Sheila Gregoire--She Deserves Better is here!
@sheilagregoire
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Healthy, evidence-based, biblical commentary on sex & marriage. Host of the Bare Marriage podcast. Author of The Great Sex Rescue & She Deserves Better.
Belleville, ON
Joined October 2008
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Last Seen Profiles
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SBC Megachurch pastor Josh Howerton's advice to women about the wedding night:
"Stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear, and do what he tells you to do."
@_jaystringer
and I unpack this on Episode 230 of Bare Marriage!
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Do we need modesty rules to keep girls safe?
That's what many have been arguing in our ongoing debate about requiring girls to wear t-shirts over bathing suits.
What if I told you these modesty rules resulted in HIGHER rates of sexual assault?
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We're all bemoaning the celebrity Christian culture that led to the Ravi Zacharias & Carl Lentz (& so many more) sex & sexual abuse scandals.
But what if the problem is not just--or even mostly--celebrity culture?
What if it's the evangelical view of sex?
A thread.
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Modesty rules do not protect girls from sexual assault, because what a girl was wearing is irrelevant as to whether she will be targeted.
But telling both girls and boys that "boys can't help it" if a girl is dressed that way? That makes sexual assault more likely.
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Today I'm thinking about blanket training after watching
#ShinyHappyPeopleDoc
.
A few years ago a young woman raised in Gothard visited us with her little ones. She put them on a blanket while we talked and they stayed there.
I was amazed! Now I'm horrified.
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@reachjulieroys
Hey,
@reachjulieroys
, I did some digging, and the son of a different pastor at this church was sentenced to 15 years for sexually abusing 6 & 7 year old children at this church.
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We surveyed 7000 predominantly evangelical women for our book She Deserves Better, looking at how experiences in church as teens affected teens long-term.
We found that attending a church with strict modesty teachings was correlated with increased chances of sexual abuse.
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We need to become the kind of church where, if an adult man says that they find a 12-year-old’s developing body to be a stumbling block--
we stop handing the 12-year-old a sweater, and we start freaking out at the adult man.
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Repeat it with me:
Someone can be loved, accepted, and forgiven--
And still be totally disqualified from ministry.
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If you truly want to protect girls, make it clear that boys are responsible for their own behavior, and that girls' clothing is not to blame.
If you just want to allow men to get away with lusting after teen girls and assaulting them, then go ahead and impose modesty rules.
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Too many Christians think God is more concerned with men being in charge than with women being safe.
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Over the last week, I have seen many pastors argue that Bathsheba wasn't raped.
Here's why it matters to us: If pastors can't recognize rape in a story with such obvious abuse of power, how will they recognize it in their own congregation?
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We used this graphic to describe the relationship with what's going on in She Deserves Better, chapter 9, on modesty rules:
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Just your friendly reminder that Bathsheba wasn't up on the roof.
David was.
She was doing her ritual cleansing where she was supposed to be, with expectation of privacy. He was being a peeping tom!
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Could it be that many men who have risen to the top of evangelical institutions just wouldn't be that impressive anywhere else?
A 🧵.
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On further thought, blanket training is really anti-parenting.
Parenting is supposed to be about guiding your kids; responding to their curiosity, teaching them about the world, being involved with them.
This lets parents abdicate having to spend time with kids.
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Many girls in youth group were told to put the upper part of the seatbelt behind them and only use the waiststrap because the diagonal seatbelt would accentuate their breasts and cause men to stumble.
Men's comfort was more important than girls' lives.
@yetihuhn
@sheilagregoire
It was framed that way too. "The odds you get in a car accident is low, the damages you cause your brother? Eternal."
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Dear Christians:
If you realize an evangelical marriage/parenting book is harmful and you don't want it anymore, please don't donate it. It could hurt someone else. Rip the cover off and recycle.
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I mentioned this to my husband too.
When the Duggars/Gothard talk about faith in the Shiny, Happy People clips, they never mention Jesus.
If your church only talks about "The Bible" and "God" but never Jesus--run.
I've watched the first two episodes of Shiny Happy People, and what I've noticed (besides all the cringy, awful, icky stuff) is that JESUS is never mentioned. It's all rules and authority, authority, authority.
