[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to that makes Total sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same.
Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us that makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
Okay, I'm here today with Sarah Stancorp. Sarah, I forgot to tell you, prerecord. We talked about so many things.
One of my favorite. I have, like, groups of folks that are my favorite to talk to for the podcast. And just because I have Ben, seminary student professors are near the top of that list. Other podcast hosts also near the top of that list. But journalists, top three. Those are my top three. Journalists, professors, and other podcast hosts. And so I am stoked about having you, a journalist, on the podcast. No pressure, no pressure, no pressure.
So I'm super excited to talk to Sarah today.
Sarah and I already, again, did this pre record. Sarah wrote a book that came out last year called disobedient, how a small group of faithful women exposed abuse, brought down powerful pastors, and ignited an evangelical reckoning. And I hold in my hand the hardback copy, but it's coming out in paperback this summer, so I'm really excited about more folks being able to get their hands on that.
And before we get started, I also just want to mention Sarah is a journalist. She is an award winning writer and author.
And when we chat today, you also may notice that she has the same vocal disorder as Diane Ream, who is one of my favorite radio personalities, spasmodic dysphonia. And so just kind of wanted to throw that out. At the beginning, Sarah and I chatted about that, and sometimes that's helpful for people to know, especially because we won't have video. This will be all audio. And so, yeah, so just wanted to throw that out there. But Sarah, I am so thrilled to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Oh, thank you for having me. It's.
I wanted to talk to you for a while. So this is excellent, excellent timing.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Well, I am grateful, and I appreciate you saying that. And I will say I have wanted to talk to you for a while and at the same time, have been hesitant, not because of who you are, but because the content of this book is heavy. And I would also say, as someone who grew up, I am a millennial who grew up in Bible belt white evangelicalism and was baptized in an SBC church. So there are a lot of boxes that I check.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: The women who are, whose stories are told in your book, many of them look a lot like me, look a lot like the upbringing that I had and even my young adulthood, especially.
And so there were. I just have.
It was a while before I thought, I don't know if I'm. I don't know if I'm ready for this book. And I.
It sat on my shelf. This hardback copy of your book sat on my shelf, and I honestly had to gain the courage to read it. And once I did, literally, page one turned into page 60 in the blink of an eye. And I was like, I cannot put this down.
I was raving to my husband, telling him, you have got to read this.
I hope this is high praise for me. I hope you receive it as high praise. It felt a lot like reading Jesus and John Wayne, which I also was not ready for at the time.
But it felt like kind of like some of those chapters that Kristen had just thumbnail kind of taken out and expanded. Let's zoom in on some of these places where.
Where she mentions this. So I just want to thank you, just, like, personally, thank you for a.
Even having this. Following through with this idea for this book, doing the hard work, sitting with women, hearing their stories compassionately, writing them, compiling these stories together with context for readers to understand a bigger picture of what you know has happened and is happening inside of this culture. This was no doubt not an easy task. So I want to start by just thanking you and then also asking you, like, where did that come from for you to take all of this in and write all of this up?
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So I've been writing about religion and women and politics, at least for a decade, and I've had a lot of opportunities to write stories of women who are not usually featured in mainstream press. So it started with Vicky Garrison, who was part of the quiverful movement, which, if your listeners are not aware of, it encourages women to have as many babies as possible, to build an army for God.
And after talking to Vicky, at first it seemed like, what is this very fringe thing I've never heard of? Like, this must be ten people.
Novice reporter at that time. I started going online and discovered, no, no, no.
Evangelicalism is huge, and a lot of these ideas are an opt in piecemeal. So it's not that there's one denomination, like, I was brought up and adopts one set of ideas all over the place.
I sort of fell into a wormhole of women's experiences. And a lot of women who did think it was only them that had had these experiences, and it was only them that had recovered from them until they went on the Internet and shared their stories.
And then they discovered, no, no, no, this is rampant. And if this is rampant, maybe there's some sort of causal link between all of our experiences. And I think that's why we ended up with so many people coming forward now about abuse that they've encountered, because the Internet blew the lid off, and it also gave people the ability to create networks where they talked about why certain theology led to certain behaviors within their families, why certain theology led the churches to believe that the church's best position was to stamp, to out, quote, unquote, gossip and cover up abuse. And these survivors instead became kind of armed hair detectives act as quasi journalists reading these stories.
And frankly, once it became kind of in vogue to talk about the fall of Marcel and Hillsong and all these big churches that fell, I started to get very angry because often the interviews asked the men who had been in charge and did not talk to many, many people who were victims, especially the women, let alone the women who had pose the abuse and I've been talking about align for decades. So that's when I sort of decided, okay, that has to be a book.
There's too much. And these folks deserve a spotlight on the efforts they've gone through. Whether they were survivors of abuse or just people who belong to a church and wanted to see, like, moral action in the world. These very brave people deserve a spotlight.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you.
