: with forty seven percent, followed by the Latino community at
16:43
Speaker 3: thirty nine percent. And the Black and Latino communities are
16:47
Speaker 3: also more likely to attend a religious service on a
16:50
Speaker 3: daily basis, though I had to recheck that number.
16:53
Speaker 1: I was daily wow. Okay, daily wow.
16:56
Speaker 3: But for the weekly basis, the Latino community comes first
16:59
Speaker 3: with seventeen percent likely to attend, while the White community
17:03
Speaker 3: comes at sixteen percent, the Asian community at fourteen percent,
17:06
Speaker 3: and the Black community at thirteen percent. So these numbers
17:09
Speaker 3: are kind of varied. But it's also noted in a
17:13
Speaker 3: gallop pole from twenty seventeen that the Black community are
17:16
Speaker 3: most likely to identify as religious, with more than a
17:19
Speaker 3: two percent on that pole.
17:21
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, and within the queer community, religion is still important.
17:39
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this the other day with our
17:40
Speaker 2: book I'm teamed with Glennon Doyle. There was that whole
17:43
Speaker 2: passage about that almost half of the Queer population that
17:48
Speaker 2: was surveyed for the Gallop Pole showed that religion still
17:51
Speaker 2: is considered a big part of their lives, that many
17:54
Speaker 2: still believe in God, they still attend religious services and
17:58
Speaker 2: pray regularly. Showed at least forty seven percent as moderately
18:02
Speaker 2: or highly religious, while fifty three percent stated that they
18:06
Speaker 2: were not. However, those numbers have changed based on age
18:09
Speaker 2: and generation, with only thirty four percent of the eighteen
18:13
Speaker 2: to twenty four year olds being for it versus fifty
18:17
Speaker 2: six percent for fifty to sixty four year olds, So
18:20
Speaker 2: that's a pretty big difference. And within those statistics, the
18:23
Speaker 2: most religious in the Queer community was the Black community,
18:27
Speaker 2: who for over seventy percent of those surveyed said that
18:30
Speaker 2: yes religious. But that is twelve percent less than the
18:33
Speaker 2: general population, and we will get into that a bit
18:36
Speaker 2: more later, but yes, the numbers seem to be going down,
18:40
Speaker 2: and as the current state of affairs have brought about
18:42
Speaker 2: the same significant and dangerous changes within the community, many
18:47
Speaker 2: continue to leave their religious ideology and the biases shown
18:52
Speaker 2: against the LGBTQ plus community hasn't just been so it's
18:55
Speaker 2: the queer community, but those who would consider themselves as
18:58
Speaker 2: allies for sure, and outside of the US there are
19:03
Speaker 2: similar studies suggesting the same thing. A study in Europe
19:06
Speaker 2: showed that women were also more likely to pray, attend services,
19:10
Speaker 2: and believe in God as compared to men, and similar
19:13
Speaker 2: studies showed the same thing for women in the Middle
19:16
Speaker 2: East and South Asia too.
19:18
Speaker 3: Right, so the overall history of religion is complicated. We
19:21
Speaker 3: know this. Christianity was often an excuse of colonialization all
19:26
Speaker 3: over the world with an intent to conquer and rule,
19:30
Speaker 3: and the spread of Christianity was quick and widespread. Today,
19:33
Speaker 3: the topic of colonization and religion is a hot controversial issue,
19:39
Speaker 3: often causing defensiveness and disagreements, and it's still an issue
19:43
Speaker 3: when we talk about missionaries and current state of churches
19:47
Speaker 3: sending out people out in the world. But before we
19:50
Speaker 3: go there, we do want to talk about is there
19:52
Speaker 3: a reason why the marginalized communities, specifically women, are more
19:56
Speaker 3: likely to be religious? And to be honest, the answer
20:00
Speaker 3: there is not really, but there are some possible theories
20:05
Speaker 3: based on some of the research and surveys. In a
20:07
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen Peugh research study, titled the Gender Gap and
20:11
Speaker 3: Religion around the World. They write based on these wide
20:15
Speaker 3: ranging and comprehensive data sets, So we just kind of
20:18
Speaker 3: talked about that. This study finds that globally, women are
20:21
Speaker 3: more developed than men by several standard measures of religious commitment.
20:26
Speaker 3: But the study also reveals a more complex relationship between
20:29
Speaker 3: religion and gender than has been commonly assumed. While women
20:33
Speaker 3: generally are more religious, men display higher levels of religious
20:37
Speaker 3: commitment in some countries and religious groups. So just to
20:40
Speaker 3: kind of as more contexts, we're not talking much about
20:44
Speaker 3: the Muslim community. We're not talking about the Jewish community
20:48
Speaker 3: as much, which we should. We will try to come
20:51
Speaker 3: back to, but we're not necessarily focusing on that. But
20:54
Speaker 3: what we do see in that as well as Buddhism,
20:57
Speaker 3: there is a higher number of men committed to those
20:59
Speaker 3: types of religion. So that's what we're talking about here,
21:02
Speaker 3: and in other context there are few, if any, discernible
21:05
Speaker 3: gender differences in religion.