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I had a wonderful talk with
@PatrickKMiller_
today, which was so healing. It was a genuine apology, and those are very rare for me to hear.
He listened without defensiveness, and I felt very, very heard. I'm grateful.
After last week’s events, I wanted to self-reflect and talk with
@sheilagregoire
. I asked her to talk on the phone and I was deeply thankful that she not only kindly agreed to do so but also followed that up with a gracious, honest phone conversation. That's a model we should all
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In secular contexts, if a man were to announce loudly in public that he finds it hard to not fantasize if a woman is wearing yoga pants, and that the sight of her makes him lust--
he would be considered creepy & pervy.
In the evangelical world, he's considered honorable.
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If a megachurch pastor is plagiarizing his sermons, then perhaps it's time to admit that churches are hiring performers and actors, not pastors.
A 🧵
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Purity culture curriculum taught 8-year-old girls that their bellies were "intoxicating" to grown men, and so they had a responsibility to keep them covered.
The horrifying reality is that our modesty messages were actually pedophilic.
A picture of the "intoxicating" girl:
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15 years ago, the deacon's board at the Baptist church I led worship at debated for a YEAR about whether I was permitted to speak between songs, since I was a woman.
On Dec 31, my podcast aimed at men & women reached 1,000,000 downloads.
On March 15, my book to men launches.
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I wish male evangelical authors would stop talking about "pushing past a girl's boundaries" when making out, like that's normal.
Pushing past boundaries means pushing past her "no."
That means you are committing sexual assault.
Call it by its real name.
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When you've got more kids than you can handle, perhaps control becomes a defence mechanism (still wrong!).
But kids need our involvement and attention.
@sheilagregoire
Also breaks their spirit, equates curiosity with sin and punishment, and makes them distrust their violent caregiver who is supposed to LOVE them, setting them up for developmental trauma they'll probably spend years in therapy trying to make sense of bc it's a visceral memory.
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This isn't how the Bible defines sex. In Scripture, sex isn't just physical. It is intimate. It is mutual. It is pleasurable for both. It is not just about a man's "physical release", no matter what Love & Respect may say.
It's a beautiful picture of MUTUAL intimacy & passion.
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We often tell women: "Don't let being a mom get in the way of being a wife. Remember your husband still needs you. Don't get so busy with kids that you neglect sex."
What would happen instead if we told men: "In this season of life, being a dad is your primary responsibility."
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For those who don't know: Blanket training was when you'd put a baby on a blanket, and put something they want just out of reach off of the blanket. When they went for it, you hit them until they would stop trying.
This way babies/toddlers will stay put & not in your way.
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Another thing that struck me about Shiny, Happy People:
Michelle looks at JimBob with absolute deference. When he talks, she looks up at him and waits for him to finish.
Jill and Derrick speak as equals. She even takes the lead at times. She doesn't have to defer to him.
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The documentary makers of
#ShinyHappyPeople
did NOT have a responsibility to say, "not all Christians are like this."
That was not their responsibility.
That is OUR responsibility, to show by our actions and by the way we respond to the victims in this docuseries.
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Cindy, Robert Morris' victim, told many, many people of the abuse over the years. Ministry leaders, pastors, elders. No one did anything.
Then she told one pastor who directed her to
@WartburgWatch
-- and now it's national news and he's resigned.
Tell a journalist.
BREAKING: Days after allegations surfaced that he molested a 12-y-o girl,
@PsRobertMorris
has resigned from
@GatewayPeople
. The church claims it didn't know the victim was 12 years old or the length of the abuse. But victim says that's not true... 1/2
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One of the things I've had difficulty processing this year is that the particular Christian tradition I thought best revealed God, that I had given myself to so thoroughly, has been on the wrong side of just about everything.
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Hot take:
The evangelical world embraced the "Every Man's Battle" route to porn recovery (bounce your eyes away from women; try hard to not lust) because it didn't challenge them to grow emotionally or to view women as whole people.
They got to keep objectifying women.
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I want to say this carefully, but firmly:
There is reason to be worried for the wives and daughters of the pastors (and other men) who have been tweeting about how David didn't rape Bathsheba.
The women you know in real life may need your help.
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Josh Howerton has made a statement saying I took him out of context and it was "just a joke."
I have no problem giving the whole context and talking about this more, so let's play the entire clip and break it down, shall we?