A couple of places I want to go.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: One is even just the title, disobedient women. I kind of want to start there because.
And this kind of. I guess this kind of leads into the other place. I'll go ahead and mention that. When you said the quiverful movement, you thought, this can't be. This is, like, so fringe. This is only, you know, but I want to play on that for a second because I have had those thoughts, too. And then we see, you know, like, then, like, the Duggars became really big. Right, on TLC. And you mention them in the book, but when all of these falls started happening, as you're saying recently, and became publicized, so Marcel Hillsong, those kinds of things.
My husband and I are watching these documentaries about these kinds of things, and one of the things that struck me, and I want to get there with you, is that quiverful or this umbrella Bill Gothard, this kind of thing. I had never heard of the quiverful movement. You know, for years, I had never heard of Bill Gothard. I had never heard of this place. I want to get to in the conversation, stay at home daughters. Like, I had never heard kind of a lot of these things. And I grew up in this white evangelical Bible belt SBC place. But even though I had not heard that terminology or maybe been exposed to those things at the extreme, it colored all of my experiences. So all of the culture, though, even if someone isn't having long hair and wearing a long dress like a Duggar girl, you know, was televised doing for years inside of white evangelicalism, inside, you know, these kinds of, they probably did have some of these same teachings of, you know, these that would, that would make these extreme kind of looking behaviors. So with that as a background for me, just kind of thinking about that as we continue this conversation with this disobedient women. You're talking about theology. I'm like, yes. Because the underlying current in this book, in this culture is that women must submit. Yes.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: They must submit they. To every this. I'll say this, and I'll shut up to, like, every man in their life, though, right? I remember when I was growing up, if you would have asked nine year old Alexis, what do you want to be when you grow up? I had two standard answers, three, teacher. Because like, every little girl at one point, I think, says they want teacher. That's a very heroic and wonderful job, and I'm very grateful for all my kids teachers.
Environmental lawyer at nine, who is saying this. But first female president of the United States.
Here's the deal.
I hope I get to vote for Kamala.
I hope she's on the ballot at this point. We're pretty sure that's going to be the case.
But point is, it hasn't happened yet. We're sitting here in July of 2024, and it hasn't happened yet. I had a girl who was a couple of years older than me. We were teenagers. And I was saying, I think I was still saying at that point, I'm going to be the first female president United States. And she looked at me and said, I wouldn't vote for you. Now. We were close, and I was like, I can, it's like I can see even where we were in a car, I can see where we were going. And I was like, what do you mean you wouldn't vote for me? And she said, I wouldn't vote for you because women are not supposed to be the bosses. Yeah, come on. Sarah, this is the culture, though. These women are disobedient for telling what happened to them. Yes, because women must submit.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: All right, where should I start?
[00:13:57] Speaker A: I will go wherever you want.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Okay. I think I'll go from the top. So it's something that was very helpful for me. It was something, I think, in Jesus and John Way and actually where Christine made hoax about what is evangelism? And it's not. It's nothing. Denomination and status, set doctrine. And the way the subculture of evangelicalism communicates values is through set books, things you may find a christian bookstore, films, homeschool curriculum. There's this mass media of that world. So within that world, you may not be a third family, but another family within your church may to go to conference. You may never have seen the umbrella of authority, but your pastor has. In your pastor may not draw you a diagram, but your pastor will convey that there is a hierarchy. It is gender.
Are he for your own safety, you poor little girl. Is this to be under the headship of your mother, but that under. Over her as your father, over him is your pastor and over them as Jesus?
This idea of authorities is imbued through media. At the same time, and I'm also an early millennial, there was a movement countering feminism in the external culture. So you have council of biblical Manhood and Womanhood. You have a lot of figures like John Piper making museum quotes, theological arguments about male headship, and also becoming, for the more intellectual evangelical, an important part of apologetics. So all of this is going on. And then as the pop culture builds ways to raise your children, those roles get folded in because they've become norms. So that then bleeds into purity. Culture then bleeds into how you discipline your children. And that sense of authority, it's baked in across the board.
So then when we think about women who experience abuse in those systems, the authority at the top, I think, is actually rather tenuous because it is structured upon an amorphous set of ideas. That is influence, well, really their influencer by these evangelical influencers and questioning that is dangerous to that authority figure that they can claim when they have authority given by God, they've been ordained or maybe got themselves ordained. It's not the same system as a more mainline church.