21:07
Speaker 2: So just a reminder, yes, and something to note from
21:10
Speaker 2: the same twenty sixteen Pew research on the gender gap
21:13
Speaker 2: of religiousness US Christians differ from other countries. So here's
21:18
Speaker 2: a quote from the report. Men and women in the
21:21
Speaker 2: United States differ from each other in their levels of
21:24
Speaker 2: religious commitment to a greater extent than men and women
21:27
Speaker 2: differ in other economically advanced countries for which data are available,
21:31
Speaker 2: including Canada and the United Kingdom. While American men generally
21:35
Speaker 2: display less religious commitment than American women, both genders are
21:39
Speaker 2: more religious than men and women in other economically advanced countries,
21:44
Speaker 2: and with that information, the same report shows the variation
21:47
Speaker 2: around the world. It goes on to say the gender
21:50
Speaker 2: gap among Christians, as well as some gender differences in
21:53
Speaker 2: other faith traditions, vary in size and different regions of
21:56
Speaker 2: the world. This suggests that while gender differences in religious
21:59
Speaker 2: commitment may be driven in part by the teachings of
22:02
Speaker 2: a particular religion, they also may reflect national habits or
22:06
Speaker 2: cultural views intrinsic to a particular part of the world.
22:11
Speaker 3: So in that research, they suggest that socioeconomic status as
22:15
Speaker 3: well as working a job outside the home could play
22:17
Speaker 3: a factor. Here's an interesting quote from that article. Women
22:21
Speaker 3: who participate in a labor force tend to show lower
22:24
Speaker 3: levels of religious commitment than women who do not work
22:27
Speaker 3: outside of the home for pay. As a result, when
22:29
Speaker 3: these two groups of women are compared with men, most
22:32
Speaker 3: of whom are in the labor force, the gender gaps differ. Indeed,
22:36
Speaker 3: Pew Research Centers analysis finds the gap between women who
22:39
Speaker 3: are in the labor force and men tend to be
22:41
Speaker 3: smaller than the gap between women who are not in
22:43
Speaker 3: the labor force and men. This pattern holds even after
22:47
Speaker 3: accounting for other factors that are also associated with religious commitments,
22:51
Speaker 3: such as education level, age, and mental status. Moreover, further
22:55
Speaker 3: analysis show that across predominantly Christian countries, the overall gender
22:59
Speaker 3: gaps in daily prayer and importance of religion are smaller
23:02
Speaker 3: in countries where more women are in the labor force,
23:05
Speaker 3: which makes us wonder if perhaps this is a link
23:09
Speaker 3: between the oppressive system that uses religion, specifically a patriarchical
23:14
Speaker 3: ideology to key control and supremacy, you know, by taking
23:18
Speaker 3: away financial independence.
23:21
Speaker 1: But we'll talk a bit more about that later.
23:25
Speaker 2: In another Pew article, they interviewed a demographer and sociologists
23:29
Speaker 2: from the University College London, David Voas, I hope I'm
23:32
Speaker 2: not fatchuring that on the gender gap, and his opinion
23:36
Speaker 2: is maybe that it's just quote biological basis, And here
23:40
Speaker 2: is a full quote from the interview. Personally, I'm tempted
23:43
Speaker 2: to give the classic academic response that more researches needed,
23:47
Speaker 2: at the risk of seeming wishy washy. I suspect that
23:50
Speaker 2: nature and nurture both play a part. Boys and girls
23:53
Speaker 2: are socialized differently, and men and women are still channeled
23:57
Speaker 2: into different roles when we look at the psychology of
24:00
Speaker 2: individual differences, though particularly in personality, it's not easy to
24:04
Speaker 2: attribute gender gaps in their entirety to social forces. And
24:08
Speaker 2: then he goes on to explain, I'm not an expert
24:10
Speaker 2: in genetics, but there appears to be some fairly compelling evidence,
24:14
Speaker 2: for example, from studies of twins, that genes do affect
24:18
Speaker 2: our disposition to be religious. And if that's the case,
24:21
Speaker 2: it's at least plausible that the gender gap and religiosity
24:24
Speaker 2: is partly a matter of biology. If true, though I
24:28
Speaker 2: doubt that it's because there's a god gene and women
24:31
Speaker 2: are more likely to have it than men. It seems
24:33
Speaker 2: easier to believe that physiological or hormonal differences could influence personality,
24:37
Speaker 2: which may in turn be linked to variations in spirituality
24:41
Speaker 2: or religious thinking.
24:42
Speaker 3: Yes, he had a whole lot of opinions. But again,
24:46
Speaker 3: I mean, we're going to talk about those, but like
24:48
Speaker 3: they don't do it's hard to resource these think these things.
24:52
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it's.
24:53
Speaker 3: Kind of how we talked about other like metaphysical type
24:56
Speaker 3: of conversations. It's harder to get the you know in
25:01
Speaker 3: an article written by doctor Angelo. Buttone, I think that's right.
25:04
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry for the Iona Institute, Doctor Botone writes.
25:08
Speaker 3: Scholars agree that the religious gender gap is due to
25:11
Speaker 3: a confluence of multiple factors psychology, family environment, social status,
25:16
Speaker 3: workforce participation, et cetera. But there's no consensus on exactly
25:20
Speaker 3: which factors are more responsible for gender differences. So there's
25:24
Speaker 3: a lot. There's a lot we don't know why. There
25:26
Speaker 3: may be many things. It may be all about faith.
25:29
Speaker 3: It may be a coincidence again, like me believing what
25:33
Speaker 3: I believed was partly due to my circumstances and being
25:37
Speaker 3: taught that. So the teachings of a particular creed might
25:41
Speaker 3: make it more appealing to a woman rather than men.
