Author Archives: Ruth Perry

002 I Amber Braddy Jones on Navigating Faith & Healing

Posted on December 17, 2025 | Leave a comment

My guest on the podcast this week is my friend Amber Braddy Jones. Amber’s husband Dale and my husband Logan have been close friends since high school, and though we have never lived near each other, I’ve always loved when our families spent time together. Amber is a kindred spirit and a beautiful soul. I have always been impressed by Amber’s writing that she has shared on social media, and she has compiled her writings and poetry into a book that was recently published. Find Sacred by Amber Braddy Jones on Amazon.

In our conversation, Amber shares her experiences growing up in evangelical Christianity, the impact of purity culture and sexual abuse, and the challenges faced in her marriages and ministry due to complementarian beliefs. She discusses the pain of leaving the church and the need for empathy and understanding within faith communities. Amber emphasizes the importance of affirming all individuals and serving communities without strings attached, while also reflecting on her mental health challenges that arose from these experiences. You can find TBKB Podcast on your favorite platform here: https://podlink.com/1858367321 or watch the video on YouTube. Comment your thoughts below or email me at ruthperry@thebeautifulkingdombuilders.com. Thank you for listening, and if this episode resonated with you, would you share it with a friend?

Transcript:

Ruth Perry (00:15)
My guest today is Amber Braddy Jones, a longtime friend as our husbands grew up together. And they even sang together in the Step of Faith men’s Gospel group that toured around Eastern North Carolina back in the day. Amber has recently published a book called Sacred that has her writings and poetry from over the past 15 years as she’s been healing from purity culture and perfectionism and from being a sexual abuse survivor. So check out Sacred. Buy a copy for yourself or for a friend.

And see if you can find, I’ve left a little Michael Scott blooper in here for you today, where I mix up the words of a common phrase that everybody should know. And if you find it, let me know on a comment thread, somewhere on social media, on one of my pages, or on my website, thebeautifulkingdombuilders.com. Without further ado.

Here is my conversation with Amber Braddy Jones

Ruth Perry (01:12)
So what I wanted to talk with you about, what was it like for you growing up in the evangelical church the good, the bad, the ugly, just speaking from your heart, what your experience was like growing up Christian in America.

Amber Jones (01:25)
What a time to be alive.

Ruth Perry (01:25)
What kinds of things have given you hope, what things have broken your heart, I don’t know. Cause I know you and Dale, but I don’t know you the way Logan knows Dale. I feel like you’re a kindred spirit. But I would love to know more about you, like what was your life like growing up Christian in America?

Amber Jones (01:48)
Whoa.

Very multifaceted. I’m just going to jump into it. I loved my childhood. I was a very happy child. I loved church. We were the type of family that every time the church doors were open, we were there. It was, I mean Sunday school, Sunday morning church, children’s church, Wednesday night revival, youth groups on Friday night. We had, Teen Talent, which was like a teen talent competition that we would travel all over and that was pretty much year-round for us. We started practicing our little songs we were gonna do, you know, so we were in church constantly and I loved every second of it. Like I didn’t have a clue really about any of the issues or problems with the church. Now there were a lot of issues and problems I had with me personally. I internalized a lot of the doctrine that was being thrown at me and growing up in evangelical Christianity I really do feel like

it can go a couple of different ways for people. One of them, I think people can develop a savior complex where it’s like, we have the answers. We have to go out and convince all of these people that we’re right and you’re wrong and come to our side. We’re the right ones, you know? And then there’s also a camp where I feel like I fell in, which was like, I’m never gonna be good enough. I’m not enough. There’s nothing that I will ever do to earn what I need to earn to get where I need to go and do what I need to do. So it was very fear-based I’ve dissected this for years now. I don’t even think a lot of it was intentional. I think people were just scared. It was fear mentality and it just translated to a child growing up in this that you’re not good enough. You’re never gonna be good enough.

And so I just, I was on a quest to like prove that I’m worthy. I’m good. I can do this. And it created a lot of mental health issues, perfectionism issues. I was a hypocrite if you want to put it into church terms like that because I had a facade on Sunday morning that wasn’t quite the truth during the week which created a whole nother set of internal struggles for me.

So it’s very multifaceted and in one respect I loved my childhood, I loved what we did and it was fun and I’m so thankful for the experiences that I had and the people that I had in my life around me but also now coming to this part of my life I see where there were just very toxic teachings that I’m still undoing to this day.

Ruth Perry (04:25)
Yeah, I relate. So did you grow up Pentecostal like Dale?

Amber Jones (04:28)
Yes, Pentecostal

Ruth Perry (04:53)
Yeah, I grew up Baptist, but I relate to the fear. Like I didn’t know it at the time. And it’s not that that’s the explicit message. Like you said, it’s you’re hearing the message that God is love, all of these really good things. But then there’s also that just the culture is conditioning you to seek affirmation from them and belonging. In ways that you have to shape shift to receive those things. And yeah, it’s hard to be your authentic self. Even like, I bet it sounds to me that you’re also a good girl.

Amber Jones (05:05)
Yeah! I’m recovering good girl!

Ruth Perry (05:17)
And that you were probably received a lot of, you probably received a lot of affirmation in the church, like I did too. And it was hard to reconcile for me personally, I just never, I did what I needed to do to receive that affirmation and I also perceived myself as being that person that was a good person. But so much fear of the people outside and fear of being rejected.

Amber Jones (05:33)
Absolutely.

Ruth Perry (05:34)
Looking back, are there particular doctrines that you understand now that were harmful to you?

Amber Jones (05:42)
Purity culture is a huge one. Purity culture, that to me started my mental health journey honestly. As a good girl growing up Pentecostal Holiness, but also developing very early like I got my period early, got boobs early, like just was very aware of my body early and it was your body’s bad. It was the message of you’re a temptress. You know, we grew up in an environment where if we went swimming with the opposite sex, like we were the ones that had to cover up, you know, the boys could wear their swimming trunks with no shirts. And, you know, we always had to wear, even if we wore a one piece, we had to wear a t-shirt over it and we couldn’t let the boys see. And we always had to walk that line of not being a temptress and that was early on. And then, you know, I’ve been very public in certain places with my sexual abuse struggle that when I was about eight years old, I started being sexually molested by a family member that nobody knew about that was happening. And so then I had to deal with all of those.

shame cycles of what did I do to cause this at eight years old and then you know that continued until I was about 12 years old and then finally I told my parents what was going on and then you know that stopped. But just the purity culture message to me is a very toxic message in the church that I’m not sure if we still have honestly because I’m so far removed.

Ruth Perry (06:56)
I’m so sorry.

Amber Jones (07:17)
from the church at this point, but I feel that it’s still there. I feel that we still have a lot of the messages to women and young girls that they’re the problems and they just need to cover up and be less and all of those things and that was a very detrimental message to me growing up.

Ruth Perry (07:35)
I also received, like on top of purity culture though and all the messages about modesty, there were also just a lot of pervy older men in the church that made me so uncomfortable.

Amber Jones (07:45)
Same, All right.

Ruth Perry (07:51)
A lot of attention from men, once I hit puberty and beyond, it was uncomfortable.

Amber Jones (07:57)
Yep. Very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. And you know, we grew up in the 80s and 90s. So it was like, any type of like short skirt or shorts or, you know, heels, I am very much into fashion. Kind of always have been in a way. And I remember from a very early age being kind of, like that’s too much. First of all, because of my weight, it was, you’re too big to wear that. And also you can’t wear that because it may be a hindrance to your brother type of thing. And so that was really hard to reconcile for me because I am a very free spirit by nature. I feel like I always have been. And I can just remember being like, wait a minute, what? Why can’t I do this? And why can’t I wear this? And why can’t I turn around with my dress on and let it fly up and all the things. And so, the message to me was like, you’re bad, you’re too much, you need to hide, you need to cover, you need to settle down, you’ve got a husband that you’re trying to grab one day and so you’ve got to be pure for him and just awful. Just awful.

Ruth Perry (09:06)
How did that pressure for perfection as a sexual assault survivor, what was that like for you?

Amber Jones (09:14)
Well, I internalized that early on, that that was my fault. And through therapy now, obviously I know that it was not, but I think that for me, I always had to make sure that I was doing the right things. Because if I wasn’t doing the right things, then I was wrong, I was bad.

I internalized that whole message. And so I always had to put on a front and the face that everything was good, we’re good, I’m good.

