Latest / Follow the Leighder / How Empire Shaped the Language of the Bible | Dr. Samantha Bise

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How Empire Shaped the Language of the Bible | Dr. Samantha Bise · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leighder I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and joining me, y'all, from Pennsylvania, it's Dr. Samantha Bise Welcome, Dr. Bise. Samantha Bise: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. You can call me Sam from here on out, but Leigh/@followtheleighder: perfect. This is I'm so excited, Sam. Thank you. Y'all, she is an author and professor, exploring the intersections of language and power, especially related to Christianity and feminism. Oof, oof, grow after my Samantha Bise: Ha ha Leigh/@followtheleighder: own heart. Her new book about the history and culture behind common Christian words and phrases is called Tongue and Church: A Liberating Primer on Christian Vocabulary. I am so excited to speak with you today on just Christian language being rooted in ancient politics, language and gender. And then we're of course going to cover your book because I have some specific questions on your book. but talk about this. Have you always identified as a sort of feminist theologian historian? What or is this something new you picked up? What what has been your sort of life journey to bring you into this? Samantha Bise: I was not raised in the church, not at all. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Okay. Samantha Bise: I was raised I so this is kind of a paradox, but I was baptized as a baby in an evangelical church. A lot of evangelicals do not baptize babies, but I was baptized because my uncle was the pastor. my dad was raised in this it's a free Methodist church, which is very evangelical leaning. And I was baptized there when I was like six, I think I was like five months old. and then that was it. Never went to church, never had any experience. My dad, he would not describe himself this way. I don't even know if he knows what it means, but he was an exvangelical before exvangelicalism existed, right? He was ahead of his time. So he left and deconstructed. And I didn't come from a home that really talked about religion at all. Not negative, not positive, but you know. You know where your parents stand, you know. Like we'd be with my Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Samantha Bise: dad's family. And religion would come up and he'd just walk out of the room and kids pick up on that kind of stuff. So I knew it Leigh/@followtheleighder: yeah. Samantha Bise: was just kind of this we were not for it or against it, we just didn't do it. And then in college, I think I inherited some of that and I became so wildly atheist in the most uneducated way, just angry about religion. and then I was twenty eight, I was divorced. And I was so curious about faith. And I have these memories now. My grandmother, who thought I was a heathen growing up, gave me a beginner's Bible and I still have it. And I would read it as a child. I was so curious. Like this thing that has my family, like some of them just not interested, but some of them so passionate. What is it? And then like the Mormons would knock on our door and my mom would kind of be like, hi, no, thank you. But I'd take the book and I'd run to my room and I'd start reading it. Like anything religious. So I had this curiosity through line. But then when I was twenty eight, I was divorced. I was curious. I started dating the man who's now my husband, Dylan, and he is a pastor through me for a surprise because I was not expecting that. He was supposed to go to law school whenever we met. He was on his way to law school. We got engaged and then he shifted. And he was always religious. He was always in Christianity in some way. but we started going to church together before seminary, before I got my doctorate. And I am not You're familiar with the Enneagram, right? So Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Samantha Bise: I'm an Enneagram five, which means I don't do many things. Leigh/@followtheleighder: fives. Samantha Bise: I'm not a casual person. So I can't just sit in the pews and be like, son of God died for my sins. Yeah, okay. I was like, What are you saying? And I study literacy and language. So I was like, What is this? So I just started devouring everything I could, just reading, going to lectures, paying to go to like face to face things. I mean just traveling going everywhere. So I just went down the rabbit hole. I got my doctorate from Indiana University. and it's literacy, culture, and language is what I got my doctorate in, but I studied specifically faith literacy and language. So for my doctorate, my dissertation research, I interviewed a bunch of women, a bunch of mothers specifically, to ask them what they were taught in their childhood churches about that little word in Genesis, helper. Just that little word helper. and these women told me terrifying stories. Many of them cried to me, just told me about how they had left the church or some of them found a new church, but most of them just left, but they are still suffering in their marriages, with their sex lives as mothers, all of these things. and that made me realize that one word can be taken and abused and have a lifelong effect. Like these women intellectually know that's that women aren't in a box, but they can't get out of it in their bodies and even like in their hearts, right? So that shifted something for me. So I just started to study religious language, but also feminist language. And the English language is just full of sexism. in a way that we can't really escape anymore, but we should still wrestle with it and shift when we can. but also Over and over and over again. This is a long winded way to say that so there's the feminist stuff, but also with Christianity, I mean son of God, emperors were called son of God first, gospel was a Roman word first. It took me down this political path. If I had to put myself in a camp, I'd for sure be a liberation theologian. I can't understand how people take the Roman Empire out of it. And if you don't have a background in history. The Jesus story makes no sense to me. I'm not interested. Maybe it's because I wasn't raised in Christianity. The heaven hell thing does nothing for me. It just doesn't land at this point in my life. I like the grounded, like it's about here and now. And that in the process I became a bona fide Christian somehow. Just studying the language of it all. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Beautiful. And I am Samantha Bise: yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: so thankful to hear you bring up the language of empire and how that relates to the Gospels of Jesus. Because are you familiar with Warren Carter? Samantha Bise: Yeah. Vaguely, vaguely. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Okay. So okay. So he has a book, Matthew and the Margins. and that is kind of his thing. He looks at Jesus and Empire and has written some really good work and he was the supervisor actually on my thesis because I was like, I am trying to write my thesis on Christian nationalism and US military chaplaincy, but I need it to be like as reflected as Jesus in the context of Roman Empire. Like, you know, I and in and I didn't speak too much in Rome. In my paper, but like that was like what I was thinking about. I was like, this is priestly class Samantha Bise: Mm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: type stuff. But I mean his book, Matthew and the Margins, goes line by line throughout the Gospel of Matthew and looks at how every line can be tied back to the empire in some way. Even like the father, like all that father language coming back to Patri Patri and Samantha Bise: And a Potter familias mm mm mm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And that's and I was like, and so I've had this exposure. You have deeply studied this too. And that's what I am so excited to to for your book. because language is political. And and the Bible particularly is a text of language that is deeply political. And we've got some real serious harm going on. And we've always had harm going on. I mean, this is but in the name of it. Can you talk about and we can just jump right in, particularly language around women in the got and we'll start with the gospels first and then we can maybe and I know that I don't wanna put you on too much of the the back burner with a lot of like biblical scripture or anything, but but yeah, can you share a little bit about the language around empire in the gospels first and then before we get to Paul. Samantha Bise: About Empire and the Gospels. Who where to start? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, or just kind of like how like right? And yeah, that is such a a large question. But were there was there a particular story that you were like, you know what, this is yeah. talk about some of those earlier stories that kind of got you thinking about it differently. Samantha Bise: Okay, so Son of God was the first unraveling. When I was just reading, it was probably like N. T. Wright or Richard Rohr or someone, and I was like, or Rob Bell was really formative to me too. son of God, like Pharaoh Thute Moses the Third, like 1400 years before Jesus was ever born into this planet, was called Son of God. Alexander the Great, all these people were called son of God. That's crazy. So whenever we call Jesus Son of God, that means something. So I learned that first, and that's when I it all started to unravel or rabble, however you want to think of it. But baptism, John the Baptist, for whatever reason has always been so interesting to me. And then I started to look into baptism that comes from the word baptizo, which was not a religious practice at all. It was just a cultural practice. And around the temple, the second temple, there were baths. And many of them were made by the Romans. And John the Baptist, I like to call him John the Dipper because baptisms weren't a thing yet. It was really just like a bathing or a dipping, right? So John the Dipper, John the Bather, these baths, he was so invested in not contributing to the Roman system because the Romans had conquered the Jews and were appointing the high priests of the temple, so they had actually taken over the temple and controlled it. He was so invested. And not using Roman-made waters, but he went to the Jordan River, and that's where he was baptizing. And on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, whenever all of these Jews would have to come, many of them would have to cross the Jordan River to get to the temple. They were missing out on money from work because they had to take PTO, right? So they could travel. And then they're paying money to the temple, which Rome has control of, to buy sacrifices. To then offer back for the forgiveness of their sins for atonement once a year. So whenever I learned that John the Baptist was at the Jordan River to interrupt this and say, Don't you know you're already forgiven? And it's free. So come be washed of your sins. You don't have to pay for it anymore. You don't have to collaborate and put money in the pockets of our oppressors. You're already loved and forgiven. Here, let me cleanse you of your collaboration of this. That's why many churches, mine including, are very serious about one baptism, because this isn't the empire where you have to continually prove yourself and pay your taxes. You're baptized once, and that's enough to be part of this community. You don't have to keep proving it. And many churches will even baptize babies to show just how unlike the empire we actually are. You have to prove nothing to be here. Just come as you are. You will be fed, and when you can, you will feed and all these things. And I think that's so radical. And then, whenever you trace this back to the history of sacrifices, Leviticus is my favorite book of the Bible, it's the driest, but I am an Enneagram five. We like dry things, right? they talk about very specific animals being sacrificed, right? And remember, these people were just enslaved in Egypt, like bull and ram, right? Because in Egypt they worshiped these animals, so they're in the desert and they need a new identity. So they are told by this God. You are going to sacrifice these animals and eat them or give it to the priest, right? Depending, rather than potentially worship them. Also, purity laws in Leviticus, you are being told to wash yourself of two things: death and sexuality. Not because they are bad, but because that's what the Egyptians worshipped using sexuality and death. They worshiped around these things and using these things as tools. So the God of Israel was saying you're gonna cleanse yourself of it so you don't accidentally do the same thing as your enslavers. You need a new God, a new identity, a new society, right? So all of that just started to paint this picture of like it's about Rome, it's always about empire. That was just a lot, I just threw a lot there. Leigh/@followtheleighder: No. Mm mm. No. I thought that was absolutely fantastic. There it was a lot in that I have like I'm like, man, I could have you explain the Enneagram to folks. I could have you go down Samantha Bise: Ha ha ha. Leigh/@followtheleighder: the rabbit hole of explaining Egyptian death and sex worship. Like there's Samantha Bise: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: a lot. Like that that is a fantastic answer. It is. It's and and beautiful. Like what a great example. Like I I would I mean, as soon as you started telling it, I like, Yeah, that makes sense. But I I was at a conference maybe la year ago, April, and a gal gave an awesome presentation on Jesus healing the hemorrhaging woman and as a radical protest, a feminist protest, and I was like floored. 