The Bible & The F Word

The Texas Episode.  Can evangelical women be feminists?  Author and famed Bible teacher Beth Moore parts ways with the Southern Baptist Convention;  author and famed blogger Jen Hatmaker stands up for her convictions;   former President George W Bush launches a new project highlighting immigrants while white power rears its ugly head (again) in Congress;   and lastly... a ranch chat about  the difference between Benghazi and Bin Laden.

Transcript

Hey, y'all, thanks for tuning in. I just wanted to give a real quick thank you for all the support. We've had a tremendous amount of growth over the last few weeks, and I'm so super grateful. So if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, if you could go ahead and subscribe, leave a rating that would help us reach even more people - I really appreciate it. 

My intention for this project was to talk a little bit about faith and a little bit about politics. Really, what truly pulled me off the bench and into this closet of solitude ( which is my recording studio) was a combination of Christianity and the Republican party and my role in that merger and what fruit it produced. And honestly, I've been treading a little bit lightly because I didn't want to alienate anyone or upset anyone or make people mad… but evidently, the toothpaste is out of the tube there - So I think today, on the heels of my trip to Texas, I think we're just going to take it to church. 

Full disclosure, I am not from Texas. I am from Oklahoma, but a bunch of my family and friends are now in Texas - so a lot of my people are there. Today I want to talk to you all about some Texans -  I want to talk to you about Beth Moore, Jen Hatmaker,  former President George W. Bush, I want to talk to you about something to be a little bit worried about in Congress, and something sort of interesting on the horizon. I'm also going to give you (as promised) an update on Mr. Ben Ghazi. 

So as I was arriving in Dallas, our trip got pushed a little bit to the ranch so I got to spend some time with family that I don't always see. And so we went to lunch- were about one basket of chips in,  which is a pretty good measurement of a group lunch in Dallas, when the question came…. So are you not a republican at all anymore?”  The question didn't really take me by surprise. I mean, I've been pretty open about my disdain for Donald Trump and lamenting what he had done to my party and my disgust with it writ large. So that shouldn't have surprised me at all. I think what was surprising was the level of of concern among my family members. One of them (I heard this,of course, third hand) thinks I've completely lost my mind. Somebody else is very concerned that I'm not supporting the republicans because of the pro life issue. And then yet another one heard that about the pro life issue and sent me a text saying that they were praying for me…which,  don't get me wrong. I love being prayed for. But that felt a little bit like one part love two parts judgment, if you know what I mean.

So,  it would appear that I am now officially the Gloria Steinham of my family, because I openly rejected the least Christ-like person to ever step foot in the White House. Which is ironic, but at least  I'm in good company. 

Being in Texas made me think of this author named Beth Moore, who is a Texan  - so she has departed the Southern Baptist Convention and that's a big deal. Beth Moore has been their number one best selling author for decades. She's had books and Bible studies and speaking tours, and she's a trailblazer, because so many women come to this through their husbands because they're pastor's wives - but she did it on her own - her husband was a plumber. 

Moore wanted to attend seminary, but couldn't get a pastoral degree because of the girl thing, so the only kind of degree she could get was how to be a pastor's wife. I'm not even kidding. (I’ll put this stuff on my website in case you guys don't believe me.) Anyway, so she was really clever about it - she called her pulpit a Bible stand because you can't teach from the pulpit if you're a woman; she wore flats on stage to avoid appearing taller than any man;  she endured all kinds of indignities and slights and insults and people talking down to her.  All the “little lady” comments that every woman over the age of 35 has endured if she ever dared play with the big boys - but it's way worse in the south and it's triply worse if you're in the Jesus business.  

I will confess this to y'all and I'm embarrassed to admit it - But to this day, when I see a female pastor walk on stage, there's a tiny bit of my brain that goes, “look at that …a woman pastor!” and then the rest of me wants to smack myself in my own face and be like, what is this 1950? Who are you, even? What is happening? These are the voices inside my head. 

