It should come as no surprise that the announcement of Biden’s decision to right-size the court also generated criticism among right-wing Republicans. Sen. Ted Cruz made the jaw-dropping statement that Biden’s decision to nominate a Black woman was insulting and offensive to Black women. His claims are as loud as they are wrong. But they also reveal an entitlement that is closely connected to the belief that white is supreme. Resistance is also embedded in the notion that only a white person could be qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. 

REGISTER: Race in America: A Conversation with Michael W. Waters on February 27th at 7pm EST

For context, just two Black men and five women have served on the Supreme Court. Of 115 individuals appointed to the Supreme Court, 108 have been white men. Unsurprisingly, Cruz never claimed the appointment of white and conservative males was insulting or inappropriate. He never opposed President Donald Trump’s assertion that he would nominate a woman to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The shock and awe centers around gender and race. 

Additionally, white people have always seen themselves in positions of power, so much so that there is an expectation that they belong in powerful positions. 

But Black women represent a bench of untapped talent. Election cycle after election cycle, Black women have propelled Democrats to office at all levels of the government. We are a reliable voting bloc, yet there has never been a Black woman governor. There has never been a Black woman nominated or appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. There has never been a Black woman to serve as White House chief of staff. In fact, in all of history, there have only been 23 Black women appointed to cabinet-level positions. The lack of appointments of Black women is about one thing: the intersection of gender and race. It is not about competency or qualifications. 

READ: An Excerpt From Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World – And How to Repair It All

This appointment would prove that the administration sees Black women not just as workhouses but as serious minds capable of grappling with the tough issues that will come before court. Not only should Biden move forward with his plan to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court; he should stand by his nominee and refuse to rest until she is confirmed. 

To be clear, this appointment does not obliterate the president of his broader responsibility to the Black community. He still needs to raise the minimum wage and address housing insecurity, the climate crisis, student loan debt and voting rights. But the courts have been stacked with conservative white men for far too long. The pillars of power are calling out for progress, and this is one tangible thing the administration can do to advance justice and democracy. 

Fortune’s father was enslaved, but she stood in that Somerset County courtroom to face the prospect of indenture precisely because she was not enslaved upon birth. She likely had been able to live free until she was eighteen years old. Why? Because of White privilege.

Lord Baltimore Charles Calvert, grandson of the first Lord Baltimore, brought sixteen-year-old Eleanor Butler with him from England to Maryland in 1681—six years before Fortune was born. Butler fell in love with and married an enslaved man, identified in court records as “Negro Charles.” She appealed to her friend Lord Baltimore to repeal the 1664 law, which required Eleanor’s immediate enslavement and the enslavement of all her children for life, in perpetuity. Calvert immediately moved to repeal the original 1664 race law. It was rescinded and replaced with the 1681 race law, which acknowledged an unscrupulous practice that had developed since passage of the original law. Masters were forcing their White indentured servant women to marry the masters’ enslaved African men. This practice reaped exponential increases in planters’ free labor force over generations. Maryland’s legislature limited the scope of the law to forced marriages between Black men and White women and dropped the requirement that their children be enslaved. The result? As of 1681, all newborn mixed- race children would be born free.

According to Maryland State Park historian Ross M. Kimmel, Butler benefited only marginally from Lord Baltimore’s efforts. She was still enslaved because her marriage took place before the 1681 law was passed. But as a White woman, she was afforded liberties not usually afforded to enslaved people. Still, her children and descendants were born after the 1681 repeal. They should have been born free. The 1681 law provided the children free status regardless of which parent was White. Butler’s grandchildren were enslaved. They appealed to the courts in 1710. Around the time of the Revolutionary War, they finally won.

Fortune’s fate should have been equally clear. She stood before the judge in 1705. The eighteen-year-old girl listed as a “mulatto” in court documents should have been subject to Lord Baltimore’s 1681 law. But in the interim, the Maryland General Assembly soured on Lord Baltimore and replaced his law with a harsher, more comprehensive, racialized legal structure in 1692—five years after Fortune’s birth.

LISTEN: Lisa Sharon Harper on the RLC Podcast discussing her new book, Fortune

The new law protected White women and their children from slavery by removing the financial impetus for their enslavement. They would be indentured to the local parish, not enslaved by the master. The parishes were ordered to transact the sales of enslaved Black men and indentured White and mixed-race servants to White families. The proceeds of those sales assisted poor Whites in the parish.

In essence, at the turn of the eighteenth century, the church itself became the primary auction block in Maryland. The grotesque nature of this arrangement cannot be overstated. The church joined the banks, insurance companies, shipping companies, iron works, and other institutions in crushing the image of God on this land. The church was the principle protector and manager of White supremacy through the trade of enslaved and indentured human beings in America’s second colony.

According to the 1692 law, a child of a White mother could not be enslaved. Period. The race of the mother became the determining factor of slave or free status. But intolerance of interracial relationships hardened in this law. White women and their children could still be indentured as penalty for miscegenation—married or not. A penalty of seven years indenture was given to the woman and twenty-one years indenture to the child if the parents were married—or thirty-one years indenture for the child if the parents were not married.

Standing before the court, eighteen-year-old Fortune was born free and should have remained free according to Lord Baltimore’s 1681 legal turnabout. But of course the application of law is different from the law itself. Fortune’s fate was largely dependent on the judge, especially in this formative period of colonial race law. Would the judge see and honor the legislative merits of Fortune’s fight to stay free? Or would his sensibilities align more with the racialized hardening of the times?