'Cause I mean, like, yeah, like are we think like We've we see that this woman was a fa like welcome back into a society, but it was like she made all the arguments of the rituals at the time, to state like in how society literally removed her dignity because of her chronic illness, or I mean like her hemorrhaging, her bleeding. And so not only did Jesus heal her malady, but also healed her reputation in the community by subverting it. And it was just like Just I mean like absolutely like yeah, this is subversive. Like Samantha Bise: Yeah. It even makes me think the thing that I've been wrestling with is the line of there are Christians doing bad things. Yes, of course, of course. And but then I think about the Samaritan. And the Samaritan worshiped the same God as the Jews, but they were so hated, right? And it makes me think about we how we hate people who are most like us, right? Like Christians. Christians hate other Christians like nothing else. It is very intense. But what is that line of like when I'm out in the wild living my life, where do I say something like, no, that is wrong, that is harmful? And also where do I love the Samaritan? Like, because there's just something, you know what I mean? There's something there too. I just think of all the people Jesus, like the bleeding woman, like the Samaritan, all the people who Jesus flipped the script with. What does that mean today? sometimes I don't have answers. It's just living into it every moment, I guess. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I I I wanna go back to this actually just to have fun. I'm an Enneagram eight. Can you tell folks and this will actually kind of segue us into other things, but can you tell us what is Enneagram? What is its history Samantha Bise: There's Leigh/@followtheleighder: and why should we care about it? Especially as a self empowerment tool or self knowledge tool. Samantha Bise: my gosh. I'm no expert on the Enneagram, but I am pretty obsessed with it. And in my marriage specifically, it is so helpful because I'm married to a two. And Leigh/@followtheleighder: Okay. Samantha Bise: so there's nine types. I mean, you can go really go the depth. This is just some real basics here. Leigh/@followtheleighder: yeah. Samantha Bise: There's nine types, one through nine. One is a perfectionist, pretty much. And again, th this is just flattening it, but there's a lot of depth. Two is a helper. They have to help, they want to be needed, and that's what I'm married to. Three is an achiever. I test high as a three. Sometimes my tests will even tell me that I'm a three because the depth that I like to go as a five makes it look like I'm after success. I am not after success, I am after the knowledge. fours, which I have a wing for, they're the poets, they're the emotional ones. fives are the observers, we're often called. I mean I observed church for like five years before I wanted to talk to anybody. I'll just like sit in the back in the corner, watch, and then like creep and like le like I don't want I don't want to participate until I feel like like I wanna hoard the knowledge to feel safe, right? So that's a five. Fives tend to be the people who just go down rabbit holes and have the the fun facts at parties that you don't really want. Sixes Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. yeah. Samantha Bise: have a lot of fear. and they're the loyalists because sixes tend to be really loyal to like a religion or a faith or a democratic a democratic party or Republican party or like a political party. They just have like they're very loyal to the group that they identify with. again, these take many forms, but seven, I can test high on sevens as well. They tend to be the like toxic positivity people, but also just like many interests. They're a good time, they're really fun. and then eight, you're an eight, my father is an eight. Eights are the challengers. They tend to s to if there's a bully, they tend to be the ones who are gonna stand up for you. Like they protect the little ones. how what do you feel like as an eight? Do you feel like Yeah, yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, that yeah, just like just justice oriented. Like that's and also like power and control. Like felt like that's my that's my fear is like me being controlled and other people being controlled. Like I just want everyone to be liberated to do whatever they Samantha Bise: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: want, just don't harm other people kind of thing. I also Samantha Bise: Yeah, there is a lot of independence with AIDS. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, that was what I was gonna say. And because of that, I I wind up doing a lot of being a lot of alone or just, I don't know, and angry. I don't make I feel like I I am a self hate. I feel like everybody like starts to self hate when they start talking about their Enneagram type 'cause I'm like, I'm really just angry and kind of on my lonesome and I and I'm just like wearing a black tiny it's just Samantha Bise: Well, as a five, when a five is in a state of health, we move towards eight, which is like say the hard thing, speak up for yourself. So I have eight energy as well. Like I'm not afraid to say the thing if it needs to be said. Yeah. So good. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And and also on the flip side, like when eights like are feeling down, like depressed or just like in a low, like we go into five, like I completely understand the knowledge consumption for the sake of it. Like even like I just books everywhere. Like if I'm in a low pl like it's I don't want to say low, it it it's just like I understand the the research, the darkness, like there's y'all are I just I Samantha Bise: Uh-huh. It it Leigh/@followtheleighder: love fives. Samantha Bise: Yeah. Well, and so lastly, I don't want people to feel left out. Nines are the peacemakers, right? They want they can see every perspective in the room. They're like, Well, I don't really know. And they tend not to have strong opinions because they can see everyone's side. But one more thing about being a five, if you move towards five is unhealth, we are hoarders of resources. Meaning I always feel like I don't have enough time. And that if I have energy right now and I woke up at six AM, I have to get everything done in two hours because I might not have energy later. So I have to do it all right now. Like there's this lack of feeling safe that there will be enough time, there will be enough resources, there will be enough energy, so I have to use it all now, or I have to save it. Like I can't socialize for three days because I have plans on Sunday. Like I can't do anything today, three days ahead of time. Yeah. Enneagram's fascinating. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. It is. And and and these are sort of like it sounds like a fun personality type listeners, as if this is your first time learning about it. But I I do encourage you to to look into this because it has done wonders for me. And as far as I understand that this it goes back, I mean to the ancient Greeks having Samantha Bise: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: do you do you know much about the history? Samantha Bise: So every time I start to read about the history, I inevitably get to the point where they say the origins are quite mysterious because it's very old. And we can date it back to the Greeks, but it's probably older than that even. And then I also read sometimes, again, I'm no Enneagram expert, but I think that it does have some Christian roots somewhere there, but then Christians kind of pull away from it. And then I think in like the sixties and seventies we kind of came back to it. And Richard Rohr of A Catholic priest, he has really brought it back into the Christian world again. Not that Christians own it, but it's kind of seen an increase. It helps me see the humanity in everybody, even people who just maybe aren't my cup of tea, just like I'm not everyone's cup of tea. It helps me be like, I can see why they are that way. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It's deeply humanizing. I know it sounds weird to like type people and be like, that's why they are there. But it is. It's very you can like see their motivation and but I I Samantha Bise: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I I bring this all up because again, it like this is a historical way of being able to understand yourself and relationships around you. that again goes like you said, older than the ancient Greeks. And this is a tradition, something that has, you know. somehow stayed alive just as much as something like tarot or zodiac or some of these other like Samantha Bise: huh. Leigh/@followtheleighder: where do all these stories come from? Like somewhere, like everywhere. Samantha Bise: I mean wisdom comes from everywhere, you know? Wisdom comes from everywhere, yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Everywhere. but I I I want to go back into history and language and and and talk about your book. So give us give us the synopsis. What is your book about? Samantha Bise: Well, I have it. I just got my box. I have it right here. So essentially, you know, I study language first and foremost. And tongue in cheek, if something is tongue in cheek, it's usually said very irreverently. It's usually said almost with like a little bit of not humor, but like satire or sarcasm or like it's not super reverent. So we called it tongue in church, as a play on that language because As somebody who didn't enter Christianity until I was almost 30, I went to church. I went to multiple churches at first. And I realized that it all felt so floaty and overly spiritualized, which I know that that's part of it, of course, but none of it landed, none of it felt grounded, and it all felt so reverent, and I think there's a place for that. But it just felt like this Jesus guy is so, and the more I learned about him, he's so subversive. He's not always the most reverent, which I talk about in this book. He says some things that are irreverent. I can't think of another word. They're just irreverent. So I wrote, I started collecting all of these words. I had a notebook. I would just every time I came across a word, I take seminary classes at my local seminary. Their grad classes, I thought about getting a degree, but I also feel like I have done enough papers for professors in my life. I'm kind of done. I would like their credential, and then I think why? I'm already doing the work I want to do in the world, so here I am. But I had this, it's published with Pilgrim Press, which is UCC's publisher. And I had this developmental editor, and she had this really good idea, which I really loved. We it honestly editing is so much more work than writing. So we just tore my book apart and we split it in half. The first half of the book is all about biblical language. So words that you find in the Bible, like serpent and savior, and Samaritan and I just have all Messiah, right? Like words that are directly from the Bible. But I think a lot of Christians think that Christianity lives and dies with the Bible. And they just ignore the fact that the church has been a witness keeping these stories alive. And even like liturgy is a way to embody these stories. So we have a second half of the book which is about church language and language that we use in church, like faith and belief. Like what do those words mean? Or family values, right? Like that's become a Christian phrase or fundamentalism. Like what do these words mean that we use to talk about church but aren't really or liturgy, right? They're not really biblical words. lecture, heresy, like those kinds of words. What are they? Because there's this whole other tradition that has been keeping the Bible alive. What is it? So that's how we divided it. I think I talk about over 100 words or phrases, and I just give a little context to them, just like some historical context, what did they mean? Sometimes some Greek and Hebrew context and translation stuff too, but I also talk about how the Bible came to be. Because sometimes we don't talk about that enough. Like it has been translated a lot. And I mean, I go to my local Barnes and Noble and the King James version is everywhere. So I also talk about things like that where like that's because it's in the public domain, so publishers make more money when they sell that translation, but it might not Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Did he really? Samantha Bise: be the best translation. So there's all kinds of stuff related to power in there. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I didn't I didn't know that. I I mean it Samantha Bise: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: makes sense. There is yeah. There is one of the things that I've been wrestling with is trying to explain how Christian nationalism has really like emerged so quickly and almost like uniformly. And yes, we have social media and podcasters Samantha Bise: Mm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: and like that whole thing that we're very well aware of on online misinformation and all that stuff. But also so many churches around the country that are evangelical are going to be I mean there's definitely urban. but there's a lot of small town rural churches that don't have a lot of money. And how they're able to make it work is that they are able to purchase or subscribe to commercial Christian material where they can have slideshows or they can have like it's already done for them. Like the and it's like according to the whatever calendar they're using. It's just like already built in. So what that means is now you're getting a standard message across the country of like the same sermon, the same slideshow, the same Sunday school material, all coming from these like specific again, Christian education. And and we we've known this with like focus on the family that's not like new, like to have, but like to really see it at scale is is a really interesting 'Cause and again when we're watching it mesh with the government, it's it's empire and it's language and it's politics. Samantha Bise: Doesn't it doesn't it feel so correct me if I'm wrong, this is I'm working it out in real time, but doesn't it feel like socially we're all becoming this like large conglomerate just to break down into small communities once again? Do you know what I mean? Like I because I have a pretty Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes, yes. Uh-huh. Samantha Bise: radical view, and I'm gonna get myself maybe in trouble, because it this could be okay sometimes. I don't think sermons should be recorded. I do understand why. at times for different communities that happens. So my husband's an ELCA Lutheran pastor. And I think about his sermons. We have about 80 to 100 people on any given Sunday. And we're in a small town. So it's not huge, but it's not small either. We're pretty average size. And his sermons are so catered to us as a community, to what we might be struggling with, to like potential conflicts going on with us, to different programming that we are doing to our Small town in Pennsylvania, which by the way has one like one out of three people in our town live under the poverty line, right? So he is speaking to a specific group, and some of those people sit in our church, right? If that were to be recorded and put online for anybody at any time, right? And he also tells some personal stories sometimes about, you know, his dad has Parkinson's. So he'll talk about that sometimes. And some things that like maybe those particulars that he's sharing, it's because he loves these people and knows these 80 people, not because he wants everybody to be able to read it on the or read it or see it online. And you lose the particulars of a community. And it feels like socially I just keep hearing it everywhere that it seems like we're starting to realize we need to, I don't know, diversity is important, unity is important. But it's like we just become a huge thing just to break down into our small little Jesus communities once again. Do you know what I'm saying? I don't know. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Yeah, no, it it definitely certainly feels like a a tribalization. There's also there's the big breakdown and I'm also recognizing and this was something that we talked I went to the Philippines last month, this sh I can't remember June, whenever what month is it? August. So it's been a while. But I went with ten pastors of the or seminarians of the disciples of Christ, of which is kind of a it's a libertarian quote unquote. Denomination. Like it is super, we are creedless. We believe that Samantha Bise: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: no man has, we believe that no person has biblical authority over the other, and that all are welcome to the communion table, whether you're wearing a hijab or a yarmulke. Like if you want to Samantha Bise: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: in participate in communion, you can. So what that looked like was like everybody on the political spectrum. We had the Gen Z leftist, we had the black conservative. immigrant who went through the military in order to get citizenship and has built a life for himself. He did the GI Bill for college. He's got the how like in his eyes he did the American dream. Samantha Bise: the power of the communion table. Like that's what communion is. Like that's the power Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes, Samantha Bise: of it. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: that's the power. And then we had, and in his eyes, the American dream work for him and superior, he's all in. And of course, evangelical black church is like so Jesus, so USA. And then we but like not Christian nationally. It wasn't like MAGA, it was just I don't know, it's hard to explain. And that's the spectrum of it all. Samantha Bise: no, I get it. I get it. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And then we had the Gen Z leftists who had everything to say about everything, and she wasn't wrong. Like, and that was it too. But I was also like, Both of y'all, I I don't know how to rec like reconcile except to keep translating an alternative view in a very kind and respectful way. Like, and even like he had some things to say about the sanctity of life. And at one point I was like, I hear you, like I I fully hear you, I I hear your concerns. And also we are standing in a abject poverty. Are you sure a woman can't control bringing a life into this world or like an abortion Because it's rape. I mean, look, we can stare straight into her bedroom. I mean, and just like those sort of like, hmm, okay, maybe it's a regulated mercy. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now we can do something. Now it's not a sin. And and then on the other Samantha Bise: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: side, and was like I don't know. there were I I don't even I can't even it was about Samantha Bise: Wait, so these were two people in the same space. Leigh/@followtheleighder: yeah, the whole week. But like everybody like I'm just showing the two different extremes, but everybody was like deeply reconciling with b and because the whole week showed us that whatever our ideology is, like survival's not clean. Like you can sit there and talk about the sanctity of life all day and I will say and yeah, yes, we should support a world with creation and life. Yes. And here's the reality of what happens when a woman can't. And like, and and Then what do you do with that? Then what does birth control regulation look like? Who's making it? What's it like? How are we like, I mean, it's not a clean, nothing gets to be clean. And and always what leads to an avalanche of questions. Anyway, but and then she was struggling again. she was almost like pro-communist, like definitely socialist, but like very, very left and like jaded of the world. Like she had an experience. she just and she had a her whole valid. She just had her her reason. And like and I heard her and she's an educated person, you know what I mean? It wasn't just someone on the internet mouthing off. Like and also I got to sh like explain why being an entrepreneur and playing the game of capitalism, whatever that means, is what got me out of an abusive marriage. Like I was able to keep a roof over my head because I had a skill that I could or like just like having a corporate job, you know, just like let's not demonize women from playing the game, even though that the game is bad. And or you know, the game is not like we're all just trying to survive at this point. And so there was just like a lot of can again, it was all about language. Like that evangelical Jamaican immigrant, like wasn't going to s you know, everyone to go pro choice. That was never way, he was never He's never gonna say like it's just a clump of cells, but I could s I we could talk about it in that language of like, well, can you see it as a regulated mercy? Like like like divorce, like as like Samantha Bise: Hmm. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: maybe us as a society thinking like things happen and and he was like, Okay, I can't I I can get there and I was like, Hmm. I anyway Samantha Bise: Language yeah, I mean mm-hmm. It's just like the way we call it welfare when it's for low income people, but tax relief when it's for the wealthy, right? It's the same idea. But the language we use, one has negative connotations and the other does not. But it's the same idea, same philosophy. I'm so in love with language because it's the tool that we have to share our consciousness with each other. What a beautiful thing. Could you imagine if we had no way of speaking with our mouths or our hands or our bodies, right? We'd just be so alone in this c flesh cage sometimes, it feels like. It also is like a liberation tool as well. But I just love language so much. And if 2016 elections taught me anything. Well, I'm gonna be super honest. 2016 to 2020 did not teach me much. I just really got in connection with my anger. And then we have four other years. And then the next election, I really I woke up and Trump was elected again. And I had this profound as somebody who identifies as a liberal, I had this profound realization that I was part of the problem because the way I speak to people was so condescending, I wasn't hearing. I mean, we've all taken psych 101 classes if we've gone to college, right? We know that that's not an effective way to meet people. And just I get to practice this at my church. I get to practice it with my parents who don't always agree with me politically. And the more you practice it and just listen and hear the language that they're using and just slow down. And say you use this word, but I think we mean different things. Can you tell me what that is? It can open up so much and you can start to see the humanity in someone and want someone else, typically, unless they're fully in their narcissistic ego. But typically if it's a person that you've taken the time to care about and listen to, and that could take years for some people, other people it's ten minutes, but if they feel heard. They will open up and meet you, maybe not in the middle, but they'll take a step towards you. And you'll find that you probably took a step or two towards them too. Where it's like, I see why they think that. And that's really interesting. And when you were talking, the word fundamentalist kept coming up for me because that's on all sides of the religious and political spectrum. And it's part of the reason I wrote this book. It's part of the reason I'm interested in gender, but also religion, because we are such fundamentalists about these things. Like this is the box. And if you go outside of this box, there's a problem. And I have come to realize that when people are fundamentalists about things, because in my early 20s, I was too, it is a reaction to feeling unsafe. When we feel unsafe, we become rigid. We become so rigid, right? That's why addicts in early recovery need a schedule, the same breakfast Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes. Samantha Bise: every day, the same workout routine, right? Because they are coming out of a space of being unsafe and unwell. So they need rigidity. It's actually normal. The problem is when you stay there forever. That's the problem. And that's when fundamentalism is born. So if you can see that like, this person just feels unsafe right now, it opens the humanity once again. Leigh/@followtheleighder: You know, that fundamentalism politically, religiously, like I've seen it in the toxic masculinity, I've seen it in the toxic femininity when you've got Samantha Bise: Uh-huh. Leigh/@followtheleighder: and we we have the toxic femin masculine is so obvious because it's violent and big and it's loud. We see like we we know it that looks but like toxic femininity really like it'll keep you scared. I've seen women like hunker down and like And and women just like, no, no, we do this. This is how we sort and and like just stick to the and like and I've seen that in the church lady. I mean, like I'm not like not all, but I Samantha Bise: Yes. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I but I've seen that dynamic too of of just how fundamentalism, like you react to something that's unsafe. It's a trauma response of some sort, or just a behavioral response like you're talking about, with like literally a life change. Samantha Bise: Okay. Leigh/@followtheleighder: and then Samantha Bise: As a woman, I often ask myself, when I'm trying to be good, how often does it require me to be smaller? And a Jewish rabbi once told me, humility in Jewish wisdom, now this is a Jewish rabbi, Judaism is very diverse, but he said it's not about being smaller, it's about taking up your God-given space. So if you are acting too small, that is also not being humble. Like you should not be smaller than you're meant to be either. And that how liberating, one word. redefined for me and it changed everything. Leigh/@followtheleighder: huge. No, that is that's there's a the book The Women Who Run with Wolves. That's like one of her she makes that comment about the too good mother of being like, no no stay home. Don't go out in the woods. It's scary out there. And like the mom's not wrong or the grand you know, it's not the woods are scary. but yeah there is and it's you can stay small. It it's a liberating, it's expansive And the thing about when you start talking about freedom, expansiveness, or like is it can feel a destabilizing. A lot of people are like, I don't actually I don't know what that looks like. Can I handle it once I get it? That's a big one. but I feel like obvious like it the mystery. The f the funny thing about being liberated is that you just come home more to yourself. You actually just kind of it's almost like just being like a more healed 12 or 14 year old. Or something. I mean like in this sort of joyful way. Like you're pursuing your inter you you're doing more of you, but you're stable about it. It's and it's really again, language is power. When you think about what you want your book to do for for the readers, what are you really hoping and aiming for? Like what is their takeaway? Samantha Bise: Mm-hmm. So whenever I sent my manuscript out, I sent it to ten publishers, my like the ten that I like, these are the top ten. And I heard back from three. And then I narrowed it to two. And one of them was much more academic leaning. And while I am an academic, I very much want to write for me when I first started going to church. Like just the person who is either. new to church or has been going to church their whole life but just actually never thought about what it means when we call God son of God or or Jesus son of God or father or all of this language, like where does it come from? But when I was writing this book, I also had these like conflicting writers say you're not supposed to, but you can't help it. You have someone in mind, right? So whenever I was writing this, it often sounds like I'm being critical of the church, and I am. But it also sounds like I'm kind of standing up for the church and I'm doing that too. So I've had some of my friends who are ex-evangelicals who have left the church and they have read it and they really enjoy it. But it's interesting because for some people it seems to push them farther away from the church because they're like, see, none of it's real. Son of God, Jesus isn't the actual son of God. It's a political statement. But for other people, they read that and they're like, it like me, it brings me deeper into it. So I think it could be for a lot of people and their reactions are interesting to watch unfold. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And that's the thing about riding towards truth, I think. And so like I mean, like Samantha Bise: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: when you just start telling it what happened, here's here it is. Like it it you can't control what is going to happen because truth is polarizing. It's it's a little bit chaotic. Samantha Bise: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It's it's like, no. And I think about that, part of the disciples of Christ unfolding is that they have a a for they're a small denomination, but part of their history is that They looked around at the United States and they like, you know what? The Baptists, the Methodists, like the Anglicans, they're doing a lot of missionary work here in the United States, converting indigenous or white settlers or enslaved blacks. Like they they started looking overseas for their missionary work. And and again, this is like the 1800s, ship ships are improving, they start sending folks abroad, and You had one reaction where people were like evangelizing and being like, it was super awesome and I converted someone and I'm inspired to keep going. And then you had people who were looking around at these foreign cultures that they thought going into it were quote, savage, primitive, whatever. And they actually had an or some they had their own way of life with their own deity, with their own spiritual modalities, with their own kind of worship ritual. I mean, and and it was how morality. was I don't know, c kind of governed i if you will. And it was like I who are we to come in here with our Jesus and start telling these fo like and it again and that's just truth to have two different reactions. You have people going in and being like, see it's so different than everything we know. We have to convert and I'm inspired that I did convert. And you had other people going like, No, guys, I think they have their own thing and I think maybe the We should reevaluate what missionary work means. Do we need to convert them to a God? Or maybe maybe actually we have more resources and we should do resource sharing of some. And that's kind of how humanitarian and compassion week or week of compassion, which is their humanitarian arm form. But like you you can't it's funny that you had some people coming back and and then you had a third group that was like, No, I'm done. That was not our business. What are we doing? I'm just gonna stay home and be a good Christian in my local community. Like so it's just funny, again, this truth that once you present people with just here's really what it is, you you just can't control 'cause in the minds of the DOC institution, I'm sure they wanted everybody to be