So anyway, she worked out a pretty good balance and everything was going along just fine and she was really super duper successful. And then here comes Donald Trump in the Access Hollywood tape. I imagine that Beth Moore along with myself, and along with most Christians actually believed that the Access Hollywood tape would bury Donald Trump with Christians, but it seemed to do the opposite. And this hit her even more personally because she had actually been sexually assaulted in the church years earlier and been told to keep her mouth shut about it. She wrote a beautiful letter when she resigned from the southern baptists and I'll post that on my website for you to read  - but Ultimately, it was disappointment that not only did the Baptist Church fail to denounce Donald Trump for his assault on women, they held him up as the evangelical poster child in politics. She said, about that time, “There comes a time when you have to stand up and say, ‘This is not who I am.” She stood up to Trump, she stood up to Christians who who defended Trump, she questioned complementarianism, (the idea that the Bible is lays out specific gender roles which cannot be broken.) And she was offended by the evangelicals’ rejection of Critical Race Theory, which is the belief that racism is kind of baked into the cake of our society and everything from bank lending, to redlining, to education, you know, all these things that were legal for a very, very long time until they weren’t… the fact that the GI Bill wasn't available to black people so they weren't able to build the generational wealth that white people enjoy. That's what Critical Race Theory is - we'll dig into that more in a future podcast…  But all these evangelical pastors  - 4400 evangelical pastors - all signed a proclamation denouncing CRT. They don't denounce Trump, but they denounce CRT.  Hmmm. They claim it doesn't exist, and they're led by this self-proclaimed (these are his words) anti social justice advocate. His name is john MacArthur, if you want to look it up, but the irony, the irony of claiming to be a follower of Jesus Christ, and being an anti social justice advocate. Do you know who was the biggest advocate of social justice?   hint: Jesus.   I mean, what happened, Pastor John… did you just miss the second half of the book? Did you just read Malachi and skip on over to Revelation?

To be completely fair, there were plenty of people who stood up to Donald Trump - some of them even in evangelical churches. But for Beth Moore, it was the third rail because she's a woman and women are not allowed to stand up and lead according to the Baptists, according to evangelicals, and frankly, according to the Catholics. I mean, you don't see any women priests out there,  either. 

So what about in the world?  Let's look at politics. The United States is supposed to lead the world in freedom. But there are 81 nations worldwide in this modern era, who have been led by women as prime ministers and presidents.  Sri Lanka, Israel, India, all elected female Prime Ministers, and that was way back in the 1960s. Then then you had Maggie Thatcher in the UK. Angela Merkel is kicking ass right now in Germany… even Liberia, not exactly a shining beacon for women's rights - a nation who doesn't actually recognize rape as a crime about half the time still elected President Sirleaf… and that was 15 years ago! 

So could it be that this evangelical and Catholic bias against women has been so tightly woven into the fabric of our culture and our national ethos that we don't even see it anymore? Think about it. India and Sri Lanka had female prime ministers 50 years ago. It took us until 2020 to get a female vice president. Why do you suppose that is?  I bet Jordan Klepper can interview some Trump supporters and help us figure it out. But heads up this accent is gonna make your ears bleed…

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So the 1970s was a particularly volatile time for women's rights - and with every step toward more liberal policies for women, the evangelical movement tightened its grip. They had women's Bible studies, women’s books, women’s seminars on how to be a more godly woman, wife and mother, and not surprisingly… mostly penned by men. A lot of these “life lessons” were based on Proverbs 31 (known as P 31 to the long skirt-wearing crowd) but it was used as a missive of how to be the perfect godly woman.  You’re supposed to be beautiful and sexy and strong (duh) but you're also supposed to raise the children and spin the wool while it's still dark , and milk the cows and deal with the servants and buy land, and I'm not really sure what the man's supposed to do…. But the Proverbs 31 woman makes the Enjoli lady from the commercial look like a slacker.

AUDIO CLIP - I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let you forget you’re a man….

But …spoiler alert - it turns out this was NOT a to do list from the Lord for all of us to follow. This was just a note from a mom to a son  like  “hey, these would be good qualities for the new wife that you're looking for…." Now this mom happened to be Queen Bathsheba and the son was King Solomon. I don't know which wife they're talking about because I think he had 599 or 600 of them or something. But that's beside the point. Let's go back to Bathsheba a minute. Y'all remember that story? So Bathsheba is the one that was that was sunbathing naked on the roof and then David saw her and summoned for her and got her pregnant -  and then he had her husband killed because, you know, he’s such a good guy. 

So…I don't know Bathsheba,  that you're the person be throwing stones. (And I am going to use an Old Testament reference because you're an Old Testament chick. Sorry.)  But not sure you should be telling me how to be a good wife - cause you know what?  Maybe I don't get up before dawn and spin the wool and flog the servants and stuff… but you know what I also don't do?  I don't cheat on my husband with the king and then having murdered, Bathsheba!  (I mean, can you even imagine having that piece of work for your mother in law?)