JOIN: The RLC Book Club with Lisa Sharon Harper on February 20th at 7pm

I imagine Fortune, awaiting the judge’s decision, looking out a window to her left, just behind the prosecutor offering his closing argument for Fortune’s indenture. Her heartbeat races. Beads of sweat form on her forehead as she wipes sweaty palms on her dress. She clasps her high yellow hands—the only thing she has to hold on to in this moment is herself. I imagine Fortune thinking of the woman who birthed her, Maudlin.

We know so little of Maudlin other than the fact that she was an indentured Ulster Scots woman married to an Ulster Scot, George Magee, with whom she bore three children. Maudlin’s first child was John Magee, born one year before Fortune. The year after Fortune’s birth, Maudlin and George brought Peter Magee into the world and three years after that she gave birth to Samual. Historian Paul Heinegg cites the judicial record of this court proceeding, as well as land tax records indicating that Maudlin was alive and living with her husband George as late as 1705—the year of this trial. Yet, there is no record of her presence.

With possible moments left in her free life, I imagine Fortune’s thoughts turning to her father, Sambo. He, too, was born free. He, too, was bound and sold as a teen. He, too, lived on the other side of Whiteness, daily surviving the branding iron of legal Blackness. Enslaved to Constable Peter Douty, Sambo and his wife were willed free and given land upon Douty’s death, five years after Fortune’s trial. We know that he and Fortune were close. She would take his surname and later live with him on that land. Evidence suggests Sambo may have been a healer. His son, Harry, was a practicing doctor in 1750. He credited his knowledge to an “old experienced Guinea doctor”—likely Sambo, who was from a region that intersected Senegal, Guinea, and Mali, before national boundaries were drawn. Sambo was a learned man who passed down what he knew to the next generation. It makes me wonder what he passed down to Fortune that was in turn passed down to us.

Fortune stood at the precipice of bondage with only the memories of her freedom and her family to give her comfort. Indenture was just as brutal as slavery. Indentured servants were whipped and maimed as punishment. Fortune did not know what was in store for her, and she had no control over it—perhaps that combination is the essence of the terror of bondage, whether enslaved or indentured. She held within her both this unknowing and a complete lack of control over her own body, life, and family.

When I imagine eighteen-year-old Fortune in that courtroom, I find my own breath shortening in anticipation of the ruling. With short breaths, Fortune likely listened as the judge asked her if she understood her sentence. She was hereby ordered to retroactive indentured service to Mrs. Mary Day until the age of thirty-one years old.

Twenties gone. 

Freedom gone.

Safety for herself and her daughters? Gone, gone.

Content taken from Fortune by Lisa Sharon Harper, ©2022. Used by permission of Baker Publishing.

Join us on February 20th at 7pm EST for the RLC Book Club with Lisa Sharon Harper! You can join live on the RLC Facebook, YouTube, or website. You can also listen to the RLC podcast with Lisa on Fortune.

Click here for more information on #BlackFortuneMonth!

My dad was a pastor and my grandfather a missionary, both progressive for their time, both loving, gentle, and compassionate. But I was in my late thirties before I first discovered God as my loving Heavenly Mother. The religion I was raised with was led by men, authorized by men, taught by men, with doctrine decided on by men. The women among us received God in a kind of “trickle down” way, where we were allowed to partake of this joy as long as it had been sanctioned by the elders. And even though they were kind, wise elders, they were still all men.  

That’s extraordinary to me now, not only because I have come to know God as my most intimate Mother, but also because the whole event of this Incarnation—the birth of God into the world—was  brought about by an experience that belongs solely to us, the “weaker sex.” 

Only those who have experienced it can understand the tearing agony of contractions, the wild kicks of a whole human being that’s growing inside you, the tears and sweat, the humiliation of being spread wide while you pass a child, a placenta, the umbilical cord, and blood, and blood, and so much blood from the most intimate and vulnerable place in your body. Breasts engorged, sleepless nights, post natal confusion and depression—not to mention the shock and pain and shame (and  just general annoyance) of bleeding monthly from adolescence to middle age!  

Motherhood is an earthy, human, painful, female event, filled with soaring joy and searing pain. God came to us like this: weak and helpless. The first one to know him was a woman, and the first one to see him reborn was also a woman. But somehow we’ve erased these gritty female images from Christ’s birth, death, and rebirth story, preferring an image of Jesus as a white, clean, orderly, and business-like all American. Similarly, we prefer a Mary who is tidied up, serene, and most of all quiet. There’s no screaming and sweating, no stench of fluids in the Nativity Scenes we create.  

Once, as a young mother living in the deep south, I was breastfeeding my newborn (with a blanket covering all the naked parts) on a bench outside of a Walmart, when an older lady—who clearly felt very humiliated for me—scolded me roundly with a “Oh honey! You cannot be doing that here!”  

READ: Mary’s Virginity Matters, but Not for the Reasons You Think

To be honest I didn’t mind too much. She was only trying to protect me, teaching me what was  taught to her: that our nakedness, our femininity, our vulnerability is a shameful thing and it needs to stay hidden. It’s not proper, and it’s not okay. This is a message we women receive again and again from the cradle on up. From our periods to our libido, to our menopause: it’s all like a very  inconvenient secret that we’re supposed to pretend it isn’t there. It’s messy; no wonder people  don’t want it in their religion.  

