86: How the Church Gaslights Women with Dr. Andrew Bauman

I recently came across the content of Dr. Andrew Bauman, a licensed mental health counselor whose mission is to provide high-quality experiential, narrative-based psychotherapy from a Christian worldview. His writings display eye-opening perspectives on religion and relationships that we aren’t used to hearing from a male Christian leader. I’m joined by Dr. Andrew to discuss how the church gaslights women and much more. Join us!

Show Highlights:

●      Dr. Andrew’s path from Southern Baptist Church pastor to therapist as he deconstructed his faith and faced stark realizations

●      The big, red-flag problems in what some churches teach and practice about women, leadership, sexism, and abuse

●      The facts about sexism and abuse experienced by women in the church

●      “How we are in our sexuality is how we are in our spirituality.”

●      Many churches demonstrate benevolent or ambivalent sexism.

●      Thoughts and feelings about I Timothy 2:11-12 being weaponized against women

●      Dr. Andrew’s thoughts on how the church weaponizes forgiveness

●      The correlation between pornography and violence against women

●      The biblical account of Jesus and the woman at the well—and how He broke decades of prejudices and sexism in His own culture

●      Other examples in scripture of how Jesus valued women—and how the church “gets it wrong” so often

●      Understanding sexuality and consent

Resources and Links:

Connect with Dr. Andrew Bauman: Website/Blog/Resources, The Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health & Trauma

Recommended Reading: books by Natalie Hoffman, Sarah McDugal, and Sheila Gregoire

 Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.

• Transcript

  KC 0:05

  Hello you Sentient ball of stardust . Welcome back to struggle care. I'm your host, KC Davis. And today we are going to talk about when the church gaslights, women, I'm here with Dr. Andrew Bowman, Andrew, I came across your stuff. The other day, as I was sort of looking at things, I'm currently writing a book about relationships for myself, I guess I would consider myself a deconstructed Christian. And here's what kind of hit me as very different than the things that I've seen before. Like, I'm just kind of scrolling through your page about some blog posts. And the first thing that comes up is on weaponizing forgiveness. And I had literally just written a chapter about this. So I was like, Oh, interesting. And then, of course, the next thing is marriage, no matter what is idolatry, and then a picture of equality, and then abuse in the Protestant church and practicing full consent. And I mean, just kind of odd, you know, having boundaries against spiritual manipulation. And these are, to me very refreshing things to hear. But I think you would admit, it's not something we are used to hearing from someone who is a self proclaimed Christian, especially a male Christian leader.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 1:17

  Yes, no doubt, no doubt, yeah, I've kind of came at this conversation a little differently. I was a pastor before I was a therapist. And so I was on the other side, I was, in a sense, on the other team, part of the Southern Baptist Church are the boys club. And we kind of held the keys to the kingdom, right, I held the power, and I liked it. It felt good until I began my studies as a therapist and began to deconstruct my own faith until I began to deconstruct scripture more fully, and then realizing my own power, my own depravity, my own darkness, and then even undoing my own kind of sexuality in my own history, of kind of pornography, objectification of women, and then really lysing patriarchy, and how much my theology had been intertwined with subjugation of women. And just like, Oh, my, I've got a lot of work to do, I've got a lot of things I need to untangle, right, because who we are sexually is who we are spiritually, and vice versa. And so I had a lot of work to do. So that's kind of what I've been doing the last 20 years of my life kind of untangling all this, and then realizing, wow, like, I've done a lot of harm. I don't want to be an abuser of women, too. I want to be an advocate of women. So I came to this conversation kind of differently than most. But now I feel like yeah, it is my calling is what I do as a therapist, working with kind of at the intersection of abuse and unwanted sexual behaviors and all those forms, and currently finishing up a book called Safe church, how to guard against sexism and abuse, Christian communities. Well,

