Confronting Sexism in Church Leadership: Exposing Hidden Biases with Rev. Dr. Heather Matthews (Best of 2024)

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Welcome to the A World of Difference podcast. I'm Lori Adams Brown and this is a podcast for those who are different. And want to make a difference. Does it feel like your whole world has just been turned upside down? Are you having trouble remembering to drink water or eat?

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Or trauma, find support groups, and also also really have a person to help. You walk through some of the most difficult parts of your life right now. You can get 10% off your first month today by going to www.betterhelp.com difference you deserve to heal our third and final best of 2024 is our one of our three top most downloaded episodes where many of you really resonated with a particular guest. We had Reverend Dr. Heather Matthews.

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Her book really resonated with many of you that you read it, but also just hearing her speaking about it here on the podcast, obviously with something you shared with your friends. And many of you listened because her book Confronting Sexism in the Church, How We Got Here and what We Can Do about it, not only addresses issues of sexism that we find in church spaces, but it also reminds us of how sexism shows up in all types of industries and in the world where we live. Many of us live in cultures where we're all swimming in patriarchal norms and cultural narratives. And whether you're in academia or politics or business or nonprofit, but especially in the church where we see theology tied to sexism, even when we see egalitarian theological spaces, such as where women pastors are on staff at a church, or women elders or women deacons, or where theologically people believe that men and women are both created equally and there's no hierarchy there, even in marital relationships or in any other relationship where men and women are working and in community spaces together, we see often that many people have not done the work to dismantle patriarchal narratives and stereotypes and even not dismantle the systems that are built on that patriarchal system where there isn't an equitable, just a level playing field at the get go, and where those conversations of all the little ways where dismantling that system hasn't taken place, we still see a lot of sexism showing up in not understanding how even just for example, how so much of the unpaid labor, both at home and in church, whether it's volunteering or on church staff, that so much of that has fallen on women to even just bear the emotional labor in the work relationships or even in the pastoral care relationships oftentimes. And so all of those things sort of resonated with many of you around the world.

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And so her book not only is based on research, but also just her own experience. So Heather is the Doctor of Ministry program manager at Wheaton College Graduate School. She's also a pastor, however, so she's not only working on the academic side, but she's also just living it out in the practical side as a pastor with a new church plant, even All Saints Anglican church in Naperville, Illinois. And Dr. Matthews has worked, like I said, as a pastor, as a church planner, a nonprofit leader and educator, and a global worker for over 20 years.

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Dr. Matthews has a DMin from Fuller Seminary, a master's in educational ministry, and an MA in Counseling Ministry from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And she also has a bachelor's in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Heather's area of expertise is women in church leadership. Like I said, she's the author of Confronting Sexism in the Church, How We Got Here, and what We Can Do About It.

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So listen once again and once again share with those that you think will really benefit from this episode as we once again revisit this best of 2024 with Dr. Reverend Dr. Heather Matthews.

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Hello Dr. Matthews, and welcome to the World of Difference podcast today, where in the last days and by the time this airs weeks, we will have had our heads spinning from all kinds of news of all sorts here in the US and around the world. So how are you faring with everything that's been kind of swirling around you? Wow. So crazy.

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Watching the news the last few days my kids and I have been talking about it so much, so certainly pretty dramatic development. So, so interested to see how it's all going to play out in the coming months. Yeah, us too. I have three kids that you know still at home, a couple teenagers and then a young adult. And we've been glued to the news ourselves because you just Never know what's going to happen.

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I was shopping with one of my 16 year old twins when we were in like an H and M. And the news that here in the United States, President Trump had been shot. And we saw his face bleeding as my son was coming out of the dressing room. And we were like, what is happening? And over the next days and weeks, things just got wilder and wilder.

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And by the time we're recording this, we know that Biden has dropped out of the race. And there's a potential for the first time in a few years now of having a woman president to vote for again. And so your book is about confronting sexism in the church. And they always say politics and religion are the things you shouldn't talk about. But we love talking about those here.

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And I would just be interested to hear your perspective, having written this book, about how we can expect sexism to show up both in the church and, you know, largely in our political sphere when it comes to trying to elect a woman once again. What are some of your perspectives on what we can look out for? Yeah, it's so interesting how religion and politics are so tied together in our country. So it's going to be really interesting seeing how it's going to play out with another female candidate. I know with our last female candidate there was so much backlash against her as a woman, and this time it's a woman of color.