25:43
Speaker 3: But local traditions and habits also play a role. That
25:46
Speaker 3: means that even within the same tradition Christianity, for instance,
25:50
Speaker 3: there are significant differences in different parts of the world,
25:54
Speaker 3: which yeah, I think that's absolutely true, because yeah, Christianity
25:57
Speaker 3: looks different everywhere. I will say again, I remember in
26:00
Speaker 3: Korea there was a mixture of Buddhism with Christianity, and
26:05
Speaker 3: that's how I learned, which is something that has been
26:07
Speaker 3: charted as they continue to serve a different countries. Again,
26:11
Speaker 3: there's differences, so we're not going to get a full picture.
26:14
Speaker 3: All of these conversations are continued and will continue and
26:17
Speaker 3: probably will change obviously as we continue in time, and
26:22
Speaker 3: the information is still not conclusive honestly.
26:27
Speaker 2: Nope, And like our past Monday many on women in superstition,
26:32
Speaker 2: there does seem to be a more likely correlation of
26:35
Speaker 2: women in spirituality, whether it's a level of intuition or protection.
26:39
Speaker 2: But once again, always worth remembering data is typically sexist,
26:46
Speaker 2: with most of the information coming from a very cis heteronormative,
26:50
Speaker 2: middle class group, and how limited information can be when
26:53
Speaker 2: access is also limited. It's just worth remembering.
27:00
Speaker 3: We'll probably put that in between a lot of the
27:02
Speaker 3: things that we say, because yes, especially because as time changes,
27:08
Speaker 3: circumstances change.
27:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, mm hmm.
27:25
Speaker 2: So all right, we've talked about statistics, We've talked about
27:27
Speaker 2: some theories of the gender gap and religion. But let's
27:30
Speaker 2: talk specifically about women in the Capital C Church. And
27:35
Speaker 2: here we are talking about, yes, that one, the Capital
27:38
Speaker 2: C Church as an institution, and we are looking specifically,
27:41
Speaker 2: as you said, at the United States as it pertains
27:43
Speaker 2: to Christianity.
27:44
Speaker 3: Right, So the spread of Christianity is fairly dark. Unlike
27:49
Speaker 3: the stories I was told growing up. Once again, it's
27:52
Speaker 3: very much framed into we're saving people, and who doesn't
27:54
Speaker 3: want to save people? Like I if as a child,
27:58
Speaker 3: what I want you to go to hell? No, so
28:00
Speaker 3: I'm want to do my best to get you to
28:02
Speaker 3: heaven because that's what I want for you. But conquering
28:05
Speaker 3: and converting were two goals of the Eurocentric governments, as
28:09
Speaker 3: we talked about in our past book club about the
28:11
Speaker 3: Hodnashonian nation. The first nations had a more egalitarian system
28:16
Speaker 3: that was created through the matriarchal line, but once a
28:20
Speaker 3: colonization began, the Protestant ideals, which are set up through
28:23
Speaker 3: the patriarch think of the father and the son, quickly
28:26
Speaker 3: took over. As Catherine Brecas explains in her research titled
28:31
Speaker 3: Women and Religion in Colonial North America and the United
28:34
Speaker 3: States from the seventeenth century until the present, women in
28:38
Speaker 3: these religious traditions have differed in terms of their beliefs
28:41
Speaker 3: and practices, with the exception of Native Americans, who seem
28:45
Speaker 3: to have enjoyed relatively egalitarian gender roles before the European conquest,
28:50
Speaker 3: women have shared similar experiences of subordination because of their gender.
28:55
Speaker 3: Once again, yeah, if you go back to our book club,
28:57
Speaker 3: we talk about that pretty intrinsically.
28:59
Speaker 1: They talk about the fact that they had.
29:01
Speaker 3: Never known any kind of equal playing field from jump,
29:05
Speaker 3: so seeing that was foreign to them, and that was
29:07
Speaker 3: because of the native First Nations people showing them how
29:10
Speaker 3: it could be inside anyway. And she references the Hebrew
29:16
Speaker 3: Bible as to the lineage and the traditions. She writes
29:19
Speaker 3: all of the major world religions are based on scriptural
29:22
Speaker 3: texts that reflect the male centered worldview of the times
29:26
Speaker 3: in which they were written. In the Torah, for example,
29:29
Speaker 3: Genesis two depicts Eve being formed out of Adam's rib,
29:33
Speaker 3: which suggests that men were the norm and women secondary
29:36
Speaker 3: in creation. Most of the main characters in the Hebrew
29:39
Speaker 3: Bible are men, and the Biblical story revolves around patriarchs
29:43
Speaker 3: like Abraham, Jacob, and David. According to the Halaha, or
29:47
Speaker 3: Jewish law, men and women have different religious obligations. Women
29:51
Speaker 3: must obey certain rules of modesty.
29:53
Speaker 2: And she writes of the examples within the New Testament
29:56
Speaker 2: as well quote. The New Testament also includes texts emphasize
30:00
Speaker 2: women's subordination to men, based on the account in Genesis, too.