  KC 3:02

  that's really powerful. And I just, I have so many thoughts that kind of hit me all at once, you know, you say, you know, you came to it differently. But it seems so similar to some of my experience. I mean, I came to the church, I got sober when I was 16. So I didn't grow up a believer at all, I had this kind of intense spiritual experience when I was 16, while I was institutionalized, and I got sober after that, and then fell into a church and converted to Christianity. And that church was very heavy on the idea that, you know, Wives, submit to your husbands and things like that, and women shouldn't lead and all this, which was a weird position to be in with a woman of my personality, because I had done nothing but lead everywhere I went as a because that's my personality. That's just what always happened. And I went to seminary. And people underestimate how radicalizing conservative Seminary is because, you know, you get there and you expect these people to be like, yes, it says this, maybe like now we don't really know. Yep, no, it probably doesn't say that. And you have people at the church level that will take phrases or things like you know, okay, Wives, submit to your husbands. And they'll kind of, they'll explain it in a way where they'll explain away all the problematic parts of it. They'll be like, no, no, no, what Paul really meant is this. And look, see the Greek word for submit is this. And we can also see this over here is actually what it is, and they'll totally, like, redefine the word into something that seems more godly. And I was like, yes. Okay, that makes sense. I love it. Right? And then I get to seminary to like a real biblical scholar, who will be like, Nah, man, that's not what he meant. He for sure meant obey. He for sure meant you were property and you'll be like, Wait, so what does that mean? And like, and some of the more honest scholars would just like look at me with like, fucking No, dude. I don't know. I don't know what we do with that. And so it was a weird to come back to church and be like, Hey, guys, that's not what this means. And then also to see the fruits of that belief like I saw many families and couples go into counseling where the woman was just battered. I don't mean from her husband, I mean by the church tried to do church discipline, and she comes out wounded and leaves the church completely because they mistreated her. And they and I remember looking at this and being like, I can't help but think that, to be fair, the church that I would come out constantly and apologize, like the church I went to, I think, was trying to do the right thing. And then they would recognize they had been a little too rough in the handling. They hadn't done it right. And they come out apologize. And I remember just thinking like, you know, guys, like at what point are you going to realize that this may not keep happening over and over? If you were to put women in positions of leadership? Representation?

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 5:44

  Yes, no doubt, no doubt. So part of my studies for the last three years was I did a questionnaire of over 2800 women who worked in the church and their experience of sexism and abuse. And so we have now we have some hard data of what their experience is sexism abuse. And what I found was over 82% of women experienced some form of abuse, sexism or abuse in their church experience. 62% would not be surprised if they heard a sexist joke from the pulpit. Right? So this is I mean, this is we've got we've got a lot of those little stats now of like, this is rampid. Right. The stories that I heard from the in depth interviews that I did, are horrific, horrific, horrific. I mean, just nauseating stories of what these women experienced the comments on their bodies, right, the comments on basically just the sexualization of their bodies, blaming them, right for what they're wearing, versus the pastors dealing with their own sexuality, their own arousal structures, right, just blaming the women for their own arousal. These stories are everywhere. It is truly just absurd how women have been gaslighted blamed when this I truly believe this is a male issue, right? 90% of churches are led by men over 90%. And I

  KC 7:16

  think even the good ones, like I always tell people that, you know, I didn't go to a church that talked poorly about women from the pulpit, like they were doing all sorts of, you know, mental gymnastics to make these problematic thing, you know, to, okay, men need to be respectful, they need to be this, you need to be that. And so like, but I think that makes my stories important, because it's easy to say, oh, that's just the churches that are bad. That's just the churches that are abusive. And like, that's not that wasn't my experience, like my experience was like, I remember I had taken a trip to Guatemala City, because there was a partner church down there. And the pastor that was leading the, you know, the trip, he and I became friends. And we had really complementary personalities. We were joking all the time. We were friends, we really respect each other. I had, I think, more seminary experience than he did at that point, I did like five years of an M div, and then switched to a counseling degree. So I ended up being a therapist as well. And Guatemalan churches don't take the whole, like, women can't teach thing as seriously. And so they had asked me to put together a Bible study. I was living down there at the time. And I wrote this whole study this course on how to study the Bible. And he had come down on a trip, and he sat into one of my classes, and I asked him what he thought. And I'll never forget his response to me was, it was the material was so good. And your teaching is so great. And I just couldn't get past how uncomfortable I was being taught by a woman. And I asked him, Are you uncomfortable? Because you feel like you are doing something unbiblical, or are you uncomfortable, because it feels emasculating to be taught by a woman or something like that. And he was able to honestly say to me, like, No, it has nothing to do with with like, conviction. I just like it just feels weird and uncomfortable. And I don't like it. And I was like, oh, oh, I can never be actually respected in this environment.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 9:18