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So it's going to be really interesting to see what happens. And sadly, I think in politics, like in the church, that many people still aren't used to having women leaders in the top positions as president or pastors of churches. That brings up a lot of fear and issues inside people that play out in different ways. So they're so intertwined. It's going to be interesting to see how people from various spheres of Christianity and other faiths in America respond to this.

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Yeah, I agree. I feel like so often people just haven't seen it. So when it comes to, in the, you know, evangelical space, Christianity as a whole, there's these, you know, two different camps we've talked about here on the podcast before, which is a complementarian theology and then an egalitarian theology. And then some people use different words like mutuality and things like that. But largely, I think so, so much of that isn't just theological based.

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It's experiential. And, you know, I did spend in a former, in a former life, spent some time as a woman pastor myself in an evangelical, oddly enough, Southern Baptist church. And it was, I often had little girls or moms bringing their little girls up to just shake my hand and meet me. And it's like you're the first one we've ever seen, you know, like you're some kind of a unicorn. And it's interesting when I've unpacked with some of our guests and some authors who've written about this, that some of the egalitarian, theologically egalitarian people we've had on have grown up seeing a woman pastor.

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And so it's often a factor. And I can't help but believe it's not a factor with US President as well. I've lived in countries where there were women presidents. Indonesia, even the largest Muslim nation in the world, had a woman president while we were there. And so, yeah.

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How much of a factor do you think that representation really is for people? I think that's a huge factor. There is some research about the church that one of the biggest influences on people supporting women in leadership in the church is their experience of being under the leadership of a woman, that it's the actual experience of seeing a woman in leadership being under a female pastor, where people realize that this isn't such a bad thing, that women can be good leaders and can be shepherds in the church. And I think that experiential piece is the biggest factor when you think about changing people's minds about women in leadership. And certainly I think it's an issue with politics as well.

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Absolutely. Yeah. There's been talk, and who knows, by the time this podcast airs of asking President Biden to step down. I think a lot of Republicans have called for that, saying if he doesn't feel fit to run, then how can he be fit to stay as president? And therefore.

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I'm not sure if the Republicans are intending this or not, but it seems like a strange move that would actually give us our first woman president automatically without having to rely on voters who are often susceptible to sexism and in this case, also racism. And so there's this word misogynoir, if people aren't familiar, which is the misogyny or the hatred of women, but also mixed in with being a black woman. Right. Which is kind of a double whammy in this case. But in some ways, that feels to me like one of the easiest ways for us to get a woman into that position, because we often need men to open doors for women like Biden has done, even just by giving her his support.

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But if he did step down and gave her the actual job breaking that glass ceiling, she would still get cut and still be bleeding. And so any woman after her would still have some shards of glass to walk through. But sometimes you just need men to open the door. And so I would love to hear your perspective on the role of male allies and how they can really contribute and this area of sexism toward women. Yeah, male allies are key to this whole issue.

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Women have been fighting for themselves for forever, trying to open doors for ourselves, but there's only so much that women can do on their own when men are still, especially in the church, when men still are the majority of the people that are in power. We need men to open doors. So that's. You're exactly right on that. And I know that was true for me in my career, that there were men that identified my leadership and opened doors for me.

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For other women that I've interviewed, it is exactly the same story for them that if it wasn't for a man opening the door for them, they wouldn't be in leadership. So that's a consistent theme that I've heard from many women. And I think obviously we're seeing it in the political sphere now, but in the church, when especially the evangelical church where the majority of leaders are men, this is such a key factor because women just can't do it on their own because we don't have the power to make the changes that need to be changed. This is one of the things I talk about a lot in my book is the need for male allies and strong vocal advocates who are willing to share power and set policies and structures that support women to invite women into leadership. There's so many, so many important things that men can do that we just can't do on our own yet.

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100%. Yeah. And just I have really loved for those on YouTube, I'm showing you the COVID confronting sexism in the church, how we got here, and what we can do about it. So everybody has their own personal journey of stories we share publicly or share with our friends and then those that we keep close to us because, you know, we all have our reasons for that. But I don't know a single woman who hasn't experienced sexism in some form or fashion in her journey.

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I know all often, even though I don't work in, you know, church world anymore, I work in a tech company and we face it there in a different way. Not nearly as extreme in my experience, which is great and something to say considering how, you know, there is definitely sexism in corporate world and in tech, but my experience of working in an evangelical church. It was so much more because the combination of religion and that kind of power is really extreme. But I'd love to hear a little more about what your journey, how it evolved into focusing on confronting sexism in the church and leading you to write this book. What sort of compelled you?

