Transcript
Intro Music
Introduction
Nicki Pappas 0:01
Hello and welcome to another episode of Broadening the Narrative. This is a podcast where I talk to people who are broadening the narrative I was taught. The music for today’s episode is “Confessions” by Bandy. I'm your host, Nicki Pappas. My pronouns are she and her, I identify most with the Enneagram 3, and I'm so glad you're here.
Transition Music
Megan Wooding 0:24
Embodiment, autonomy, and agency are necessary to having pleasurable and consensual sexual experiences, and other kinds of consensual experiences, whether we're talking about relationships or friendships or whatever, but also that embodiment, autonomy, and agency are where much of the harmful teaching lies in purity culture. You can't detach yourself from your sexuality and be embodied. You can't have a mutually consensual sexual encounter without everyone feeling that they have the full right and ability to be enthusiastic about what they want and don't, and what feels good and doesn't. This is where agency and autonomy really come in.
Transition Music
First Segment
Nicki Pappas 1:01
On today's episode of Broadening the Narrative, I am joined by Megan Wooding, author of the book Dear Sister. We will be discussing the church, purity culture, and sex. I met Megan through Instagram, and I have continuously been encouraged by her through our interactions online and even getting to connect on Zoom a couple of times. Megan, thank you for coming onto the podcast. I’m really looking forward to our conversation today.
Megan Wooding 1:24
I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Nicki Pappas 1:27
Yeah. Well, to get started here, could you share a little about yourself and your background for listeners?
Megan Wooding 1:32
Yeah, sure. So my name is Megan Wooding, like Nicki mentioned. I'm the author of Dear Sister, which is a book of affirmation for women, particularly women who are trying to sort out their identity coming from an evangelical Christian framework. I grew up very conservative, and mostly Baptist churches that my family went to. But I was also homeschooled. And because we lived in a very rural area, and just the choices, some of the choices that my family made, I tell people that I was like Little House on the Prairie homeschooled, because of you know, the prairie dresses, and no TV, and no popular music. Very isolated. So yeah, that's kind of where I came from. It wasn't until I got a little bit older that I really started sorting out how that upbringing really affected me. And even had some frank conversations with my mom about some of the choices that they made, which has been interesting, as we have kind of formed our adult relationship.
Nicki Pappas 2:39
Yeah, how has that been? Has she been receptive to your conversation?
Megan Wooding 2:43
So she actually, to my mom's credit, she has always prioritized relationship with her kids over her own comfort. And that's not something that I can say for all parents of like even my friends who are in similar situations. So that has really kind of provided a container and a starting point for us. I didn't grow up with any understanding of like personal boundaries or autonomy or anything like that. So I really had to kind of learn that myself, and then bring that to the container and be like, “Okay, well, these things are important to me, and this is why it might have been helpful to incorporate in, you know, my upbringing.”
Nicki Pappas 3:24
Yeah, no, that's really good to hear that she prioritizes your relationship, even over her own comfort. Yeah, that is very rare, and quite a gift in a mom. So yeah, I mentioned that you're the author of the book Dear Sister, you talked about that, so I wanted to ask you why you wrote Dear Sister and who you had in mind when you wrote.
Megan Wooding 3:47
Sure. So I wrote Dear Sister because I have found the keys to unlocking my ability to claim wholeness in places that I feel it could very easily be overlooked, especially by those from similar backgrounds. Because you're taught, like you talked about in your podcast Broadening the Narrative, your, we both started with very narrow narratives. And sometimes it can be very challenging, scary, unsettling to look outside of those spaces, especially if you don't have a bridge. So I wanted to kind of create that bridge for people. It also came honestly about out of a social awakening, because I realized that a large percentage of the blocks that we're facing in social discourse have really not much to do with the topic at hand, but more to do with our collective emotional hygiene, our projections, our biases, our trauma, and what we feel our worthiness is tied to. It's incredibly difficult to have hard conversations about the needs of society, community, or church without connecting those dots first. So there's this idea that, especially in many Christian communities, that we don't need self awareness or personal development because we have Jesus, but I know you can't see me, but I did the little like, you know, hand pump thing there. But in reality, Jesus is there in part to guide us as we unpack our trauma and baggage. So I tried in Dear Sister, I tried to make it a very like easy entry point for folks who may be kind of wading into these ideas for the first time and also a tool of affirmation and inquiry for those already doing the work. So one of the most transformative things I've come to believe in is the power of women coming together in healing. So this book is both addressed to women and also encourages and examines the blocks we often face to developing deep and supportive female relationships. I also addressed it to women because being a woman has deeply impacted my personal experience, and that's the experience I believe I speak to the best. For the record, I think that men struggle with the same demons in different manifestations. but women are my people, and I am here for them first.
Nicki Pappas 5:54
Yes, and I know I told you this before, but I loved Dear Sister. I loved the reflection questions embedded into the chapters. And it was very helpful for me. But going back to even the part you said about, “We have Jesus,” I was thinking about how often that has been used, and I even had believed that, to keep people from having medication or going to therapy, and in one of the episodes from season one with Dennissa Young, who is a relational artist and performance, like video performance artist, she talked about how she believes therapy and medications are gifts from God to take ownership of our own mental health journeys. So that is quite different from that narrative I was taught about those things when it's like, yeah, “You have Jesus.”
Megan Wooding 6:48
Yeah, 100%. And I know this is maybe off of what our original plan was a little bit, but my family actually has a history of depression, on both sides. My dad's mom and my mom's mom were both hospitalized for depressive episodes during their lifetimes. And my mom has experienced depression, my sister has experienced depression. And so my mom watched my grandmother go through her challenges, and with the very minimal mental health care that was available to her at that point in time, because we're talking, you know, oh, man, I'm really bad at math. But we're talking a while ago, we're talking about like, a couple generations ago with mental health care of what was available. And to my mom, the “we only need Jesus narrative” was helpful. Because to her, it gave her another option from the very limited choices that she saw available, whereas the mental health care field has, like, taken off in the last generation. So coming up behind her, I felt like, “Well, you're not getting care for your mental health challenges, and what kind of relationship might we have had if you were able to be more present and you had more help?” So that's been an interesting kind of journey to go on. And, you know, there's still so much stigma around mental health care and medication, particularly, especially in religious circles.