  Exactly. Exactly. And like your story is probably so many women's stories, and it sounds like you have been able to leave that behind and step into that. And yet so many women most likely have not had the strength that you had to leave that behind where you have now developed the platform and you've been able to speak and step into your glory and into your strength and yet so many women have had a battle for that to be seen to step into their goodness. And it's so sad. I mean, it's so

  KC 9:54

  you know what's interesting, though, is like I don't even think it was about me being strong. Like I will say this and this is like a weird thing to say, around this narrative, but like, when I married my husband, he was pretty devout, but he was not churched. He didn't like church, he didn't like any of that stuff. And he was really the one that gave me this picture of you can hold on to your faith, and walk away from this church nonsense, from the way this is being structured. And I think that that's has more to do with it than like strength because people don't have that lighthouse, people think that their choices are to leave the faith completely. Right, or shoot whole. And I think that's why it's so important that people like you exist, because, yes, there are lots of really great therapists out there that you can go to that will say to you and validate, like, I want to leave this faith or like this faith is toxic, and this, that and the other. And I'm not even saying that that's not true. And I think that people who deconstruct to the point of leaving the faith completely are valid. And there are people who don't want to leave the faith completely. And I think it's important that people stay in the faith so that they have somewhere to go holy.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 11:08

  Well, I remember when I was working at the church, and my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, came to the church to meet my pastor, buddies, and my wife was in seminary, at the time very strong, articulate woman, she comes meet everybody. And I remember my pastor buddy says, well, Andrew, don't you want more of like, you know, help me be somebody who will support your ministry, you know, your dreams? And I was like, huh, like, What? What? Why do I have to somehow like, why does she have to be less? Why do I have to be that insecure, I wanted an equal. I wanted a partner who will inspire me, right, and my wife, as her PhDs, written multiple books. And like, that's what I wanted, because that's what I wanted in my life, too. And I have that as well. Right? And so and we're both running very fast. So we both have a lot of like, that I wanted to be inspired by my partner, right? I didn't like I

  KC 12:02

  mean, that person said the quiet part out loud, didn't they? Because they'll say all day long know that men and women are equal. It's just a different role. But you are so right. I literally remember asking one time I was in a conservative seminary, there was a guy that I liked, just like as a friend. And I remember asking him, Hey, why is it that y'all never date? seminary students, you never date the female seminary students like you guys. I was like, I don't mean to be rude. But like, it seems like you guys tend to only date like, very under educated church girls. And he was like, well, think of it this way. This conversation will be etched into my brain forever. Andrew, if you play football for a living, and you just play football all day, you leave it out on the field, you don't really want to come home and play more football, you know what I mean? And I was like, Oh, you genuinely like, don't want a smart woman. Like, he was trying to say that, like, you know, I'm doing this intellectually rigorous, you know, thinking in theology, and then at another in the day, and like, I don't want to do that. I want that in a partner, which was like so, so hard for me because like, no matter what, like I am extroverted, I am a theater major. I have ADHD, like I was never going to be less intelligent, less out loud, less of a strong personality. And I love to look back on that now because my husband now is like Mensa level, freakish, Goodwill Hunting smart. Like so much smarter than any guy I've ever met. in seminary. We're talking like, graduate. first in his class from the top 50. In law school smart, like the smartest man I've ever met, like, find quadratic equations scribbled on napkins, smart, but like you. He wanted that he wanted a person that was equal to him. He wanted a person that could challenge him that he could admire. He didn't want to just be admired totally.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 14:01

  And I knew my darkness, meaning like, I have a very strong personality, right. And I know I can, in a sense, dominate, I can power over like, that's part of my darkness. I don't want to do that. I don't want to abuse my strength or abuse my power. I want someone who can take me on, because I have propensity to dominate or power over and I don't want to do that. So I want another strong personality that I know I won't be able to do that. Like if we know our darkness if we know who we are. In a sense, we can know like, Yes, this is what I need in my life. Because this I don't want to I want to continue to stay well, I need a good partner. I need a partner.

  KC 14:41

  I want to go back to something you said earlier that I kind of bookmarked is you. You said something to the effect of how we are in our sexuality is how we are in our spirituality. What was that phrase?