00:13:28
Yeah, so I decided that I wanted to go into ministry when I was a teenager. So from that point on, I was heading in that direction. And I ended up going to seminary right after college because I knew that's what I wanted to do with my life and my career. And that was when I really first came to understand the issue of sexism in the church. And obviously it was there before.

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I also, like you, grew up in a Southern Baptist church that had all male leaders. But I just wasn't aware of what was going on or at the time, you know, I was young. It wasn't thinking about it too much until I was in seminary and realized for the first time that there are people that really want me there, that don't support my leadership in the church, that don't believe that I should be doing what I felt like I had been called to do. So it was a real disorienting wake up call that I had to experience that for the first time when it really started impacting my life. So really that was a turning point for me where I started to study more about this issue and pay attention in my own career and as a advocate as much as I could in my spheres of influence.

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Luckily, I was part of some churches that encouraged women in leadership. But like you said, there's sexism everywhere and in every space. And I continued to struggle in lots of different ways. So eventually, a few Years ago, in 2018, I decided to go back to school and do a doctor of ministry. And it just seemed natural for this to be my research topic when I was there because it had been my greatest interest in all my years in ministry.

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So my research was specifically focused on female pastors in evangelical churches, but specifically in egalitarian churches, because like I said, even in egalitarian churches, women still face lots of resistance and sexism and underlying bias that most people don't see. So from there, it just seemed like a natural step to write this book. And in the book, I look at sexism more broadly, more than just women in leadership in the church, but I look at it more broadly with the issue of sexism throughout evangelicalism today. So glad you did this research. It's so needed.

00:16:04
We need so many voices in the space and so Much more research on it, because it is such a confusing thing, I think, for so many who have been in a largely complementarian space or a space where women were not allowed to be pastors or priests, you know, if they're Catholic, and then suddenly thinking you're jumping into a Christian space that is egalitarian, where you've seen women pastors or they're theoretically allowed or even, you know, present. But what you may not know is behind the scenes, it may look really different than what you're seeing as a congregant. That is my own personal, lived experience that I went from a much more complementarian space in ministry within Southern Baptist, who was recruited to work for a man who was seen as fighting the Southern Baptist Convention on behalf of women pastors. But behind the scenes, it was like a hostile work environment. Very abusive, very discriminatory toward women, but a lot of layers of other things.

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And that was something I never saw coming. And it was also hard to explain and can still be hard to explain in the light of how the Southern Baptist Convention has even had these votes over the last couple years of the law amendment, which the pastor I work for is seen as a hero for women pastors in that space since he took over for Rick Warren at Saddleback. And he and Rick Warren both have been sort of these quote, unquote, champions for women, while also ignoring my story and other women's stories of working on staff under Andy Wood's leadership, both here in Silicon Valley, where I still live, where the church was, and also in Saddleback. And, you know, as I began to sort of get into spaces of women pastors, I began to realize this is not exclusive to Southern Baptist. We see it in all kinds of denominational spaces, and we also see it once again in.

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In the political realm. So some people might assume to be a Democrat means that women are completely accepted. And that's not necessarily true. You still have sexism there. Explain how sexism can hide in a space that looks overtly egalitarian or looks overtly feminist in whatever form that is.

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Yeah, they're. Besides the overt kinds of sexism that maybe we see from people like Donald Trump, you know, that's easy to identify at times. There's also unconscious and hidden sexism that is under the surface that most of the time, men and women aren't even aware of unless you are really attuned to what's going on. And so the other issue is just that patriarchy and sexism have been around forever. And so it's just built into our ways of thinking and our cultures.

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And even people like me, I'm attuned to this issue. And yet I still act out of these ways of thinking that I grew up with or that are part of our culture. And that's the way it is even in churches that are egalitarian or have women in leadership that there's still things under the surface that people may not notice and ways of thinking. And there's so many examples of this about oftentimes certain positions like we were talking about, women may still not be accepted as the senior leader or there may be token women in certain positions or there may be things that you could label many things that might be labeled as microaggressions. Like I know people sometimes will refer to grown women as girls or the pastor's wife instead of, you know, if you have an official position or women often in the church aren't asked to preach very often.

00:19:53
You know, 95% of the time it's usually a male preaching in evangelical churches. So there's so many ways that there's sexism that's under the surface that unless you're paying attention that it can, you can just go without even noticing it. But usually women notice and women talk about it. I know that's been my experience is that when you talk to a woman, they know what's going on and they see it and they feel it and it's deeply painful. I was just with a group of female students here at Wheaton last week that are going through our master's programs and they're all in some type of church leadership or Christian nonprofit leadership.