All of that authority is precious and, I think, vulnerable. So when someone within that system, you can say, while your hierarchy of authority hasn't worked because the protection that you showed me that would be attached to that authority didn't work, you're not only saying there's a problem within this church. You're questioning the structure of authority that feeds the whole system. And it's much easier for that person who's in a vulnerable position of authority to tamp at that with one individual, then let the whole thing go up in a puff of smoke. And so that is perpetuated abuse lets the abuser get away with it. Sometimes that authority figures also the abuser, so that they have a double interest in keeping it quiet. And I think going off of what you just described, thats how it all connects. And so many of these survivors of abuse, which with evangelicals, those who've spoken up have predominantly been women and girls, those survivors are called disobedient. They're called jezebel. They have so many terms implying simpleness thrown at them in order to win their silence. And so I use that term as a nod to what they had been called. And I hope as this kind of an indication that we're going to be talking about obedience and when it is necessary to be disobedient.
And I think I've made a case for the necessity to speak up against false figures of authority.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm just going to throw this out here because, I don't know, I'm feeling a little bit, I'm feeling a little bit kind of sassy today. And you're a religion and politics reporter, so we're having really fun dinner conversations these days. This is not in the book. We're having really fun dinner conversations these days surrounding the election. So I don't need to make this overly political, but some of the things we've just been chatting with our kids about, our kids are preteens through early teens. And my husband brings up the other day, do you know what some pastors and church leaders are calling Kamala Harris? Do you know what they're saying about her? They're saying, and I thought of this because you said that she has a Jezebel spirit.
They're saying, what are we saying? What do we think that means? What do we think they mean by that? You know, then going into, I mean, we could talk about JD Vance talking about how she has never given birth, you know, and then I used heard someone else say, and I said in the room full of our kids the other day, I'm like, how many other us presidents have given birth?
Well, zero. They're my daughter because they've all been men. Right. So none of them have actually birthed children. Okay, so there's that.
But then also, you know, let's talk about you know, qualifications. So they're trying to disqualify her. And then we, let's talk about qualifications and then ask ourselves, is this about her resume or is this about something different?
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Specifically her gender. You know, because they're qualifications wise, she's pretty well qualified for the job. We look at her resume. Let's, we don't have to talk about policies or do we agree with this or do we agree with that? Let's just look at her jobs. Let's look at her career experience and let's say career experience.
She's qualified to do this, but then we have men. And I, you know, and I'll go ahead and say this was one of the things that I think Kristen talks about in her book. You mentioned him also in yours. But it's this, like, it's the same evangelical culture that we're talking about.
Who made it okay to dismiss Trump's womanizing, misogynist abuse of women and call him, like, this righteous leader?
It's the same culture. So he's not a pastor, but he's a man, specifically a white man in author, in an authority and a useful one.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: A useful man.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. So I just kind of wanted to throw that out while we're, you know, talking about some of these things. And also mention, as you mentioned, this was in my notes. This is in the book we talked about naming evangelical culture. What's in the bookstores? What are these things? And then a couple of years ago, when Beth Moore decided to leave the SBC and pull her stuff from lifeway, which was a huge thing, she also had, you know, said she was a never trumper in so many words and described how she couldn't possibly support this man.
She was. She got a lot of backlash for doing that. And I even heard comments of people from people who surprised me, like, questioning her faith when she left.
And I'm trying to say, but this is, I think, partially how closely we see these things tied this culture with faith. If someone decides, I don't want to be inside of this culture anymore, the culture comes back and says, you must not love Jesus.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
Well, there's a lot to respond to there.
The Jezebel spirit, the Enya has been interesting. I don't know if you follow Matthew Taylor. He's a scholar who specializes in the new apostolic reformation. And he's been cautioning reporters who said, well, they're calling Kamala Harris Jezebel, but you're right, it's a Jezebel spirit. And in those contexts, it's this new subset of evangelism, which is the only growing part of it, that believes in spiritual battle. So, as it only sounds gross and misogynistic, but it also has this underlying current of demonic warfare, which I think is a little more disturbance of, we should mark with a flag element of evangelicalism that did put Trump on this pedestal as quasi messianic, or at least King Cyrus figure, who fulfilled, would fulfill certain prophecies. And that fulfillment was in gaining political control. So it was bringing the heat of God to earth and feeding the poor and lifting up the least of these. No, it was Supreme Court justices. That's really what. What the goal was.
And I think with his first election, much as you know, 81, depending on polls, percent of white evangelical halls voted for Trump.
For many people who still identified as evangelical halls or who were brought up in an evangelical church, and we're just still christian, seeing those passes given to Trump, especially on abuse, when they were not allowed to wear a tank top, they were not allowed to wear a swimsuit without a t shirt over it, lest they tempt a man, let someone touch them inappropriate, because it would be their fault, it would be the woman's fault. And to see these same figures look upon a man, and I don't know what I'm allowed to say here, but who proudly talked about grabbing women by the pussy, and these revered men who had this christian authority say, oh, but this is transactional, and we're gonna get this on the Supreme Court.