Nicki Pappas 8:17
Yeah, that's actually a conversation that I have with a lot of my friends, right, like our parents, and they were doing the best they could with what they had. So now we can push that forward for the next generation, whether that's our own kids or kids that we interact with sort of building on that, because we have more things available to us. And yeah, it just makes me think about a quote that I remember seeing that talked about, “Can we just heal these traumas and these cycles so that the next generation is doing better?” And so that's what I see with your book, right, a tool, a resource, to try to help heal some of those generational traumas and cycles. But I was curious, what was the most difficult subject to write about in Dear Sister?
Megan Wooding 9:02
Yeah, so there were a few things that were challenging, but the hardest topics for me to write about were the ones that really were like furthest from my own personal experiences. So there's a chapter called “Kingdom Focus,” which, in short, is about keeping a global kingdom mindset and an inclusive kingdom mindset versus a nationalistic, nationalistic mindset. And it was hard to write but it was, I also felt that it was absolutely necessary to discuss how antithetical to Christian ethos many of our social and political ideologies are, particularly the ones that support systems of white supremacy and colonization. So that was, was a thing of like, on the one hand, it didn't necessarily feel like 100% my space to write, to write to, like it's not my topic, but then also it's necessary to bring in to the conversation, so I worked to do that in a way and bring in voices. I interviewed a few other people for the book as well. So I, you know, work to bring in other voices for that chapter particularly and make sure that it was something that it wasn't just me putting eyes on before I put it into the world. I also had kind of the age old issue of not wanting to trash people in the book, but you know, still be very honest about the outcomes of their actions and beliefs. So, for example, I talked about my experience of sexual harassment. And I've always kind of worried that people who know me well might be able to figure out who it was. And that's not really something that I've wanted to like amplify. I know some writers live by the adage that if people want to be well represented in writing, they should behave well. But, I care about my relationships, even the ones that have histories of trauma, and my family relationships being honestly the ones that I probably am the most delicate with, how I represent, others a little bit less so. And then I also worked very hard to encourage inquiry without stepping on, like, trigger topics that would turn people off. So like, for example, people might say that, “Oh, you know, she has a progressive view on this topic, so I'm not listening anymore.” So like I talked a lot about like sexual shame and patriarchal oppression that's packaged as purity culture. And this is the book where we examine how that is harmful and a terrible fruit in faith, and examine maybe implications of where that came from, and how it has presented in our lives. Not the book where I talk about how I personally think masturbation, especially for women, can be a really powerful tool of self love, self soothing, and a way to claim pleasure, which I feel like might make some readers kind of like pearl clutch a little bit. So, but it's hard when you're learning all of this stuff in a very, like, holistic way to be like, “Oh I want to talk about this, and I want to talk about that.” So like being authentic without, while staying in the lane of the book, I guess, was probably a challenge. The last thing was that my experience is steeped in Christian faith, and I still identify as Christian, but I think the topics that I delve into apply to folks of all different religious backgrounds, both because of the unholy marriage of Christianity and colonization and because the problems the church has are the problems everyone has. So I didn't want to assume that my reader was a Christian, which I see in a lot of Christian books I read, and it's not a bad, it's not a bad stance to have. It's just not what I wanted for my book. So I avoided Christian lingo as much as I could. And I worked to acknowledge that Christian faith and practices are not the only ones or the assumed ones. So this book isn't an altar call, or an expectation of anyone to adopt my faith or beliefs. And I wanted that to be really clear. That makes it kind of hard to quantify, though, because like, there's a lot of church talk, but I also don't necessarily want to be like, “Hey, it's a Christian book.” So I also decided early on not to gender God in the book, which can be challenging from a writing craft perspective.
Nicki Pappas 13:07
Yeah, I remember us talking about that on one of our zoom calls before, and I was saying about not gendering God results in a lot of “and God, the Lord, and God.”
Megan Wooding 13:18
I like “the Divine.”
Nicki Pappas 13:20
“The Divine,” yeah, yeah.
Transition Music
Second Segment
Nicki Pappas 13:30
Well, on October 19th last year, you posted about the church and sex and when I saw your post, I was like, “OMG. I want to talk to Megan, on season two, about this,” like, yeah, so I was so nervous to ask you and then you said yes, which I still can't get over the excitement of, but your post served as the basis for the questions I want to ask in this next section with some of the questions coming directly from your post. The first question I want to ask you is, “What is purity culture?”
Megan Wooding 14:03
Sure. So the term purity culture comes from kind of a couple places. It comes from the religious movements that started with True Love Waits, which is a largely ineffective initiative to promote abstinence among teens, and Josh Harris's book that came out around the same time called I Kissed Dating Goodbye, where 20 something single kid shares his vast life experience on romance and waiting until marriage to even kiss. So Josh Harris was in many ways kind of the poster boy for purity culture. And side note, I kind of feel bad for him because there was no one in his life at 20 something to be like, “Hey, there are some problems with your ideology.” Sexual purity was really touted particularly for women and girls. And it was a marker of worth as a woman, which is really unhealthy. And then this was all underscored by the conservative evangelical political voting bloc kind of mobilizing around that time and really pushing to elect leadership nationally that promised to promote abstinence only sex education in schools. So, I personally call purity culture, the version, the Christian version of rape culture, particularly to explain it to those who grew up outside of a religious paradigm but are familiar with secular terms because it operates out of the same ideologies, has the same outcomes, and is equally based in suppression of and violence against women. So purity culture basically just takes run of the mill sexual shame and oppression of women and tells us it's God's will with some Bible verses plucked out of context for good measure. Purity culture is based in lack of trust. Evangelical Christianity preaches individual relationship with God until a flashpoint comes up. And then they want to take back the reins. So to be clear here, I know people who have made the choice to remain abstinent because that's what they want. And that's fantastic. I think as long as it's their choice, and they don't feel shamed or pressured into it, that's amazing. The problem is, and what becomes manipulative and controlling, is teaching teens that even as grown adults, their choice is abstinence or divine judgment, and sometimes shunning if they are found out, and there have been, I know, I personally know of churches that have like made examples of teens and adults who were single that they found out were large air quotes, “living in sin,” you know.
Nicki Pappas 16:30
Yeah, I think there are probably many people who, yeah, that's either their own story, or they know people who've experienced that. Well, looking at your life personally, how did this purity culture impact your life?