30:04
Speaker 2: Many Christians have argued that Eve's decision to eat the
30:07
Speaker 2: forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden brought sin and
30:10
Speaker 2: suffering into the world. According to this interpretation, God ordained
30:14
Speaker 2: women to submit to the authority of their fathers and
30:17
Speaker 2: husbands because of Eve's disobedience. Christians have also been influenced
30:22
Speaker 2: by several texts from the Apostle Paul, including First Corinthians
30:26
Speaker 2: Chapter fourteen, verses thirty four through thirty five. Let your
30:30
Speaker 2: women keep silence in the churches, for it is not
30:32
Speaker 2: permitted onto them to speak, and One Timothy chapter two,
30:36
Speaker 2: verse twelve. I suffer not a woman to teach, nor
30:39
Speaker 2: to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
30:44
Speaker 2: Throughout American history, many Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, have
30:48
Speaker 2: used these texts to argue that women cannot be ordained
30:51
Speaker 2: as priest or ministers until the passage of the Nineteenth
30:55
Speaker 2: Amendment in nineteen twenty, which extended suffrage to women. Christians
30:59
Speaker 2: also use used the Bible to argue that women should
31:01
Speaker 2: not be allowed to vote or to hold positions of
31:04
Speaker 2: political authority. And before we get too far into political references,
31:09
Speaker 2: it is understood that there are different beliefs and interpretations
31:13
Speaker 2: of these texts and the Bible as a whole, and
31:15
Speaker 2: many changes have happened through the history of Protestant religions,
31:18
Speaker 2: with different sects and denominations sing for other religions and
31:23
Speaker 2: beliefs as well, and we are going to talk about
31:25
Speaker 2: that too, but for now we are referencing the more
31:27
Speaker 2: traditional understanding of these verses.
31:31
Speaker 3: Now, I'm not going to talk about my controversial view
31:34
Speaker 3: on Paul slash Assaul because lot I have a lot,
31:39
Speaker 3: because I often argue, and I'm so sorry to put
31:42
Speaker 3: too many beliefs that Paul is actually outside of the
31:46
Speaker 3: Hebrew slash Old Testament. Paul's the only one who really
31:49
Speaker 3: speaks about homosexuality and women as leaders. Like honestly, when
31:56
Speaker 3: you look at the other acts, and I don't know
31:58
Speaker 3: if the people will come at me if you look
31:59
Speaker 3: at these their prophets and or disciples. They talk a
32:02
Speaker 3: lot about the church as a whole, and they talk
32:05
Speaker 3: about the church being women, So that is the wife.
32:11
Speaker 1: So I find that interesting.
32:12
Speaker 3: And of course they also say then that's Jesus is
32:14
Speaker 3: the husband, and Jesus is the one that leads the church.
32:17
Speaker 3: So that's a whole different conversation. But women are still involved.
32:20
Speaker 3: So I have a lot of thoughts. I'm not gonna
32:23
Speaker 3: put it here. I just about to be noted, Okay,
32:28
Speaker 3: I have a lot of thoughts. Historically, women have always
32:32
Speaker 3: outnumbered men and religious practices, and actually they've tried to
32:36
Speaker 3: change the role of women within the community, even way
32:38
Speaker 3: back when we talked about it again in our book
32:42
Speaker 3: club with the hod and a Stone women, because for
32:46
Speaker 3: few of the leaders of the Suffragettes, we're fairly anti
32:50
Speaker 3: religious and we're going against the church, and really felt
32:53
Speaker 3: like that was part of the problem in taking away
32:55
Speaker 3: the rights of women.
32:56
Speaker 1: So I found that interesting. I still vast and I think.
33:01
Speaker 3: That's what we're talking about here when we see a
33:02
Speaker 3: lot of changes. Of course, we got those who went
33:05
Speaker 3: to the extreme, and we're going to talk about that
33:06
Speaker 3: right now. According to Breca's at one point, women were
33:10
Speaker 3: able to have a hand in influencing Christianity by arguing
33:13
Speaker 3: women were quote crucial guardians of religious and political virtue,
33:19
Speaker 3: which still influences women's roles within.
33:22
Speaker 1: The Church and Christianity.
33:24
Speaker 3: Today, we'll be talking a little bit more about the
33:27
Speaker 3: virtuous woman. We've already had an episode about the purity movement,
33:32
Speaker 3: and we're going to come back and talk about it
33:33
Speaker 3: again a little more in context of trauma.
33:36
Speaker 1: Again.
33:36
Speaker 3: I know we already kind of talked about that, so
33:38
Speaker 3: y'all can go back and hear what we said on that.
33:41
Speaker 3: But this does have a big role that plays in it.
33:44
Speaker 3: But at one point it was taken as being more
33:47
Speaker 3: in the frontline slash leadership for the church. And then
33:51
Speaker 3: within these movements, they helped create a quote cult of domesticity,
33:55
Speaker 3: which was a movement that quote again this is all
33:58
Speaker 3: out research enhance their authority within their families and Bregas
34:04
Speaker 3: writes before the Industrial Revolution and the growth of a
34:08
Speaker 3: consumer economy, women played a central economic role in the household,
34:12
Speaker 3: for example, spinning wool, churning butter, and sewing clothing, but
34:16
Speaker 3: as the factory rather than the home became the center
34:18
Speaker 3: of production. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
34:22
Speaker 3: women placed a new emphasis on their role as nurturers.