Really. He is the culmination of everything we've been waiting for religiously, too. I think that wildly blatant hypocrisy is why I've now interviewed so many women who left evangelicalism. They quit the church. They said, forget it. All of these things you've been telling me are clearly not meant to care for me, that are really for the benefit of the church. That entanglement with politics and the justification of a very crass, quid pro quo version of governance shocked people morally. And it drove a lot of people away.
And it also made transparent that a lot of the cognitive dissonance that people felt in their own lives and seeing maybe a more limited number people within the church talking about their treatment, it helped them see the reality in that and just the craving, desire for power that was really driving a lot of these leaders.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: I want to get back to power, okay? Because I think, I mean, that's it. That's it. That's just like a huge. That's a huge piece of all of this. But you mentioned it, and I had it in my notes. So I'm going to go ahead and go. There is also one of the underlying things. So we've got submission. It's huge. Power is huge.
You also spend a lot of time in the book on purity culture. But I want to go even, like, a subset under that and talk about modesty piece, because, you know, you're saying she has to wear a t shirt over your swimsuit and you can't wear tank tops and all this stuff. And. And I.
For years, and I know other women have been saying this, too, but I'm like, I just don't get it. And when I was. I was doing my m div and I was reading Tertullian, I'm like, okay, this isn't new. People have been. This is a theologian from thousands of years ago. And I also want to just hit him, too. Like, what are you saying? Tertullian? No, no violence here. But.
But it was frustrating because it was similar ideas. But I'm like, okay, so let me get this straight. I just need to know where I am as a woman. Okay? So I am weak and helpless and really kind of stupid. I'm not really as smart, you know, as the men around me. And so therefore, I always have to have someone over me telling me what I can and can't do, what I should and shouldn't do. Okay, I got that.
And I will say this. This is also. It's kind of weird, but there's also this line, and it goes way, way back. Churchillian may not be the right one, but there's. There is always. There's been this idea of woman being kind of this malformed man, you know, look at Aristotle. Aristotle, right? Aristotle, right? Look at her like, what is it? These fat deposits on her chest, right? These shapely hips? This is not as it should be. Look, in nature, right? The. The male peacock is the beautiful one. You know, all of this, right? And the females are, you know, whatever. So, okay, okay, so I'm ugly. Okay. Got that? So I'm stupid. I'm not able to have. I'm ugly. And I also can't wear a tank top because it would turn you on to the point that you would not be able to control yourself. I don't understand how all of these things jive together, you know, like, okay, so you're the smart one. You're the one who obviously has more control and discipline that you can run the world because now I'm being real. You have a penis. You know, like, this is what qualifies you to. Okay, got it straight. Okay, I'm good. You can grow a mustache. That's fine.
But I can't. I'm like. I'm so confused by, like, I'm like, pick 01:00 a.m. i. Stupid, unable to do, you know, blah, blah, blah. Or am I so wise and able to, you know, like, that I can just trick you into what, you know, as a 14 year old, even, you know, when we go down to some of these things, some of these. These abuse stories that we've. We've heard, it's confusing, right?
We should have, I think, some cognitive dissonance in what women are being told and what the culture is being shaped to believe about women and men and their relationships to one another in this culture. It doesn't make sense.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: I mean, go ahead and drop your microphone. That's the best summary of just a logic within beauty culture that I think I've ever heard. And, I mean, you're right. It does not make sense.
I think the reason why a lot of people buy into it is, and this came up many times in my reporting, a lot of the women were little girls who really wanted to be good. It wanted to be good in God's eyes.
And so when you're a child, if you're in a position where everyone's an authority over you, you have all the higher adhesion, and everyone's the boss of you, if you're told, these are the roles that I kind of can instill it in a way that it takes a long time to start, you know, logging where things don't make sense.
And if you're in a position where you don't have the ability to voice those questions out loud, that's how the people get stuck.
And it takes decades of. He can try to inter climb out of it to be able to articulate the way he just did. But, yeah, of course it doesn't make sense. Of course he doesn't. It's based on, like, piecemeal.
It's a myth cooked up by various speakers over time, conflicting Bible passages. Like, you have Eve, you have Potiphar's wife, but in that, I don't know. We also have the Virgin Mary, and we're supposed to embody all of these figures who don't get nearly as much play as the men. What if we based our model of what a man is on various male biblical figures?
It'd be a mess. There's a lot of very screwed up men in the Bible. And if we put a weight on every living Christian Mandeh, they'd be a mess. I mean, a different type of mess than many are now. So I think at the root of it, the way that it holds, is that desire to please God. That's why it's been able to function for so long. But no, you're right. It's bullshit.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: I'm grateful for you naming that. I think it is. It is this desire to please God. And I think that's also, that is what.
And the lack of being able to question, that's why it's just so harmful. You know, I've talked with a lot of women who, and, you know, I'm included in this particular camp of women who have felt a call to ministry on their lives. You name you, you've got stories like this of women in your book as well who are feeling what I believe now to be an unnecessary cognitive dissonance because they feel this call in their lives.