It’s almost agonizing that many of us seem to prefer a twisted and perverse idea of masculinity in our image of God: one with guns and guts and “greatness.” Is it any wonder that the most weak and vulnerable among us, the most marginalized, flee from this poorly made image of the Creator? 

More and more as the years go by, I am convinced that God became a human because she wanted us to know that we are okay just as we are. She wanted us to accept our messy humanness with all its vulnerability.  

God became a poor, working class person; and in doing so, God declared the least of us sacred. The stable became holy ground, the unwed pregnant girl became a saint. No prosperity to bind us to the  rich one, no renown to bind us to the famous one, no power to bind us to the strong one, there is just love to bind us to Love.  

God became poor, obsolete, weak, and lived with those of us who are poor, obsolete, and weak, so we could choose to love her, Our Wonderful Heavenly Mother, freely.  

In eliminating the most female parts from the Christmas story, we’ve eliminated the most human  parts. But becoming human, being human, affirming the sacredness of humanity, was everything the incarnation was supposed to teach us in the first place! God is with us. God is one of us. Accepting and loving ourselves, wherever we are on the gender spectrum, this I believe, was the very heart of what Christ came to reveal. Blood, sweat, tears, screams and all. 

But what if Mary’s virginity—the very part of the Nativity story we think we know so well—is actually a mystery we have yet to fully unravel? 

For 2,000 years, Christians have held fast to the belief that Mary’s conception of Jesus was miraculous—sexless. I’m not here to object; after all, inexplicable phenomena are a part of spiritual experience (and if California Condors can reproduce without a male, why not Mary?). But it’s also undeniable that the Church has a dicey relationship with the carnality of human sexuality. The critique of Christianity’s hyper-fixation on sexual purity is more than fair, yet if we look back over the canon of mythology throughout human history, we see pretty quickly just how often the symbol of virginity was evoked to tell a deeper story.

In myths and fairy tales, a virgin is a young woman who suffers some hardship and must go inward to discover the depths of herself. Her virginity is imperative because it represents self-belonging. She is not the property of a husband—not physically, emotionally, or spiritually, either. Neither is she under the protection of a father.

While the well-documented archetypal male “hero’s journey” is one that requires radical sacrifice on behalf of others, the less acknowledged virgin’s journey is one of becoming self-determining: her heroism is not in rescuing others but in finding her own voice through an awakening.

We see this in mythological tales like that of Inanna, who must descend alone to the underworld (i.e. the unconscious) and strip herself of one protective power at each gate she comes upon in order to continue journeying deeper inward. We see it too in fairy tales like that of Little Red Riding Hood, who also journeys inward—as represented by the dark woods—and must face the breakdown of the construct of her world that she once thought to be infallible. In both stories, the virgin is tasked with an awakening deep within her psyche that invites her into a womanhood of self-belonging.

And so if we hold the virgin archetype up against Mary of Nazareth, we might be surprised by what we find. What if Mary’s virginity tells us not just about Jesus’ significance, but equally, about hers?

The virgin’s journey calls Mary to be self-determining. When approached by the angel Gabriel, she gives her own consent to a pregnancy that will stigmatize her for life, consulting no one else first, male nor female, peer nor elder. She would have been well aware that her fiat would make her a legally valid candidate for a public stoning; but with courage, she moved toward union with the Holy One when it was offered to her. Mary accepted a hero’s journey that would call her not outward to conquer the world, but inward to conquer the temptation to look to others for direction, validation, and permission. 

READ: Jesus is Waiting at Our Border

While the entire Christian church holds to the belief of Mary’s miraculous conception of Jesus, Catholics take it one step further to the dogma of perpetual virginity: the belief that Mary remained a physical virgin all her life, even after marrying Joseph. (Non-Catholics are usually unaware of this teaching, and Protestants are likely scratching their heads with confusion since the New Testament mentions Jesus’ brothers and sisters. But the Catholic Church interprets this to mean “cousins.”) The teaching of Mary’s perpetual virginity is often scoffed at by those both outside and inside the Church to be archaic, sexist, and puritanical. These are not irrelevant objections and should be held under feminist critique.

But what if the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity communicates something far deeper than the church fathers and popes understood? What if deep in our human consciousness we needed her as an archetype to remain metaphorically whole through the course of her life and motherhood, ultimately belonging only to herself and her own experiential knowledge of God? What if perpetual virginity is meant to prophesy to us about the union between the soul and the divine, free of any third-party intervention?

Of course, there is a wider story at hand. The fleshiness of the Silent Night promises us that whoever the good and gracious mystery that is God might be, they ardently desire to be in union with human beings. 

Women, children, and youth are already being disproportionately affected by the climate emergency. The UN reports that 80% of people already being displaced by climate change are women. And when natural disasters hit, women and children have been 14 times more likely than men to die, more vulnerable to gender-based violence, and afterward, there has been as much as 20-30% increase in trafficking. Therefore, we must be actively involved in advancing solutions to the climate crisis.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Aug. 2021 report warned that limiting global warming to close to 1.5 degrees Celsius or even 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels “will be beyond reach” in the next two decades without immediate, rapid, and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The good news is that we still have a chance to turn the tide on the climate crisis: we can reduce emissions at an individual and corporate level. To do this, we need to understand our carbon footprint. It’s called carbon footprint because most of the planet-warming pollution is carbon dioxide. The energy sector accounts for nearly three-quarters of worldwide emissions, followed by agriculture. The primary source of emissions comes from the energy sector, and chiefly from fossil fuels – coal, oil, and increasingly natural gas, used for electricity and heat generation, followed by transportation and manufacturing. In fact, the past IPCC report noted that we must completely eliminate fossil fuels by 2050, and move towards renewable, lower energy demand, change dietary habits and consumption, and protect and restore natural ecosystems.