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And every single one of them had a story and some were in tears and told painful stories of the kinds of treatment that they had received from well meaning men that often are blind to what it's like to be a woman in the church. And the sexism that's so prevalent. Yeah, you know, there's, so there's, you know, Jimmy Carter, who was Southern Baptist for many years and then left over the issue of women when the BfNM was changed to very, to very clearly say that women were not allowed to be pastors. And so he left because of his theology and his support of women, which is, you know, continued to this day. But he has a, a lot of different talks where he's kind of mentioned this and why he left and everything.

00:21:19
But there's a really great TED talk, I'll try to remember to link it in the show notes where he, he talks about this. And the one of the ways I like how he words it is, you know, the thing about privilege is you often don't realize you have it. You know, so my white privilege is something that I haven't always been aware of. Right. Even though I've grown up in South America and I was a minority and then in Asia for 20 years, you know, I was very much a minority, but I was still very privileged to.

00:21:48
The way I present is very white, you know, and I have a US passport. There's privileges with that that you're often not aware of. But he often talks about how, you know, men aren't often aware of their privilege in a space. And so part of it is just raising the awareness that. And you having researched this, and I know writing about this in your book quite a bit is, you know, when we're in spaces, whether it's in business or church or politics, they've done, you know, this research that shows when a man speaks in a meeting, men, when they get surveyed, assume that the men spoke less, even themselves.

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And when they ask them how often women spoke, it will be less, but they will imagine that it was more. And so I imagine that's true in preaching. You know, when it's like a woman preaches just on Mother's Day, the perception is probably she spoke a third of the year or, you know, but in reality that's how we're trained. So how are you seeing that play out currently? And how have you seen that in the research?

00:22:50
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And this is one of the things I looked at in my research is just at the numbers of the number of women in leadership positions in churches, like you said, the numbers are very low. Even in churches that say that they are supportive of women in leadership, they hire female pastors across the board. The senior pastor was a man and the majority of higher level leaders were still men. It is very difficult to find a church that where there's actual equity, equity and leadership, where there's real equality of numbers.

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When you're just talking about numbers of women in leadership positions, it just is very rare in evangelical spaces. So. And that's just when you're looking at the top level leaders and women are often pigeonholed into traditionally feminine roles. There's just so many ways that it plays out in the church. And often male leaders feel like they're doing a good job.

00:24:07
You know, one of the things I've found is that male leaders often feel like they're doing a good job. They think they're supportive of women. And they are to some degree, but until there's some sort of equity, you know, we really haven't gotten all the way there to where women want to be. Yeah. And sometimes in these spaces, it feels like crumbs are just being thrown to women.

00:24:33
And they're supposed to be utterly grateful that these male superheroes save the day. And that's in a way, that's no one's fault. Our superhero narratives have played that they're getting better. I notice Marvel movies in this generation I'm raising my kids with are way better than the one Wonder Woman Underoos we had to choose from back as the Gen X. Right.

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But you know that there is this. These sort of the stories we tell ourselves are part of our culture. Right. And they're a part of the sermons we hear that are, you know, you're most likely to hear sermons by men about male characters and the flaws and all of that necessarily not being shown, you know, like them being portrayed as heroes. And so when we have these narratives that men are supposed to rescue the damsels in distress, there is no role for a woman to be the leader, for her to be the president, for her to be strong, like a Deborah in the Bible or a Jael with her tent peg, you know, that kind of thing.

00:25:30
Those narratives aren't really spoken about often in the evangelical world. And so it does mean that men can feel good about themselves if they gave a token pastoral to a woman while never considering giving her equal talk time, ability to help change decisions, push back, question, make decisions on her own that you might disagree with. Like, those are the challenges. Those are the nitty gritty details that we're not getting into, I think in the evangelical world. What has been your experience of seeing that?

00:26:01
Yeah, that is exactly right. It's all those little ways that those things that need to be changed in organizational culture for it to be a space where women can lead well and be the people that they're meant to be and share equally in leadership with men. It's all those pieces that it takes to change a culture where women can. Can be in leadership. And it takes so much work and attention to change organizational culture in that way.

00:26:43
And that's why we're still struggling at this point. And usually there's so much pushback to even bringing these issues to the table. If women bring these issues to the table, they can be seen as antagonistic or, you know, worse than that or dismissed. So this is why understanding sexism and educating ourselves, even doing things like gender bias, Training is so important because it's through those methods that we can actually become aware of what our cultures are like and how it's inhibiting women's leadership in the spaces that they're in 100%. You have a bit of diverse background though.