And along with that call, I think they're hearing that call because they do want to please God. But then, and I would say that would be true for me. But then, along with that call, you have this culture who says, but you are not allowed to. This is actually would be displeasing to God. If you were to be in this position, if you were to have this job, if you were to be a pastor, this would be displeasing to God. And so it's very difficult to reconcile those things for women. And I know you have some stories of those in your book.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Oh, and me. I mean, me too.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: It was my youthful story, too.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, yeah, it just feels really hard. I think it's just a shame, you know, that that ends up being the way that it is. Personally, I could stay there for another good while, but I want to stick with this purity culture place that, where we have been, because one of the things that I had never heard of in the book, but again, as I mentioned, but it colors the culture for sure.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: So we talked about quiverful. We talked about the Bill Gothard, the umbrella, things like this. But this one inside of purity culture was the stay at home daughters. Yes, I was blown away by this. But at the same time, I'm like, oh, yes, I can, I can taste that seasoning. You know? Like, I'm like, yep, that was, you know, that was there in my, in my young adulthood, was where I was, where I saw that. So not with my own father, not with my, my home that I grew up in. But once I got to college and was really, really by choice, embedded more and more in this conservative, evangelical, white evangelical culture. And then I was like, oh, snap. When I read your stuff, I was like, cannot turn the pages fast enough. Eyes were biggest saucers. Like, oh, my goodness, I can't believe what I'm reading. And then at the same time, I'm like, yeah. And it's familiar, even if I didn't, even if I didn't know folks who fit that exact description and that influenced how the culture at large did life.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, yeah. And I think so people, if they're not familiar with stay at home daughterhood, it was a movement encouraging girls to stay home and not go to college. Definitely not go to college. You could be infected with Marxism and feminism there, but instead stay home with your parents under the authority of your father. Again, we return to the idea of the umbrella of your father's authority being protected. So you stay home, you learn how to be a homemaker, and then not only with the approval of your father, do you be in a courtship and then eventually marry a man and then fall under the authority of that Mandev. So it was, I think, come up with as a way of protecting the purity of these girls, so intellectual purity, not exposing them to academia outside of what they were in their homeschool curriculum, but also sexual purity, because the idea was if they were under the father authority, that it would not be tempted or hurt sexually, which obviously is not true, but that was the underlying logic. So for these girls. And I learned about this practice for a feature story for Marie Claire that taught you young women who were desperate to eventually just get out of the house.
They reached adulthood, and the woman talked her family into letting her leave the home and go away to college, which is a huge no no. And she got engaged, and her fiance raped her. And because of the basin logic of which she had defied, she blamed herself because she had moved out from under the authority of her father. Now, on the other hand, I met a number of women at that time. One of my sources, Eleanor skelter as female underdog binary.
But Eleanor was so just repressed at home and eventually did get off to the. As a commuter to college, because what her father wanted was for. Well, she her. But their father wanted was for Eleanor to take be part of the family business and become an orthodontist. Eleanor did not want to do that, but that was not Eleanor's choice. So Eleanor went off to college and met other homeschooled kids like this wasn't a big, radical departure, but Eleanor gained that little freedom and wanted more. And it was such an ordeal getting out.
And after that point, Eleanor started to sort of run a safe house. This is someone who didn't know how to manage bills, manage life, had alerted all of them, was helping other people who were also stay at home daughters, but in their situations, they were in very abusive family environments where they had to get out to live, to survive.
And it was such a tricky story to tell because it was so heroic and also dangerous that you had these young people who were so ill equipped to be out in the world, whose only lifeline with each other. And you saw that really look, these women could stand on their own about that, but because of how restrictive their lives had been, it was just so much more difficult and so much more dangerous as some of the biggest escape missions went on. Sounded quite dodgy, like there were angry fathers who did not want their daughters to leave. So it was really.
It was a hard story to tell. But what I found out years later was a woman named Kate West. I don't know if you've heard that name, but she was just eight of daughter, and she kind of never saw herself out of the world, out on the page. And he actually just published a memoir of escaping stay at home daughterhood called Rift and what it was like detached from a movement that put so much emphasis on her purity and the control of her father over her life and learning to stand on her own. It's an incredible park.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I think part of that with, with stay at home daughterhood. But all. All of these things that we've mentioned, we've said the word abuse a lot, but we've kind of not intentionally skated around it a little bit. Yeah. But I think that. I think this is one of the things that strikes me, is one of my kids the other day was asking a question, really just kind of thoughtful questions about women who find themselves in abusive partnerships. And because of some previous work that I'd done, I almost call it my previous life, you know, a previous career before or what I'm doing now, this has been 15 years ago.