34:25
Speaker 3: Instead of earning wages like men, women would provide a
34:29
Speaker 3: haven from the cold and impersonal world of the factory
34:33
Speaker 3: or the office. Again, we're seeing where these influences are
34:36
Speaker 3: coming from. And this history extends even more with different
34:39
Speaker 3: interpretations and understandings of the Bible and the role of
34:42
Speaker 3: the Church, and different discoveries haven't made about the history
34:47
Speaker 3: and about the role of women as well. Many of
34:50
Speaker 3: those who identify as Christians do not agree with the
34:53
Speaker 3: old traditions of women being completely submissive to their husbands
34:57
Speaker 3: or to men at all, and biilled that misinterpretation has
35:00
Speaker 3: allowed for these types of misunderstandings of the Bible. As
35:04
Speaker 3: the author of the making of Biblical womanhood, how the
35:08
Speaker 3: subjugation of women became gospel truth. Beth Alison Barr, who
35:12
Speaker 3: is also a historian, a Southern Baptist, and a pastor's wife,
35:16
Speaker 3: actually told NPR this in her interview while she was
35:19
Speaker 3: publicizing this book. She said, the reason we think women
35:23
Speaker 3: cannot be an authority is simply because we've taken five
35:26
Speaker 3: or six verses from the New Testament, and we've used
35:29
Speaker 3: those verses and read the entire Bible through them, through
35:33
Speaker 3: that lens, and they're mostly the Pauline verses women be silent,
35:38
Speaker 3: women submit to your husbands, etc. And if we step
35:41
Speaker 3: away from those verses and actually put them in context
35:43
Speaker 3: of what Paul was doing, and then put that in
35:46
Speaker 3: context of the entire Bible, what we see is that
35:50
Speaker 3: while patriarchy exists in the Bible, that God is actually
35:54
Speaker 3: always fighting against patriarchy, that he's always raising women out
35:58
Speaker 3: of it, He's always giving authority in surprising ways, both
36:02
Speaker 3: in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and
36:05
Speaker 3: that if we look at the historical context of what
36:07
Speaker 3: Paul is actually doing the New Testament, there are serious
36:10
Speaker 3: problems with reading Paul as telling women that they have
36:12
Speaker 3: to be solid and under the authority of men for
36:15
Speaker 3: all times.
36:16
Speaker 1: I feel like she agrees with me, y'all.
36:18
Speaker 2: I think so.
36:19
Speaker 1: I think she agrees with me again, strong opinions about this.
36:23
Speaker 2: I think we should come back. I think we should
36:25
Speaker 2: talk about it. She continues in that same interview. Conservative
36:31
Speaker 2: evangelicalism has been teaching women for so long that there
36:34
Speaker 2: is only one way to be a woman that makes
36:36
Speaker 2: us godly and that allows us to follow Jesus, and
36:39
Speaker 2: that one way is to be focused on home and
36:42
Speaker 2: family and marriage. So be free is me wanting women
36:46
Speaker 2: and men to know that the limitations we have placed
36:49
Speaker 2: on them are not God's limitations. There are limitations that
36:52
Speaker 2: we have placed on them within our own human culture,
36:56
Speaker 2: and we can see how they're constructed by human culture,
36:59
Speaker 2: and they are not of God. So be free means
37:02
Speaker 2: be free to be what God has called you to be,
37:05
Speaker 2: whatever that may be. And she's not the only one
37:09
Speaker 2: to see these differences in the interpretation of the Bible.
37:13
Speaker 2: But much like anything concerning morality or who has authority
37:17
Speaker 2: and supremacy, these opinions are divisive.
37:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just kind of wanted to go through
37:36
Speaker 3: some of my own experiences of what I've seen, because
37:38
Speaker 3: this is a prime example of what she is talking
37:41
Speaker 3: about of what we were looking. My charge in itself
37:45
Speaker 3: takes out of context, and people wouldn't argue with me.
37:52
Speaker 1: What Paul has done, what Paul has said.
37:54
Speaker 3: They use that as the authority because he wrote the
37:56
Speaker 3: Book of Acts, he wrote all the different disciplines, and
38:00
Speaker 3: instead kind of uses that as the ultimate authority. Over
38:04
Speaker 3: the words of Jesus in his cell which if you
38:06
Speaker 3: ever read through, and this is when we had this
38:09
Speaker 3: joke of in the New Testament. Typically in the copies
38:12
Speaker 3: that we see in the US, Jesus's words are written
38:14
Speaker 3: read purposefully, so that's how you know he is never,
38:19
Speaker 3: at any point in time ever come after people for sin,
38:23
Speaker 3: except for those who are profiting off of other people.
38:28
Speaker 3: The only time you see this man angry, and I
38:31
Speaker 3: say this in that level, and again I give it
38:33
Speaker 3: a Bible lessons.
38:34
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry.
38:37
Speaker 3: That's the only times you see him anger. He hangs out,
38:41
Speaker 3: like we hear this often. He hangs out with prostitutes,
38:43
Speaker 3: he hangs out with women, he hangs out with children.
38:46
Speaker 3: And I'm saying this in such a relevant way, i
38:48
Speaker 3: feel like I'm teaching God.
38:50
Speaker 1: This is r being back to college.
38:52
Speaker 3: But what we see in these very controversial comments about
38:56
Speaker 3: what we think is sin is literally the words of Paul,
39:00
Speaker 3: who never met Jesus and who had actually went and
39:05
Speaker 3: persecuted many of jesus the followers beforehand, literally killing people,
39:11
Speaker 3: killed many of them, and out of the Old Testament,
39:15
Speaker 3: which is the Hebrew Bible, which was never intended for
39:19
Speaker 3: anyone outside of the Jewish community, and even many of
39:22
Speaker 3: the people of the Jewish community would say, this is
39:25
Speaker 3: not what you think it is. You are taking this
39:27
Speaker 3: out of context because Sodom and Gomora is often referenced as.
39:31
Speaker 1: This is because they were all gay. Not true.
39:33
Speaker 3: They were actually raping and beating and you know, blesting
39:37
Speaker 3: people in that community. But hey, we're not looking at
39:39
Speaker 3: that alway, because we don't mind that if we look good.
39:43
Speaker 1: What were laws were being passed.