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 14:52

  Yeah, just basically, you know, we can't split ourselves. Basically, I feel like who we are sexually represents who we are in every area of life who we are spiritually, right. We can't be. We can't say, oh, I'm super healthy emotionally and then we're super unhealthy spiritually or I'm super spiritually healthy. And then you're super emotionally unhealthy. They all tie together, they all we can't just split, we try to, you know, somehow you have a secret sexual life and then we're you know this really good Christian like, No, we are a human we are one. We can't just split off,

  KC 15:29

  because the reason I bookmarked it is because I felt like you could hear it either way. Like it sounded like it could be similar to what people have heard where, where it's like, Hey, your sexuality is the most important thing about you, and it's gonna Damn you to hell and like, you cannot be a Christian if you don't have a certain sexuality, but I didn't think you meant it that way. But I did want to clarify, because I could hear somebody hearing it that way. Because what but what I hear you saying is you cannot mask your derision of half of the people of God under this like convenient theological structure, and think that's not going to affect your emotional spiritual health. Exactly.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 16:09

  Yes, well set exactly. No, I mean, the men that I work with who have hidden many of them have hidden sexual lives are cheating on their partners are having these extramarital affairs, and they're, you know, going into acting like they're great Christian guys. And, you know, they have these separate lives in their thinking that there's somehow these good guys, you know, and it's like, no, like you are what you hide your secrets do define who you are in your character. And so what does it mean to have full integrity is to be fully integrated? And so that's kind of what I mean in that. I mean, I did want to revisit what you're talking about around the sexism in the church, you know, what you're describing as hostile sexism? I think it's important. Basically, most churches do not demonstrate the hostile form of sexism and which is basically this blatant Am I remember this pastor in 2001, he made some comment about it was in the news, but some Melania Trump, he said something about, you know, every woman can't be a big trophy wife like Melania Trump, he said, it's from the pulpit. Anyway, some gross thing, like that's like just straight up hostile sexism, right? That's a debt. Most churches aren't going to do that. Right. And so don't just dismiss Oh, my church doesn't say that. So they're not sexist. Most many, many churches, I'm not going to say most, but they demonstrate a benevolent sexism or an ambivalent sexist. So there's a difference, or it's much more passive, which makes it much more difficult to for women to see or men to see, because it's not well, though, they're not basically, you know, actively hostile towards women. And so it's just important to define what that is. But if you're if women are not in leadership, or they're defining certain scriptures in a certain way that's blatantly sexist. And so there are a few problem scriptures that outright they seem quite sexist, outright. And I just wanted to address a few of those if you feel like that would be helpful to your audience, a couple of kind of the most problematic scriptures. So what kind of what I would like to do, if it would be helpful for you is to kind of as an emotional exercise, I just want to read a couple of these scriptures. And I just want you to kind of take a few deep breaths and then just we'll check in with your body. And I'd like just to see what you feel emotionally in your body physically, just from feeling these scriptures. Okay, take a few deep breaths in through your nose out through your mouth. We'll start with a classic one First Timothy 211 through 12 A woman is to learn quietly with full submission, I do not allow a woman to teach or to have authority over a man instead, she is to remain quiet. Take a deep breath, breathe out what has come up for you

  KC 19:01

  you what feelings or thoughts start with feelings

  betrayal but I think that's the biggest one and sadness.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 19:18

  If you read that, just in that context, right that I mean, that can be so weaponized, right? What do you feel like betrays you with that verse.

  KC 19:30

  I think one of the things that I always struggled with before I kind of found my space is that there is a cultural prescription from first century Judaism and before that shows up in the Scriptures about what makes a woman a worthy person, and it's always connected to her femininity, and her femininity is always narrowly described. I act as being submissive and quiet, and meek and gentle. And I have never naturally been any of those

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 20:10

  things. Which means and true, then somehow you had missed the mark on you. Yeah, being an authentic woman or something.

  KC 20:17

  Yeah. And it's one of those. It's like this deep shame that a man is wrong by what he does. But a woman is wrong by what she is. And I'm fundamentally undesirable as a woman. And so if you connect that to the large emphasis on marriage, and how we all need to be getting married, and that's like the most the best thing you could do, you know, okay, well, who's gonna want me if I'm not those things, and many of them didn't, because I wasn't those things. And so there's this weird disconnect of, okay, like, I got sober sitting on a bench in Oklahoma, staring out at the sunset, feeling as though even though I didn't believe in God, I was being visited by the presence of God. Like, that's what won me over was this, like tenderness? And this realization of, I feel so unworthy. And that's okay. Not even like, No, you're good enough. It's like, oh, mean, maybe you aren't, but you're so loved. And that love will make you feel enough. And it'll be okay to be not perfect. And it'll be okay to be not broken. And it'll be okay to be not, you know, perfect, like everybody else, or like everybody else. And so this felt experience of what it felt like to encounter God on my own terms, and in my own way, was radically different than the way that I encountered those scriptures that I encountered the men using those scriptures, to say, actually, the core of who you are, is undesirable. And