Megan Wooding 16:45
Sure. So I talk about this a lot in the book, and it's really an ideology that permeates every aspect of your life, if you grow up in it, so it can be kind of hard to pull the strings. But I first really see it popping up when I hit puberty. I had this really strong cognitive dissonance of wanting to be grown up and independent, but not wanting so many of the things people told me came with being a woman, particularly a Christian woman. So in Dear Sister, when I say that purity culture teaches sexual dissociation, this is kind of what I'm talking about. To be seen as a good, worthy, holy, and pure woman, I was taught to disconnect sexually and trust that when we got married someday, I'd be able to flip a switch and magically access sexual power and pleasure. And that's just, I never really fully bought into that, but that was really the narrative that was taught. And something that I think we often miss is that the organization of Christian religion really doesn't ever need women to flip that switch. We've often talked about how it doesn't happen, how it doesn't work that way, how we're sold a bill of goods about it, but we don't really necessarily go back and be like, “Huh, the role that is outlined for us actually never needs us to be in touch with ourselves.” So embodied and powerful women who claim their pleasure and gifts are harder to control, and we make more waves. So in The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf talks about how the feminine ideal in society is purposely unattainable because when women constantly feel unsafe, hungry, and exhausted, we are unable to understand our true power, and we are unable to demand equity. I see a very similar dynamic in the church. Purity culture does its job by disconnecting women from an integral part of who we are, and then giving us a very shallow container to pour all of ourselves into. And I personally haven't yet found a church that asks me to show up with my full integrated self. Even the ones who are full of the most lovely people who I love. Purity culture grooms women to fill a specific role in our religious organizations and society. It's convenient that role aligns with the one Naomi Wolf references in The Beauty Myth, which she terms “The Iron Maiden.” And it's really all just misogyny. So the expectations of Christian womanhood made me hate being a girl and a woman from a very early age. And I often wonder how my life would have been different if I had learned self-love and self-trust when I was 10 instead of self-loathing. I never totally bought into purity culture. I've always been investigative and wary when things don't add up. However, there really weren't positive alternatives offered. So I kind of had to forge my own path, often without a lot of guidance. Sometimes it went okay, sometimes it didn't. As a teen and 20 something I was fine with the idea of, you know, doing things on my own and being a rebel. But now that I kind of have more information, I see how it could have been really helpful to have that like mentoring voice earlier in life.
Nicki Pappas 19:40
Yeah, for sure. And even going back to, you talked about, that this purity culture is rape culture in the Christian church and all those things you just unpacked. What strikes me is that when we say these things, and we know what we're talking about, or people who, well I shouldn’t say I know what I'm talking about. I know what I've learned and what I've come to know from the experts and what I feel in my body. And so yeah, like, I do know what I'm talking about when it comes to my body. But we try to bring these things to the attention of particularly men who lead churches, and we experience gaslighting.
Megan Wooding 20:20
Well, yeah, cuz if the system benefits them, and I'm not trying to be like, particularly cynical, but in reality, you know, the system is working for them. The system is working fine for them. Now, I would say that's not true across the board, because there are ways in which it is, it is very harmful to men. I personally think having one dimensional relationships with women is actually really harmful to men, among other things, but it's hard for them to, I think, really see and practice empathy for a narrative so different from what their experience is, and that is something that we see across the board in so many marginalized communities and communities that are far, experience far greater marginalization than you know, white women in evangelical churches.
Nicki Pappas 21:23
Yeah, yeah, I just remember trying to have a conversation with a former pastor and telling him how the beliefs that I had gotten taught to me and in my premarital counseling from him and his wife, what it had done in our marriage, like for me and Stephen, and literally being told, “Well, it might not have worked for you, but it's working fine for me.”
Megan Wooding 21:49
Ok, here's something too that pisses me off in all of the situations where this comes up, because it comes up in political discussions too, “Well, it works fine for these people.” Or, you know, this person was able to air quotes, “Pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” you know. But why do we always focus on the one person that it works for to justify the system that is obviously not working for so many other people? Shouldn't we be investigating the people that it's not working for because there's a problem there? And not just being like, “Well, it worked for two people, so we're good.”
Nicki Pappas 22:21
Right. Yeah. And over and over again, I feel like what happens because of that gaslighting, right, it becomes that this person is just dissatisfied with God's good design, which you mentioned, right, and we'll talk about that more like these ideas being packaged as the ideal from God. And so then there's all this gaslighting that happens and all this questioning, and this, in this topic, and, and in many others, and I think too, there's this objectification inherent in the purity culture, as women are and girls are reduced to our bodies, and what we wear and all those things. And my friend Jordan, who edits the podcast, I just remember him saying, like, “When we don't have meaningful,” and like you were saying, like multidimensional, “relationships with women,” right, “then we objectify them, and then we're gonna,” like, he said, “Men fill that hole in some unhealthy way.” You know, and I just thought that was a really good insight to say, “Yeah, it's harmful for men, too.”
Megan Wooding 23:26
100 percent, and it's also something that, the male role that is handed out, and again, like I said, at the beginning, I focus on women because that's my experience, and that's who I have energy for most of the time in my life, but the male role is also very narrow. And there is, you know, just as much shame available to them if they step outside of it.
Nicki Pappas 23:58
Yeah, I mean, for us, Stephen was told, like, I was really insecure when we started dating, and then in our counseling, and just thought, like, he's gonna leave me, he's gonna fall in love with someone else. And the advice given was for Stephen to just not talk to other women. And so for basically the entirety of my church experience at that church, it was a handful of men who looked me in the eye and talked to me and treated me like a human being. So they're suffering because they aren't having healthy relationships with women. Women are suffering. Like everyone's suffering. But I was wondering if you could speak more about the role women are, you said, groomed to fill in religious organizations and society and what that grooming looks like.
Megan Wooding 24:46
So The Beauty Myth is really Naomi Wolf's explanation of a deep dive into that topic. So she has this, she has this what she calls basically like the beauty ideal that we would say, we would call like, you know, the beauty expectations, unrealistic beauty expectation, she calls “The Iron Maiden.” And she calls it “The Iron Maiden” because it's unattainable and is tortuous basically. So she goes through history and she talks about how women really hold a large percentage of the global, particularly national but even global, economy because they do so much household purchasing. And she talked about how the expectations of women shifted in, you know, during first wave feminism, when women started going to work and how that really this, these beauty expectations were coming up and being created by advertising executives as the economic sector was reeling trying to figure out how to market to women now because they're in this new role, how to capture their income now. And so, really, the whole, from then until now, it's about money. It's about power. And it's about keeping women distracted enough not to realize their power and influence. The church is very similar, and I don't think it's necessarily as intentional in the church. But there are some really like some, some of like the early popes wrote some like really repressive stuff about sexuality and women and there was just like a deep misogyny from the very beginning of Christian writing. And it's embedded. And the role that women were expected to play in the church also very, very specifically mirrors the role that they are expected to play in society. So the other thing that I found really interesting, there's this book that Chris gave me for Christmas, and I will get you the exact name and author of it so that you can link it later. But it's about the the desert mothers of the Christian faith, which are like the first kind of the first nuns but it was really before Catholicism, but talking about that like lifestyle that was chosen when you know, Christianity and Rome kind of came together, there was a group of people who kind of decided that they were going to do things differently and not partake in the social, the social, like bonus, bonuses is the only word that I can think of, but the things that came with, you know, Christianity now being a popular thing instead of something that could get you killed. And one of the things that was mentioned in the book was that women had a lot of power in the church before Rome took over. And I found that really interesting, which they said that Christianity was somewhere that women could go and express their spiritual leadership, really, a place where they could be leaders in their spaces, because it was for these people on the margins. And when it became something that Rome owned, Rome was very patriarchal. So gradually, that became something that was just completely colonized.