39:44
Speaker 3: But in that level, my church heavily believed in these
39:49
Speaker 3: same theories. As a woman, you were not allowed to
39:52
Speaker 3: speak in church unless you're testifying. That means the Holy
39:55
Speaker 3: Ghost has taken over you and that's not you speaking.
39:58
Speaker 3: And y'all, I had those moments. I actually had those
40:01
Speaker 3: most feeling like overwhelmed in joy or like in a
40:04
Speaker 3: moment that like, I'm supposed to say this thing out loud,
40:06
Speaker 3: this is going to affect people. I really there's levels
40:09
Speaker 3: of like gospels and there's levels of gifts to me.
40:12
Speaker 3: I thought I had discernment. I think I can read people,
40:16
Speaker 3: but that translated into something else spiritually for me, and
40:19
Speaker 3: I got caught up in that. In a long time,
40:22
Speaker 3: the belief is that you have to pray for your
40:24
Speaker 3: sins and I'm literally sitting at an altar crying until
40:30
Speaker 3: you feel okay and say Jesus saved you. And it
40:34
Speaker 3: is an emotion and a feeling a lot of places,
40:38
Speaker 3: a lot of beliefs believe that you are not saved
40:40
Speaker 3: until your baptized.
40:42
Speaker 1: The church I grew up in was not like that.
40:44
Speaker 3: The church I grew up in was also the type
40:46
Speaker 3: that said once saved, always saved.
40:49
Speaker 1: So technically I'm good, right, Yeah, sounds like although for
40:55
Speaker 1: people like me.
40:57
Speaker 3: That they come back with she was never really saved.
41:02
Speaker 3: So even though during that time I did these holy acts,
41:06
Speaker 3: and that's WHYBA became a social worker, That's why I
41:09
Speaker 3: took a year off to work with kids. And it
41:11
Speaker 3: wasn't that I went and just taught Bible. I literally
41:13
Speaker 3: lived with them and helped them and mentored them. That
41:16
Speaker 3: was something that was important to me that I did
41:18
Speaker 3: something physically as well as spiritually. So I did that.
41:23
Speaker 3: I traveled all over the South teaching young kids the
41:26
Speaker 3: Bible as well. Again a lot of guilt there, but
41:29
Speaker 3: the one thing I can say is I did teach
41:32
Speaker 3: love and never taught hate. Because by the time I
41:36
Speaker 3: became a high schooler and kind of was able to
41:39
Speaker 3: make for my own opinions what I saw the church
41:42
Speaker 3: that I was growing up when sewed fear, which is
41:45
Speaker 3: that hell, fire and brimstone, which came way long ago.
41:50
Speaker 3: We know about this in that you are all sinners
41:55
Speaker 3: until you're saved, and if you do something wrong, you
41:58
Speaker 3: are sinning against God and us, and we can judge you.
42:02
Speaker 3: If a a woman has an opinion, she has to
42:07
Speaker 3: go through the husband. Most of the meetings, you can
42:11
Speaker 3: be present, but you cannot speak. Again, you have to
42:14
Speaker 3: talk through the father or the husband. And I bought
42:16
Speaker 3: into this belief. I remember telling my father at one
42:19
Speaker 3: point in time when I was talking to other people
42:21
Speaker 3: who are in different churches denominations specifically, I was like, I,
42:25
Speaker 3: you know, being a woman of God meant I trust
42:29
Speaker 3: my father and we have the same opinion and that
42:31
Speaker 3: you will listen to me. Of course, that should be
42:33
Speaker 3: the way it goes. That's kind of the whole idea
42:35
Speaker 3: of democracy, that we trust the people that were voting
42:37
Speaker 3: for to be our voices. That's that ideal, except for
42:41
Speaker 3: that that it absolutely bans women. And if you don't
42:44
Speaker 3: agree or if you're in a bad relationship, and as
42:47
Speaker 3: in fact, up until recently, they condone you staying with
42:51
Speaker 3: your husband even if you are being abused, or being
42:54
Speaker 3: heard or being neglected. The only reason, and it is
42:58
Speaker 3: actually written in the Bible that you can take the
43:00
Speaker 3: leave your husband is if he cheats on you, and
43:04
Speaker 3: even then the woman cannot get married m M. And
43:09
Speaker 3: if they believe that you are in the wrong, you
43:13
Speaker 3: have a physical membership, and they will take your membership away,
43:16
Speaker 3: and that they will not allow you to go to
43:18
Speaker 3: any other churches within that denomination. No shorts, no pants
43:21
Speaker 3: for women. I remember one sermon and my parents didn't
43:24
Speaker 3: believe this, thank goodness, but one dude got up talking
43:27
Speaker 3: about how women wearing makeup were sinful because they were
43:31
Speaker 3: trying to tempt men. It was quiet, and my mother,
43:35
Speaker 3: who is the Southern mother who's like never goes out
43:38
Speaker 3: without makeup, was astounded, and she was like, I do
43:41
Speaker 3: not believe that that man is wrong. That is the
43:44
Speaker 3: one time I've seen her disagree. And up until my
43:48
Speaker 3: siblings went through some of the really messy stuff that
43:52
Speaker 3: they went through a divorce, was absolutely frowned upon. I
43:57
Speaker 3: will say me living in sin with my partner.
44:00
Speaker 1: They don't talk about it. They're just really grateful that
44:03
Speaker 1: it's not.
44:05
Speaker 3: Outside of their comfort zone, outside of me living with
44:08
Speaker 3: them and sin.