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It's time for the evangelical church to realize that the way we talk about sex and lust and porn poses a danger to women, as the Atlanta shooting all too horrifically showed us--and 8 people, including 7 women, died for it.
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The megachurch pastors who have been caught and lost their positions--were they really EVER "strong men of God"?
I'm seeing people on social media saying that the devil targets strong men of God. I don't think that's what's going on.
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I think the conversation around divorce in the church would be healthier if, instead of labelling divorce as the evil, we labelled the things that LED UP to most evangelical divorces--
abuse, infidelity, chronic porn use, addictions--
as the real evil.
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For those asking about why we're saying that the "Jezebel spirit" comment by Mark Driscoll was a common sexist insult, let me explain:
"Jezebel spirit" is a misogynistic insult that is given towards any Christian woman who dares to speak up for women.
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It's your choice.
But I believe that she deserves better. And I hope you do too.
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Hot take that some Christians may find controversial:
I think you can marry the wrong person.
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Can pastors please stop salivating over women's bodies in their sermons?
So pleased that
@baptist_news
allowed me to write this piece about megachurch pastor Jonathan Pokluda and the woman with body parts "in all the right places."
We deserve better.
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Dear Christian Wives:
You’re allowed to want an orgasm, too.
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Why is it that when women want to be equal we're accused of being prideful and grasping for power,
but when men want to preserve male-only leadership in church and marriage, they're NOT seen as grasping for power?
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Does the MODESTY debate affect BOYS? You betcha.
One thing we often overlook in the debate about teaching girls to dress "modestly" is the effect this has on the male gender. When boys hear that girls must dress modestly so that boys don't lust, they hear three things:
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Josh Howerton preached this week that because Jesus offended people, it should be normal for pastors to say offensive stuff.
He fails to note that Jesus offended because He was fighting injustice, not because he was perpetuating it.
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@JG_Writer
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife. And then the dragons arrived.
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Yes, celebrity culture gave these men (and so many others) more access to victims, and it gave them cover for what they were doing.
But it was not celebrity culture that taught these men to objectify women. Our evangelical culture did that all on its own.
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Also, the number of men commenting "it was just a joke" is so telling.
Spreading messages that result in 2.5 times higher rate of vaginismus is not funny.
Marital rape is not funny.
Normalizing sexual coercion is not funny.
Not caring at all about female pleasure is not funny
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I’m having people tell me I should be kinder to John MacArthur and John Piper on social media, despite the horrendous things they have said, especially about abuse.
I think sometimes righteous anger is the kindest thing we can do, for everyone.
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Over the last two days it has ben so disheartening to have to convince multiple pastors, defending another pastor, that "jokes" from the pulpit about how women should essentially be sex blow up dolls for their husbands is not okay.
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I am very concerned with the number of young, evangelical influencers building platforms on relationship and marriage advice with no credentials who are spreading toxic messages.
We need to deal with celebrity culture. It's hurting our youth.
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If a pastor believes that a book on how Christian men and women can be friends causes a man to commit adultery, that pastor shouldn't be a pastor.
If you can't minister to the women in your congregation because you view the as threats, you're not a shepherd. You're a wolf.
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Church, when scandals like this happen, we need to stop being surprised. These men are acting out EXACTLY what our evangelical resources have told us--men need physical release; they can't control themselves without women's help; if they don't get help, they'l become predators.
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Did you know that swimming while wearing regular clothing increases the risk of drowning? And should never be done, especially in lakes with undertow?
Yet how many youth groups insisted girls wear t-shirts or shorts in the water?
Again--boys' comfort trumps girls' safety.
Many girls in youth group were told to put the upper part of the seatbelt behind them and only use the waiststrap because the diagonal seatbelt would accentuate their breasts and cause men to stumble.
Men's comfort was more important than girls' lives.
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This last month has reminded me all too vividly why women in the church deserve better.
And I'm exhausted.
Let's do a recap:
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Women just want to go to church without having to hear a pastor call his wife "smokin' hot",
or brag about how strange, hot women want to have sex with him, and how he needs to recite Bible verses to get the courage to say no,
or tell us how much all men struggle with lust.
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Do you know what's missing in the evangelical bubble? Women's voices, minority voices, & actual academics doing peer reviewed work in their fields of study (outside of complementarian theology).