But how we respond is vastly different based on where we are from and how much pollution we have created in the past and currently. About 60% of GHG emissions come from just 10 countries, while the 100 least-emitting contribute less than 3%. The 10 countries include China, the United States, the EU, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, and Canada. Some countries have polluted the least but are experiencing the worst effects of the climate emergency because of countries like the United States. 

Though the U.S. is 4% of the world’s population, we have emitted 25% of cumulative emissions. In fact, we have the highest emissions per capita. The top 10 largest emitters, especially the largest historic emitters, must do more to not only reduce their own emissions but also to finance and support the mitigation efforts of countries least responsible. This will allow us to help countries least responsible for the climate crisis with reparations for loss and damages, and resources for adaptation and resilience. 

For those whose countries are the historic emitters we have a responsibility to amplify not only how the climate crisis is impacting our own domestic communities, but the realities of our sisters from countries least responsible but most impacted, from Kiribati, Fiji, the Bahamas, Tuvalu, Mozambique, Samoa, the Philippines, Kenya, Sri Lanka, to name a few.

While the 10 largest emitting countries must take drastic actions, all countries and all people can be part of turning the tide on the climate crisis.

READ: A Lovesong for the Longhaul: UMC Pastors on Hurricane Ida Aftermath

One concrete step we can take is to reach out to our government leaders and urge them to commit to eliminating fossil fuels as energy sources and to transition completely to clean renewable energy sources like wind and solar. We need to urge them to transition from fossil fuels to just energy sources that do not cause harm or cause communities to relocate because of rising sea levels. Instead, we can envision and advocate for a world where there is equitable energy access, where women are not dying because of smoke inhalation from cooking or being raped while getting water or kindling. We can advocate for an energy economy that is not extractive but just; where we are stewards, not pillagers, of creation.

Advocacy can take many forms, and it can occur amid a global health crisis. In April 2021, more than 300 United Methodist Women leaders from 40 states had 80 visits with Congressional members. Our group urged our elected leaders to quickly transition to renewable energy that is centered on justice and equity. We also met with car manufacturer Ford at their headquarters and dealerships. Some members even went to Chevron’s headquarters and met with staff. In each meeting, we urged a just transition to renewable energy.

At the personal and communal level, we can determine our carbon footprint by using an online carbon footprint calculator. Good calculators where one has a large carbon footprint and avenues for modification. Advocating for energy policy change is key, but I can also turn off the lights, replace lightbulbs with LEDs, ride public transit, compost, eliminate waste and plastic use, and reduce the amount of meat I eat on a weekly basis.

Another crucial thing we can do is to talk about not only the climate crisis but the climate solutions with our family friends, schools, colleagues, companies, and our government leaders.  

The current climate crisis is doing incredible harm to God’s creation. Women of faith have an opportunity to be like the widow in the parable with the unjust judge. The widow did not get justice because the judge thought she was right, but because she was persistent. Even when we get discouraged, we should persist in demanding that our government officials, fossil fuel companies, churches, and communities do their part to address the climate crisis. In the process of calling nations to account while also reducing our own emissions, we have the possibility to do as John Wesley advised: to do no harm, to do good, and care for creation.

It took such courage for that woman to let us into her house. Over the years, I’ve known many women that were too ashamed of their space to have company. To them, their home was a reflection of themselves: a three dimensional resume of their success or failure as a homemaker. As this young mother held her son, his inability to gain weight was a constant reminder to her of her failure as a mother. Allowing us into her home was an exercise in humility. 

I knew the women from bible study only through our weekly discussions. We were a ragtag group of displaced women that shared in common a love for the Word of God. The instant we crossed the threshold into that young mother’s home, we saw the character and strength of each other in a new way. One woman mentored this young mother through strategies of a functional kitchen while the rest of us grabbed cleaning supplies and jumped in. We picked up things that were cringeworthy without cringing. We knew someone’s life was at stake, and whether she felt worth fighting for could be communicated in a glance or gesture. She was worth fighting for. 

Standing in the midst of that house in chaos felt like a reflection on the chaos of my soul over the past few years. After being very active in our church, I had hit a season of exhaustion and burnout. I hunkered down and tried to regroup in isolation, but somehow it hadn’t worked. It’s hard to heal in a vacuum. I knew I needed help, but it was the kind of nebulous help that is hard to ask for. Most of the time I wasn’t even sure I knew what I needed. In an act of desperation, I slowly began to give up control over knowing, and began to let Jesus deep-clean the deepest rooms of my soul. I began to realize that he was fighting for me, and that he never stopped, never looked away, never threw up his hands in disgust when I failed again or forgot the reality of my truest identity as his child. I am loved. I am worth fighting for. 

We all come with baggage. We all have hidden closets—physical, spiritual and emotional—that we wouldn’t want someone to walk into and start cleaning. It takes courage to ask for help, and it takes courage to step into each other’s lives. More importantly, it takes faith to believe that Jesus has already stepped into ours.