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 21:49

  there's, again, so much pain and grief in that for in your journey, I just feel the grief, and so glad that's not where you landed, like, that's not the end of the story. And

  KC 22:00

  like some of it, I feel this sort of like, you know, now that I have left the church, and, you know, I, it's funny, I became a stay at home mom, and just wanted to stay at home with my babies. And I ended up just starting a little tic tock channel and talking. And then all of a sudden, the TIC tock channel blew up, and I was talking about mental health. And then I wrote a book. And then I got a book deal with another, I did a TED talk. And then I did every time I walk on stage, I think back to my church, and I think you could have had this, I could have been doing this for you. But you didn't want it. There was no place for me to go. There was no place for me to go. And so now I'm doing it out here. Like there was no life in which I wasn't going to be on a stage. And I don't mean that egotistical. There was no life in which I wasn't going to have a loud voice and a strong leadership and an intelligence that wanted to speak to people, but you didn't want it.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 22:52

  And what Pastor What's your pastor buddy felt right of being uncomfortable is because you were so damn good, is because you were so skilled. And he was like, blown away and felt so insecure, most likely.

  KC 23:07

  And it's weird to feel like you've had like, people laugh all the time, I made a tech talk recently where I talked about how I pick and choose which parts of the Bible I believe are accurate. And everyone was like, Well, you can't do that. And I was like, no, no, what you need to understand is that everyone does the most like sola scriptura. We only go by the tax like they're doing it to like anyone who tells you that Paul didn't mean submit, to be obey is lying. Anyone that tells you that rape is not seen in the Old Testament as a property crime against a man is being disingenuous, that is what they that is what the author's meant. And so like we're all picking and choosing, I'm just going to choose to pick and choose by a different metric. And it's weird to have this like so anyways, but so people will always be like, so then why do you believe and like, then if you can admit how problematic the religion is, why do you still believe in a Christian God? And every time I answer, because I met him on a bench once I can no more make myself disbelieve in him, then, you know, probably somebody listening could make themselves believe.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 24:10

  Yes, it's well said. Well, sir, I just wanted to thank you for sharing that. I wanted to go back to the first Timothy passage that's so triggering has been used to weaponize so much. And just a few things I wanted to add there, which became part of the translation that is so screwed up that we've added the word quietly in that passage. Again, my Greek is not good has shuaa it actually doesn't mean silence. It means stillness. Do you see how different a peacefulness a stillness rather than silence, women should learn in still like to be still be still not silence, not silencing women for all time, but we should learn in stillness, the word authoritative mean authority, authority and is what the word means of solution. Translation Greek word, the origin of the word relates to abusing one's power or misusing authority. This is the only time this word was used in the Bible in relation to unique position that Paul was addressing directly in the letter to Timothy, basically, as you go on, and you see some of the early church, some of the contexts, a lot of scholars will say, a few women because the early church was going against the patriarchal culture, some of the women were so excited, they were finally being given a voice, they were going against the norm, that they were disrupting some of the early services, that there were a couple of women that were so pumped because they could finally have a voice. And they were being disruptive. And they were writing Paul was writing to that church. Hey, stop it, you two ladies that are so pumped that you can finally talk and be respected. And I love that version of that of like, Hey, you to women, like stop being so disruptive, go home, talk to your husbands about it, because you guys are equals, like, discuss it with them, versus silencing all women of all time to be quiet. Like I love that little shift of like, what if that is actually the intent of that original passage of just like, hey, you to women, and yet what we've taken it how it's been translated, I've like, all like, what if we actually have gotten it all wrong? But if we've got it all wrong, I love some of those unique scripture, just looking at scripture in a different way. And that Paul, though, yes, some of his things are a big, but like, I actually think some of the study that I've done in the early church women, the churches, I mean, if we just look at Jesus in the way Jesus engages women, it's so opposite of what the culture at that time does the women

  KC 26:49

  do you think? So? When I listened to that, and I've never looked into those words, it doesn't sound less sexist to me. Like, which is fine. And I think if I were to put that together with like, the other things that Paul says, even even when you can, like dial down the intensity a bit by like, understanding context, what I have found freeing is the idea that like, the idea that this man would, I mean, like your own story about how much unpacking you had to do from like, the cultural both inside and outside the church, like the cultural misogyny and the cultural patriarchy. Like we don't have any indication of Paul, we like doing that. Except around a few cases, you know, neither Greek nor do kind of thing neither man nor woman, like certainly within the equality before God. He does that.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 27:39

  And then, you know, other women, Juna Phoebe, calling them, co workers, you know, that sort of thing, basically fighting for equality. But yes, in other ways, he's calling them equals.