00:27:29
I'm from biomedical engineering. Is that right into ministry? How did that shape your approach to this whole conversation around sexism in the church? Yeah, people are always a little surprised with my undergrad that I studied, but that was a huge part of my coming to awareness of this issue. I did my undergrad at Northwestern University, which is, if you know it, It's a top 10 university in the US pretty prestigious.

00:27:57
So I was lucky to be able to go there. And the whole school is just filled with amazingly intelligent and talented men and women. And so I was in this environment for four years studying engineering where women could do anything and women could be anything. And we were encouraged to be use our talents and abilities without inhibition and to go after our dreams. And I was surrounded by, you know, hundreds of other women who were amazing in their own fields.

00:28:35
So leaving that environment and going straight to a conservative evangelical seminary was disorienting, to say the least. To go immediately to another environment where sometimes people wouldn't look me in the eye, where I wasn't supported. As for my intellect or my abilities, where my future prospects were limited. It could not have been a different culture. And that was part of the big I eye opening that I had where I realized the severity of the problem and in the church and evangelicalism.

00:29:19
But I do think I still use that initial education. At the time I wanted to do medical missions because I really didn't have a vision for being a pastor or any other type of ministry. I thought, well, I know I could be a doctor, I'm smart, I can go to medical school and I could do medical missions. And so. But I eventually found myself pastoring and.

00:29:45
But I still think I use that analytical mind and that's what I'm hoping to do partly with this book is let's talk about this issue. Let's talk about the problem and strategize and problem solve and see how we can make the church a place where women can truly flourish. Yeah, what a story. I mean, because we know that women in STEM really struggle and there's certainly a lot of sexism embedded there. And I think it's a pretty big eye opening statement that you went from that world into a Christian evangelical world and faced more.

00:30:23
And I get that it makes 100% sense to me, because I've had a very similar experience on the opposite direction. But, I mean, I know that there are some really historical and cultural factors that contribute to sexism in the church. This goes way, way back. Right. Even though we have women in the early church very involved.

00:30:40
If you don't know that research, please check out my Women in the Church series and even many other podcasts since then, where we brought on authors who dig into the history of women in the church, historians like Dr. Beth Ellison Barr. We've also had Dr. Nijay Gupta on Dr. Scott McKnight multiple times.

00:30:56
Many people who it's. If you want to know the truth, women have been involved in the church all along in all leadership positions. But today in the evangelical world, sometimes history isn't taught. Church history is skewed, and really, people just see what's in front of them. Tell us how history and cultural factors have contributed to sexism from your perspective and how we address that.

00:31:19
Yeah, this is one of the chapters that I have in my book looking at the history of sexism. And really, it starts from the very beginning of time. We see it in the story of Adam and Eve, and it just continues on from there. And the Bible was written in a patriarchal culture, so we see patriarchy throughout the Bible. And it was written to.

00:31:43
It was written to people living in that type of culture. And so I think it's so important to understand how this narrative progresses. And you're right that people like Nijay Gupta and Beth Barr have written great books that look at how this progressed through time. I think some of the interesting things that we've kind of touched on already is just in the last 50 years, there's been huge political changes that have impacted women in the church. With the second wave feminist movement and then the religious right response to that, the emphasis on family values, the way multiple issues ended up being tied together with women's roles and abortion, LGBTQ rights, women in leadership in the church.

00:32:35
All these issues got tied together in evangelical churches and became markers of whether we were true evangelicals. And so the last 50 years have had tremendous impact on women and the way churches see women and treat women. And so the way things are now isn't the way things have always been. And so much has been influenced politically more than anything else. It hasn't been a new study of Scripture.

00:33:05
It's been our political environment has had huge influence on our church environment today and evangelicalism. But there's so much to learn and know. And I think it's Important to know history. And one of the things I talk about in the book as well is a history of anti sexism of people and women who have been advocates for women in the church throughout history as well. That's not new.

00:33:32
That's not a new phenomenon. Since the 1970s, there's been women leading and in all spheres since, as you say, since the early church. So it's important to know that history as well. Absolutely. And some of it is that women have done so much work, but often we see men getting credit for women's work, or there's some great research.