Even in my marriage with Dale, we’ve been married almost 25 years now. Early on, it was like neither one of us wanted to accept that anything was wrong in our marriage. Like we would rather just deny, deny, deny, we’re good, we’re good, we’re good, rather than really facing the issues because, you know, he struggled with that perfectionism as well in his life. So it comes full circle and if you don’t get that dealt with, it can wreak havoc everywhere.

Ruth Perry (10:11)
Did complementarian theology negatively impact your marriage in any way?

Amber Jones (10:17)
Absolutely. I remember early on, I never really had boyfriends growing up.

So Dale was like my first serious boyfriend when I was 20 and I remember I went to Bible college and I remember when I went away to Bible college like the reason why I was going to Bible college was because I wanted to find a husband like that was my mission in life. That’s what we were taught like you’re not a complete person until you find your husband and You know, I was on the hunt for that didn’t find it at Bible college came home Dale and I met he was singing with Ricky with the singing group and we started as friends for a while and then it just progressively got to you know where we were interested in each other romantically but talk about you know imposter syndrome with me and him because he was older, he grew up in church he was in a singing group like I felt like I can never live up to this man, you know? And now I’m like, you’re lucky to have me bud, you know?

Ruth Perry (11:19)
Yes.

Amber Jones (11:21)
You’re lucky but at the time like it was my gosh if I can keep him he became my identity. I was there to basically serve him and honestly Ruth I know I’m jumping but even me working in ministry years later in a church, when I had kind of gotten out of evangelical Christianity Dale and I kind of walked away from the Pentecostal Holiness Church and moved into a more non-denominational progressive more progressive type church where grace was the central message which was healing for us at the time. But I became a staff member there for worship and I remember I would never call myself the worship leader because I was a woman. And this was years later. I was a professional woman in my 30s, had children, had left the evangelical Christian Pentecostal, but still had to have my husband and all the other men worship leaders out in front. And I could step up and sing a song every once in a while and lead people, but the men had to be the worship leader. And I’m just like, now? I’m like, what the?

Ruth Perry (12:05)
Yeah. And Amber, you are the real deal. Like when it comes to singing, you’re extraordinary and amazing and gifted and called. And yeah, it’s hard to see women who are so gifted to even imagine that they would have any kind of self doubt.

Amber Jones (12:35)
Thank you. I could do everything behind the scenes and did everything behind the scenes. I mean, pick the songs out, the set list, pick the band. I mean, ran the rehearsals, did every single thing that was required to have an excellent worship experience for people, but did not feel the confidence to step myself out and actually be the full-time worship leader for this congregation of people, which is really sad.

Ruth Perry (13:13)
Did the leadership of the church call out your leadership and your gifts?

Amber Jones (13:18)
They did really push women in leadership. and I remember them kind of encouraging me and you need to step out. So yeah, they were very encouraging in that point. That was just a personal thing of mine of the way that I grew up.

Ruth Perry (13:33)
I’ve been deconstructing complementarian theology for, I think, 15 years now. And I just realized two years ago that I needed to, pursue my calling in ministry regardless of what my husband is doing. I have a calling, too, and it’s not just to ride his tailcoats. It takes a long time to unlearn the way we were taught.

Amber Jones (13:55)
Absolutely. It really does. really does. Yeah, it does. Still unlearning.

Ruth Perry (13:58)
Yeah. So you left Pentecostalism behind and I’m curious to know, what was that experience like for you? Because you come from a small community and then Pentecostal community inside of that community is even a smaller community, but you still encounter all these people. And like, how have you been?

Amber Jones (14:09)
Yes. Yeah.

Ruth Perry (14:24)
How, what was that experience like for you?

Amber Jones (14:28)
It was hard in some ways. When we decided, we had been contemplating making the move for about a year probably. Just, we were just burned out. We were burned out.

From our marriage, like our marriage was not good. Barrett was small, I was actually pregnant with Chandler at the time but Barrett was small. Our marriage was not great. We were not great personally and we had just needed a change. There were just some things in the church that we were just like, we are not feeling this.

And we finally made the move, which was very hard because my whole family was a part of that church. I mean, my grandmother was a member of that church until she passed away a few years ago. Cousins, aunts, like so many people that still attend the church. And most of them have been great. You know, you have a few people who I was friends with and it totally changed the relationship, which was hard and heavy.

But now that I’m on the other side of that I’m like some of that could have been me as well. I try not to stay in victim mentality with it as it’s like I was changing and growing as well. So it wouldn’t it wouldn’t have lasted the distance anyway, probably with where my mindset and my theology was going. So it was better probably at that time to go ahead and cut the ties. But at the time it was very painful and it felt very isolating.

So when we switched that congregation and made our way to the new congregation we jumped in like because we were missing our community at that point and so that will probably wasn’t the best thing to do as well it was basically going from one congregation full force to and I mean cuz Dale and I were very involved we’ve been involved in ministry since I mean, forever, since we were little kids singing. Both of us grew up singing in the church at little kids. You know, I taught children’s church, sang on the praise team, like always. And so we left that ministry, Pentecostal Holiness Ministry, went into this more non-denominational ministry, jumped in head first there, which probably wasn’t the smartest thing for us to do at the time. So.

And we ended up staying there about 10 years, and then we parted ways as well.

Ruth Perry (16:33)
And now you say you’re far from the church. Tell me about that.

Amber Jones (16:36)
Yeah, we haven’t attended church in a few years.

We were both in ministry positions at our previous church, And both of us served in, I would say full-time ministry, even though I was only considered part-time, it was full-time ministry. We both were involved and he actually left his credit union job that he had been at for almost 30 years to be on full-time staff at this church. And so it was big. We downsized our home, moved into a smaller home.

It was a big deal for us to do this. He ended up staying about three years and he was completely burned out, like classic burnout. And I was burned out as well, but I’m a little bit better at faking it til you make it type person. And so I remember certain things, you know, he would be very vocal about.

And I would say, no, no, no, no, you can’t say that. can’t. Because I had learned how to exist in the system. And I was very good at, like you said, shape shifting into these systems. And so I had planted myself firmly in this system. And now Dale was disrupting that and started calling things out. And it made me very nervous.

Being like mm-hmm like you can’t say that you can’t do that you have to operate this way to stay in the good graces and it became apparent he wasn’t able to do that and so then once he stepped away certain things just started happening that now I was like that’s my husband and this we’re gonna start calling this out.

So we ended up parting ways with that church around the time of COVID, which was, you know, pretty convenient for us. Honestly, was like churches were closing anyway. So it was like the perfect time for us to step away and just figure out can we exist in this congregation now with not being in ministry? Because as you know, when you serve on a church and you’re in the inner circle, and then you step back, it’s really hard to then enter back into that congregation as just a congregation member. So we had to figure out if we could even do that knowing a lot of the behind the scenes and we couldn’t.

And then we of course began looking for another church in town. It was like, oh well what do we do? We go to church on Sunday so let’s find another church. And so we tried a few and never really landed anywhere. We were at one for almost a year probably and started singing again and leading worship again and then it was just like it just wasn’t a good fit for us. And you when you know you know and so I have a hard time because I don’t want to ever make anybody feel like their ministry is not good or you know I don’t want to talk bad about somebody’s ministry but it’s just not a good fit for me. I can say that at this point in my life.

We haven’t gone anywhere in a few years. And I’m at peace with that. Honestly, I’m at peace with that.

Ruth Perry (19:30)
Yeah. Well, I wonder, it just seems like the church in America has become so commercialized and they’re run like businesses. I really enjoy good teaching. I love worship, but I feel like personally, a conversation like this is going to feed my soul so much.

Amber Jones (19:52)
Yeah.

Ruth Perry (19:52)
And I’m so appreciative for your authenticity and willingness to like, just have a conversation about your faith journey and where you are now and where you’ve come from. I feel like that is missing a lot in churches today where we don’t really make space for conversations and we especially don’t make space for hard conversations.

Amber Jones (20:15)
I agree. And I think that growing up, the church that I grew up in was very different than the second church that I was a part of. So the first church that I was a part of was very much more like organic, flying by the seat of your pants. Like we never knew what we were singing to. We got there. Very more laid back. There wasn’t a lot of people on staff. It was really kind of the pastor and then he had a secretary and they had a deacon board and you know everything else was volunteer positions. And so then the second church that I was part of, very different church. It was in the time Hillsong was very popular and so a lot of churches had patterned themselves like you said, very commercialized, very business like and so there were more people on staff, so more paychecks had to be paid every week. And so with that comes more pressure for giving talks. And, you know, we need more people to volunteer because we’ve got more people coming.