Nicki Pappas 28:34
Yeah, even that book I've mentioned before, Paul and Gender by Cynthia Long Westfall, man, it was so interesting to read this whole narrative that we are missing because of the lens we have reading the scriptures, when she explains that these women are running the churches, right, and they are doing all this work, and yeah, were flourishing and all the people on the margins, but it makes me think, okay, so I mentioned this in our Instagram Live earlier today, but that book, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie Jones-Rogers, I believe. And that book, I heard about it through historian Lettie Shumate, and she talked about how in our society and in our churches, we teach that women are meek and humble, and they're meant to be quiet and submissive, and all these things. I read this whole book, They Were Her Property, and it is disturbing to see how white women even would take their own husbands to court over their own property, like they were not afraid to assert their dominance over enslaved people and the ones that were their slaves, and they were gifted these people and courts would rule in the favor of these women. So it made me think that just like with other oppressed, like ethnic or racial minorities in this country, how we leave out the stories in this narrative to disempower them, right? It makes me think, you know, this is something I was talking through with Stephen, I was like, “Man, we've taken this whole narrative about women,” because when you read about who the quote “masters” were, enslavers, you think like these white men, but the amount of white women who held enslaved people as their own property and operated this power over them, to strip that away from the narrative, like, makes women think they've always been, like white women, “Oh, I have to be submissive, I have to be this and that, like, I've always been this way.” But I was like, “Man, can you imagine the power that can come from knowing we've had a voice? We misused it, and we could tap into our voices and tear the whole system down or be part of helping tear the whole system down.”
Megan Wooding 31:00
Yeah. 100%. There's two things that, oh, go ahead.
Nicki Pappas 31:03
No, no, that that was basically the gist of it. We’ve misused our voices. So.
Megan Wooding 31:08
Yes, there's two things that makes me think of. So I mentioned earlier, the book Ain’t I a Woman? by bell hooks, where she really delves into how white feminism has sold Black women short. She talks about very similarly how white women were slave owners, and not only that, but often held the slaves, like slave women, responsible for their own rapes and assault and abuse by their husbands. So they were getting doubly, doubly traumatized. And it was just it's, it's, it's hard to read. But I think that it's necessary for us to be aware, especially those of us really like working in any kind of, working towards equity in any, any way. Because if we're not aware, then we're still operating out of these same patterns, honestly. And the second thing, I just remembered, there were two things. The second thing is that I think, I think women play a very similar role in patriarchy. So the women who choose to ally with patriarchy or purity culture, because a lot of times it's not men, a lot of times, you know, the people leading these, these teen groups or whatever, where you're told how long your skirt is allowed to be and you know that men can unzip your sweater with their minds, if you wear a zipper. Literal things that I've heard come out of these things. They're taught by women, they're not taught, like men aren’t coming in and teaching these things. They're taught by older women. So it's, it's passed down through the generations. And it's not, it's not just women are, women and men are both like perpetuating it and also the victims of it.
Transition Music
Third Segment
Nicki Pappas 33:27
I'm so glad that you brought that up, because I know it went way off of script here. But
Megan Wooding 33:33
We're like long past
Nicki Pappas 33:36
But no, I mean, I think that's so important to shed light on, and I brought this up in the Instagram Live earlier. But in that group that I was part of with Lettie Shumate, Myisha Hill and Weeze, how they talked about white women aligning themselves with white supremacy, because it gives them that dominance over anyone who isn't quote “white” at the expense of their own female liberation. So thank you for going here with that and talking about that, but within purity culture, right? Why is modesty such a huge component within purity culture?
Megan Wooding 34:09
So modesty is one of the main physical applications of purity culture ideology, and it's a huge component because it's a main tool of control. Modesty is the patriarchal infrastructure that tells women we have the ability to control and are responsible for the thoughts, urges, and desires of men, while not being allowed to act on any of our own thoughts, urges, or desires. So it's also one of the outwardly enforceable ways those in power remind women of their place in the hierarchy. So it's really, it's like the infrastructure of, you know, the system of, if you're, you know, how terrible of a person you are or you aren't.
Nicki Pappas 34:53
Yeah, which goes back to you saying like women leading these things and the things you heard. I was gonna say it's, it's been so recent, like last summer, I started wearing tank tops again after probably a decade. And one of my friends said something like, “I don't think I've ever seen as much of your skin,” just because she, the whole time she's known me, I haven't worn tank tops, right? And so she was just like, “I don't think I've ever seen this much of your skin,” but breaking free from this idea of my bra strap, right, that anyone could see that what, and that my stumbling blocks are, you know, oh, like all those things, yeah, very damaging. But within that, right, about modesty, how did those modesty teachings impact how you viewed yourself, Megan, and your body, as well as other women and their bodies?
Megan Wooding 35:45
Yeah, so I, kind of like you were saying, the women in my family wore only skirts and dresses when I was little, which is really kind of ironic, because when I met like people and men and even like my husband from like outside of the bubble, like skirts and dresses are not like particularly more modest than pants. If anything, they're like easier to get into or under. So I don’t know where the skirt and dress thing came from other than the fact that it's harder to do things in them and it impedes your movement. So I was always active and had no problem ripping them to shreds when I was like 10, climbing trees and exploring, but they were always like a reminder that being a girl was more important than and got in the way of everything I wanted to do in my life. So in Beauty Sick, Renee Engeln talks about this idea of body monitoring, which is the mental energy and awareness that you have constantly of how you look or how you're perceived by others, or how you're sitting or if they, you know, if your legs are crossed, or if someone can see up your dress or all of those things, right? So modesty really taught me body monitoring. And then conversely, part of me really wanted to be attractive, because I wanted to be desirable, right? And purity culture and modesty taught me that I was owed some kind of like magical sexual siren power over men, which really never materialized. So even once I had kind of like kicked all this to the curb, wishful thinking, right, when I did get married, and I, at certain points in my marriage, had experienced a higher sex drive than my partner, it was really hard to rectify. It felt, it was deeply painful to feel like something was wrong with me as a woman because I wasn't able to like elicit this response. Yeah,
Nicki Pappas 37:43
Yeah, yeah, with the body monitoring, that's definitely something, I monitored my own body, but also the bodies of other women around me, very judgy and regret so many conversations that I had with women, trying to get them to buy into what I bought into about modesty, and yeah, really policing their bodies and what they were wearing. And then I yeah, the same for me, having a, you know, higher desire and all these things within my relationship and felt like, yeah, something's wrong with me, because this doesn't fit in that box of what I was taught about all these things.