Living life in relationship with others always seems to have a bit of chaos about it: the stepping into a project without the whole picture, signing up to do your part joyfully to the best of your ability. So often we want the big picture before we jump, and as a general rule most of us like to have a plan with few detours. It takes courage to face the chaos and jump in.

READ: Blessing a Cultural Threshold

One of my favorite verses is Isaiah 61:1-4, which Jesus read in the synagogue at the beginning of his ministry:

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, God has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prisons to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that God may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, and the devastations of many generations.”—Isaiah 61: 1-4  Luke 4:18,19

About four months ago, I was asked to be the Executive Director for the Desens House, a long term residency program for women overcoming addiction. In many ways this is the project I’ve been waiting for my whole life. It’s stepping into intentional hope, relentless optimism, and faith everyday as we come up with ways to remind each woman that she is worth fighting for. The road isn’t easy. Sometimes I think people mistake my passion and optimism for naive idealism. It’s not. I know this is a tough gig. But I also know that our God can enflesh dry bones and bring the dead back to life. Our God is a God of the miraculous. I see the Desens House operating in the space between verse 1-4 of Isaiah 61, coming alongside and empowering generations of women to build back the “ancient ruins of their lives and families.” In many ways it feels like standing on the precipice of the impossible and yet, that’s where faith happens. 

I am humbled by a Jesus that makes all things new. A Jesus with his hands in the mess of our every day lives calling us all into resurrection. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life—the roadmap for redemption.

For more information about the Desens House, see Dean’s contact information below. 

As I reflected on the Gallup findings and on the many conversations I have had with my now adult friends about why they left the church, I was reminded of my youth group days in evangelicalism. One of my major take-aways from that time was that leaving the church, even leaving the denomination, was one of the worst sins you could commit as a Christian. When I was in youth group, I would attend city-wide youth conventions in these massive sports arenas, and the head of the denomination’s youth sector would speak to all in attendance. Over a loudspeaker with concert-type lighting and instrumental music filling the space, he would talk to us seriously about how so many people were leaving the denomination and the church. They would go off to college or become adults, and the faith they cared so passionately about in their youth apparently did not matter anymore. He implored us to stay the course, to stay committed, and basically told us not to become another Gallup statistic. His tone was not exactly inviting. It felt like a reprimand from a parent, only he was reprimanding the wrong people. We were the ones that stayed; the prodigal was not in the arena.

I did end up leaving. In fact, you could say I ran out of that denomination the second I could. It did begin my first week of college, so the speaker in my youth had something right. I remember it distinctly. I knew a friend from my youth group days who lived in the same city as my college, so she offered me a ride to a church service. I went, and halfway through the sermon, I regretted doing so. The preacher kept going on and on about how I did not need to understand my faith, I just needed to believe. I see an importance for faith in the Christian journey, but in that moment, as a first-year college student, I needed some understanding. I was away from home from the first time. I was trying to create my understanding of self beyond my parents, my upbringing, and my hometown surroundings. My faith too needed to break away and become its own.

READ: Welcome to Wilderness Church: Where Stubborn Faith Makes Resurrection Possible

As I look back, though, the real reason I left that denomination was not the constant reprimands. Rather, as I pictured life in that church as an adult, there really was no place for someone like me. From a very early age, I have always loved having a voice, taking charge, and filling a leadership role. While the denomination in which I grew up affirmed women in ministry, it was so rare to see them. The church board only had ever had two women serve. (When my mom became the third, she convinced them to do something daring and bring on a second woman to serve while she was still serving.) If you were not married or didn’t have children, there really wasn’t a whole lot of opportunity for leadership or ministry. You would also hear sermon after sermon where almost every anecdote consisted of a nuclear family. If I stayed, I believe I would have been in a holding pattern until I had a family and even then, my chances for leadership were few and far between. But by the time I graduated college, I had no interest in sticking around. I look back now and realize that I worshipped in a church that was white with so very few exceptions when I didn’t live in an all white town. I also realized that while that church would have very happily married me to my future spouse, it would have rejected my younger brother for wanting to marry a man.

I am grateful I did not leave the church entirely, however. I found a church early on in adulthood that celebrates all gifts and all people. I kept being amazed any time I got the chance to do something I never saw in the church growing up. I received training as a lay preacher, and week after week, I got to hear sermons from women and members of the LGBTQ and BIPOC communities. I was asked to serve on the church council, even being single and under the age of 45. I was then asked to lead the church council, as a woman and a millennial. In all these spaces of leadership, I would always feel this immense amount of gratitude for the support to use gifts of leadership, writing, and speaking in service to something I have always loved so dearly. Despite her flaws, the Church has been such an important space for me in my life.

As an adult, I would visit the church I grew up in with my parents when I came home for holidays. The pastor made small talk with me one Sunday, asking about my life in Pittsburgh, the city I moved to for grad school. I told him I was doing well and that I had found a church. He asked about it and when I told him about it, he said very succinctly, “Well the mainline church is dying.” I was somewhat taken aback. I hadn’t left the church. I had just found a church where I felt like home. But in his mind, I’d gone. He couldn’t celebrate with me the joy I had found somewhere else. I can’t speak to whether any denomination or category of churches is dying or not. But I do know I love the home that I have found; and that as a member of my church, I want to do what I can to help it thrive.