44:11
Speaker 1: Essentially, So there's a lot.
44:13
Speaker 3: I am definitely haunted by some of the things that
44:16
Speaker 3: I did in the belief that I was doing something
44:20
Speaker 3: well as godly or that I felt committed. I have
44:24
Speaker 3: a Bible that I still keep that is written with
44:27
Speaker 3: so much stuff. I've got four journals of my adventures
44:31
Speaker 3: on the mission trip, thinking that all of my prayers,
44:35
Speaker 3: all of the things that I believe that God was
44:37
Speaker 3: telling me. There are so many things, and again I
44:41
Speaker 3: am very grateful to those experiences because I really think
44:44
Speaker 3: it kept me alive. But there are so many harmful
44:50
Speaker 3: things that actually mess with me as an adult, and
44:53
Speaker 3: it still does. It still does, and it's become a
44:55
Speaker 3: pretty big strain. So if my family members hear this,
45:05
Speaker 3: but yeah, it's that level of understanding the Bible. And
45:08
Speaker 3: of course for this traditionalist had to be King James.
45:13
Speaker 3: The first time I've ever seen a Bible that was
45:15
Speaker 3: not King James was an awful man, by the way,
45:20
Speaker 3: historically real bad, real bad. Just so you know, it
45:24
Speaker 3: was sinful. They did not believe that it was good.
45:27
Speaker 3: But my parents have grown, I will say, even though
45:29
Speaker 3: they are very, very religious, they have stepped outside of
45:32
Speaker 3: those strict I think they have lived enough and seen
45:35
Speaker 3: enough to be like, okay, okay, this is becoming a
45:38
Speaker 3: little more hateful than loving, So they have stepped away
45:42
Speaker 3: from that a little more.
45:42
Speaker 1: Still far from far from.
45:45
Speaker 3: What I believe in everything I believe so definitely and
45:48
Speaker 3: very far spectrum of my views on the world and
45:53
Speaker 3: what I think is right. And yeah, that really has
45:57
Speaker 3: put a big strain on our family. To be fair,
46:00
Speaker 3: never there's always been a strain because of the trauma
46:04
Speaker 3: and the response religious response that I got instead of
46:09
Speaker 3: therapeutic response I should have gotten. Again, my parents were young,
46:12
Speaker 3: they didn't know, and they actually, you know, we've kind
46:14
Speaker 3: of talked about it and admitted, both of us admitted
46:17
Speaker 3: the wrongs that we committed when I was young because
46:20
Speaker 3: they didn't know, they didn't know some of the things
46:24
Speaker 3: that we know today. And then like the more thank god,
46:27
Speaker 3: it's at least a more normalized therapy and all of that,
46:31
Speaker 3: but at one point in time it wasn't and they
46:33
Speaker 3: were heavy.
46:34
Speaker 1: Duty into prayer should fix it.
46:36
Speaker 3: There's nothing you need but God, which is again, and
46:39
Speaker 3: I'm really glad to see that they had stepped away
46:41
Speaker 3: from that.
46:42
Speaker 1: And we've gone through a lot, but a lot of
46:45
Speaker 1: this really.
46:46
Speaker 3: Pushed me into walking away from religion altogether. I remember
46:52
Speaker 3: having the conversation with my mother in the parking lot
46:57
Speaker 3: of my work about to go in about the fact
47:01
Speaker 3: that I did not believe in God anymore, and her
47:04
Speaker 3: crying and me crying, and we're just sitting there in misery.
47:09
Speaker 3: I see my mother has purposely forgotten that conversation because
47:12
Speaker 3: I didn't want to light to her, especially every time
47:14
Speaker 3: we's like have you been praying about it?
47:16
Speaker 1: Have you been going to church?
47:17
Speaker 3: Because I was super religious and she was very proud
47:21
Speaker 3: of me and thought that I was going to be
47:22
Speaker 3: a missionary. She didn't love it at first, but she
47:25
Speaker 3: soon grew to love it because like people admired me
47:28
Speaker 3: for that in that community.
47:32
Speaker 1: It was.
47:32
Speaker 3: It was a lot of things, but I will say, like,
47:34
Speaker 3: this is one of those moments that I realized, this
47:37
Speaker 3: doesn't make sense.
47:39
Speaker 1: We're not going to get into.
47:40
Speaker 3: That portion yet, and you're not going to go deeper
47:42
Speaker 3: into that in another because we're going to talk about
47:45
Speaker 3: the whole trauma of it all the yay.
47:49
Speaker 1: But it was the point in which I walked away.
47:55
Speaker 3: And I've seen more and more people in my generation
47:59
Speaker 3: and then the younger kids.
48:02
Speaker 2: Walking away too, right, yeah, yeah, And we have some
48:07
Speaker 2: numbers around that. So these kind of rules and laws
48:12
Speaker 2: that you've been talking about have come at a cost
48:15
Speaker 2: for the Christian congregation. In the recent article written by
48:19
Speaker 2: Christianity Today, author Ryan P. Burge writes, as recently as
48:23
Speaker 2: last year, the religion gender gap has persisted among older Americans.
48:28
Speaker 2: Survey data from October twenty twenty one found that among
48:31
Speaker 2: those born in nineteen fifty, about a quarter of men
48:33
Speaker 2: identified as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular, compared to
48:37
Speaker 2: just twenty percent of women of that age. That same
48:42
Speaker 2: five point gap is evident among those born in nineteen
48:45
Speaker 2: sixty in nineteen seventy as well. For millennials and Generation Z,
48:49
Speaker 2: It's a different story. Among those born in nineteen eighty,
48:52
Speaker 2: the gap begins to narrow to about two percentage points.