Megan Wooding 38:31
And I think this is, also going back to like how purity culture is bad for men, you know, on the flip side of it, there, you know, there are men that are caring and wonderful and just have, you know, aren't like the man that is typified in purity culture that we're taught about. So sometimes there's, you know, wonderful things that you learn when you get married, or you meet someone that just defies all of the stereotypes, but then there's other things where you're like, “Okay, so what do I even do with this? Because I was not given any information on how to handle this situation.”
Nicki Pappas 39:07
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's so true. Yeah, cuz there was that one book. I don't even remember what it's called. But I remember Stephen reading it. It was like one of those man books you know, about, like going out in the wild -
Megan Wooding 39:21
Wild at Heart.
Nicki Pappas 39:22
Yes. Yeah. John Eldredge, is that the name, okay. And he was just like, “Yeah, this isn't me.” So, yeah, we already, you already hit on this, but I want to dive into it a little bit more. Why is it particularly damaging that churches package up these harmful ideas you've shared about pleasure, about our bodies, about sexuality, and then claim their ideas are God’s?
Megan Wooding 39:50
Well, I kind of feel like it's heretical. I mean, we talk, personally, but it's really because they're taught, like these things are then taught as a path to holiness to wholeness to happiness. And none of that's true. It's all a lie. So it's one thing if a friend or parent disagrees with your choices or feelings, but it's a whole different thing if you're taught that God is threatening to send you to hell or judge you because of your choices and feelings. So I'm not sure if it's because of my experiences or my faith, but speaking for God and getting it wrong is probably one of my biggest fears in life. In my writing, I work really hard to be honest about where my experiences have brought me and offer that as something that may resonate with community. But I really work not to be like, “God says this.” But that really wouldn't work, that approach really wouldn't work very well with purity culture because then who would actually like do it given any alternative. I think it's also really harmful because it prescribes this recipe for happiness and security that doesn't hold up for everyone. I know so many couples who check the boxes and follow the purity culture rules and have had marriages and often divorces full of heartbreak and loss. So I'm not saying that their relationships went up in flames because they didn't kiss till they got married, but there's so much that purity culture recipe doesn't hold space for. And it definitely lends itself to quick marriages for couples that had like this really strong erotic connection they were ready to delve into and they hadn't necessarily done the other heavy relational lifting necessary for a strong, lifelong commitment. I don't have kids and maybe it's something you can speak to Nicki, but this may be easy for me to say, but if I ever do, I think I'll be a lot more concerned about whether or not my child's potential partner has a good understanding of boundaries and relationships than what they are or aren’t doing sexually over age 18. I would want their potential partner to be self aware, and respectful of their needs. I would want to know my child had witnessed them process big feelings like anger and grief in healthy ways. I would want to know they honor the autonomy and agency of my child, that they weren't controlling, that they were able to roll with growth and change. I would care about all these things vastly more than any sexual status. And these and more are the conversations missing in purity culture. So telling teens that all they have to do for a happy and healthy adult life is to stay abstinent until marriage is setting them up for, at best, disillusionment, and at worst, potentially really dangerous situations, particularly for the women, who as we've talked about before, are very much groomed into this role. So a good example of that in the “Patriarchy” chapter of Dear Sister, I wrote something that I think relates really well to this conversation, and it's about how Christian patriarchy and purity culture contribute to women staying in unsafe and even violent relationships, that says, “Some look at victims of abuse and wonder why women don’t leave their abusers. In the Christian community, the teachings of many evangelicals on modesty and women’s roles prime women and girls for cyclical abuse. We stay because we have been taught to believe it’s our fault. We stay because we have never been told others are responsible for how they treat us. We stay because we have never been taught we are allowed to have personal boundaries. We stay because saying ‘no’ or ‘that’s not okay with me’ has never been something practiced, accepted, or modeled. We stay because we were taught to look for a partner who agrees with issues on a static checklist of theologies instead of a partner who respects our ideas, values our input, and cherishes our connection. There are more reasons, of course, but these are the ones I have seen perpetuated in faith circles. So often we don’t arm our women and girls. Instead we undermine their worthiness by chiding them about their bathing suits and skirt lengths. We are not only made to think parts of ourselves are undesirable or shameful, but unholy. We shear away attributes ruthlessly in an effort to become more Christ like, throwing back at God’s feet gifts God has blessed us with. Sensuality, rest, pleasure, emotion, intuition, connection. We need all these God-given parts of ourselves to be whole.”
Nicki Pappas 44:09
I feel like so much of what you've shared is my story. So much of it is why I got married when I was 20, you know, and like, I love Stephen, and to do that with anyone, I'm glad it was him. You can imagine, yeah, if it weren't him, but it was for so many of the same reasons that you talked about. And then, yeah, just all the things that were taught to me that led to that. So how do you feel, Megan, about creating public conversations around church and sexuality without also discussing how church teaches that sexual disassociation you talked about and disembodiment, patriarchy, and misogyny within purity culture?