I wish though I could go back to that young girl, sitting in that big arena with all its grandeur. I wish I could invite her to a quiet, less intense space, and tell her she may leave the church, but it will never mean she left the faith. Faith can and will evolve. The church can fail us, and we can choose to leave it and that does not make us spiritual failures. I would tell her God’s love is deep and wide, like the children’s song tells us. God’s love reaches out to me with a love and a peace that pushes me forward, instead of pressuring me to stay where I am if it is not the right place for me. I had to leave, so that I could stay.

“But you only work part time?”

“So how many hours does that take you away from home during the week?”

“Oh, you breastfeed? I figured you didn’t do that since you worked.”

“Is your husband okay with you making more money than him?”

These are just a sampling of the questions I have been asked over the past twenty years. A pastor’s wife who continued to pursue my own career even while I had children perplexed many in my evangelical community—including some of my college students. One student was particularly vocal. He was theologically conservative and expressed concern about my choice to continue teaching as a wife and mother (especially as a pastor’s wife). He challenged me so often in the classroom that I took to rewriting lecture material, trying to minimize his disruptions. I wasn’t successful. Once the student suggested that I clear my teaching material with my husband before presenting it to my classroom. This both angered and unnerved me. It angered me that he thought it appropriate to suggest that I submit my teaching materials to the authority of my husband. It unnerved me because every semester I worried about how my vocation as a female professor clashed with conservative Christian expectations about female submission.

When I read Russell Moore’s attempt to distinguish “Christian patriarchy” from “pagan patriarchy,” the experience I had with this student came to mind. According to Moore, “pagan patriarchy” encourages women to submit to all men, while “Christian patriarchy” only concerns wives submitting to their husbands. Moore has softened his discussion of patriarchy over the years, emphasizing in his 2018 book that, in creation, men and women “are never given dominion over one another.” Yet he still clings to male headship. While he writes that “Scripture demolishes the idea that women, in general, are to be submissive to men, in general,” he explains wifely submission as cultivating “a voluntary attitude of recognition toward godly leadership.” Thus his general attitude remains unchanged: women should not submit to men in general (pagan patriarchy), but wives should submit to their husbands (Christian patriarchy).

Nice try, I thought. Tell that to my conservative male student. Because that student considered me to be under the authority of my husband, he was less willing to accept my authority over him in a university classroom. No matter how much Moore wants to separate “pagan patriarchy” from “Christian patriarchy,” he can’t. Both systems place power in the hands of men and take power away from women. Both systems teach men that women rank lower than they do. Both systems teach women that their voices are worth less than the voices of men. Moore may claim that women only owe submission “to their own husbands,” not to men “in general,” but he undermines this claim by excluding women as pastors and elders. If men (simply because of their sex) have the potential to preach and exercise spiritual authority over a church congregation but women (simply because of their sex) do not, then that gives men “in general” authority over women “in general.” My conservative male student considered me under the authority of both my husband and my pastor, and he treated me accordingly.

Christian patriarchy does not remain confined within the walls of our homes. It does not stay behind our pulpits. It cannot be peeled off suit coats like a name tag as evangelical men move from denying women’s leadership at church to accepting the authority of women at work or women in the classroom. 

READ: Jesus Invited Women to Take Their Place

Patriarchy by any other name is still patriarchy. Complementarians may argue that women are equal to men, as does the Southern Baptist Convention’s 1998 amendment to the “Baptist Faith and Message”: “The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image.” Yet their insistence that “equal worth” manifests in unequal roles refutes this.

Historian Barry Hankins quotes the “key passage” of the controversial statement approved at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) meeting in June 1998: “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.” The claim is certainly that women’s work (from housework to childcare to answering phones) is valuable and worthy, but when that same work is deemed unsuitable for a man to do, it reveals the truth: women’s work is less important than men’s. Moreover, just as men are demeaned for doing women’s jobs (which often come with less authority and, consequently, lower pay), women are restricted from doing men’s jobs (which garner both more authority and higher pay). In this way, Christian patriarchy models the patriarchy of mainstream society. Our pastor valued the work of a woman less than the work of a man, just as the economy of my hometown values the work of women less (almost $20,000 per year less) than the work of men. Russell Moore is right to prefer the term patriarchy because, realistically, it is the right term to use. But he is wrong to think that the Christian model is different.

Indeed, regarding the treatment of women throughout history, the present looks an awful lot like the past. How little the wage gap between women and men has changed over time both frightens and fascinates me as a medieval historian. Judith Bennett describes this startling reality: “Women who work in England today share an experience with female wage earners seven centuries ago: they take home only about three-quarters the wages earned by men. In the 1360s, women earned 71 percent of male wages; today, they earn about 75 percent.” This historical continuity—what Bennett calls the “patriarchal equilibrium”—lends superficial support to the idea of biblical womanhood. When examined carefully, however, the historical origins of patriarchy weaken rather than bolster the evangelical notion of biblical womanhood. A gender hierarchy in which women rank under men can be found in almost every era and among every people group. When the church denies women the ability to preach, lead, teach, and sometimes even work outside the home, the church is continuing a long historical tradition of subordinating women.

Content taken from The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr, ©2021. Used by permission of Baker Publishing www.bakerpublishinggroup.com.

