Author Archives: holytension

White Evangelical: Let’s Talk About Race, Baby

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(or Why I Associate My Spiritual Heritage with Race)

The majority of my posts have, in one form or another, addressed the problems with patriarchy in the white evangelical church. The most unexpected pushback I regularly receive on social media and in real life is not my criticism of patriarchy, but my use of the term white evangelical to describe my spiritual heritage. I realize I’ve never clarified why I choose to use the term on my blog and would like to directly address my use, even though it’s a term very few white evangelicals actually use to describe themselves. My post White Evangelical Married Sex is Not a Beautiful Union: The Pride & Profitability of Patriarchy most frequently raises good questions from my readers about my employment of the term white evangelical:

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The Christian Couple’s Guide When He’s Not Up to It

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Raising my Ebenezer: Why I’m still a Christian

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It’s been 3 years, 10 months, and 5 days since my family walked out of the doors of our local Southern Baptist church for the last time. I knew when we were leaving that we were leaving something much bigger than our local church and even the Southern Baptist Convention, but I did not yet comprehend how far outside of conservative white evangelism the journey would take us nor how long we would be wondering in a spiritual wilderness. Sometimes the grief still leaves me breathless. I often feel embarrassed that it still hurts so much.

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A Husband-Focused View of Biblical Marriage

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My husband spends a lot of time on social media engaging with others to explain the problems with complementary/patriarchal theology. He asked if he could write a post for my blog and organize all his conversations in one place. I’m so happy to share his thoughts with you!

My previous article, Love & Submit ≠ Husbands Lead, Wives Submit, looked at the corruptive nature of complementarian theology in marriage. Despite the many bad fruits of this theology, many complementarians still insist Biblical marriage is hierarchal, with the husband leading his wife from a prominent place of authority over her.

If the husband’s leadership and authority over his wife is crucial to marriage, surely Scripture would have plenty of instructions for husbands about leading, right? Let’s do a husband-focused study of Scripture, and see what we find…

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Submission Saved My Marriage! The Tragic Irony of Christian Complementarianism

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Many conservative evangelical women have led their marriage to a healthier place by following Jesus and learning to love well. The classic conservative marriage testimony that I have repeatedly heard from women often goes like this: “Our marriage was a mess. I (wife) started lovingly submitting to my husband, then he started leading our family in love, and now we have a much happier, healthier marriage.” Let the reader understand the irony of this statement. The wife initiated submission in her marriage, but the husband is praised for his leadership. The greatest racket of conservative white evangelism is that the husband is praised for being a “leader” when he responds with love to his wife’s submission.

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White Evangelical Married Sex is Not a Beautiful Union: The Pride & Profitability of Patriarchy

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Sigh. Every time I mention Gary Thomas and Debra Fileta’s book Married Sex in one of my posts, I think, This will be the last time I mention their book. Except, for me, their book has come to encapsulate much of what is wrong with conservative white evangelism, and so I repeatedly find myself coming back to it. This spring, a social media firestorm erupted after The Gospel Coalition (TGC) published an article endorsing Joshua Butler’s new book Beautiful Union. Positioned by TGC’s senior editor Brett McCracken to be the new “protestant magnum opus” on sex, Beautiful Union compares the Holy Spirit to semen, calls the male orgasm a “sacrifice,” pressures women to have obligation sex by shaming them for being “churlish” in the bedroom, and never once mentions the female clitoris. Sigh.

I experienced severe déjà vu as things played out. [My original critique of Thomas & Fileta’s Married Sex can be found here: “Married Sex” Lacks Strong Biblical Exegesis]

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The Bad, the Good, and the Beautiful

Romans 8:28 is a frequently quoted, beautiful verse often used in very harmful ways:

In all things God works for the good of those who love him.

Though God does work in all things for the good of those who love Him, God’s goodness should never be used to justify or diminish suffering.

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Patriarchy: Porn & Purity Culture (and a book plug)

This past month, I’ve been part of a pre-launch group for She Deserves Better. The group dialogue has led me to reflect on my own complex history with purity culture.