You know, it’s a slippery slope because I understand that you want the church to be relevant in your community because there are a lot of things vying for our attention now. Whereas back in the 80s and 90s, I mean, what did you do? You went to church and you went out to eat and you had a few places to go out to eat.
But now it’s like with the culture that we live in, there are so many things vying for us on Sundays. And so churches did have to get creative, I think, to go, how do we get these people here? And so the lights came and the rock music came and the, you know, all the things that now we see as like the typical commercialized church happened.

And I think that a lot of them probably came from good intentions. People were trying to, meet the needs in their community. My thing that I always try to go back to is I don’t know the motives of others. I know my motives and my motives sometimes are not great and I have to constantly check my motives. I cannot tell you your motive. And so I feel like a lot of good intentioned people are in ministry and try just to do the best that they can in this culture that we find ourselves. Now there are predators, 100%. There are people who prey on innocent people, but I do think a lot of pastors and ministry teams do have good intentions, but I think that we have just lost our way in a lot of ways.

Ruth Perry (22:23)
Yeah. And I feel like a big aspect of where the church is today has to do with mental health, like you said, and a lot of unexamined childhood experiences. like, I went and had EMDR therapy last year. And just thinking about the difference of how I feel now compared to before then. And just so many people are traumatized in ways that they don’t understand. And they’re still pouring themselves out because they love God and they love being in ministry. They love using their gifts. They’re called to use their gifts. But I just wonder like how much more impactful would the church be if we were all healed and serving from a place of well-being?

Amber Jones (23:06)
Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Ruth Perry (23:26)
Where we weren’t seeking any kind of personal gain from it because we have these gaping wounds in our lives that need tending and care.

Amber Jones (23:35)
Yeah, Absolutely. So many people, I think, get into ministry for the affirmation of it. And because we developed with the Savior Complex early on, like we have all the answers and you don’t. So here I am to tell you what you need and how you need it, you know? And I think that for a long time, I think it’s getting better, but I think for a long time, the church was very adamantly against therapy and against any type of wellness journeys.

I know myself personally, in my early 20s, I went through a really bad clinical depression and was diagnosed from a therapist. went to see a psychiatrist in my early 20s, had never been to therapy, never even had heard of any type of mental illness really, and was diagnosed with clinical depression and had to go see a psychiatrist. And she basically was like, you’re clinically depressed. I’m like, what does that mean? And you need to be on Prozac. And I was like, okay. And because I…

At that time, I would have done anything to feel better. Like I was literally, I had a lot of things that I needed to work through. And so I remember talking to my church leadership about that and was very excited. Like, yeah, I went to see my psychiatrist and she’s prescribing Prozac and they were like, like literally gasped in my face. And I was like, and she was like, you can’t take that. And I’m like, why? And she’s like, That that’s bad stuff like no you can’t take that and I remember you know a person in leadership telling me that there’s no such thing as depression that I was oppressed and that I just needed to pray and then the shame I was already in such a vulnerable place and so then it’s like wait a minute what my pastor, you know, my leader is telling me that I’m not depressed, there’s no such thing as depression, that I’m oppressed and that I shouldn’t take this medication. So that was really a time in my life where I had to be like, okay, what do I do? Who do I listen to?

And thankfully I listened to my psychiatrist and my parents at that time as well. And so my parents, thankfully, even though they were involved in the church as well, thankfully, had the sense enough to say, you’re depressed, there is depression, you’re taking this medication. And I did, and it was very healing for me. So I do think that the church needs, it’s getting better, but I think that as a whole, the church really needs to dive into these mental health issues and everybody work on it. Leadership down, like everybody, like you said, everybody needs to be whole. Everybody needs to get well.

Ruth Perry (26:15)
I think what I want to ask you, I think there’s been 40 million people that left the church in the last several decades. And so you’re one of those people. from your perspective, not that we want to be commercialized as well and shop for churches, but what do you feel would make for a healthy and safe church where you would be drawn to attend?

Amber Jones (26:40)
For me, at this point in my life, I feel like it would have to be a church that affirmed everyone. I’m just at that point in my life where I’m tired of us versus them. I’m tired of we have the answers and you don’t. We have it all figured out and you don’t. I feel like we’re all on a journey and there are so many theologians that are way smarter than me, who have struggled and argued with biblical text for centuries. So you don’t think that those people could come to an understanding of exactly what the Bible means and says. If they can’t, then what makes us feel like that we’re the experts on it?

So I think that in order for me to feel safe in a church congregation again It it would have to be a church that affirms everyone and it’s not an us-versus-them mentality. It’s like just come regardless of what you’ve got going on. You know and a lot of churches say that that’s what they do, but they really don’t, they don’t at the heart of it, they don’t. And you know the difference.

And so it’s like everybody is welcome and not just welcome, but everybody is celebrated for your uniqueness. Sunday morning is the most segregated place in America. The most segregated hour is Sunday morning still. And I hate that. Like that has bothered me for decades. Why are we so segregated on Sunday mornings?

Ruth Perry (28:09)
Yeah.

Amber Jones (28:10)
There just needs to be a lot of conversations, a lot of healing, more trust, and I just don’t think it’s there in America. We just don’t trust each other.

Ruth Perry (28:19)
That is a word. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard not to get caught in cynicism and hopelessness about where things are.

Amber Jones (28:26)
Yes. Every day it’s a battle. But I do go back to, and I go back to this a lot Ruth, because I remember that Jesus said on my rock I will build this church. I don’t think we have gotten that right yet though. Like I don’t, I feel like the way that we do church is just not there. It’s just not the idea that Jesus had for his church yet. We’ve tried, we’ve you know, there’s so many denominations and so many churches and so many creeds and so many, and we still haven’t gotten it right yet, I don’t think. And I say we because I’m part of that too. Like, I don’t even know. That’s the thing.

Ruth Perry (29:08)
Like you said, there’s been theological differences and arguments from the beginning of the church. I mean, it’s right there in the Bible. But so many people are so certain about their beliefs and the way they read the Bible. This is a question I would ask God if I could have a conversation with God. Why are our brains wired with so many biases? Like, why can’t we just be smart and perceptive.

Like why does it have to be like this? I don’t understand that.

Amber Jones (29:39)
Absolutely. And it’s getting worse. I mean, with social media and the impact of internet. When I was growing up, we didn’t have social media. We didn’t have, you know, the internet until I was in college. So our teenage years, you know, we had the people in front of us. had the people at our church, with the people we played ball with or whatever. We had, you know, our family members that could have been spread out.

Ruth Perry (29:43)
Yeah.

Amber Jones (30:03)
That was our influence. We had TV, so we watched those shows and had those influences and books. But now think about what our teenagers are consuming on a daily basis. No wonder there’s so much anxiety and mental health issues for our teenagers and young people right now, because they’re wading through so much information and misinformation and trying to find their way. Like, can you imagine?

I just have such empathy for them right now.

Wading through it all and how to, you know, to try to be the best person that you can be and, you know, be a good human in the midst of everything that’s happening.

Ruth Perry (30:44)
I’m thinking back about when I was growing up, I was like the golden child and I got a lot of affirmation in church because I did everything right like I was supposed to. But I have three brothers and two of my brothers didn’t receive that kind of affirmation and nurturing in the church. In fact, they experienced a lot of the opposite.

I think that that is just the experience of a lot of people coming to church. If they don’t fit in and conform, they know they don’t belong. They know they’re not being accepted. They know they’re not being celebrated. And it doesn’t feel good. It does not feel like God’s love and God’s grace and God’s mercy, no matter what language we’re using.

Amber Jones (31:21)
They do.

Absolutely and think about the sense of belonging like that’s a basic need that we all have is to belong and I just think of you know If you’re If you’re in a church you can belong to the church, but that’s so relative because you change one thing or stop doing one thing and then you can be outed and then it’s like you lose your whole community

And that’s hard, like losing your entire community and then having to like, refind that and reframe that, we did that twice now. So it was like we lost our community in the first church that we left and then we lost our second community in our second church and then didn’t find another church community. So Dale and I are still like grappling for community, which community is so important. And that’s one of the things that I think the church does well, but it only offers it to the people in their church. Like they offer it to the people that are serving there and the people that are giving there and the people that are attending there. Just, there’s just something that we’re missing that we could be so much more of a beacon of hope in our communities than we are.

And one of my favorite things about the earlier church that I think of often is, when I see old churches with the steeples and they’re still standing and you think about why those steeples were there. So the churches were planted in those communities and the steeple was built over top of all the other buildings so that when people needed something, needed help, were in need, they knew where to go to get the help. They would go, they would find the steeple and then they would go to the church. And I’m like, do our churches provide that for our communities now? Like are we those staples that we want to be? Are we very insider focused?