  KC 27:53

  Yeah, I just wonder like, is there not space for us to say, these words are important, they are important testimony. And there are probably ways in which culturally, we have progressed farther than Paul himself. Yep. And to be like, yeah, man, like that is what Paul said, here's the context. It's not quite what you think it is. But even so, what the hell does that have to do with you trying to shepherd the women in your church? Right?

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 28:19

  And could Paul have still been sexist? And could Paul still be awesome? Both can be true.

  KC 28:28

  So let me ask you about a few points that you have talked about before. And one is this idea of weaponizing forgiveness. Can you talk a bit about how forgiveness gets weaponized in church? Yeah,

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 28:40

  basically, it's so common, right? A wife will go to her pastor, and talk about an affair talk about the secret porn use talk about this. And the immediate response will be Have you forgiven him as somehow the deceptive sexuality, the line, the lack of integrity is not the issue. I'm not going to focus on the deception, or the lack of integrity. I'm going to focus on the forgiveness, I'm going to make it the woman's fault. Right? I'm gonna make it about what you're wearing. And make it rather than confronting the actual issue rather than confronting the man. Right? And I think there's a lot around that one Barna did a study 2014 That showed like 50% of pastors had some type of relationship with porn, which means they have some type of relationship with shame, most likely, because some most that's hidden. Right? So then what do they do instead of amid their own shame, they're going to project that onto women, right? Make it about modesty. Make it about other things, right? I'm not going to make it about my own shame and be honest with my own darkness, my own lies, my own lack of integrity. I'm not going to confront other men. I'm going to projected outward and blame women, I'm going to make women. I'm going to make women the issue. Right. So that's, you

  KC 30:05

  know, what's interesting about that, too, is that it doesn't even touch the idea that the vast majority of pornography that's put out specifically is misogynist, like, the amount of pornography that is very heavy towards infantilizing the woman towards humiliating or degrading a woman. All the way down to one of the things that I noticed is like the noises that women make in like 85% of pornography that is directed towards men are indistinguishable, from sounds of pain, and discomfort, and like non consensus, like, I have noticed that where I'm like, I don't sound like that during sex. Yeah, like, you know what I mean? Like this sort of little girl. I don't like it. But oh, the baby, I do, like, even all the way down to the kind of grunting that's used, well, is specific to this, like little girl being violated. And that can't not shape your view of women.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 31:12

  zactly. Exactly. So it creates a pornographic mindset. It creates what I call a pornographic style of relating, and Dr. Anna bridges at Arkansas. But University of Arkansas did a study that showed they studied the over 300 most popular porn videos, and they showed it was like 85% of them showed violence against women. Right? Out of those 85% 90% of those videos showed women either enjoying the violence, or being passive, being not like either, you know, either enjoying it or being complacent about the violence. Right. So what is that teaching us? Right? And then so back to the church, then you have church and pastors, some engaging in that, right. So of course, that's going to impact how they engage femininity, how they engage masculinity, how they talk about domestic violence, right? It's like all going to so you're not you're not hearing lots of sermons about domestic violence. And yet, one out of three women experience some type of sexual violence, one out of four women experience some type of domestic violence, right? And so but if it's coming from a male lens, while I'm not experiencing domestic violence, well, I've not experienced sexual violence at that rate. So I'm not going to talk about it. Right. And when you don't have the representation, when you don't have women in leadership, right. And so I remember one of the women from my study who was sexually abused by a church leader, you know, she went, as she was a teenager, she went to the church leadership to, you know, say, what happened, and the sexual abuse? And the pastor said, Well, you know, why did you seduce him? You know, you're 18, he's, you know, married and 40. But why did you have sex with him? You know, calling it six, it was raid, right? It was, what we have to name it, what it actually is, you know, have to begin to, that's why I'm so passionate about this work. So passionate about actually beginning to tear down some of these systems, calling it for what it is, and it's hard as a man, I have to do my own work. First, I have to do my own deconstruction around my own sexuality, my own issues, before I'm actually going to see it clearly. Elsewhere, I have to realize that I am part of the problem, right? I'm like, I objectify women, I have to clean that up inside of me my own pornographic mindset, like I have to do that work first before I'm actually going to have integrity and to work moving forward.