I had just, you know, had at least a little bit of education in cycles of abuse and things like that. And so I was trying to explain to this kiddo of mine, like, you know, because it wasn't an insensitive thing. It was an honestly, like, why doesn't she just leave? You know, it wasn't about a particular person, but it was just about this topic in general. And I was, you know, trying to help help understand the cycles of abuse and things like that. But one thing that kind of struck me, I'm kind of talking to think right now, so forgive me, but one of the things that struck me as you were talking is that when women who have been raised in this culture end up experiencing abuse. So I'll say two things.
Number one, not everyone who is raised in white evangelicalism inside of America has a very tragic story or has a very extreme story or has been a victim of abuse. And we know that. But these are the stories that we that we, that we read and that we tell and that are the downfalls of many of these ministries and things like that.
[00:44:11] Speaker B: And we're hit at.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: Absolutely.
But what's interesting to me, again, talking to think here is that when women, sometimes it is boys, so I don't want to leave them out. But when women and girls are abused in these situations, I think part of what hits me is that it's not just the abuser telling them a lie to keep them submissive and to keep themselves in power. It is subtly if not explicitly, everyone in their culture telling them that they need to be submissive and that they are the ones who are powerless. So if I think about, you know, and I have known women who have come out of abusive partnerships, who had a very strong support system outside of that partnership to help them when they were ready to leave, to help them to get back on their feet, to help them speak, you know, the truth into their lives, of who they were, what was wrong with this relationship? You know, things like that you are not who this person says you are. YoUtLaNden do have, you know, autonomy over your own body. You know, things like this. But it's still very, very difficult. Right? But I think about this, even if people in their culture, they have one abuser, but the culture is still telling them, you do not have power, you do not have autonomy over your own body. You do not have that authority. Men have that authority over you. And so as a victim of abuse, how do you go? You know, this is part, again, part of the reason it's hidden besides the fact of gossip and, you know, things like that, I kind of use also kind of Eric was with that, you know, gossiping to not the saying not gossip, you know, to kind of protect those men in power. But I think, you know, how does a victim come forward? No wonder these things are hidden because the entire culture would say things like, well, what did you do? Or this is your boss, or, you know, these kinds of things. There's no. There doesn't feel like there's a safe place to say what happened when the culture is encouraging that kind of power dynamic. Am I making sense?
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Yes. No, you're. You're absolutely right. So I'm thinking on two fronts. So, first, childhood domestic abuse. So the institute was the opposite. In the pearls, a handful of writers who taught parents to use horrible punishment in order to correct their children's behavior, to make them so disciplined that basically they're afraid to put one toe out of line.
That normalized a lot of physical abuse families. And for those kids, it was framed as their parents doing momentary physical harm, or not even harm, creative physical pain in order to save their souls. It was a spiritual effort. So it may hurt now, but it's so much better than suffering hell for an eternity.
So for these kids as they grow up, that creates a lot of issues with your parent that people have divulged to me.
But if you don't leave that system and then you get into a marriage where now you have a different person in authority over you, it's no longer your parent if you're a woman or husband. And your pastor now, if your pastor teaches, it is the woman's responsibility to please her husband, to keep him from straying from the marriage. She has to do whatever she's told.
And I've had a number of really just heartbreaking stories out of Moscow, Idaho, in particular, Christchurch system, with women who describe being in a relationship like that, where they're told by their pastor, or the reading is handed over by the pastor, pastor's wife, that they need to be sexually available no matter what. That waters down and erases the idea of consent. Just like a child has no place to say no. You may not speak me, you may not hit me with a belt, hurt my body and leave wealth on my body. These grown women are in positions where they're not, to their mind, able to say no. And I talked to women who started, you know, it was getting violent. These rapes were getting violent. Talk to their friends within the church and their friends said, that's just the way it ends.
And so even if you can, like, pop your head up enough to say, you know, that's really hurting my body, what's happening. If it's normalized because it's coming from the pastor, it's coming from the church, it's coming from your friends, it's coming from all directions. It's very difficult to know the way out.
There's a group, one of the groups that I highlight in the book.
But one of the things they do when people reach out to them is simply give them a link to take a little quiz online and see if maybe it might be domestic violence because they don't have the vocabulary for it, because they're trying to do what is spiritually required of them as women. They're not able to see it as violence or abuse. So just giving those words from an outside perspective is sometimes the only way that people can begin to question. And that's so haphazard at random. But the time that people are willing to pour in to create a resources for absolute strangers on the Internet is also really incredible because they're not trying to indoctrinate them. They're just trying to give them basic information to judge as they see fit.
And there's a liberation in that that they're not allowed within the churches.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you for elaborating on that. And, yeah, bringing clarity. Some of those ideas, I was just kind of fumbling around with, I don't want to talk about him.