Ruth Perry (33:23)
I think we’re insider focused. I mean, just looking at how we spend our money, budgets in churches are like 90 something percent going towards maintaining their staff and their building and very little for the people who are outside.

Amber Jones (33:24)
I do too. Yep, absolutely. Very little, very little. So I think it’s gonna take more than a couple of missions trips a year for churches. I know that feels good, know, that makes us feel good.

Ruth Perry (33:52)
And it’s more, it’s not just about like trying to recruit people to come sit in your pews. It’s about serving your neighbors. No strings attached.

Amber Jones (34:02)
Absolutely. We do not have that down at all. So that would probably be another thing that I would look for in a church is like how community involved are you? More than just a couple of little fundraisers a year, you know? It’s tough. It’s just tough.

Ruth Perry (34:06)
Yeah.

Amber Jones (34:22)
They’re just set up in a different, the organizational structure right now is just very different than, know, so. So many politics involved with it all.

Ruth Perry (34:28)
Yeah.

Amber Jones (34:32)
And I’m not interested in that, if I’m being honest. I’m just not.

Ruth Perry (34:36)
Politics is a fun topic too. How much that’s infiltrated the church.

Amber Jones (34:38)
Shoo!

I didn’t recognize that so much when I was younger and I know that you there was a big push in the 80s with the Christian nationalism movement I’m learning about that now but it wasn’t as prevalent back then I didn’t pick up on it. Now, it’s like blatant in your face like you can’t escape it really so

Ruth Perry (34:55)
Yeah.

No, thank you.

Amber Jones (35:03)
No thank you. No thank you. And I just feel like the church in America, like we have an obligation and I feel like we have the call from Jesus to do the best that we can do. And at this point, I try to stay hopeful, but I don’t know how to reverse it at this point. I see it going down such a slippery slope. It’s gonna take something huge, I think, to wake people up to say, and I’m even talking to myself, you know.

Ruth Perry (35:34)
Yeah.

Amber Jones (35:35)
Because there’s so much more that I could be doing, know, personally without a church for my community and for people all over the world. So I’m not saying that I have it all together and I’ve figured it out and these churches need just need to do it. I don’t. I’m there with you. But I do think that recognizing it is half the battle and I think some churches just haven’t recognized it yet.

Ruth Perry (35:41)
Right.

Amber Jones (35:58)
They see everything else, everybody else as problems when they’re not taking ownership in their toxic practices as well. And so how are we going to change it? There’s going to have to be something huge that wakes us up, to say, we’ve got to about face. Like there’s gotta be an about face, I think. Or it’s just gonna keep going the way that it’s going. And Christians are just gonna be in a totally different camp than everybody else. I mean, they’re writing their own books and they’re making their own movies and having their own shows. And it’s like, I don’t think it was ever intended that way. Like I think you plant yourself in and you be the light and the salt. It’s turned so crazy where it’s like, now we’re gonna put ourselves in a cave and we’re gonna protect ours. Almost like you’re going in a bunker. And you want to…

Ruth Perry (36:47)
Yeah, and I’m so cynical about it. I think that it’s just like their marketing machine. The people that are making all of that content are making so much money because they have a captive audience who this is all that they’re allowed to consume. So that’s the conferences they’re going to. Those are the books they’re buying. That’s the radio shows they’re listening to. That’s the podcast you’re listening to and the blogs they’re reading. And, you know, it’s self-serving in some way.

Amber Jones (37:12)
Very, very self-serving.

And I mean, what good are you doing with that? What are your billion dollars doing? Where are they going? You know? And so I think until that changes where there’s just such an us versus them mentality on both sides, because I can tend to get very us versus them as well.

Ruth Perry (37:23)
Yeah.

Amber Jones (37:35)
I can go my gosh why are they why do they believe that what are they thinking and then it’s like but they’re thinking the same thing of me and until we can kind of have some common ground and figure out where each other’s coming from there’s gonna be no headway and I just don’t know how to do that at this point I really

Ruth Perry (37:51)
Well, that’s what they say, you can’t hate close up. Like if we would just get to the point where we could have a conversation with each other, where we’re actually listening actively and having empathy for other people’s stories, I think that’s what we need.

Amber Jones (37:59)
Yeah. Yeah. I too. I just don’t know how to get there because it’s so polarized. Everything’s so polarized right now. So I don’t know. But I do think that the hope that I see in it is that I do feel like there’s so many people that are using their voice like you. You know, like people who are writing and I love Jen Hatmaker. I mean, she’s using her voice and all of these people that are putting out content, you know, so that we that are following social media can see and go, yes, yes, that’s what I believe. I’m not on my own.

Because when you feel like you’re out on an island and everybody else around you believes this way, but you don’t, it can be very isolating. And so to be able to have like-minded people to have conversations and see, OK, I’m not out on left field here. There are other people who feel the way that I feel. It’s just very important, I feel like, to think out.

Ruth Perry (38:58)
I think that’s why I started the Beautiful Kingdom Warriors with my friend Becky all those years ago, just feeling isolated and alone and like we’re crazy. And I’ve met so many like-minded people who just understand the experience of that first domino falling and the mental anguish of learning that something you always believed might not be true.

Amber Jones (39:10)
We’re crazy here!

Ruth Perry (39:22)
And then the anguish of, what else? Like it’s so much work to start peeling that onion and discovering what do I really believe authentically deep down in my heart?

Amber Jones (39:31)
and what you feeling.

Yeah, it’s like once you start the peeling it just keeps on peeling When does it stop?

Ruth Perry (39:40)
Yeah.

But it’s worth it.

Amber Jones (39:45)
It is. It is. And I’m thankful.

Ruth Perry (39:47)
If you can persevere.

Amber Jones (39:49)
I’m thankful. Dale and I talk about this a lot, you know, with our boys, because we’ve always told them, we don’t want you to have our faith. We want you to find God early. We actually prayed when they were young, and now it’s like, God, that was, we prayed when they were young that they would come to their crisis point early so that they could find God in it and their own faith, not just our faith.

And walking that out is hard, being in the middle of that is hard. But I’ve never wanted them to just accept it because that’s what I’ve thought. But I think for so many people, that’s just what they do. They believe it because grandma believed it and grandma brought them to church and then, mom believed it and so dad got saved and so now they go to church and so now, I guess I’m going to have to get to the age where I’m going to have to stop drinking so I can go to church. I mean, I see that and hear that so often, but it’s

Like that you’re missing it. Like if that’s really what you think, you’re missing it. So. But they just don’t, they just believe it because that’s what they’ve been told to believe in their whole life. So, my brain doesn’t work that way.

Ruth Perry (40:54)
That’s a good thing. I’ve enjoyed having a little peek into your brain today Amber.

Amber Jones (40:55)
Yeah! Thank you. It’s messy up there.

Ruth Perry (41:03)
Well, and I do hope that we can have an episode with your family. I think that would be really great.

Amber Jones (41:09)
I do too. Yeah, absolutely. We have these conversations quite a bit, honestly. So, yeah, thank you.

Ruth Perry (41:15)
Yeah, I love your family and it’s been beautiful and amazing and I’m so grateful. Thank you, Amber.

Amber Jones (41:22)
Thank you.

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001 I Becky Buck & The Origins of TBKB

Posted on December 10, 2025 | Leave a comment

Please enjoy the first episode of The Beautiful Kingdom Builders Podcast, in which I interview co-founder Becky Buck and we reminisce about the origins of this blog and our Facebook community. We explore our personal journeys of faith, the challenges of deconstructing traditional beliefs, and the importance of love and community in spiritual growth. We discuss the impact of religious trauma, the complexities of gender roles within faith, and the need for critical thinking in understanding one’s beliefs. Our conversation emphasizes the significance of reclaiming identity and voice, particularly for women in high-control religious environments, and the transformative power of love in fostering a deeper connection with God. I hope you enjoy it! Please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and follow me on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook and TikTok for reels and more!

In this conversation, we mention North Harbor Community Baptist Church, our pastors Dan and Lisa Wells, Brennan Manning, and Carolyn Custis James — all great resources and hopefully future podcast guests!

TRANSCRIPT:

Ruth Perry (00:15)
I just want to welcome my very beautiful friend, Becky Buck! We go way back to our time when I lived in Maine. And we are the dynamic duo that started The Beautiful Kingdom Warriors page. I had to look it up. When did we start? It was January, 2014. And so I’m very grateful to have you here, Becky, because I was in a real spiritual wilderness period of my life at the time and it was so lonely. And you filled a huge gap for me being a kindred spirit. And I’m just so grateful for our friendship and our work together on The Beautiful Kingdom Warriors. And I’m excited to like reminisce together and talk about our spiritual journeys together.