1. Leader Representing God—where leadership represents the highest spiritual authority, creates an atmosphere of forced immaturity among members and a culture of distrust for outsiders or naysayers

2. Spiritual Bullying—where ex-members are criminalized either overtly or subtly and members are robbed of the right to be themselves

3. Acceptance via Performance—where one’s worth is measured entirely on very specific productivity that serves the leadership and leadership’s vision

4. Spiritual Neglect—where an environment of omission is fostered, disallowing needs (emotional, physical, relational) to be met by outsiders if at all

5. Expanding External/Internal Tension—where dissonance between inner and outer realities continues to increase

6. Manifestation of Internal States—where that dissonance eventually substantiates through physical and mental maladies

Abuse is a big word. It is charged, laced with nuance, riddled with consequence, one way or another. Like the word trauma, we hear of it a lot these days. And as a writer, as a Christian, I am very careful about where I use them both, not because I think they are insignificant. But quite the opposite. I think they are words that represent grave realities deserving of our utmost responsibility, respect, and care. I enter into this record neither lightly nor rushed.

It quickens my breath to think about it. We were sitting in a circle comprised of my husband, my coworker, all of the executive leaders (older, male, white), and me. I’d anticipated some form of caucus would follow the letter I’d written and delivered at the end of the previous week, but the mental preparation hadn’t lessened my anxiety. It had taken me months to gather my thoughts and even longer my nerves.

For years in the environment of this employment, Matthew 18:15-17 had been drilled into me as the only appropriate (biblical) form of conflict management. (“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you.”) I was already breaking the rules by writing a letter, and to multiple people at that. But I had tried the face-to-face conversations, and those weren’t working. They left me muddled, interrupted, gas-lit, and embarrassed of my own emotions. If we were going to move forward relationally, professionally, socially, and spiritually (all areas of my life that had become intertwined within this work and community), then I had to share my truth in a way that allowed me both time to think and to speak.

READ: Silence: The Facilitator of Clergy Abuse

I had questions and concerns which were becoming increasingly impossible to ignore. Male employees under female directorship were being paid larger amounts; grant-funding wasn’t being delegated to the needs for which we’d written the grants; we were periodically being asked to go without paychecks (a reality that had been included as a possibility in our original contracts) and praised in the public square for our perseverance despite the sacrifice. Furthermore, protected always was a culture of optimism, and by that I mean, one devoid of challenge to those in power. To convey any of these issues as upsetting or inconvenient was to “sow a root of bitterness” into the otherwise content ministry body.

“You will never, ever accuse this leadership of sexism ever again. I won’t tolerate it,” the founder demanded with a wagging finger and harsh tone as we sat in my kitchen in the round, walking through my letter point by point. “I marched with women!” he scolded.

Today, it is darkly comedic, the irony of this moment. At the time, it was crushing. Who was I to propose such a thing? Had I witnessed any of what I thought I’d witnessed? 

A few years before, we’d found each other (this faith-based nonprofit and I) at a time when I was most vulnerable—an ideologue in her early twenties deconstructing the capitalist nature of institutional Christianity and hungry for holistic, communal purpose. I was in transition or wanted to be, aching for mentoring and support. They were a light illuminating a different kind of path, a different kind of faith, and how it functioned in the real world.

“I used to get up and go to work,” one of their second-career employees would say, “now I get up and come to life.” It was Utopian, this body of people whose careers and religions and friendships were all fed by the same source; I all but begged to be a part. So, I paid for inclusion with the currency of my ideas and network and became an extension of one person’s quest for their vision to be the one thing for all people. For years, I invited it into every part of my life, welcoming the entanglement, rehearsing the answers and systems of the lifestyle, cloning myself into a continuation of the leadership for whom I now represented hope for the organization’s future.

But there’s only so long you can survive with the internal dissonance of inner calling and outer manipulation.

The first writing workshop I was ever selected to attend during my tenure there should have been grand news to all those who cared for me. It was refining for my craft, encouraging for my vocational network, launching for my confidence, and threatening for my mentor. I sipped a La Croix on the couch of a monastic apartment, crafting an essay late into the night that would be workshopped at the next day’s round-table when my phone rang.

“I’m sorry to bother you so late, but the Holy Spirit has just told me to tell you not to sign anything. Do not sign anything while you’re there,” the urgent voice of my boss said.

Caught off-guard, I offered comfort, “There’s nothing to sign here. This is just a workshop. I’m learning from other writers.” When I hung up the phone, I noticed several texts had preceded the call: “DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING.” Upon returning to my city, I was whisked away to a lunch where I was told that the nonprofit would actually be starting a publishing house soon through which I could share all of my work. And that, if I so chose, of course, I could assign a percentage of the profits to the organization since most of my stories came from shared experiences within it anyway.

That was probably the first time I experienced a flag without the compulsion to coat it with internal excuses. Something was wrong, and now I could see it.

A breakdown ensued, first of my body; because a breakdown of my external reality would have meant the loss of everything. Every single part of my existence had been kneaded deeply into the milieu of the organization. To walk away from the work would equate to burning down my metaphorical house while I sat inside, weeping for what could have been. I thought maybe I would have a heart attack by age thirty, the stress was so consuming. But eventually, the cost of staying was at least equal to if not more than the cost of leaving. And, with much peace and gutting sorrow, I lit the match.

I’m told that my leaving, and therefore the total erasure of the program I and my friends had built, was excused by my eight-month-old child. She just couldn’t handle the work and motherhood.