48:55
Speaker 2: By nineteen ninety, the gap disappears, and with those born
48:58
Speaker 2: in two thousand or later, women are clearly more likely
49:01
Speaker 2: to be nuns than men, and nuns is defined as
49:06
Speaker 2: religiously unaffiliated people in the United States.
49:09
Speaker 3: Right, So when we say nuns, we're saying n n ees,
49:12
Speaker 3: not in uns.
49:13
Speaker 2: Good good, good follow up clarification. Yep. And this type
49:19
Speaker 2: of change has been noticed. Some theorized because the church
49:21
Speaker 2: has been so focused on growing their male attendance, whether
49:25
Speaker 2: by offering more male leadership classes or by challenging men
49:28
Speaker 2: to become quote manlier, some believe this has only pushed
49:32
Speaker 2: women further away from the church. In that same article,
49:35
Speaker 2: they write, evangelical women have long attended church at higher
49:39
Speaker 2: rates and evangelical men, but today that gap is narrowing,
49:42
Speaker 2: not because more men are coming, because more women are leaving.
49:47
Speaker 2: Such women are increasingly likely to deconstruct their faith or
49:51
Speaker 2: identify as nuns, a rising population of the religiously disaffiliated.
49:57
Speaker 2: As Lyneman Stone wrote to U years ago, making your
50:01
Speaker 2: church manlier won't make it bigger. It could be a
50:04
Speaker 2: factor in making it smaller.
50:06
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.
50:07
Speaker 3: And another theory is that as more women become more
50:11
Speaker 3: educated and more likely to focus on careers, they are
50:14
Speaker 3: less likely to be involved with the church. Here's another
50:17
Speaker 3: quote from that same article. Education may be another significant
50:21
Speaker 3: factor among college educated adults under twenty five. Women are
50:25
Speaker 3: slightly less likely to say they have no religious affiliation
50:28
Speaker 3: compared to men, thirty nine percent of women versus forty
50:31
Speaker 3: five percent of men. So, once again, when we talked
50:34
Speaker 3: about earlier that job having a check, maybe financial independence
50:39
Speaker 3: does seem to be correlated. Not exactly sure why. Again,
50:43
Speaker 3: the education level, and there's that conversation. I will say
50:47
Speaker 3: the biggest fear for my parents and my family is
50:50
Speaker 3: that the kids will go to the city and get
50:54
Speaker 3: learning and educated, and that education is going to ruin
51:00
Speaker 3: and I guess taint this Christian morality ideas. And we've
51:07
Speaker 3: seen that today as we talk about CRT and book banning.
51:11
Speaker 3: There is a reason for that. And again later we'll
51:14
Speaker 3: be talking about deconstruction. We talked about it with our
51:17
Speaker 3: interview with Dara. We just said a little bit about
51:19
Speaker 3: it previously, but you want to go ahead and define
51:23
Speaker 3: it since we did mention it. Deconstruction is quote a
51:27
Speaker 3: Christian phenomenon where people unpack, rethink, and examine their belief systems.
51:32
Speaker 3: This may lead to dropping one's faith altogether or may
51:35
Speaker 3: result in a stronger faith. And so just to let
51:40
Speaker 3: you know, this is from Wikipedia, and typically we don't
51:44
Speaker 3: use that as an actual source for definitions. This term
51:47
Speaker 3: is contentious right now, so much so that if you
51:50
Speaker 3: try to search it you will be bombarded with anti
51:53
Speaker 3: deconstruction articles about how this is dangerous, literally like deconstruction
51:57
Speaker 3: is ruining. You don't listen to this, it is dangerous,
52:00
Speaker 3: walk away from it. And again, we're not going to
52:03
Speaker 3: talk about it here because like I said, this is
52:06
Speaker 3: there's a lot, but we will be talking about it
52:09
Speaker 3: in our probably next episode. It's something to remember because
52:14
Speaker 3: it is a movement. I've seen it on social media.
52:16
Speaker 3: We talked about it with Dara. There's conventions. We'll talk
52:19
Speaker 3: about the origins of it and why it's important and
52:22
Speaker 3: what we're looking at.
52:23
Speaker 1: Yeah.
52:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a reason we put these off
52:28
Speaker 2: for so long. There's a lot to discuss. There is.
52:32
Speaker 2: There is so we'll have We'll have more more coming
52:37
Speaker 2: your way. This is only a bunch of part one,
52:39
Speaker 2: but yes, we would love to hear from you from
52:41
Speaker 2: you listeners. If you would like to contact us, you can.
52:46
Speaker 2: Our email is stuph Media moom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
52:50
Speaker 2: You can find us on Twitter at mom Step Podcast,
52:52
Speaker 2: or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff We've never told
52:54
Speaker 2: you. You can also find us on YouTube. We have a
52:57
Speaker 2: book coming out, so you can pre order it at
52:59
Speaker 2: stuff You Should Read books dot com. Go do it,
53:02
Speaker 2: and thanks to everyone who's already done it. Yay yay.
53:07
Speaker 2: Thanks as always to our super producer Christina, our executive
53:11
Speaker 2: producer Maya, and our contributor Joey, who's particularly helpful with
53:15
Speaker 2: these episodes.
53:15
Speaker 1: Oh so good.
53:16
Speaker 2: Thank you, joe Yes, and thanks to you for listening.
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