a missionary. And then they were like, Wait, we're the retention numbers are not good and Samantha Bise: Yeah, I mean just the history of Christianity too. I mean, to go back to fundamentalism, I don't wanna I mean I academics say this all the time, but like live in the nuance a little bit because we're always thinking. I mean, I just posted recently about a lot of people think churches should be taxed. And while I understand that impulse, especially from a lot of people who are not in the church, I Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm. Thank you. Samantha Bise: do understand it. I don't agree with that because I look at my small town in Pennsylvania. One out of three people living under the poverty line, a lot of children, and homelessness in a small rural town looks like kids living out of their car. You don't see it, right? It's not on the street corner asking for money. It's living in a car and then waking up without a shower and breakfast and going to school the next day, right? And the churches in our town, if they were to be taxed, because a lot of them are not doing fantastic financially, the pastors Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Samantha Bise: and priests in our town, I know because I'm married to one, we're not rolling in dough here. We are not the mega churches, although I d many churches do abuse their tax exem status, yes. but we have churches that give out baby food, diapers, formula. The largest food bank is a Methodist church in our town, right? Just countless things. Leigh/@followtheleighder: yeah, critical. Samantha Bise: We have a school that has school uniforms. So my church, my Lutheran church, gives out school uniforms once a year to kids who need it. We just collect them all year and then give them out. and it is heavily attended because it's needed. we give out winter coats 'cause a people don't have them. I mean, if churches close tomorrow without some other plan to to take this on, and I don't think our government is going to be shifting anytime soon, right? It's just tricky. And I don't think people realize what they're saying when you say all of our churches should be taxed. And I'm a fan of accountability, but I've had I have a friend who is an accountant and does church accountant stuff and he's like the infrastructure it would take to To make sure that every church is doing what they're supposed to do. The costs might not outweigh the benefits of that. So, like at a logistics level, I just think it needs to be a more nuanced conversation of like, yes, hold churches accountable, but also acknowledge that churches have done harm. Churches have also always been doing good. As a as a Lutheran, we've got Dietrich Bahnhofer creating underground Leigh/@followtheleighder: yeah. Samantha Bise: seminaries during the Nazi occupation, right? So like we need to hold both of them. And in this book I'm trying to do that to be like the church has done harm. Some of this language is harmful. And it's also done good. Can we hold it all? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Abs absolutely. Absolutely. It's It's it's and and I'm I'm really thankful that you're you're writing to that nuance and to that complexity because a lot of people don't don't want it. I appreciate your your take on the defending the church economics and finances and also the cost of regulating all of that. You're absolutely right. And then from the political state perspective, like I understand the tax generation people are hypothesizing. I also see Now you've got the government in your books as a religious organization. And that can go bad. Like bad power, Samantha Bise: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: having that much like knowing and it it goes back to separation of church and state. It protects us both. Like I don't want the government I I just don't. I don't want them in our books. And Samantha Bise: Yeah, there's a whole lot of rhetoric about how we don't want Christianity in our government, but I don't want our government in our Christianity either. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think about Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Right. Absolutely. Samantha Bise: during the Nazi occupation, during Hitler, pastors and priests were given state approved sermons and told this is what you're going to read on Sunday. I mean, it can be dangerous whenever the government infiltrates Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Samantha Bise: and takes over too much control and overhead and oversight. There's a reason And that does come at a cost because some people are abusing that. I don't know what the answer is, but let's just really wrestle with what we mean when we say we want the government to get involved in religion. Not just churches, religion, right? All of it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Right. Yeah. So absolutely. Well, we are coming up, just out of time. Can you let this has been awesome. I want you to come back Samantha Bise: So fun. Leigh/@followtheleighder: and like we could we could spend so much time talking. How can folks learn, follow or otherwise like do a deep dive on on your work? Where can where can I send Samantha Bise: I am most active on Instagram, so it's doctor D R period Bice B I S E so B is in Boy I S E. So doctor dot Bice on Instagram. my website is semianthabice dot com. That's where most of my stuff is. Everything's listed on the website in Instagram. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well folks, let me know what y'all thought of this conversation in the comments. If you have any questions or just other topics we can bring up in the next conversation, it'd be awesome to hear. but Sam, like fantastic conversation. You so so needed. Your voice is so needed online, your work, your mind. Looking forward to your book. I can't wait to to quote it and recommend it on my book recommendations list and folks make sure to get that from your local bookshop. no Amazon if you can help it. I understand though. and but yeah, please, Sam, come back and and and keep up the great work. Samantha Bise: Thank you, and thank you for your work too. I appreciate it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, absolutely. Alrighty folks, we all know the drill. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe. This has been another episode of Follow the Leader. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and until next time, see ya. Samantha Bise: See ya.