A couple of good takeaways from this are 1. context matters, and 2. words have power. I think it might be time for us to take some words back. One of them being the word feminism. 

I've struggled with this for years - I can't really admit that I'm a feminist, even though I definitely am. I struggle with it probably because of the Feminazi thing I talked about a few episodes ago. But I was asking my friends in Texas. I said,  “Are y'all feminists?” And they're like, “Absolutely not! We're not feminists. We're not angry… We don't hate men”  blah, blah, blah… this this notion that this is what feminism means - It's just it's BS. And then I said, “Well, do you teach your daughters to be submissive to men?” And they're like, "hell no!”  Well, then you're a feminist, girlies. You know what? I think it's just the word. I think the Evangelical Church and Rush Limbaugh and politics has ruined that word forever for a lot of us. 

To be a feminist doesn't mean that you think you're better than men I just means you dont accept that you are worse.  It means that women are man’s equal. In Genesis 2: 18 when the Lord says “it's not good for man to be alone, you need a help mate,” actually a  help meet. And technically that word in Hebrew means to stand face to face to be the other half  - opposite but equal.  It's a word for strength. And in some translations, savior or corrector.  A helpmate is someone to be your equal half  - your partner. So here's a pushback for you… If you are a woman and you believe that you're equal to men, then BE a feminist… and don't be afraid of being a feminist. Own it.   

Alright, let's talk about another Christian feminist named Jen Hatmaker. So, Jen grew up in Kansas and went to Bible College in Oklahoma and got married really really young - I think she was maybe 19 - So she was a Uber Bible girl, her dad was a preacher, her husband was a  preacher. So she came about this the normal way, which was coming up as a good girl, writing Bible studies and all that. If you don't know Jen Hatmaker, you should.  She's pretty plain spoken, she calls it like it is. She's really warm and funny. 

So she was an early Never Trumper and she took a hit for it - she said that Donald Trump made her sad and horrified and despondent after the Access Hollywood tape scandal,  but the full weight of the Christian establishment crashed down on her when she shared that she supported same-sex relationships. And it didn't matter to people that she had a homosexual child… the Christian community went bonkers. They pulled her books, they canceled her tours. They boycotted her, they accosted her in the streets, her family even got death threats. And all of these things happened to her and her family because she chose to take Jesus seriously when in Matthew 25:40. He said, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me.” Because she chose truth over lies,  and love over hate. 

Both of these women, both Jen Hatmaker and Beth Moore just make me proud because they're brave - and they've used their platforms to stand up for their faith and for their beliefs and for what's right. For whatever reason, we are finding ourselves at a time where Christians and Republicans are more comfortable on the side of the oppressor than on the side of the oppressed.  

But not all of them…Former President Bush now has a project called Out of Many, One, and it's a collection of some of his paintings of immigrants. He said it was created in an effort to humanize the debate on immigration and immigration reform. He has penned an Op Ed about some ideas on immigration reform  (Republican ideas? the nerve!) 

To illustrate the cognitive dissonance in the Republican Party right now, at the exact same time President Bush announces this initiative, something is crawling up from the sewer called the America First Caucus, which is essentially a racist Manifesto. It's nativist, it calls for an Anglo Saxon tradition. It's basically a white power paper.  It is hard to process how obscene it is  - Since it dropped,  It's gotten a lot of criticism and people are starting to backpedal away from it but I just want you to be aware of it because and be forewarned. If youre still a believer in  this party and think that it's hit bottom and about to come roaring back, I need to warn you that this kind of ugliness and nastiness is not going away anytime soon. It is flourishing in the shadows… and it's barely in the shadows anymore. I'm afraid it's here to stay for a while. 

Alright, it's time to close out my Texas episode. But you know who might run for governor of Texas? (Alright Alright Alright…)  Yep. Matt McConaughey.  He’s got a double digit lead over Greg Abbott for the 2022 race - who knows if he'll run, who knows if he'll win, but it's certainly something to keep an eye on…. or maybe since it's Matt McConaughey,  maybe both eyes. 

I'm sorry…that was a little bit Bathsheba-like, wasn't it?  Last thing on the agenda today… I got a surprising number of inquiries about the Benghazi situation. I'll let these girls speak for themselves. 

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And there you have it. Thank you all for joining. I love those girls so much. They're such good sports for letting me broadcast this to the universe. I love you all for listening -Thanks so much. Have a great week and I'll talk to you next time.