Becky Buck (01:04)
Yeah, definitely. I can’t believe it’s been 10 years. That is, that’s wild. I mean, we’ve seen so much since then, you know, moves, transitions, losses.

Ruth Perry (01:07)
Yeah. You’ve had two babies, I think, since we started. You already had two.

Becky Buck (01:21)
Yes, I’ve had two babies. A pandemic. mean, coming back after that, career changes, it’s been a decade. It really has been. Yeah, I was looking back when we were working on the blog and getting main ownership transferred back to you. I was like, wow, this is a trip down memory lane. I tried to go back as far as our first blog and blog entries would go. And it was like, wowzer, we’ve done a lot of growth since even then.

Ruth Perry (01:50)
Yeah, yeah.

So I thought, I want to go back before the Beautiful Kingdom Warriors. And both of us share where we were when we met each other. And so I’ll give you a couple of minutes to like just stew on that question. And I’ll say where I was at the time. We had, my husband and I moved back to Maine.

Becky Buck (01:59)
Yeah.

Ruth Perry (02:13)
after we finished seminary in Massachusetts and after we had had our first son and he was an infant and my dad’s church in my hometown is where we were going and my dad was the senior pastor and my brother was the associate pastor and we went there for a couple of years and then there was a huge church split and it was really ugly and there was a lot of trauma and spiritual abuse that we experienced through that. And so I think that was when Benjamin was a baby.

And he was born in, oh my gosh, 2007. And then between the time that we came to North Harbor Community Church where I met you, so there was like five years where we were basically starting in our hometown of Boothbay, Maine, going to like all the evangelical churches and visiting them. And then we would get involved in them. And there were several churches that we ended up having, like either being asked to leave or being like gently prodded to leave. And so we had additional traumatic experiences with church. And so when we came to North Harbor, spiritually I was very ragged and I was like an open wound. And then I was also deconstructing because in 2010, when I was pregnant with Abbey I had my call to ministry from God and I was a complementarian at the time. The belief that spiritual authority belongs to men in the church and in the home. And so that was causing some painful cognitive dissonance for me. And I started reading books and blogs but in my personal relationships, if I brought anything up like that, it was like I’d get slapped on the wrist by people. Like you’re going out of bounds, you’re headed down a slippery slope. And so a lot of personal
kind of trying to keep me in my place and in my lane. So a lot of those readings and things were just happening privately for myself and kind of lonely. So that’s where I was when we came to North Harbor. I think we got there in 2012. And where was your journey to North Harbor, Becky?

Becky Buck (04:05)
Yeah, I mean, I think a big piece of we were we hit it off immediately because I feel like you and I were both really battered and bruised at that point in our like season of ministry. I think when we both first came to North Harbor, I don’t know if we I guess maybe we were still volunteering on the Kids Cove team. I don’t know if Graham had joined the preaching team yet or if even we had started with worship. But I feel like

We were easing our way back in to serving after also coming out of kind of a toxic ministry situation. So the short answer for how we ended up at North Harbor is community. think when Graham and I moved from Florida back home here to Maine, it was because my two best friends were part of the launch team for North Harbor.

And so Graham served for about two years on staff at a church in New Hampshire as a youth pastor. And I think what was hard about that is we thought even just moving to New Hampshire, somehow we would have community and friends and family, but we very quickly discovered that because we believed in things like egalitarian ways of moving through ministry in the world, because we didn’t really hold to normal upper middle class, I would even say elitist views of students needing to participate in sports and get amazing grades and then go on to Ivy League institutions. We didn’t really push that and you know we were basically pushed out of that first official full-time ministerial position.

When that happened, I was like done with the church because lots of pieces of my story involve, we’ve talked about this before, spiritual and religious trauma through high control, fundamentalist Christianity. And my journey with my faith, I think it’s really hard when you’re hoping for the best because you’re answering the call of ministry and you encounter just pain and disappointment and shame. And I think those were themes that I had struggled with personally, but then to watch Graham go through that for the first time really was like, I was so heartbroken and yeah, so when we made the choice to move back, was to be near my family. We found out my dad was really sick and we wanted to kind of move home to help care for him.

And again, we had community, like we would come visit North Harbor and it was like, that was our people. And I think what made that place so special for us was there wasn’t an expectation for us to get involved. We were just like loved. But that made us then want to be involved, probably a little faster than we should have been. But I think what’s really hard as you grow in your journey of life, deconstruction is a natural part of that. And I think people are very afraid of that and it’s a very hot button topic word that’s being thrown around in these volatile times of just worldwide unrest. And I think it’s not something to be afraid of because a richer understanding of the human experience is what can await you in that because we would not have found each other if we hadn’t been open to the process of growing and questioning and critically thinking together, you know?

Ruth Perry (07:26)
So was it church hurt that started for you, the onion, peeling away the layers of the things that you had been raised with in high control religion? Or was it something else like what radicalized you, Becky?

Becky Buck (07:38)
What radicalized me? I don’t know the Sermon on the Mount. Imagine that. It’s so funny because I was like practicing last week or two weeks ago before, you know, the unfortunate Black Widow incident. So glad that you’re on the mend. That was scary. Yeah, I was in the car and I’m like, she’s going to ask me about my deconstruction journey. She’s going to ask like, what are you going to say? Like, and

Ruth Perry (07:42)
Yeah!

Thank you. Thank you.

This is what I love to talk about. I love to hear people’s story.

Becky Buck (08:05)
Yeah, yeah, same. I mean, that’s why we started this, right? was like a redemptive base for people to have redemptive dialogue about, you know, areas of theology and life that were colliding. Yeah, so I think, well, first of all, I think being born a woman, radicalizes you quickly. Because we don’t know necessarily what is being done to us when that is the norm, right? And I think, I always felt in my spirit that I was a lot. I always related more to my brothers and the men. I was very nurturing, but, and I love hair and makeup, obviously, and fashion and creativity and expression and all of that. And I always had loved that.

what I always joke about like being so young and having like, you know, the tutu with the bow and arrow and a Barbie and a GI Joe. Like that was kind of my childhood. And I think that was humored until I hit puberty. Right. Like the aspects of myself, I was still very praised for my beauty and I was praised for my like performing abilities with like singing and music. Right.

Ruth Perry (08:58)
Yeah!

Becky Buck (09:16)
And so you learn quickly that if you want to belong or if you want to feel good, those are the things that you have to do. And I think when I hit my teen years, that’s when my deconstruction journey began. Because I quickly realized that in high control fundamentalist Christianity, not all voices are welcome at the table. And that was through local church.

That was through youth groups. went to a church school. It was through that. And I don’t want to completely destroy how beautiful my growing up experience was in that in many ways. I had great friends in my very, very small Christian school. We made a lot of great memories together. I met Graham at a Christian camp that I would say was much more liberal, but still women were only allowed to work in the kitchen, the nurse’s office, or admin. They could have admin roles at the Christian boys camp. We were told that we were supposed to be wallflowers, which if you’ve spent five seconds with me you know like that’s it’s not gonna happen.

And I think I never understood, I guess in so many ways I’ve always been moving like the line towards like liberal progressive Christianity because I always felt like I was pushing the boundary of always asking, but why do we do it this way? So like we have dress code, but why? women’s bodies are dangerous, but like what about men though?

Like, so we have to have modesty, but like what are men doing? Like there was just these pieces to my deconstruction journey and the way that my brain works. Like it didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense. Like if God loves everyone, why are we saying like in order to be loved by God, you have to look like this, be like this, perform like this, do like this. So I think my entire deconstruction journey was truthfully just like studying the Bible through a critical lens and being open to hearing from people who didn’t believe the same things as I did. And that was really frowned upon, right?

I mean, I lost friends for reading Carolyn Custis James. Like, I mean, I lost friends because of that, because I was no longer a complementarian. Yeah, so I think the beginning was being born a woman in a high control patriarchal society where it just didn’t add up. It didn’t add up for me like who I was as a person and what I read in the Bible even without knowing Hebrew or Greek like it just it didn’t make sense to what I was being told I had to do and be to what I was like reading. So yeah I don’t know.

Ruth Perry (11:41)
Yeah. You were young because for me, I never questioned complementarianism and I got a lot of positive feedback for myself and like puberty and beyond as being a good Christian girl. And so I never really questioned it until I was, um, after I’d had children basically, or maybe it was actually the day that we got home from our honeymoon. My husband came home for dinner and I was like sobbing and I said, I don’t want to be a housewife. Like finally occurred to me. Wait a second. This isn’t for me. Um, yeah. So I would commend you for being a young person and realizing and asking why.