And so, you know, I often start conversations like this with my husband. I don't want to talk about this. And then we talk about it, but I don't want to talk about him. So I want to make it short.
But you named Doug Wilson in Moscow, Idaho. And so there are lots of things that are interesting to me about Doug Wilson and kind of his crew.
I was reading a different book. I couldn't name it now if I tried, but I was reading a different book a few months ago, and it had some kind of extended quotes from Doug Wilson. And my daughters were home, and they're early teens, and I read the quotes out loud to them and was just like, tell me what you think about this, you know, specifically. Well, it's two specifically quotes. Quotes regarding women and then specifically quotes of his regarding race.
So it was like, okay, one, two, three, go. You know, I'm going to read you this. You just tell me what you think about this. And, I mean, obviously, the results were, I mean, they were just kind of funny because they were just like, basically like, what in the world am I even hearing? You know, it was like, so. It was. It was so crazy to them.
But one of the things that I do want to say just to. Just to say, this is culture. I mean, I'm like, this is Hobby Lobby. This is, you know, this is the youth group. This is, you know, whatever. Not every single person. I'm not saying this, but. But classical christian education. Yeah, this is Doug Wilson.
And. And years ago, when my daughters were starting kindergarten, so their twins, when they were starting kindergarten all these years ago, I didn't know anything about Doug Wilson. Again, it's kind of these, like, these fringe places, right? Not everybody is in church in Moscow, Idaho, but these fringe places that influence. They influence all of the culture. So we didn't know what we were going to do for schooling. We live in Houston. There's, like, so many options. We felt very overwhelmed at the time. My husband and I both grew up small towns. We both went to public school because that was what you do.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: And so I was like, we didn't know we had all these options. And so we went for an informational meeting at a local classical christian school. We had no idea. We didn't know anything.
And one of the things was, one of the requirements was that you had to read the handbook before you could apply. So I'm like, okay, do my due diligence come back? I start reading the handbook, and I'm like, oh, my goodness. Like, I was really surprised. And at the time, I couldn't.
I would say I couldn't quite put my finger or not, but I. But I could. And this is what it was. Now, this is me naming what I saw in this one particular handbook. But I think it. I think it's consistent with what I've seen from Doug Wilson and his camp. And what struck me at the time, now, again, this has been many, many years, is that there was a very, very big emphasis on western culture.
And so, at the time, we were in a faith community that had a lot of emphasis on Hebrew, and, you know, was, you know, intrigued and interested in ancient near east culture, but also just middle eastern culture in general. There was a hebraic mindset there. We were bringing. Getting ready to bring home our son, who is from a different continent. And so we're like, okay, so am I supposed to buy that? The only intellectual conversations that are worth having have come out of western culture for all of these years, european western culture. And through reading the handbook, I was like, I think I am. I think I'm actually supposed to buy that. And part of it, I don't know if this was language just from that school or just from the classical in general, I don't know. But I remember all these years later, I remember the phrase kept coming up, the great conversation.
So I joked with my husband at the time. I was like, this is. I was like, I am not even smart enough to know what the great conversation is. So I guess I'm not having it. You know, I assume that I'm not having it because I have no idea what it is. And anyway, we, long story short, we did not apply to that school.
And that though, before I knew anything about Doug Wilson, I was like, I think for me and mine, this classical christian education will not be, that won't be the winner for us.
[00:56:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:56:11] Speaker A: Then in recent years, realizing who the founder of this movement was, I was like, oh, now all of these dots connect for us. So that's just for free.
[00:56:27] Speaker B: This is for free.
Yeah. I have a theory, and it's that Wilson, for all of the many objectionable things he said and written, is smart at surrounding himself with very savvy people who, whether they are able to argument, I'll put that aside. What he has been able to do is create christian media empire for himself. He has the k through twelve school, he has a college, he has a seminary, he has a publishing house, he has a streaming service, he has acolytes who have podcasts that just celebrate him. He's created, he's got classical christian education. These tendrils are in so many different directions that they can wrap around people.
The closest I've seen to that is Bill gathered. And he had physical books. He had to actually go to his conferences or at least get a vhs tape and pop it into a VCR and watch and learn from him. Now, he had a whole lot of money. He had his own publishing arm, Wilson's a 2.0. And that gives him incredible influence in a lot of different ways, especially with the graduates of new St. Andrews, who then go on to plant churches all over the country, spreading the influence that way. Oh, and I forgot, also a denomination.
So that's a lot of influence from one person, and I think the classics.
And he was the student of philosophy, so I think he valued that. But when you had someone like Cawthard said a lot of really goofy stuff, I had people tell me that he told women if they wanted period cramps, they should hang a light bulb over their bed at night. He was all over the place.