00:33:59
I know I saw something with Sheryl Sandberg speaking not long ago at Lean in, where she was quoting this research that shows in when we look at women as leaders, we will often say about her a different narrative than we might say about a man, all things being equal. Right. And so for the man who's a leader, we'll just take presidential candidate, for example, because that's real time right now for us. If you had somebody with all the same demographics as, you know, Kamala Harris, but he was a man, for example, we would typically, because of the ocean of patriarchy, we all swim in the air we all breathe, right? We would say, oh, he earned this himself.

00:34:41
He worked hard to get here. His experience and his resume shows that he did this. But for her, what we swim in would have us to think through that filter we kind of are kind of given. She obviously had help to get there. There could be even worse narratives that she slept her way to the top, which is very not uncommon, assuming that a woman could only get power if she wielded her sexuality in some way, which is a very deep form of misogyny that still exists.

00:35:16
Or we would just say she got really lucky. You know, she didn't deserve it, but, oh, wow, somebody gave her this. And then a lot of the narrative we'll see is that, you know, she was a token. And in some cases, we will see women tokenized. But it's not fair to call women tokens when they have the resumes that they often have.

00:35:36
So, you know, in the case of politics with Hillary Clinton, we saw some with a great amount of experience as having lived in the White House herself as first lady and been very involved in her husband's, you know, presidential years, and then also being accomplished lawyer herself from an Ivy League school and, you know, having been a senator, having been secretary of state, like many much experience. And for Kamala, she's been vice president, she's been the district attorney of San Francisco. She's been the Attorney General of California. She's been an amazing prosecutor before all of that. Her years in the Senate were, you know, very accomplished.

00:36:12
And, you know, some of the narratives I've already been seeing is, who's Harris? What is she? What has she done? And you're like, oh, wow. So the work of women is often invisible or we don't credit to them, both in church politics and everywhere.

00:36:24
And so some. What are some of the ways we can overcome that narrative? And where do you see it taking place? Yeah, that's so true. Even as we're talking about history, so much of the history of women in the church has been lost because their contributions weren't recognized or valued.

00:36:42
Men were writing the history books and left out women's stories. And even now, it's often difficult to learn stories about women leaders. Those aren't always the things that were taught in school. And that's why we have Women's History Month and Black History Month is because so often these stories are hidden. And it's interesting, there is some research today that shows that female pastors often are more educated than male pastors because like many women in leadership, we realize that we have to do more to get into positions of leadership.

00:37:24
We have to be more accomplished and have more degrees than men so that we can get into positions of leadership. And so often there's a lot to be said about celebrating the stories of women and talking about women's accomplishments, highlighting those for, you know, in churches, in the political arena, whatever it is, because like you said, otherwise it's easy to overlook them, dismiss them. Women are more likely to dismiss their own stories, like you said. And so it's so not to brag or be narcissistic, but women have. Most women have earned, worked hard and earned their positions.

00:38:09
And we need to talk about their stories and share them and like you said, to inspire other younger women who are coming behind us. Absolutely. I do have a lot of hope in the younger women because I feel like each generation has had a different way of handling this. And I have a lot of hope in how I see Gen Z really pushing boundaries. And what we're seeing in Gen Z is that a lot of the women in Gen Z are more progressive, and then a lot of the men, especially white males, are becoming more conservative.

00:38:39
So we're seeing a much more polarization in Gen Z, which I think is the reality of the social media and everything that's going on that we've handed them. So it is still up to us to continue to mentor and guide. We know that women are often over mentored and under sponsored. So we really need are the open doors, like what Biden has done for Kamala, like what men have done for you and I, because the men are the ones that hold the positions of power. And no matter how much a woman may be overqualified, you wouldn't be given it without someone actually giving power away.

00:39:10
And that is really what we see, I think, in the life of Jesus is somebody who had all authority and then shared it with us. And that's where I think our faith is rooted in these conversations. I'd love for you to give us some sort of practical things we can look out for. What are some sexist tropes that we often know about as women because we experience them or maybe we aren't even aware of that. Men listening to this right now may be really shocked by, you know, so what are some things we can look for that people might say that are very sexist in nature or they might think that often people don't know about.

00:39:51
Good question. You know, in the church, there's one of the things that I've noticed is there's this soft complementarianism that is so common where men are still expected to be the leaders in charge, head of their family, the stronger ones, protecting women who are weaker. And there's so much of that that's just pervasive in evangelicalism. So I think that is a big one to be aware of because so often I think it's seen more as chivalry. This is a good thing, what it means to be a man or a woman, and that this is how we relate together.