Like that’s a skill that I just, I didn’t have. And I really admire it in people, the people who are like, what, why? And also, like, I agree with you. I have so much gratefulness that I came from a Christian background. Even if it wasn’t a perfect Christian background, I still don’t think I have a perfect Christianity. I don’t think anybody does. And so that heritage I’m grateful for, but I do feel like we need to have curiosity, and we need to work out our own salvation. And we need to like really test the things that we believe because we’re all wrong about stuff. And I think we were wrong about a lot of things. Yeah.

Becky Buck (13:02)
Right. And I think, for sure, for sure. I mean, I think, yeah, it’s tough. Like one of my words in the current season of life, studying to become a licensed clinical counselor is like duality or like if you’ve ever heard of like dialectical behavioral therapy, right? It’s this concept of radical acceptance that two seemingly opposing truths can be true at the same time. So I can hold gratitude for the friendships and the lessons that I learned through really beautifully loving and kind people who embodied the teachings of Christ, right? I can hold that. And then in this other hand, I can hold appropriate feminist rage for systems of harm that are anti-biblical, that push an agenda that was never the gospel because women are dangerous in many, views within the church.

And I think, yeah, I think that piece is unfortunately the piece that people see, especially in these turbulent times. Like that’s what they see, right? They see just this in your face, high control, Christian nationalist agenda. That’s what people think the church is. Like it’s it’s rough out there, it’s really rough out there if you are somebody who’s really trying to embody the teachings of Christ and kind of let everything else go because the second you put your foot into anything that goes against this ideology. You know, you’re blacklisted from so many things. It’s, it’s, it is a rough, rough world trying to hold that duality. So I don’t want you to hear me say that I’m like, okay with how I grew up and what I was exposed to and what I went through because I carry that spiritual and religious trauma of not being able to trust myself.

In full disclosure, right, one of my first moments in therapy in Graham’s first year of seminary, when I had a really intense emotional breakdown, my work was to order for myself at a restaurant. Like I had such fear and like I couldn’t order from a menu. I would get anxiety about like ordering my own food. I had to like defer to what everybody else was having, why they were having it. I could not make choices for myself. And I think in high control religion as a woman, you’re taught that you can’t trust yourself. If you are born female in high control Christianity, you are immediately marked as less than. You carry evil within you, you carry temptation within you, right? And I think we internalize that.

We are internalizing a message in critical periods of human development that I’m not safe. My emotions, my feelings are not safe. I can’t trust those things. The only thing I can trust is what my dad says and what my pastor says. Those are the only things that I can trust. So I’m being taught that message, right? But still experiencing such rich celebration of who I am between my relationship with Christ growing up, right? So like, I don’t know, like I just, I don’t want to gloss over the duality, you know?

I think it’s really important that we call out systems of oppression for what they are. Even though high control fundamentalist Christianity taught me about community, it also taught me about hate and it taught me about fear and it taught me about separation. And I think that’s something that unfortunately we still see in this giant movement back to what so many of us were fighting against for so long. So, yeah.

Ruth Perry (16:46)
I had a epiphany, maybe there’s two different times when I feel like I had big spiritual awakenings. And one time was after one of my very best friends died at 21 years old. And she had become a Christian when we were in high school. And I had done this discipleship book with her and she was my Christian friend. But then when we went off to college, she IM’d me one day back when we were IM-ing people and said that she was doubting her faith. And I remember like throwing myself on my bed sobbing. I couldn’t comprehend doubting faith. And to me, she was a lost person now. And for a few years, when I went home and we would hang out, I never talked to her about her faith. Cause I was like, so the weight of her salvation was on my shoulders.

Becky Buck (17:11)
Yeah, we were.

Ruth Perry (17:31)
And I was so intimidated and fearful of what a conversation about her faith would be like, that I just never said anything. And then she died of a pulmonary embolism at 21 years old. And I was certain, like I had this like crushing guilt that I failed her and that I did not save her in time. And so that spiritual awakening, came to the realization, I don’t really, I don’t know how I think, I mean, God just revealed this to me, I think that God loved my friend more than I loved my friend. And that God cared for my friend more than I cared for my friend. And that God could have reached her without me, which was like a huge light bulb realization that her salvation wasn’t on me, that it was on Jesus. And so I had this like, new realization that the weight of the world wasn’t on me. God is the one doing the work.

And then around the same time, after God called me to be in ministry and I started reading about women in ministry and rethinking that. And this was right after our home church had split with all my family involved and just a lot of emotional, like it was a really raw time. I came across Brennan Manning on YouTube. He’s the guy who wrote Ragamuffin Gospel. And there’s like old gravelly videos of him preaching with his old like deep voice. And there’s something about listening to his sermons that just broke me wide open. And I was weeping and realizing for the first time that God loved me unconditionally and that I didn’t have to earn anything, that I didn’t have to be a good Christian girl.

Becky Buck (18:48)
yes.

Ruth Perry (19:08)
I could be just a very flawed human being and God would love me. God loves me unconditionally. That realization gave me the freedom to really start deconstructing and having the liberty to question things. Cause feeling like you have to earn your salvation or that like you could go to hell at the like, there’s so much fear in that. And I, the realization that you know what?

I think God is powerful to save. I think that we’ve underestimated what God can do for us and that God is more loving and beautiful than we’ve ever imagined. And it was in that, that knowledge that gave me the freedom to deconstruct. So tell me, Becky, with all of your psychology studies, what is it about love, like feeling loved, that gives you the freedom to be curious about other things?

Becky Buck (19:52)
Yeah, that’s a great question. So I think love equates to safety. And when we feel truly safe, we can experience love, right? It’s very difficult to feel love when you’re not feeling safe. Not that you can’t, but I do think for me specifically, my own journey, like safety has been like a priority for the 15 years I have personally been in therapy. So it is a journey when we look at why love though, right? Like why biologically do we need love?

Well, love is belonging. Love is identity, love is bonding, So that moment that the baby is born, that rush of those bonding hormones and oxytocin, right? That is present in birth and all mammals that give birth. So I think we have to think about that without that bonding, we would die. Just on a purely biological level, like it keeps us alive, right, to desire to be bonded and cared for.

I think in relation really into attachment theory, where that explores how our primary caregivers shape our ability to be secure in relationships, most often in romantic relationships, but not exclusively to that. And so, you know, that love really has to be present and specifically meaning love looks like meeting basic needs, yes, but it also looks like somebody having joy over who you are. Physically touching you. There’s so many pieces to secure attachment. You know, that when I push back or when I go away, you’re still gonna be there and you’re still gonna love me. You know, that’s stuff that we learn.

And I think in faith, I think what’s really difficult in high control religion, is we equate love with transaction and possession, which is not love. And we reward that system with praise. So again, was like the whole looking back at my childhood, there were just things that did not make sense to me. It didn’t make sense to me how I could feel love from the same people that caused me harm. That created in myself a type of attachment called disorganized attachment. And it’s really complicated because people who are your primary caregivers show up for you a lot, but then are also unsafe sometimes in really big ways.

And so for myself, I think it was hard for me to process love because I equated love with chaos and the love of Christ brings peace, right? I think of like perfect love casts out fear. That’s one of my favorite verses. I had a friend once we were having a conversation about what we believed about faith and spirituality and he talked about how his experience of God is that God is love and love is God. So any place that you find love, that’s God. And that just blew me away. That was like four or five years ago. And I was in the thick of some really, really difficult deconstructing life stuff. So I tattooed love wins on my knuckles. ⁓ And that spoke to me in so many ways because that is love, right? Love is showing up. Love is safe spaces and safe places. Love is having hard conversations with people who don’t agree with you, which is why we started this, right?

Ruth Perry (23:08)
Aww. Yeah. Yeah.

Becky Buck (23:30)
and trying to find a way to offer compassion to each other. yeah, psychologically speaking, we have to have love to thrive in healthy mental and socio-cultural ways. Yeah, it has to be there.

Ruth Perry (23:48)
I’m thinking of 1 John 4:7-8 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. And they that love not know not God, for God is love. Beloved, let us love one another.

Becky Buck (24:03)
Yeah, we have chills. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ruth Perry (24:06)
Fortunately, that was a song that I sang growing up, so I remember it, because I have the worst memory in the world. But I mean, I’m so grateful for it. Like, that’s a verse that I remember, because I do feel like until you understand love, you don’t really understand God.