They've spent their entire working lives with their views largely unchallenged.
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I am so tired of people portraying the story of Esther as a "beauty pageant" or a love story.
It was human trafficking. Thank you for this thread:
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"I personally know of cases of false allegations. Women do lie!"
I hear this constantly when issues of abuse come up in church.
Can I tell you about a time that I absolutely 100% knew of a case where a woman was lying about abuse? Absolutely for sure knew that it was false?
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On International Women's Day, can we ask the biggest names in evangelicalism to stop endorsing books that blame pre-teen girls for their own statutory rapes?
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Why do evangelical male authors/pastors so often teach that women need to have more sex to prevent affairs--even when new research shows that's not remotely true?
I have a theory--and it's a controversial one.
A 🧵
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When we say to girls, "you need to understand that boys just have a hard time stopping," as if the problem is girls not understanding boys' sex drives, what we're really saying is:
"Boys have a hard time not raping you."
Let's get the language right.
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Remember: Most youth pastors start in their 20s. Are we really saying youth pastors assaulting 12-year-old girls is okay?
Because that's what those defending Robert Morris are saying.
When you explain a pastor’s sexual assault of a minor by saying, “It happened in his 20’s,” you’re giving permission to all the 20 year old men in your church to feel less bad about sexually assaulting women.
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Got that? Men naturally sin sexually.
God-given male sexuality and objectification of women are seen as one & the same. Our evangelical books tell men: God made you to objectify women & see sex as only physical. Your sexual sin nature is innately given. You can't help it.
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As someone who has returned from the hospital without a baby, can I ask us to be kind to Chrissy Teigen?
She needed others to know that Jack existed & mattered.
Criticize her, and other moms with empty arms will feel it.
Jack lived. He mattered. My Christopher mattered.
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I found Jesus in those churches. I still cling to Jesus. But those churches seem to have forgotten Him.
I'm grateful I found Him there. But now I have to learn to follow Him anew. It's freeing but also very scary at times, like I'm unmoored.
All I can do is look at Him.
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UPDATE: I will not be speaking at the Money & Marriage event at the Ramsey Center.
I pulled out this morning.
I am so sorry for pain that I have caused.
I appreciate people speaking so thoughtfully to me last night. It helped immensely.
Our team has had a policy that we will speak anywhere that will have us, as long as they don't censor us. But I will not advertise anything where I'm not hosting the event, because I can't necessarily stand behind everything or vet everyone.
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Dear evangelical church:
When does the welfare of the sheep get to matter more than the reputation of the shepherd?
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And until we start talking about a true biblical sexual ethic, we will continue to have these scandals on the front pages of our magazines--because they're only reflecting what's already happening in our bedrooms.
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Dear wife of a megachurch pastor, or wife of a celebrity Christian author:
I know many of you are in miserable marriages. I can read between the lines in your husbands' books.
If you ever need help, reach out to me. I will get you in touch with someone, totally confidentially.
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So
@R_Denhollander
left a church over abuse.
@BethMooreLPM
has just left the SBC over its treatment of women & abuse & race. I’ve left a denomination over its treatment of women.
Many of the women speaking up for justice have left churches over injustice.
Will churches learn?
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I believe that Josh Butler's book A Beautiful Union, which was excerpted by The Gospel Coalition yesterday, should be pulled. It is not a healthy view of sex. It is not a healthy view of God. It is not a healthy book.
However, I feel very deeply for Butler.
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In secular jobs, I was always respected. Men looked me in the eye. They valued my opinion.
In church settings I have been dismissed, mocked, ignored, belittled, and accused of making men stumble. And called a Jezebel.
As a Christian, this breaks my heart, and wounds me.
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If a pastor admitted to a gambling addiction, we'd keep the church credit card and offerings far away from him.
So why, if he admits to lust and says it's "every man's battle", don't we protect the women and teen girls?
Don't people matter more than money?
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Now that Josh Duggar has been indicted on possession of Child Sexual Abuse Materials (child porn), some depicting toddlers, we must confront the sexualization of children in evangelicalism.
Let's start with teenagers, and go all the way down to toddlers.