I have a complex relationship with purity culture. (Purity culture is a catch-all phrase to describe the popular teachings surrounding dating/sex/marriage in modern white evangelicism). In my teens, I benefited from popular Christian dating books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Passion & Purity. I know and understand these books are harmful and have hurt so many people, so please bear with me.

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Life under Patriarchy: Death by a Thousand Cuts

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Examining the wounds of my past is part of my journey towards healing. Wound-care is often messy and uncomfortable.

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Language: Labels & Longing

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Musings on why I do not love the label egalitarian.

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Different AND Equal: One Woman’s Journey from Complementarian to Egalitarian

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Why did I avoid wrestling with egalitarian theology for so long? A weird stew of several factors: desire to be objective, rejection of secular white feminism, result of my circumstances, propensity towards self-flagellation, and fear of becoming a feminazi.

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Rule & Desire Revisited

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This article is a follow-up to an earlier post, Age of Patriarchy: Desire of Woman & Rule of Man.

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Finding My Voice (in the wilderness) – Part 2

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Sometimes I think I’m done writing for awhile, and then I stumble across something that reminds me of all the pain still trapped inside. This week I stumbled upon an article on social media entitled A Southern Baptist Pastor’s Plea: Please Listen, and I started bleeding again. Watching a complementarian man receive praise for “listening” all week on social media has been painful, and at first, I chose to stay silent. I knew to speak would open the floodgates and unleash the hurt still buried deep in my soul. Then Aimee Byrd wrote her response, Why Complementarians Can’t Listen. I found the cries of my heart echoed in her words and those cries are no longer able to be stifled.

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The Apostle Paul Led Me Out of Patriarchy

Three influential factors that led me out of complementary/patriarchal theology: the racism inherent in allowing white women to teach BIPOC men overseas but not white men in our own churches, the wake of devastation left in my own church from the vacuum of female leadership, and…the teachings of Paul.

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Spiritual Discussion Guide

I’ve facilitated hundreds of bible studies over the years, in many different cultural settings, both for people who identify as Christian and those who don’t, who are seeking spiritual answers. Borrowing generously from many resources¹ over the years, here’s an outline I’ve developed that works well in one-on-one or group settings with little-to-no planning.

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Love & Submit ≠ Husbands Lead, Wives Submit

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Jesus teaches the foundation of Christianity is for all believers to “Love God” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Later, Paul expounds that love includes mutual submission: “Submit to one another” (Ephesians 5:21) before he breaks it down into wives submit, husbands love—NOT wives submit, husbands lead. Nowhere in the Bible does it explicitly state, “Husbands lead, wives submit.” When the church twists the Christian message of mutual love and submission into “lead and submit,” LOVE is lost.

In a recent social media post, my husband captured the corruptive nature of complementarian theology (male leadership/female submission) in marriage no matter how well-intentioned the couple. Thought I’d share.

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Finding My Voice (in the wilderness) – Part 1

Living in “complementarian” spaces was death by a thousand cuts. It can be hard to articulate, because each cut on its own sounds petty. Also, some of my pain is intertwined with other women’s stories, and it can be difficult to know how to talk about my own role without oversharing the details of their stories. This is my first attempt to put down in words the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain of living in patriarchal spaces most of my life. I think this old outline I recently rediscovered is a good place to start, because it shows my head space when I still considered myself comp.

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Sex Idol: Where Evangelicals Worship & Women are Sacrificed

In white evangelicism, the fanaticism, money, & extrabiblical rules that revolve around sex scream idol worship and the humanity of women is sacrificed on its altar. The evangelical message that married sex will fulfill you is really no different than the larger culture’s general message that sex with whomever, whenever will fulfill you.

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Age of Patriarchy: Desire of Woman & Rule of Man

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When Adam and Eve chose the rule of humankind over the rule of God, they tragically ushered in the Age of Patriarchy. The word “desire” is used only 3x in OT – Genesis 3:16, 4:7, & Song of Songs 7:10. The realization that the man has desire for the women in the Song unlocked the mystery of the Genesis curse for me.

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The False Dichotomy of Truth & Love

In my former corner of Christianity, sermons often pitted truth and love against each other because of a poor interpretation of Eph 4:15:

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