And within evangelicalism, you have a lot of these kind of goofy authorities who just claim to be speaking God's word and people follow them. But if you have someone who can intellectualize it, who can pull from knowledge that not everyone has, that lifts them up on a higher pedestal. And I think for that reason it's been very, very helpful as studied philosophy. That has amused me for a very long time is that, you know, Socrates warned about sophists these people who can make an argument about anything. And so, without consequence for what they were really arguing. And that reminds me quite a bit of Wilson in his ilk, and I think he would be very upset to be autosophist.
[00:59:55] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness, Sarah, I have, like, a page of notes. I'm looking at them like, we didn't get to anything. We actually got to a lot of places that were on my notes. So I'm going to leave you with where did we. What did we not hit, maybe in your mental notes in this conversation? Or what would you like? You know, as you have spent so much time with women who have shared their stories with you, what would you share with maybe not just women, but other folks who are listening, who have some shared experience in. In the space with these women. Maybe it's nothing as traumatic or as, you know, as extreme as some of the women that you've interviewed, but maybe it is, or maybe it's just people who are just sitting in their churches every week and they're continuing to hear things like this.
Yeah. What would you share with. With people who have some overlap with some of the women that you spoke to for your book?
[01:01:19] Speaker B: I mean, I love to say speaking the truth lifts a burden, and it does, but it can also create a new one.
One of the women who I featured pretty heavily in the book is Krista Brown, who was the survivor of clergy abuse in her SBC church as a teen.
Krista has been fighting the SBC for over decade and a half in her fifties forward, spoke about her abuse. And in this process of approaching SBC alone, that the general conference in her state of Texas had a list of abusive clergy, that they were a keeping secret. So they knew they just weren't telling the churches that they would hire these people and give them an opportunity to abuse again. And from that time on, she's been fighting with SBC just to be transparent, to acknowledge the abuse that happens within its churches. And with it, wouldn't. She created her own database, and she used public records and gathered names.
So Christ is a formidable person.
I had an opportunity early on, a few months after the boy came out of pasture, and Mary and Baptist pastor in my town, as if I would want to hold an event, if there was a survivor in the book, I would want him to fly out to talk to clergy, to talk to his church, to talk to anyone in the community who wanted to come. And I said, let's see if christians well. And she has been so scarred by the church, you cannot imagine the things that these southern Baptist leaders have called her over these years.
But we came, we brought in Jamie Hinton, whose father was a predator, and Jamie spent his life trying to protect people with in churches. His sister was one of his father's victims, so he met with clergy. I talked, Christian talked. Jimmy taught, and then we did an event for the community, and then Christus spoke at this pastor's church, and it took a lot out of her. I mean, it's so exhausting. But also, there was this something healing about being in a church and being asked to tell this truth and protect other churches. That's what a church should want to do.
And this happens all the time. But after some folks came up and. And, you know, sometimes there'll be people who grab your hand and they just cry. They don't know. They don't know how to put into words. We'll say my father and then break off. They can't put it into words. But we had a couple of folks who are probably in their seventies or eighties who told us what happened to them or happened to someone in their family.
When you have a. When you can make a place like that for someone who's carried a secret, a secret that wasn't fair to put on them to be with and give them a home, whether it's in a church or a bookstore, like it's happened all over the place, but give them a place to say, this is my reality. They don't have to come out the newspaper. They don't have to fight the fight for 1516 years like Krista, but just to be able to speak the truth, there's such power in that, and that's true power. It's not the kind of power that you stake a claim to, to position yourself and, you know, live a lavish life as an influencer, like a pastor in one of these more toxic churches. Instead, a power to give someone a moment to just be authentic about what their experience in this world has been. And I'm not a believer necessarily. I'm an Austin. I sometimes see beauty that might be God or might be something else in the world, but when I see it, it's in moments like that. And that's an incredible power that I think most of us are able to claim. And I think that's one way to topple this vast amount of falsely claimed authority over other people. And I'm very grateful to have gotten to know other folks who create these moments for people.
[01:06:32] Speaker A: Sarah, that's a beautiful place to end.
I just want to thank you because I'm in a, in a, not exact, but in a similar way, I'm feeling kind of a lack of words for my gratitude for your work in this.
I can't imagine personally how much it took out of you to sit with women while they told you their stories over and over again. Same women, over and over again, different women, different places, all over the country.
It is very meaningful and I really appreciate you bringing their stories to the forefront. And I'm grateful for your work and for every person who will, who will read these stories. There is, as you say, there is a sort of healing that can begin to take place with this kind of compassionate truth telling. So I'm very, very grateful for that. Again, this book that has been out for a year, but the paperback comes out August 6. Yes, 6th disobedient how a small group of faithful women exposed abuse, brought down powerful pastors, and ignited an evangelical reckoning. By Sarah Stancorp Sarah, thank you again so much.
[01:08:06] Speaker B: Thank you truly.
[01:08:09] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit
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