Megan Wooding 45:03
So, not good. And I kind of feel like at this point, we're at this place where some churches and organizations have kind of realized that they screwed up, and they're just kind of trying to fix their PR without doing the work of actually cleaning up the mess, but I feel like it’s the same when we talk about like white supremacy, right, it's like, “We're gonna have a panel on race and have these, you know, ministers of color come talk to us, and then we're not going to talk about it ever again.” So it's kind of the same, same situation, and it kind of feels like they're trying to use Febreeze instead of taking out the trash. And we all know how well that works, I'm assuming. And again, like they’re still missing the conversations that we talked about. The problem, I think, though, is that those conversations not only can be really hard to have, but they also can shine a light on other places that churches and religious organizations need to grow and make amends. So the reality is that the church just like in society, women advocating for accountability and equality requires an overhaul of how things have been done. So just like, if you're going to really work to make reparations for the harm caused to marginalized communities, by Christianity and Christian churches, you're going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting. And that's going to require an overhaul of how things have been done. But I honestly think that as long as the biggest financial supporters are men, and in the other, you know, like in the other realm, like white men, we are going to make a very slow progress in having these conversations, because that's really what it comes down to is that if the church is going to be challenging their financial base, they're not likely to do it. I have a friend who left the church because their rapist was allowed to stay after addressing it with the church elders. I have another friend who shared with different church leadership that she was being stalked and the person came to church and was monitored, like they watched him, but they let him stay all through a worship service, and he wasn't asked to leave. And then there are multiple women that I know who have been encouraged by pastors to stay with abusive husbands because, quote, unquote, “the husband didn't cheat.” So honestly, at this point, I look for evidence that churches want to protect and create safe spaces for women, but it's really damn hard to find sometimes. And you can't cover all this up with some Febreeze in an attempt to have like a hip and relevant conversation about sex and Christianity, you know. Like the relevant conversation is dismantling systems of oppression, even when they're labeled “Christian.” Welcome! So glad you're joining us.
Nicki Pappas 47:44
Yeah. Why do you think that we need to be having more honest and authentic conversations about the church, sex, and purity culture? And why do we need to go beyond discussing just this basic information to really examine the harm caused by puritanical mindsets?
Megan Wooding 48:03
Yes, so there's a couple of reasons. The first that comes to mind is what Brené Brown always says, which is that shame loses its power when we name it and talk about it openly. So if we don't examine the roots of purity culture’s ideology, it will just keep churning out the same poison in different flavors. And not to be like dire, but it really is an issue of emotional, spiritual, and physical safety, particularly for women. And having these conversations is really sounding that alarm that emotional manipulation and abuse in the name of God is unacceptable. So I share in Dear Sister that I don't really feel called to proselytize for my faith, or like, you know, quote, unquote, “witness,” but I do feel really responsible for the safety of the women in my community and for creating and participating in spiritual spaces where they will be able to bring their full selves and be safe. My husband says I'm a defender, and that definitely comes out here. I have these conversations because I really dream about a world where I can assume that most women are safe and well in the way that I can right now assume that most women carry trauma.
Nicki Pappas 49:07
Yeah. Wow. I know when I read those notes, this part right here, “in the way that I can now assume most women carry trauma,” that's powerful to be able to flip that.
Megan Wooding 49:26
Yeah, and you know, I don't remember where I, where I said this, or where I put it, it might’ve even just been in a journal, but I was talking about how, oh, I think it was in my blog post about “God Cares about Christian” “God Cares about Women and Christians Should, Too.” I said that I sometimes wonder if pastors get up and look out over their congregation and realize the stories that the women carry, because that's one of the first things that has come to mind any time that I've gotten up in front of a group of women is realizing that one in three has reported their story of assault or harassment, or has potentially an unsafe living situation. It's just when you know too many people, you get up and you look at the, you look at a group, and you're like, “Okay, these stories are here.” So I feel like because, I know off topic, but I feel like because male pastors, a lot of times don't have that basis of understanding, I don't think that they get up and look at their congregations that way. I remember listening to a really well meaning pastor preach about David and Bathsheba and spending 95% of the sermon on David, and, you know, Nathan, and how deep it is, you know, forgiven by God and not talking about, you know, the rape, you know, and or, or the fact that Bathsheba even becomes basically the first Queen Mother, you know, like her story carries so much and carries so much for the women in the congregation, and we're just going to kind of like gloss right over that because it doesn't apply to the men.
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Fourth Segment
Nicki Pappas 51:19
But for you, when did things begin to change for you regarding all of this?
Megan Wooding 51:24
So I've kind of been on a trajectory out of purity culture since I moved out of my parents house at 19, and probably even before that, but that was when I was really able to take like more personal control. A few years after I moved out, I went to therapy. And at that point, I was really just trying to deal with my unmanageable depression and anxiety. And then my therapist, who was also a Christian, gently challenged my core beliefs about myself. And then I realized how many of those were really tied to this limited and misogynistic idea that I had of God and who I was, like, what was available to me and who I was in faith. And one of the things that really invalidated purity culture for me, that I feel like also applies to some of the other stuff that we've talked about in like the gender roles, is that it's really firmly planted in these very stereotypical gender roles that have not only never fit my marriage, but it's also like completely assumes that everyone is heterosexual. So like, I get that a lot of churches aren't ready to delve into like Queer theology or decide whether or not they're going to be affirming, even though I think they should. In purity culture, like the paradigm just completely falls apart when you consider that all men aren't even looking at women. And that some women are. So if gay men can experience attraction and control themselves, then why can't straight men, and then if women who are attracted to other women experiences attraction, and also are controlling themselves, like, why can't straight men. So then there's, you know, folks of all genders who are demisexual or asexual, and there is no teaching for them in purity culture, which I think is fine, because I don't think that would be helpful. But realizing all of this really kind of discredited the whole thing for me completely, because whatever folks are feeling on Christianity and queerness, like Queer folks have been here right along the whole time. And they're already living outside of these like heteronormative, very strict gender role narratives.
Nicki Pappas 53:36
Yeah. So what has this journey been like for you broadening this narrative you were taught about sex and purity culture within evangelicalism then?
Megan Wooding 53:47
So it's been really holistic for me. I know we've kind of talked before about how like some people like to pull one string and follow it when researching or deconstructing an idea or belief. And then some of us want to know everything that that string is connected to and we unravel, like, all of the things at once. So for me, the teachings about sex and purity culture were tied to the teachings about who I was and what I was capable of as a Christian woman. And my sexuality is one aspect of who I am. And I've worked to honor and accept all the parts of myself and my identity. And that means my sexuality as much as it means the shape of my nose, or the fact that I'm 5’2”. I have been lucky in many ways on this journey, that I have a curious and attentive partner, that I didn't deal with the sexual abuse many of my friends have, that I've always had resistance to being told what to do or not to do, particularly with my own body. I was taught this idea of total surrender. I was taught that this was of God, but something about it never felt like the whole story to me. So I came to a point where I realized I couldn't worship a God who expected me to be constantly fearful and miserable in their name. And I think the broadening the narrative for me has been based in broadening my understanding of God and God's nature. So believing God really wants good things for me, and that God cares deeply for me and protects women was essential in my journey. I know it can sound basic, but we're having an in depth discussion of a system designed to undermine and limit women in the world and church. So it's pretty easy to feel like God is still holding a grudge over Eden. Honestly, this is the topic that has come the closest to making me lose my faith, because if God really does think women are second rate servants or created us to be second rate servants for humanity who deserve oppression, then like, what the hell am I doing worshiping that God? Why am I in this religion if I'm only allowed on the sidelines? And I've honestly stayed because I can't get over Jesus and how Jesus treated women.