Becky Buck (24:14)
Woo! Right, right, because we often associate

Ruth Perry (24:23)
Not that anybody can understand God, but you start to.

Becky Buck (24:27)
Right. Yeah. Well, because God is something when you’re in really high control, fundamentalist Christianity with a headship model and a complementarian model. And I think probably a lot of people who watch this will know what that is. But, you know, headship is in the home where the father figure, the male father figure, that’s the child’s first go-to and the father is accountable to the pastor and the pastor is accountable to God. And so everything is run through the father and I think unfortunately I talk a lot about I lost my dad in 2022 and so the last several years have been a lot of joy and pain as I listen to people’s memories of him.

I am constantly reminded of villains and heroes and how we often, in other people’s accounts and experiences of us, sometimes we’re going to be villains and sometimes we’re going to be heroes. But all of us embody that at one point or another in our lives. And I think in my growing up fear, was a motivator for good behavior. Love as a child felt very far away. I didn’t really see but I think I was also like obsessed with Disney romantic love too. Like there’s a whole piece of that in there that I was like wanting that and very swayed by those persuasions and feelings but yeah I agree. I think God isn’t fear. And I think we were taught that we have to be afraid of God to keep us in line and to keep us compliant, especially as women.

Yeah, that’s an interesting thought, because like, mulling it over We can’t know who God is, if you don’t really experience love or understand love. You’re gonna miss it. Or value it, or value love, you know? You’re gonna miss God.

Ruth Perry (26:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I was taught, I think I was 30 something when I had that epiphany. So for 30 years, I had been a Christian and been taught that God is love and God loves you and we’re saved by grace, not by works. I knew all that, but there’s a difference between the words that you’re taught and then the behaviors that you’re conditioned in everybody was rewarded for conforming I don’t think my home churches ever felt like they were high control. But as a child growing up in them, I definitely absorbed.

how to conform and be praised and what was expected and what was valued in that community. And it’s taken a lot of years now to just find my voice like you. I didn’t have a voice. I had a script that I had inherited and I knew by heart and I used my script, but I did not know my own personality or… desires or needs. I was really good at just compartmentalizing that all the way in some hidden recess that I couldn’t reach. And so I was a very golden Christian girl, but that’s a painful thing to undo. It’s really hard to undo.

Becky Buck (27:36)
Yeah, yeah. Well again, because you’re rewarded for being a martyr as a woman, you know, we have the internalized misogyny of, in order to be loved by God, in order to be worthy of love and belonging, you have to die to yourself, right? And that’s praised. So the woman doing all the things in the home, in the church for kids, right? That is praised as pastors wives. That’s what people are like, great job. Like we really want to keep you around because you’re such a utility that we can just work with, you know? So I think for me that was really hard.

I didn’t say this, but when Graham went to seminary, they had a, what do they call it? Wives in ministry? It was wives. They prized the word wives. It wasn’t women, it was wives in ministry and it was like a support group and I kid you not the first one I went to there was a lesson about how to properly set a table for when you’re hosting like different families and things like that. Like literally it was like Miss Manners Club and I turned around and I walked out. I’m like no this is not it. This is not it for me. And I think that also fueled my deconstruction journey was seeing at a seminary, you know, 50 women being put in their place and willingly doing it and not questioning it.

I found that really upsetting because in my experience growing up, like, because obviously I had my mom, like there was tension. There was constant tension in my mom showing up for her family, but being true to herself. And I love my mom for that. she was not going to be controlled. She was not going to conform, but then she like kind of did, you know, but I think I also have to credit her and I have to credit the women in my life who were believers but still brought a voice to the table even when they weren’t supposed to. I think I learned that you have to know how to play the game, that you can have a voice at the table in certain situations and places. But yeah, the script is real. That is a real piece.

Ruth Perry (29:40)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Buck (29:59)
to… I know I feel like we always say it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that bad. And then you start to tell your story and you’re like, oh my, I was actually a part of a community that a pastor from a pulpit said that women who wear pants are whores. Children in the service saying that. mean, who, some of those kids didn’t even know what a whore was. Like, and yeah.

Ruth Perry (30:15)
Yeah. My gosh.

Becky Buck (30:23)
It’s crazy to look back and just think how Creator God aligns us to bring healing to the world. I think looking at you and I and our alignment, I think we were both rewriting the script.

Ruth Perry (30:40)
Yeah, and it was really powerful to find a fellow sojourner on the path out there in the wilderness. made it a lot less lonely. You actually like threw a lot of firewood on my fire. Like you got me so revved up and so passionate. And I was like, you know what? This has to change. We’re gonna change the world, Becky.

Becky Buck (31:01)
Yeah. We’re just, it’s what we do. Just one brave truth at a time. One brave truth at a time.

Ruth Perry (31:09)
We should have recurring conversations because you’re a wealth of knowledge and expertise on this and just such a beautiful soul and your heart is bigger than anybody else’s. You have so much love and passion and a heart for justice and making things right. Which I feel like that’s straight from God and that’s a mission and the Church is blessed to have you. And I hope more people tune in and join us in this I don’t know that I like the word deconstruction, but I don’t have another one. So just question the script that you’ve been given because… Yeah! Yeah. Yeah.

Becky Buck (31:54)
Just call it critical thinking, where we’re exploring critical thinking skills together, because that inevitably leads to deconstruction.

Ruth Perry (32:03)
Yeah, things aren’t as black and white as we were told. There’s room for questions. And wrestling with your faith is a biblical thing to do, so.

Becky Buck (32:11)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ruth Perry (32:12)
Before we say goodbye on this one, can you tell me about where the name The Beautiful Kingdom Warriors came from?

Becky Buck (32:19)
yes, can I tell you that? Well, I remember us wanting to start this blog. You talk about me lighting a fire under you, but your spirit spoke to me about just being willing to be wrong, being willing to shift and change gears and perspectives. And I think, you know, we both knew that when we met, we were supposed to do something with our experience and our stories.

I guess originally because we really geared this more towards like women in ministry and debunking, complimentarian faith, the word beautiful came to my mind, because like, that’s such a hot button word in the church as a woman, right? Like if you’re too pretty, you’re going to distract the men. But if you’re not pretty enough, you’re not trying hard enough to get a husband. So there’s this really distorted view.

Ruth Perry (33:08)
Or you’re not trying hard enough for your husband that you already have.

Becky Buck (33:11)
Also true. So I think reclaiming that word under the lens of an egalitarian worldview. And then warrior comes out of, a very misunderstood translation when in Genesis when, you know, it’s the account where like basically scriptures are written as like you know God made a helper for Adam and this is a weapon that complementarian people use and high control religion and fundamentalist Christianity and all of that use to say that that headship is biblical right like God created men men then is told that he will have a helper.

So like a woman has to come under. I always was described it as like God, men, women come under the mission of the men in their lives. So first their fathers and their pastors, and then when they get married, that then becomes the umbrella that they’re under to come under their husband’s for furthering the gospel. And so that also never sat well with me.

Right, remember Little Becky with the bow and arrow and G.I. Joe and Barbie, like I have a warrior spirit within my soul. And I think, a big piece of my deconstruction journey was reading the book Lost Women of the Bible by Carolyn Custis James. And at that time, her husband was the president of Reform Theological Seminary where Graham was at. And so she took a massive hit in writing this book, basically debunking headship and pushing forward God’s truth for women and celebrating and empowering women as equals in life and ministry.

And I think she basically opens the book and kind of talks about that word helper. And it’s translated as ezer and it means yes, helper, but in the Hebrew, it actually means more of like co-laborer or co-warrior. And I think it’s 16 other times that it’s used in the Old Testament in reference to God coming and helping in battle. So it’s this visual of a man and a woman being back to back in battle, keeping an eye out for one another to fight for safety for whatever they’re fighting for. And I actually have that tattooed too.

Somewhere, nope, not that arm. This arm, this arm, some arm, this arm. I don’t think you can see it, but it’s there somewhere. I don’t know. I don’t know how to move it. But I think that was reclaiming that word, right? Through that knowledge received from the Lost Women of the Bible book. And I think it’s such a powerful visual that’s inclusive of everybody in how.

Ruth Perry (35:32)
Yay! Yeah!

Becky Buck (35:53)
whether it’s a romantic relationship, friendship, whatever it is, men and women are meant to work together, back to back, to co-warrior in sharing light and love and truth.