00:40:38
And yet these ways of thinking are still so limiting for. For women. So I think that's a big thing to watch out for in the church.

00:40:52
There's just so many other little things. What are some of the ones that you come across? Yeah, I definitely see that one. And there's multiple in what you just said. Yeah, I think that, you know, assuming that women are warm, I think there is a tightrope.

00:41:09
And I. You've probably faced this too. I faced it in ministry. I've faced it in all aspects of my career in life. And I see that with a challenge to overcome.

00:41:19
When it comes to electing a woman president of the United States, there's this tightrope between showing up as warm and showing up as strong. And you can never quite thread that needle exactly perfectly. And men just aren't expected to. Right. So we had Dr.

00:41:33
Kristin Kobez Dume on the podcast, right as soon as, like, soon after Jesus and John Wayne was released, which is a book that's very insightful to many of us and I think is absolutely relevant in the US Politics right now, we're very much going to continue to see that played out. And so I think that, you know, what we see with that kind of thing is that especially in the evangelical world, and especially as politics mixes with the evangelical church in the United States, here in the west, that men are just expected to be strong as leaders, like even toxic rock stars at times. But if a woman starts to show too much strength, she gets in trouble. She's not warm enough. And if she starts to show too much warmth, well, she can't lead.

00:42:19
How could she ever make hard decisions? And so a woman shows up in a room, we automatically assume she's warm. She has to prove she's strong, but not too much. And then a man. And patriarchy hurts everyone, right?

00:42:31
So sexism hurts men, too. And so if a man shows up not appearing too. He's supposed to appear strong, that's going to be our assumption, is he's strong. But if he shows up looking too warm, like, if he cries or shows too much empathy in certain situations, then maybe he's not fit to lead either. And so I think that this is where men and women need to come together, right?

00:42:52
Because we are so human and we're so nuanced and we have feelings and we. No one's perfect. But asking a woman, especially the first woman pastor in a church or the first woman president, to be perfect is impossible and you'll never get there. And it shouldn't be that. She has to be everything for everyone at all times and can't be human.

00:43:13
That's where sexism, I think, often shows up. What have you seen with that? Yeah, that's so true. This is such a huge issue for women in leadership, this tension between what we see as traditionally masculine traits and traditionally feminine traits. And especially for women, like you said, it's so hard to find that right balance because we're judged either way.

00:43:34
Either way we go, we end up being judged harshly. But good leaders actually have a mixture of these traits where they're strong and soft at the same time. And that's what makes good leaders. And so. But yeah, there's.

00:43:49
Women get stereotyped either way. And this is a huge issue for leadership, especially, you know, roles like president or pastor, where they are seen as traditionally male roles where people can't even envision yet What a female in this role would be like. It's almost impossible for a woman to navigate all the landmines that are there. No, 100%. I really feel like.

00:44:19
And I've had that conversation over the past, you know, just over the past day when it comes to women supporting Kamala Harris even, because the. The thing about sexism and misogyny is it's internalized, even for women. And that sometimes can surprise people. But I myself am still working through some of those narratives that held me back and caused me to hold other women in my life back. And so we need to have an imagination for it.

00:44:46
And I think that so much of kind of how we started this conversation is the lack of imagination for a woman pastor, the lack of imagination for a woman president, because we haven't seen it or experienced it, so we can't imagine what it would look like. So how can churches specifically create an environment where women can thrive when they get these positions? What are some practical things they could do to be more supportive and inclusive when a woman does get there? Yeah, I think there's so many things that churches and organizations could do, and I talk about this a lot in my book. I think one big issue for churches is to actually have theology that supports and values women's dignity and supports their gifting in all areas.

00:45:32
This, as you said, having this foundation helps women to internalize that we're allowed to be. We're allowed to be there and to be doing the things that we're doing. Beyond that, churches need to have policies and structures and accountability that support women in all levels of leadership and equitable hiring with structures where there can be conversation and accountability, where women's voices can be heard, where these issues can be addressed. Churches can need to be filled with male allies, like we talked about, men who are willing to open the door for women, elevate women in leadership, let women be the first one in a new role, all of these things. There are so many different ways that churches can become more welcoming for women.

00:46:32
Like you said, mentoring and sponsorship is a huge issue for women. Often there aren't, especially in churches. Sometimes there aren't other women in similar levels of leadership. So men have to be open to working with women in churches. The Billy Graham rule is a huge issue for women in leadership.