Nicki Pappas 55:47
Yeah, that's so good. That's so good. Yeah, that's a huge thing for me, too. And the Almost Heretical Gender Series that I've referenced before, I loved how they dive into the stuff about Eden and Eve. Because yeah, I mean, I was taught in my early 20s, right, that this curse for Eve in Genesis 3 was that she would want to usurp power from her husband. And that even though the whole “he will rule over you” was included in the curse, that it was somehow not part of the curse, that men thinking they rule over women isn't part of the curse, but it's part of God's good design. But yeah, that Gender Series, I felt so many emotions, because they really redeemed Eve for me because they explained that what happened in the garden is a failure on Adam’s part to effectively teach the command given to him by God, to tell to Eve, rather than a failure on Eve’s part to obey God's command. So it was really fascinating to hear all of that taught in a way that I'd never heard before.
Megan Wooding 57:04
Yeah, I've heard a few different like interpretations on that whole origin story. And one of them was, and again, I'm not saying that I believe this, but you know, it's interesting to hear different, different ideas that come from, you know, that interpretation was that Eve wasn't actually given that command. So it's possible that it was okay for Eve to eat the fruit, but it wasn't okay for Adam to eat the fruit, you know, like, you just there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of different options, but even within that, like, I don't think that any of them were meant to like damn women for eternity.
Nicki Pappas 57:43
Right. Yes. Yeah, I wrote this poem one time, and I said something about how, you know, they talk all about how Eve was deceived. So it's like Eve's deception becomes my perpetual perception. And yeah, it's like, all that's used to justify mistreatment of women and judging of women and not trusting women. But yeah. I'm curious if you could talk about what you believe about God and pleasure now versus what you believed about God and pleasure before all of this.
Megan Wooding 58:18
Sure. So the Baptist churches that I grew up in were really big on your flesh being terrible and evil, and not trustworthy, and really despicable to God, and that the only reason that God will even look at you is because of Jesus. And then there's also the whole trope that women's desire is what brought sin into the world, as we were kind of discussing, so we have to be constantly supervised and limited. I was taught not to trust myself basically, or what I wanted, as far back as I can remember. So now, I believe that the myriad kinds of pleasure we experience are gifts from God. I don't know that I would necessarily say I 100% believe this, but I have heard and I like the idea that God actually experiences creation as a form of pleasure and created the world and humanity out of, out of a good and holy pleasure seeking experience. And that's something that I've always really, really liked the idea of. So I have been working personally to retrain my responses to my own desires for all kinds of pleasure, as welcome signals instead of red flags to be suppressed. So green lights instead of red lights.
Nicki Pappas 59:39
Yeah, well, thank you. Thank you for sharing about that. Yeah. Also, in your post, you wrote, “I talk about how the church teaches sexual disassociation in my book. The path towards integration isn't just additional information about sex (which is important,) but ALSO embodiment. Also autonomy. Also agency.” So why are embodiment, autonomy, and agency important?
Megan Wooding 1:00:03
Because embodiment, autonomy, and agency are necessary to having pleasurable and consensual sexual experiences, and other kinds of consensual experiences, whether we're talking about relationships or friendships or whatever, but also that embodiment, autonomy, and agency are where much of the harmful teaching lies in purity culture. You can't detach yourself from your sexuality and be embodied. You can't have a mutually consensual sexual encounter without everyone feeling that they have the full right and ability to be enthusiastic about what they want and don't, and what feels good and doesn't. This is where agency and autonomy really come in. But handing women autonomy and agency over what we wear, say look like, think, and do is completely antithetical to purity culture, and the roles handed women by church and society. So someone steeped in purity culture can get married, and read a whole manual on the mechanics of sex, but if they have sexually disassociated, or don't feel comfortable exercising their autonomy and agency, it's not going to be good for anybody. This is why I feel that much of the “Christian sex ed” misses the mark.
Nicki Pappas 1:01:12
Yeah. Well do you believe that your body was created to be your home and safe place first, before it's anything to anyone else?
Megan Wooding 1:01:21
I really do. And it's taken me a long time to get here. This idea also is very kind of antithetical to purity culture, and also just a lot of like general religious culture that's not even about sex. But purity culture teaches that women's bodies are created primarily for literally everyone else. Men, male pleasure, making babies, but not for, not for the women. Like, there's no reason for the clitoris at all, basically. Everyone but them. So I don't know, can you believe I had to work through religious programming telling me I was allowed to prioritize myself like in my own body? That I got to make choices about what I wanted in and for my own body. And again, it seems simple, but so revolutionary coming out of purity culture, claiming my body is mine first, for my pleasure and wellness, has been deeply healing. And this goes for all of our energy as well. Many Christian communities teach a very sanctimonious version of codependency that says, “We must always offer ourselves to others first, and be content with what's left.” Like did you ever hear the kid song “Jesus then others then you. That's how you spell joy”? I hate it. I hate it. So claiming bodily autonomy can be a really big power move.
Nicki Pappas 1:02:37
Yeah, that is so good to bring that specific point up there at the end, oh, so good. Well, why do you think that sexual education is important?
Megan Wooding 1:02:49
So there's a few reasons. The first is that data shows that abstinence only sex education doesn't really affect how long teens wait to have sex, but it does have a higher rate in undesired outcomes. The second I mentioned earlier, and that is that shame is dispersed when we talk about things openly. Hiding and avoiding conversations about sex and sexual education teaches people that sex is shameful. The third is that sexual education is empowering. The sex talk I got when I was like five is “the sperm goes in where the baby comes out.” And honestly, like I was asking about something completely different. So I was super mystified about why my mom said that. And I figured it out like 10 years later, I'm like, “She thought I was asking about like the talk.” And I was not. Anyways, I didn't figure out what it meant until I was like 9 or 10, and when we got farm animals, and there's nothing like goats to teach you about the birds and the bees. And like birth control of all kinds was seen as going against the will of God. So there was no discussion of condoms or barriers or hormones. And that was something else that I figured out on my own. Sexual health really wasn't addressed either. I found a lump in my breast when I was 20. And I had no insurance. And I went to the gates of hell, also known as Planned Parenthood, to have it evaluated and years later, I found out that fibroadenomas run in the family, which may have saved me some anxiety or you know, if I'd had medical care before my 20, you know, before I was 20, I probably would have gotten it evaluated even sooner. A friend of mine got married in her 30s having never had a pelvic exam or personally explored at all and learned that she had vaginismus, don't know how to say that, on her wedding night. But it's the, it's the medical condition where you are so tight that you cannot, all of your pelvic muscles have just like completely contracted and are tense and tight like a, almost like a knot like if you have like a tense muscle. And you have to usually do pelvic floor therapy to treat that and again something that would have been found if she had regular medical care before she was 30 something. So sexual health is health, just like mental health is health, you know, knowledge is power. Not educating women and girls about sexual health, sex, birth control, and bodies is just another form of control. So this is not just within Christianity, but across the board.