  KC 33:52

  Well, and it's the interesting part to me is that if you claim to follow Jesus, one of the most striking things about the story of Jesus is the inversion of the power dynamic between God and quote, unquote, God's subjects, right? And coming and being a servant and coming in washing feet and coming and saying, I'm not above you. And I feel like that is like the core from which all of this starts is that men can't see the power dynamic that they're operating in, and even men who are trying to be good and they're trying to be godly and they're trying to like I've known men to genuinely look at the Scripture and go okay, it says that it's wrong that he did this, but it also says that we have to forgive so like we have to be exactly what the Scriptures say like we have to we have to be and there's this sense of like, we're so obsessed with being quote unquote, biblically accurate, that if there was one woman in the room to just go, Can y'all just zoom the Fuck out for a minute. Like, you don't even see what you don't see, you don't see that like, even if it's in black and white, the application of that, in the context of a power dynamic changes what you should be saying and doing to people, which to me, is so brilliantly illustrated in the picture of Jesus. I mean, the amount of times, you know, like, my favorite story, of course, and whether you know, when it got added is debatable, but is the woman at the well, right? Jesus shows up, and everyone's got their stones, and it's like, well, she's an adulterer. And like, the text says, the Scripture says to stone her, and I love that, like, his response isn't like, no, no, that's not what it says. Or like, no, no, you've misinterpreted it. His response is like, yeah, that's what it says. And if you think following that text right now is the godly thing to do. Once you stone yourself idiots. I'm like, that seems so clear to me. Like why do you not feel that that would be the appropriate way to approach any text when it comes to looking at a situation and using your God given common sense? To go? How do we handle this?

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 36:09

  Yeah, that story, it's um, and that, to me, that story partly makes me just continue to be a Christian. I mean, that story, to me just blows my mind. I love that story, breaking decades of prejudices and sexism in his own culture. Literally, real quick, I want to just read this quote about that story. This is from Catholic priest and blogger Angela Meyer, the rabbinic warning against contact with a woman of any kind was extreme. If speaking with a woman can cast one into hell, how much more drinking from the same cup during a woman's period, any ritual objects she touches becomes impure, and those she encounters will also become unpure. Basically, saying that, because even Jesus literally shared spirit, because he asked for a drink, like even sharing spirit with this woman. So not only did he engage, you know, from a Samaritan woman, literally shared spirit with her. I mean, how wild is that? Yeah, the

  KC 37:07

  other one that I love is the Martha and Mary story where Jesus is teaching. And Mary is sitting at his feet to learn, which is like where disciples sit to learn from a master, right, and Martha is running around fulfilling her feminine duty, like she is fulfilling her culturally prescribed religiously prescribed gender role. She's getting the food ready, she's getting the drink. She's getting this, just getting that and Jesus stops her. So she gets onto her sister, right? Like, get up, like, I am doing this all by myself, like you're sitting there and listening. Like, we gotta get snacks or whatever, right? And Jesus's response is like, no, no, no. She's doing the better thing, which is so countercultural. Oh, much? So? Yes, um, that she is allowed to be there that she's allowed to listen, that she's allowed to learn that she's allowed to do those things, and she doesn't have to get up and get snacks for the men.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 37:57

  Totally Jesus's example, the woman in the alabaster jar, the Canaanite woman, Mary Magdalene. I mean, all of these examples of the way Jesus valued women to me sets an example of how us as a church, right? I mean, literally, who does Jesus show up to first? Yeah,

  KC 38:15

  like the first women, the first people to notice that he's risen from the grave as women and the women go and tell the rest of them. And if you don't know that, at the time, a woman could not be a witness in court, because they're not deemed as reliable witnesses. That story isn't quite as astounding as it is. I mean, these are the reasons that I stay like outside the fact I could probably make myself unbelief if I wanted to, but like, those are the reasons I stay. Those are the reasons I claim, like those are the parts of sacredness that like my heart beats and says, Yes, that's true. Yes, that's true.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 38:47

  And it's like, we can't escape Jesus's value of women. And again, where he was at culturally, did not value women. In that way.