Ward writes, “Spiritual abuse is a misuse of power in a spiritual context whereby spiritual authority is distorted to the detriment of those under its leadership. It is a multifaceted and multilayered experience that includes acts of commission and omission, aimed at producing conformity. It is both process and event, influencing one’s inner and outer worlds and has the potential to affect the biological, psychological, social and spiritual domains of the individual.”

With every year that passes since I began extricating my life and faith from the organization, I understand the experience with a little more clarity. But what colors most my evolving understanding is not an increased demonization of my former superiors, but rather a good, long look at how easy it was to become like them—to adopt a spiritual hierarchy, to mimic the enforcement of the rules onto those considered “under” me, to shame challenge and truth as “divisive.” Was I spiritually abused? Maybe you have an answer. Did I experience and further a culture of spiritual abuse? I’m willing to say yes.

Abused power is tricky when it comes wrapped in love and brilliance. We want so badly as people to be connected, to find the answer to all of our problems, to employ the systems that can fix everything when it feels like the world is burning. Because of this, especially if we’re vulnerable, it is easy (exciting even) to hitch our wagon to a wave of hope without the aid of critical thinking, no matter the cost.

But utopia and hell are just one refusing-to-be-challenged leader away from one another. It’s crucial to recognize this along with our susceptibilities as humans to jump headfirst into a persuasive person’s promise—especially those who fuel their influence and decisions with God, creating a manipulative atmosphere for those who wish to please God. And why is this important right now?

As a country, as a Church universal, we are in transition or want to be, aching for guidance and support. We are starved for a light to illuminate a different kind of path, a different kind of faith, and how it functions in the real world. We are vulnerable, but we cannot be desperate to the point of turning a neglectful eye to injustice wrapped in the language of faith. The result of this level of unchecked desperation can and has invoked the creation and perpetuation of silencing cultures, absolved maltreatment for the sake of “the cause,” and spawned trauma that is both deeply embedded and often unrecognizable to those stuck. We see this in the unwavering loyalty to political affiliations and the church’s countless sexual misconduct stories of #churchtoo.

But if the abuse of power is historically difficult to identify (and it often is, at least at first), how do we know what to look for? We need leaders who are willing to tell the truth, who—as Ward outlines—respect individual autonomy, tolerate and encourage critical thinking, recognize and are sensitive to power issues, accept the individual due to intrinsic human worth, seek to incorporate healthy bio/psycho/spiritual integration, and recognize and acknowledge their own personal flaws and limitations. And we need community members who are willing to invest in them rather than in the narcissistic megalomania of those who willingly trade integrity and humility for vision and power.

We need people who love the world more than they love themselves. Furthermore, we need people who love the world enough to not just better it but also release control over it. For to love your neighbor as yourself is to lay down your life, not enforce the duplication of it onto another.

For the bleeding woman who was plagued by her condition for twelve years, he stopped a crowd to acknowledge her faith and healing (Luke 8:43–48). After Jesus asked who touched the hem of his garment, she courageously spoke up to tell what had happened, even though her actions—an unclean woman grasping on to a man, a rabbi no less—broke the law and could have led to grave consequences for this already suffering woman. Jesus called her, a woman ostracized by her community due to her condition, a “daughter.” She was not the dirty, unclean woman. She was a daughter. For the woman quite literally bleeding to death, he stopped the bleeding and honored her faith. He made space for her voice and her experience. He welcomed the interruption to engage a woman in need, and he still does.

READ: Silence: The Facilitator of Clergy Abuse

For the woman at the well, a Samaritan woman who sat alone at Jacob’s well at perhaps the hottest hour of the day, Jesus dismissed the practices of the day (Jews not associating with Samaritans, men engaging women only if their husbands were present), recognized her losses, and offered what a husband could not (John 4:1–42). In a time when a husband represented a voice, a place, security, means, and protection, she had none. Yet after her encounter with Jesus, she dropped her bucket and raised her voice to all who would listen to tell of the man “who told me everything I ever did” (4:39). Because of Jesus, this woman spoke up to the very people she was likely trying to avoid.

Not only did Jesus give women a voice, he protected them— their bodies and their reputations. For the woman caught in adultery, he first and foremost chose to protect her (John 7:53–8:11). He did not wait until he got to the bottom of the issue, finding out exactly what she had done, if she had been seduced, if there was a power imbalance, or if she started it. Ensuring her safety came first. After he wrote in the sand and dared others to cast the first stone, he spoke to her compassionately. He was not another man who would take advantage of her. Although Jesus told her to “Go and sin no more,” he did not condemn her. He was the man who protected her.

Instead of doubting women and listening only to men in power report the narrative, Jesus models for us all a response to a woman with a truth to tell who has been hurt by another and harmed by her community. He doesn’t ask the woman caught in adultery if she asked for it, what she wore, or if she led on the man she slept with. He doesn’t accuse the woman at the well of internal brokenness that invited desertion by men who would care for her. He doesn’t dismiss the bleeding woman because of her social standing. To all these women and more, he dignifies their experiences, offers compassion, and displays to onlookers the care and respect she is worthy of. We can do the same.

We are told by those bent on hiding misconduct and by fear in our minds that silence in the midst of misconduct appears to be the smartest and arguably the most spiritual response, but Jesus makes it clear by his actions, words, and care for women that silence is not spiritual; it’s destructive, isolating, and anti-gospel.

Content taken from Prey Tell by Tiffany Bluhm, ©2021. Used by permission of Baker Publishing www.bakerpublishinggroup.com.