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A Rule We Should All Adopt:
Whenever a male pastor/author/speaker talks about how all men lust, or that yoga pants cause men to stumble, realize they are telling on themselves and treat them accordingly.
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To the women arguing FOR patriarchy on my Instagram:
One day, you may wake up to how much you've been used and abused.
On that day, I pray you remember this: It was not Jesus who preached patriarchy. It was your church.
I pray you won't feel Jesus was the one who hurt you.
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A reminder:
"Having sex" with your wife while she is sleeping is called rape in many Criminal Codes.
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A wife is not your rehab.
A wife cannot cure you of sexual addiction.
Your problems are your problems. Do not get married and then make them hers.
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In the renewed discussion about Josh Butler's book Beautiful Union, a theological discussion on sex, many men are upset at the women who are criticizing it.
So let me explain: Men have the privilege of seeing this book as a fun theological intellectual exercise. Women do not.
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To the women heading to a church tomorrow where there's a high likelihood the pastor will "joke" from the pulpit in a way that objectifies you or your daughters: Please know that not all churches are like this.
A 🧵
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The pastor who went viral objectifying a woman in a sermon--a "perfect" woman with "body parts in all the right places"--is indicative of a much larger problem in evangelicalism: We outsource our self-help advice to pastors who are not qualified.
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Why is it that people cling so tightly to physical force being necessary for rape to have occurred? Perhaps it's because if they admitted that lack of consent meant rape, it would illuminate coercive sexual dynamics in their own relationships.
That's what they can't accept.
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I'm constantly astounded at how LITTLE we in the evangelical church think it's reasonable to ask of men when it comes to sex, and how MUCH our evangelical resources think it's reasonable to ask of women.
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Go home.
“There’s no such thing as PTSD. There’s no such thing as OCD. There’s no such thing as ADHD.”
— John MacArthur
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God did not make sex to be a male entitlement and a female obligation.
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Thinking of Focus on the Family warning that the title to the movie “Turning Red” has an “echo of menstruation.”
I’d like to write a Spoken Word called “Echoes of Menstruation.”
Anyone got any good lines that we need to include?
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Tim LaHaye, in the Act of Marriage, echoes this: "Women must cultivate the problem of visual lust, whereas men almost universally must cope with the problem just because they are men."
So if men can't help it, what is the solution?
Women! It is women who keep men from sinning.
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What happens to your daughters if you stay in a church with toxic teachings about women?
All the benefits of church attendance disappear, & they would have been better off, in terms of future outcomes, not going to church at all.
Seems relevant to reiterate our findings today:
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Just a reminder:
@RevKevDeYoung
criticized
@bethallisonbarr
, saying she wasn't in a position to critique patriarchy because she was an abuse victim.
To DeYoung, the only people who can talk about patriarchy are those who benefit from it.
That's not how it works, Kevin.
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And yet, if you had asked me a decade ago if I had known about specific instances of false allegations, I would have absolutely agreed that I had.
I was wrong.
Could it be that you are too?
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After surveying 20,000 predominantly Christian women, we know what evangelical messages mess sex up for women--and how to give healthier ones. Check out The Great Sex Rescue--and let's change the evangelical conversation about sex.
#greatsexrescue
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I just want to encourage all Christians who feel called to counselling:
You are needed. That is wonderful.
Please choose the licensed route, though! The world needs Christians who are properly trained in evidence-based therapies. It takes longer, but it’s worth it.
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Women: When men tell you who they are, believe them.
When men say that women's dress is a huge, huge issue--so much so that they won't go to a beach with their kids--they're telling you who they are and how they will view you.
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If you think this is funny, you may want to ask the women in your life if they find you safe and kind.
And be humble about it, and just listen.
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@ostrachan
Awesome! So if it’s rewarded by God, then you must be doing a lot of these too, then, right?
Like David (praying), Jesus (preparing meals; teaching children), Isaac (made Joseph a coat of many colours), Aquila (supported his wife as she taught Apollos)!
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Please don't get defensive about how Christianity is portrayed in Shiny, Happy People.
I have heard people get upset about the documentary, or stress that we need to discern what is Truth from God's Word, and hold on to that.
That is exactly what IBLP would say.
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Why, in the church, are women accused of "grasping for power" when we merely want to share power with men,
but men aren't accused of "grasping for power" when they want to keep it all to themselves?
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