Ruth Perry (36:08)
I think Carolyn Custis James uses the phrase Blessed Alliance to explain what the relationship between men and women ought to be in God’s kingdom. And it’s like such a misrepresentation of egalitarianism that women want to be above men. Like we want to be free to use our gifts and follow our callings and be a part of building God’s kingdom here on earth as in heaven. And it’s about an alliance. It’s not a competition. And really the curse is where the dominion of man came over the woman. So we don’t want to live out the curse. We’re supposed to like live in the resurrection, redemption, history of Jesus now. Like in the kingdom of God, we should not be living under the curse.

Becky Buck (36:38)
right. Yeah, yeah, think, yeah, I think when we chose the Beautiful Kingdom Warriors, that was kind of the thought behind that. And I love how you kind of shifted it to be builders, right? Because that has more of a peace lens, which we need in this world.

Ruth Perry (37:00)
Yeah. Yeah, I was getting a lot of comments from people, why are you using such violent language? like, well, I mean, it was more like drawing from the imagery of the Bible and the, but yeah, I think they both, I like both names.

Becky Buck (37:17)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, well I think you’re, you know, the, the, I don’t even know what we call it, the blog, the company, the, what is it? What is it even now?

Ruth Perry (37:29)
Yeah, I just always call that a blog. I don’t really know.

Becky Buck (37:32)
I feel like it did its job and now it’s being birthed into something new. And I think it feels like it’s moving towards a more inclusive space where it doesn’t have to be as feminine driven, like in terms of what it needed to be to start for both of us to find a place for our voice and to help other women struggling with feeling like they didn’t have a place and that they were too much and not enough.

Ruth Perry (38:02)
It’s like once your dominoes start falling, you realize, well, actually, you know, patriarchy is linked to white supremacy, is linked to colonizing, is linked to this, is linked to that. And you’re seeing like how everything is interconnected because anything that’s like about supremacy of one over another is anti-God’s kingdom, I think.

Becky Buck (38:13)
Mm-hmm. Agreed. Totally agree. Because people use religion as a weapon, right? In my anthropology class when I went back to school, which was also a huge piece of my deconstruction journey, was like going to a secular university for the first time in my entire life. But it has made me so full and like clear in my vision and purpose and who I am and who I want to become. Like I could not have done the work that I needed to do to get to this point in my journey. the professor, the first day of class, she started by saying, beware of ideology. I didn’t even know what ideology was. I think when we say it has to be this way and only this way or else.

The or else is a problem. And you’re absolutely right. Like we can’t look at egalitarian belief in ministry and then not talk about issues related to like systems of oppression 100%. Like, yeah, I’m in full support of that. you can cut this out if you want to but I even hesitate to call myself a Christian at all these days. and it’s not because I don’t believe in the love of God and the person of Christ like bringing that truth through his life and death and resurrection. But yeah, I think the Christian nationalist movement has defiled the name of Christianity and Christian. And there were atrocities and terrible things that the Protestant faith and the Catholic Church did, again, weaponizing ideology for power and control and colonialism.

Yeah, maybe I would just end that with beware of ideology because it’s serving someone. That ideology that you are screaming in the streets taking bullets for, that is serving someone else who is not in the street taking bullets, right? And I think that’s where the critical thinking lens is really, really important in offering compassion and understanding to one another, but also being willing to be wrong and to pull back and say, like that wasn’t okay that that happened in history or in my past or path. Yeah. Yeah.

Ruth Perry (40:45)
The truth will set us free. It doesn’t help to be defensive or defend like the indefensible. It’s better just to shine a light on it.

Becky Buck (40:57)
For sure, for sure. And we talk a lot about like moving the needle, right? So I think it was Lisa in one of her sermons that that always stuck with me. You’re either moving towards a growing relationship with Christ or like moving away from that.

Ruth Perry (41:15)
I remember her saying that the day that we went to the youth group and that you and I shared about ezer and Genesis and she had her lesson first and I remember her talking about that with the kids and then I remember us talking and then if I remember correctly maybe Kian or Marissa had like a gecko or some lizard that they named Ezer and I was like really honored.

Becky Buck (41:36)
I love that. I love that.

Ruth Perry (41:37)
And I also remember while we were at North Harbor, think between you and I causing such a stir over women’s equality that they changed Lisa’s title from director to pastor. And I felt like that was so exciting. And now North Harbor has a female lead pastor. It’s like just.

Becky Buck (41:51)
They did. They did. I have chills from that. Yes. Yes, yes, Patty is,

Ruth Perry (42:00)
You and I speaking up and this being the thing that we’re passionate about. I mean, you can like really change a culture. And so it’s really powerful when we talk, tell our stories, ask our questions out loud. It’s powerful.

Becky Buck (42:03)
That makes me cry.

Yeah, and to not be afraid to think about who’s missing at the table, right? If we’re going to say that love is God and God is love and God loves the world, then the world should be represented at our table equally across the board. So if there are people missing at the table, there’s a reason why they’re missing. And I think not being content and asking the hard questions paves safety to experience love and belonging.

because now you’re safe enough to critically think and explore and deconstruct and you’re in a safe place to do that. And then again, inevitably love wins. And so you come to a place where more people’s voices are at the table and more work can be done creating places where people can belong and they are no longer feeling oppressed. They’re no longer feeling less than. And yeah.

I agree. I think it’s so powerful how one voice can turn to two voices, can turn to hundreds and thousands of voices just by asking the questions and finding that truth and that light together.

Ruth Perry (43:17)
Man, this was a really beautiful episode and I’m just so grateful for you, Becky, and I love you so much.

Becky Buck (43:25)
I love you too. I’m so, so grateful that we have reconnected and got to kind of celebrate where we came from and where we’re at. And maybe we can kind of revisit where you want to take this next. I don’t know.

Ruth Perry (43:37)
Yeah, let’s do this again soon.

Becky Buck (43:40)
Definitely.

Ruth Perry (43:41)
Alright, thank you. Bye.

Becky Buck (43:43)
You’re welcome. We did it!

Thank you again for celebrating the birth of the Beautiful Kingdom Builders Podcast with me! I am so excited to continue having redemptive conversations about gender, justice, abuse and healing in the Christian faith. Subscribe so you never miss an episode!

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Introducing: The Beautiful Kingdom Builders Podcast!

Posted on December 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

This has been in the works for a while and I am so excited to launch with a little teaser episode today, with a full episode coming next week! You can listen to it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and more!

Coming soon: interviews with Becky Buck (co-founder of our blog and FB page so many moons ago!), Jenna Dunn (Bible study author at Ezer Bible), Amber Jones (author of Sacred), Scott Harris (missionary), and Dr. Roy Ciampa. You can comment here or email me suggestions for future episodes at ruthperry@thebeautifulkingdombuilders.com.

Transcript:

Welcome to The Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast. I’m your host, Rev. Ruth Perry. This is a space for redemptive dialogue on gender, justice, abuse, and healing within the Christian faith.

This short teaser episode is here to introduce the podcast and give you a glimpse of what’s coming in the weeks, and maybe years, ahead.

More than ten years ago, my friend Becky Buck and I created The Beautiful Kingdom Builders Facebook page as a place to share what we were learning— and unlearning—about God’s dream for women and girls in His Church. Over time, that community grew and expanded into conversations on racism, abuse, Christian Nationalism, and many other issues that affect the Church in America.

I believe those conversations matter deeply. But posting articles and memes has always felt incomplete. I’ve longed for a space where we can explore these topics with more depth, nuance, and compassion. That’s what this podcast will do, I hope.

I’ll be talking with friends, mentors, authors, theologians, pastors, and activists—people who have been influential in shaping my faith and helping me to obey Jesus’ greatest commands, to love God with all my heart, mind, and strength, and to love my neighbor as myself.

There are so many beautiful expressions of Christianity—shining examples of what it looks like to follow Jesus faithfully. And there are also expressions that have, frankly, become bad news for many of our neighbors. The American Church has hemorrhaged 40 million people in the last 25 years, the fallout of her culture wars. Let’s talk to some of those folks, too.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that loving our neighbors well starts with listening to them well. And so I invite you to listen in as I host these conversations.

God is love and God’s grace and power to save are bigger and better than we’ve ever imagined. God’s kingdom is beautiful, and God is moving in powerful ways to heal and redeem the world. It is our deepest purpose as his followers to partner with God in that redeeming work.

I’ve already recorded several episodes and I have a hundred more in mind. These first conversations have been life-giving, challenging, and so much fun for me. I cannot wait to share them with you.

Please subscribe, share with your friends, find The Beautiful Kingdom Builders on all the socials, and join me as we imagine and build more beautiful expressions of Christianity—expressions that reflect God’s heart and God’s will, for earth as in heaven.

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Thanks for listening and following along! Please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, and subscribe to emails here on the blog if you would like to read transcripts and episode notes!

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