Nicki Pappas 1:05:18
Yeah, well, will what we've talked about today be the basis or included in the next book that you're not writing?
Megan Wooding 1:05:28
Maybe.
Nicki Pappas 1:05:30
Well, while we wait for the book you aren't writing, what resources do you recommend for anyone interested in examining more about this narrow narrative that we've talked about within evangelicalism about sex?
Megan Wooding 1:05:43
Yeah, so if it's people kind of looking for more information from the outside, or if you're kind of trying to like break stuff down yourself, I would say Pure by Linda Kay Klein is excellent. And really like it has a lot of interviews from people of all different backgrounds that dealt with purity culture. And then Shameless by Nadia Bolz-Weber, also very good. There's also a few Instagram accounts that are good, I think, for people who are kind of coming from the other side of it, if you're trying to come out of purity culture and really like establish a more healthy sexual ethic. There's a sex educator, her name is Erica Smith, she goes with ericasmith.educates is her handle. There's also sexpositive_families. And misstarateng talks a lot about embodiment and coming out of purity culture as well. So, Erica, Erica Smith also talks a lot about like Queer sexuality, so if that's something that like, purity culture doesn't even remotely touch on, so if that's something that you're, you know, looking into or feeling like you need education on, she is a great resource.
Nicki Pappas 1:06:57
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing those. I think I mentioned this book to you, too, Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski, is that how you say her last name.
Megan Wooding 1:07:06
I’ve read part of that, and it's really good, too.
Nicki Pappas 1:07:09
Yeah, that one was really good, so thank you for your recommendations. Now I have more things to read. Well, do you have anything that you're working on that we can be looking out for in the future?
Megan Wooding 1:07:19
Oh, you really want me to write that book, don’t you?
Nicki Pappas 1:07:21
I do.
Megan Wooding 1:07:26
So there's a possibility of working on another book. But it's gonna be slow, because I really allowed the Dear Sister to take over my life when I was writing it. And I think it was the right decision for me at the time. But I am trying to kind of find some semblance of balance in my life and not, not repeat that experience fully. So there's that. I also do in person workshop, that are called Embodied Sisterhood Photo Workshops, and where we really bring a group of women together and evaluate our relationships with our images in our pictures in, whether we're talking about online or just photos that are taken of us, because that can be a really big trigger for a lot of women. And obviously, this is like dependent on the pandemic clearing up, but this summer, I'd like to be launching that again and do some more of those workshops. I'm also a photographer. So we do a group photo shoot, and also do some personal reflection and exercises to really claim our space in photos. And just Instagram, and if you sign up for my email list or my Instagram, that'd be cool. Follow me.
Nicki Pappas 1:08:47
Yes. Well, one, I remember you telling me through a text about the photos and working on the image, and I just love that idea so much. Well, can you tell people your handle for where they can find you online for Instagram and then your website?
Megan Wooding 1:09:03
Yes. So my website is meganwooding.com. And I'm the simple Megan meganwooding.com and then my Instagram is at @mwooding. And I believe my Facebook is Megan E. Wooding.
Nicki Pappas 1:09:19
Awesome. Well, last question to wrap up here. What is your hope for yourself and the church as you broaden the narrative around the church and sex?
Megan Wooding 1:09:30
I mean I really hope that we can learn to show folks that their full selves are deeply welcomed and accepted as thoroughly as we've shown them that they are not in the past. I'd love to see the intersection of Christianity and sexuality focus on what's equitable, healing, and whole with the understanding that good theology will always lead to good fruit in our lives. So to really understand that if, if a theology or ideology is continuously giving us bad results, that we should like reevaluate it. And then I think engaging in Christian community while prioritizing wellness, boundaries, autonomy, and personal agency in general, without even talking about sexuality would be revolutionary. But really, I hope someday the church can be a place where women can feel safe being their full selves, and also actually be safe emotionally, physically, and mentally.
Nicki Pappas 1:10:23
Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I hope all of those things, too. And Megan, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about the church and sex as well as for your honesty and vulnerability here. I really enjoyed our conversation.
Megan Wooding 1:10:38
Me too. Thank you so much for having me.
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Nicki Pappas 1:10:41
Wasn’t that such an incredible conversation with Megan? I am so grateful that she said yes to being a guest this season. I also wanted to share part of a comment from Matthew Powell that I didn’t see until I was looking at Stephen’s Castbox app. Matthew wrote, “Nicki, first of all I'd like to congratulate you on putting together an excellent and informative podcast. I appreciate the insight into how women in the church have generally been made to feel. As an Atheist who grew up in the church, it's interesting to see how we have come to the same conclusion regarding certain traditional Church views and practices .. albeit from different starting points. Thank you for everything that you do. I know this is a difficult task you've undertaken, but you are really kicking ass at it!” So thank you Matthew for your encouragement and for leaving this comment. As a reminder, the music from today’s episode was “Confessions” by Bandy, and the full song will close out the episode. You can stream, purchase, and download Bandy’s music at bandy17.bandcamp.com. If you like what you heard today, share it with a friend. I really think that little by little, person by person, we can broaden the narrative. In addition, make sure to subscribe. Then, rate and review to help others find the show. I also want to thank Jordan Lukens for his help with editing and Danielle Bolin for creating the episode graphic. You can access the Broadening the Narrative blog and transcripts for podcast episodes as they become available by visiting broadeningthenarrative.blogspot.com. You can find Broadening the Narrative on Instagram @broadeningthenarrative, on Twitter @broadnarrative, and on Facebook at facebook.com/groups/broadeningthenarrative. Come back next week for a powerful conversation with historian Lettie Shumate on the topic “If Your Church Isn't Denouncing and Repenting of White Supremacy.” You don’t want to miss it. Grace and peace, friends.
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“Confessions” by Bandy