00:46:58
That has to be addressed and changed. When I did interviews with men and women in leadership, this came up every time. In every church that I talked to had some form of these rules. They're pervasive, and they're hugely inhibiting for women. So there's many practical things like that that we can do to make churches and leadership spaces where women can thrive.

00:47:30
Absolutely, yeah. And if you're unfamiliar with the Billy Graham rule, once again, go back and check my Women in the Church series. We unpacked that in a few episodes a couple years ago and it was something I pushed back on. When I came on staff as a woman pastor, I was really shocked. I came on staff with, I thought, an egalitarian lead pastor who had the Billy Graham rule.

00:47:47
And so my ability to get the same development was non existent. And then it made me feel horrible, like there was something wrong with me that I was somehow trying to have sex with with all the men in the church, which just for the record, there was not a single one that that ever crossed my mind about. And so that leads me to like our next question because, you know, we see a lot of abuse happening and we've unpacked this in other episodes here too. But I'd love for you to give us, in your experience, how do issues of abuse, trauma, gender intersect with church communities? Because I know that sometimes the reaction is we'll have the Billy Graham rule and then the pastor won't abuse the women on staff.

00:48:21
But in reality, as these pastors are, have the Billy Graham rule in many cases and they still break it. And that happened to me. I wasn't abused sexually, but my lead pastor had the Billy Graham rule. And then emotionally, verbally and spiritually, psychologically, really abused me one on one in these meetings. And so that's where the abuse took place for me.

00:48:40
Even though we had the Billy Graham rule, he was breaking it. And so that's, that's the thing is abusers are going to break their own rules. Right. So how do you think that this whole conversation around sexism plays into abuse, trauma and gender in the church? Yeah, that's a great question.

00:48:56
Obviously abuse is everywhere, in every environment. Whether it's a space that is supportive of women in leadership or it's not abuses everywhere. But I do believe that some of our, the traditional recent beliefs in, in the church, in evangelicalism, do prime churches and men for abuse. When there are beliefs that women should be the leaders, men should be the leaders of women, that they should exercise power over women, that this naturally leads to, can lead to objectification and abuse. And obviously not every man that has believes in male headship.

00:49:43
There are many kind and kind men who have these beliefs. But it does set the stage for men to misuse their power when they believe that they are divinely ordained to have power over women. That it, it opens the door for men to misuse that power and feel justified in doing so. So this is a huge issue and obviously all the news stories that have been coming out recently about fallen leaders and sexual misconduct and abuse in the church, I think this is a wake up call to us that there we have a big problem in the church and the church has an issue with women. And this whole issue of sexism is certainly intertwined with the abuse and scandals that we were seeing in the church.

00:50:34
And we have to start talking about it and identifying the problem for what it is. 100%. Yep. Keeping our head in the sand is not going to help us solve the problem, is it? It's just going to make it continue to grow and fester and more people are going to get injured along the way.

00:50:51
100% agree with that. I am so grateful that you wrote this book Confronting Sexism in the Church. And I hope that a lot of people get it and read it and that it's helpful both in our church spaces, our political spaces and in our communities at large. And even if you're not a US based person or you're not a person in the church, I think that you'll find some of the insights in this book valuable. I know some of my Singaporean friends who are churchgoers or who aren't are really excited about confronting sexism in all spaces and wherever you are listening to the world, I hope you get a copy of this book and read it.

00:51:28
Let people know how they can find more of your work and support you and the work that you're doing to confront sexism. Yeah, you can buy my book Confronting Sexism in the Church on Amazon or any other online book retailer. And mostly what I'm hoping is that people will read it and educate themselves and continue the work in their own contests context to work on the issue of sexism where they are. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for just doing the research, for bringing your scientific mind into questioning and coming up with the data so that we can understand what the real problem is.

00:52:08
Because we really can't solve a problem if we don't know what it is. And you really have laid it out for us and hopefully we'll get a lot of brains around this and work together to overcome it. I'm going to ask you to hang out for our difference maker community and ask you more about kind of the future of how you see things going as you look ahead and some of your hopes and goals for the church leadership and gender equalities are going to impact that there. But thank you so much for being on the podcast today and for helping us confront sexism wherever we see it. Thank you.

00:52:34
Thanks so much for having me. Before we go, I just want to take a moment to thank you. Yes, you. The fact that you're here, tuning in, leaning into these conversations, and doing the hard and beautiful work of making a difference in this world, it means everything to me in this episode. If it spoke to you, if it brought you healing, hope, or even just a new perspective, I'd love for you to help us spread the word.

00:53:00
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00:53:27
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