  KC 38:57

  Let me ask you this. One of the other things that you talk about is consent. And that is different than I've seen. Pastors talk about and even, even God help us Christian counselors, the amount of Christian men counselors that will approach the sex topic with couples with well, you know, men need sex and like you need to give up yourself and Scripture says, and I'm curious, like, what your approach with couples is when it comes to that, yeah,

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 39:29

  healthy sex. And again, when I'm speaking of sex, I'll speak to directly towards intercourse whereas for me Sex is a much broader category than just intercourse, but we'll talk specifically towards intercourse. That should be an overflow of the connectedness, of emotionality, emotional intimacy, of connectedness, versus using sex as a way to connect intimately. Right so you see, so many people say, Well, we're so disconnected. Let's have sex. Well, no should be the The opposite. Let's intimately connect. And then we'll see if that leads to more, you know, physical connection right versus no more. You know, you hear this excusable men connect sexually No, we don't. We connect emotionally as well, we just are unpracticed, right. And so we can't use that as an excuse. We don't need sex, we don't sorry, you want it. And you actually use it as a way to escape, doing the hard work of emotional labor. And you just use it as a way, a cheap form of connection, right, just kind of getting off rather than actually connecting. So what we do in our men's work and our retreats, like we'll, you know, literally start on the first day, and we'll put men six inches face to face. Right. And so we'll start there, and we do what's called sentence stems. So I see in your eyes, and then they answer the question, I see fear, I see uncomfortableness. I see, you know, whatever, right. And we do that. And over the course of the weekend, you know, my deepest shame is we practice eye contact, we practice these intense, quick sentences of getting quickly deep into and by the end of the retreat, you know, we're doing it for forever, eye contact, and we're very comfortable with intimacy and connection, and then realizing, Oh, I've been so terrified of just being still with myself. I've just been so terrified of sitting and looking at my partner's eyes. But at the end of the retreats, men are so hungry for genuine intimacy, they no longer hunger for the false thing. They can't wait to get home and be with their partners, and just like be with them, and pursue them. And not just sexually, right, we've we've somehow replaced it and made this kind of cheap replacement of an orgasm as somehow the epitome of connection when really men are craving deep intimacy, and we're really just unpracticed but I truly believe men are so much, you know, we'd like to treat them as little cavemen rather than like, no, actually. There's no difference between men and women. As far as our craving. We just I truly believe we're unpracticed that yeah,

  KC 42:16

  they get told that they're going to be too gay if they're emotionally intimate.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 42:21

  Yeah, the weaponizing of the word gay is something you know, I mean, growing up, that was like the biggest, you know, in the early 90s. That was like the biggest curse. Oh, you're gay. And so what are we learned? Whenever we face men, the men it's it's about competition, right? It's about dukes up rather than like, no, actually, I want to connect. I'm hungry for connection. I'm lonely. I'm craving connection.

  KC 42:41

  Yeah. And that's if you are a straight person, not to mention the layers of shame that if you are actually gay, and you hear it as an insult your whole life.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 42:51

  Exactly, exactly. And that doesn't change. If you are gay, you are craving connection. So

  KC 42:58

  Andrew, where would you send people? If someone's listening to this? And they're thinking, oh, goodness, I think maybe my church is gaslighting me or I'm worried that maybe I you know, I'm not getting good information about my relationships. But they are wanting to still hear something from a faith perspective. You know, where would you send them? Do you have some resources?

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 43:21

  Yeah, love Sheila Gregoire. Its work is great. Her work is fabulous, really research based. So follow her work. And let's see who else there's there's so many great people online now. Natalie Hoffman, Sarah McDougal, as far as abuse informed work, and

  KC 43:38

  your website is Andrew J.

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 43:41

  Yeah, my blog, Andrew J. Bowman, and our business is we run my wife and I run the Christian Counseling Center for sexual health and trauma. And you can find us at WWE dot Christian cc.org and I blog at Andrew J. bowman.com. Yeah,

  KC 43:54

  you've got some great resources on here. And we'll put those in the show notes as well so that people can find the way to get there. Well, Andrew, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I really appreciate your time. Yeah,

  Dr. Andrew Bauman 44:06

  thank you for having me.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai