Tag Archives: Biblical justice

027 I Is Your Theology Liberating or Oppressive? A Deep Dive with Dr. Eliezer Valentín-Castañón

Posted on September 16, 2026 by | Leave a comment

I took a Biblical Exegesis class this past April with Rev. Dr. Eliezer Valentín-Castañón, who is a United Methodist Church minister and scholar, currently appointed as Frederick District superintendent in the Baltimore-Washington Conference. He has had a long career in ministry and advocacy. I was delighted when Professor Eliezer accepted my invitation to speak with me about his personal journey of faith, from a Puerto Rican teenaged Pentecostal preacher to a mainline denominational leader, known for his commitment to justice, scholarship and community engagement.

In our conversation, we discussed the lengthy process of training and vetting that UMC pastors go through, and the importance of that process in light of low trust in clergy these days (see: https://news.gallup.com/poll/700736/nurses-continue-lead-honesty-ethics-ratings.aspx ).

Professor Eliezer also sent me these links to resources that help people rethink church and faith:
*Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice
This is an interdisciplinary program located at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. It focuses on issues of justice that arise at the intersection of religion, economics, and ecology.
*The Bible for Normal People
They believe in a world where people engage with the Bible freely, without fear or guilt—where questions are welcome and scholarship is accessible.
*Dan McClellan YouTube Channel
Dan is an American biblical scholar who is well known for his activities on social media, creating and sharing videos on religious topics from a historical-critical perspective. 
*Misquoting Jesus Podcast
This is a six-time New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned Bible scholar, Bart Ehrman. He uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity.
*Homebrewed Christianity
Their goal is to bring the wisdom of the academy’s ivory tower into people’s earbuds. Most episodes center around an interview with a different scholar, theologian, or philosopher.

And books that impacted his faith journey during his early years of theological awakening (with TBKB affiliate links):

Please enjoy this episode of The Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Substack, and more! 

TRANSCRIPT:

Rev. Ruth Perry (00:16)
My guest today is Reverend Dr. Eliezer Valentín-Castañón, although you’re originally from Puerto Rico, so could you say your name for me without the American accent?

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (00:26)
Sure, sure. This is Eliezer Valentín-Castañón.

Rev. Ruth Perry (00:29)
I met you this spring in my first course of study class. I’m a local licensed pastor in the United Methodist Church, so I’m going through a course of study and my first one was Biblical Exegesis, with you. And you were amazing. The class was amazing. And throughout the class, as we’re talking about the Bible you would drop little tidbits about your personal story, about where you came from theologically and how you’ve changed, and it was very intriguing to me. I’m so pleased that you said you would come on and share your story with my audience today. Thank you so much.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (00:59)
Absolutely. Thank you, Ruth, for the invitation. As you know, I had some professors in my life and when we met with friends and family, they will always say, and he was one of my best students. So I’m gonna repeat that in this context. And Ruth, you were one of my best students. Thank you for being in that class.

Rev. Ruth Perry (01:18)
Thank you so much. That’s very kind of you to say.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (01:22)
Absolutely. It is indeed a blessing, when you explore things together with pastors, right? And as I said in the class, you most likely will be the only theologian in residence that people will have in their churches. The only biblical scholar that people will have in their churches. And that’s why this is so serious, right? This is such an important thing and has such a value.

I measure things for the value that they have for me and in my life, how they help me to be a better Christian. But I also believe that, when you take this seriously as a pastor, then you really see the importance of your preparation in relation to how this is going to help your folks in the church.

So I am glad that you took the course. I am glad that we were able to explore some of the things the Bible teaches but also the tools we have at our disposal today to study scripture in a way that is going to be more helpful to the current reader, right? To the present reality where we live today.

Rev. Ruth Perry (02:19)
I would love to talk with you as part of our conversation about the material of that class because it was really powerful and impactful and I learned so much. It was a short class because you were teaching pastors in ministry and so the expectation isn’t that we’re full time students. But the material was really helpful to me in my ministry and I’m grateful that I had that. And

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (02:41)
Praise be.

Rev. Ruth Perry (02:42)
So you wear many hats. You’re a district superintendent in the United Methodist Church for the Baltimore-Washington region, and you’re a seminary professor and a former pastor. How many churches are you district superintendent of now?

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (02:55)
Right now I have ninety seven churches under my supervision. Yeah.

Rev. Ruth Perry (02:59)
So what does being a district superintendent involve?

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (03:02)
Mostly working with encouraging people, encouraging churches, encouraging pastors, and once in a while trying to extinguish fires. This is part of the deal with district superintendents. I have to say, sister in all honesty, it’s an incredible ministry. It’s an incredible ministry when you’re working with congregations and you’re working with, pastors and they’re different situations and different needs.

It’s a different work, as I tell my pastors, this is not pastoral ministry as pastors do in the local church. This is indeed something having to do with some administration, but from my experience is a lot of holding people responsible for what’s happening in the local church, but also encouraging them to continue to further their education, further the work that they’re doing, continue to pursue the things that they like. and as our Bishop Easterling says, is dream big, don’t be afraid of dreaming and pursuing the things you believe are important to pursue.

I think that that’s something that I also like to promote among my pastors and and also for the local churches because it’s a dream of the pastor but it’s also a dream of the local church and my hope is always that the two of them come together, so that you’re working in tandem with each other, pursuing the same goals for ministry. And at the same time for pastors, it’s the business about also challenging their congregations not only to do pastoral ministry, but also what I understand to be the extension of that pastoral ministry, which takes place in the community, that is not necessarily the folks that meet in the church building, right?

So it’s that extension of ministry, that extension of what it means to be a pastor in the church, especially in the United Methodist Church, where our pastors we are not called just to serve in a building, we’re called to serve in a location, and that location implies the entire community where the church happens to be. I have to say it’s been a real blessing. It has a lot of challenges, as you can imagine, but it’s just been a blessing. It’s a lot of conversations, a lot of hurt.

As you know, Ruth, we all make mistakes. And it’s just no way to avoid that. We just need to be humble about that and then accept also that when we do something wrong, that we’re willing and open to ask for forgiveness and have the humility to be able to admit that, we messed up. I think that this is all part of that ministry of the district superintendent. There is a lot of authority, but more important than the authority that is given to a DS is also the importance of recognizing our own failures and our own brokenness in this journey. So that we’re related to our folks like they are, so are we.

We’re not better than anybody else. We’re not above anybody else. We just have been called to special ministry in the life of the church. And so for me again, it’s been a blessing. It’s been a blessing also to see how things work, at this level of the life of the church. Usually pastors feel that they’re alone, that they’re isolated. And I can tell you, my sister, that being a district superintendent makes you feel that even more. Yeah.

Rev. Ruth Perry (06:00)
Oof. Well part of my background is that I grew up in a Baptist church that was independent of any kind of denominational structure. We were part of a denomination, but it was essentially in name only. My dad was the pastor. I don’t know that he ever went to any conferences in our denomination or had any communications from anyone in our denomination. And there was a terrible church split in our church. And I just felt the absence of a district superintendent and the absence of a bishop, that support that would come in when there’s a fire. And so it was just a really horrific experience. And this is something that drew me to being a part of the United Methodist Church is having the support of that structure in place and also just the high standards that you have for your ministers that you require education and you require so many steps and so much accountability and training.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (06:48)
Yeah.

Rev. Ruth Perry (06:48)
I think it’s really important.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (06:49)
Well I tell those who are aspiring to be pastors, you are coming into the ministry of the United Methodist Church and this is not for the faint of heart. We want to have the best pastors, best prepared folks that we can. So that the people we’re serving have the best that they can, the best that we can offer. and so it is sometimes a lengthy process, sometimes it’s a very taxing process.

If you want to be a pastor in our church, it’s because you want to be the best you can be as a disciple of Jesus Christ, so that you can give the best you can to your people. If you’re not willing to do that, then this is not for you.

I was telling my son the other day, my son is considering ministry in a different denomination. We’ll leave that too for another day. But he was asking me, so dad, how does the process work in the United Methodist Church to be ordained?

And I said, Well, you know, baby, you spend three years in seminary. Then in our conference, you spend three more years as a provisional member. And before you can be a provisional member, you have an examination done by the Board of Ordained ministry, a bunch of pastors and lay folks who are part of the Board of Ordained ministry who will examine your theology, will examine your biblical knowledge. And we’ll examine your polity knowledge. So, how well versed are you with our theology, our history, and our polity? And once you pass that, and it requires three-quarters of the members of the Board of Artine Ministry to actually vote for you. So if you don’t get the three-quarter requirement, you will not be moved forward to provisional membership.

But let’s say you did, right? You passed the examination and now you’re moving forward and so you’re gonna be now serving for three more years as a provisional member. Then you’re gonna be now going to another interview, another examination. Of which time you’re gonna have to prepare a written document that expresses your theology and your biblical understanding and your polity understanding and so on and so forth. And I said, and that is going to be evaluated. So the written material is gonna be evaluated, your sermon is gonna be evaluated, your Bible study is gonna be evaluated. If you fail in any of those, you will not move forward.

If you don’t pass the examination, you may be able to come back in the following year after you correct some of the things that they will tell you you did not do right. But let’s say you pass and it was great. Then you will be going before the Annual Conference. Specifically you will go before the executive meeting, which is the all the clergy in the annual conference, and then they have to vote for you. And if anything happens that somebody brings an issue about your candidacy at that level you might not actually be able to move forward.

But let’s say that all that passed then of course comes the consecration of the individual. So you have a bachelor’s degree, you have now a master’s degree, so that’s between eight, nine years maybe of study. And then you spent three more years waiting as a provisional member and that’s if you just follow the three years, right? Well the people take a little bit longer. and now you, enter into the process to be considered for elders’ orders. And I said, so this is how long our process is. It takes years. And he couldn’t believe it.

He said, and you had to do all this? And I said, Yeah, that’s what elders in the United Methodist Church have to do. And he was just surprised. And then of course I explained a little bit that also about, local pastors and the difference between local pastors and elders. I said, local pastors have this, course of study program and it’s this long and so on and so forth. And for a local pastor who wants to be ordained, I said you go through the five years of basic course of study, then you do another three years of advanced course of study, and then you might be able to apply or request to be ordained. But you need to meet other criteria before you can get to that point, because there are some educational criteria that are part of this. And I said to him, and with all this, all these roadblocks, so to speak.

And we still have pastors who should not be pastors in the ministry of the local church. So that it’s not for lack of effort. It’s not for lack of effort to get the best people we can. We still will find people who should not have been ordained or moved forward as pastors in the church. But this is precisely because we want the best for our people.

We want the best, most prepared folks we can have to serve our churches so that our people are served by folks who are from their own congregations, but who have decided that they want to serve the people of God and provide the best care and the best knowledge and the best education to the people that they’re serving. I said, this is who we are, this is what we do.

Rev. Ruth Perry (11:22)
There’s a Gallup poll from several years ago. I can’t remember what year it was, but it was ranking the trust that the population has in different career paths. And for clergy I think it was only thirty six percent.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (11:35)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rev. Ruth Perry (11:36)
And so I think this is really important that denominations do have high standards for their clergy and a lot of accountability and support. But also the training too. And there’s a lot of support within the denomination to help assist and provide for clergy as they go through this process, which is wonderful.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (11:54)
Yeah, yeah. I think the denomination is also committed to helping and providing resources to folks to be able to do that. And we also encourage churches where people are serving as pastors to also support their pastors in this process, right? Because, you know, by supporting their pastors they’re also benefiting themselves, because as you bless these pastors and as you help them in their journey, when they move from your congregation to the next church they’re going to be pastoring, you are being part of the process of blessing that other congregation and blessing the denomination, right?

I think again, as much as it’s challenging, as much as it’s difficult it’s also a wonderful opportunity for all of us to make sure that we’re doing the best we can to serve our people and to be as committed to doing the right thing as we can and always again with the humility of realizing that even so we may not have everybody who’s supposed to be in this ministry and doing the right thing. But again, we don’t know what is in people’s hearts and minds. So we do what the best we can and that’s why we are so demanding on our clergy.

Rev. Ruth Perry (13:03)
So you did not grow up United Methodist and you were originally ordained as a teenager. Can you take us back to your background

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (13:09)
Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Rev. Ruth Perry (13:11)
and tell us about your beginnings?

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (13:13)
Yeah, yeah. I started my journey of faith first in the Catholic Church, as most people in Puerto Rico did, well, at least at my age. I became a Baptist for a little bit and then I joined an independent fundamentalist Pentecostal church. That’s the church that I became a pastor when I was 18.

And as a Pentecostal church, of course, we were, led by the Spirit and the idea was that if you know your Bible, meaning if you can quote scripture left and right, you are definitely able to be a pastor in the church, because you know, somehow it seemed to me that the biggest requirement to be a pastor in my church was that you know your Bible. So that you can call the Bible for every occasion in any situation. And so I did.

I learned my Bible and I quoted scripture left and right. And so I served as a pastor for a few years in that church. In my church, different from the Methodist church and some other denominations, we had several pastors. So I was not the lone pastor. I was a part of a team and we called our team a group of elders. Imagine that at eighteen you were the elder.

I remember going to a to a Pentecostal, another Pentecostal church looking for some assistance for a member of our congregation. And the young man who made the contact with the pastor of this church, the pastor was not going to help this young man because he was a young man, and he said if I bring an elder, from my church, would you be able to, he said, So yeah, bring an elder and so and there I come I was even younger than the guy who was making the first connection with the pastor and the pastor look at me and says and you’re the elder?

All that simply to say we had a lot of fun and many challenges but that experience also shaped me, shaped who I am as a pastor today, shaped my experience as a Christian until this day. There are many things that remain with me from my from that early experience. And there are some things that I just realized were not right. And those things I have left behind.

And it’s one of those wonderful journeys. As I listen to stories of people who have a similar experience than I had growing up in a Pentecostal fundamentalist church, and and they’re now in deconstruction. You know, interesting because when I was going through that process in my life, there was no deconstruction. This is just what you do as a Christian who’s actually maturing in faith, right? Now we call it deconstruction. So when I hear the testimonies of people I realize what an amazing experience. Because all these folks who are currently in this journey of deconstructing, is simply encountering their faith in a deeper fashion and just simply gaining an even richer understanding of who the God that they believe in is and then seeking to serve to be part of that community of believers but now with this new understanding of what it means to be a Christian in today’s world.

I remember one point in that process, we used to do a lot of street preaching. And we were in one of our towns in Puerto Rico doing that, which we did every week. And I was just in that process asking God for guidance. I said, there are things that we do in our church that I just cannot understand how we can sustain these things as gospel.

And I’m a pastor in that church and I’m asking questions of how can we sustain these actions as gospel teachings, and I ask God for a community of people that can share the experience of questioning and also growing. And a few weeks later I made that first connection with one other Christian who was also in a similar journey from another Pentecostal church. And we started a group of Christians, and part of what we did was we took time to study the Bible, but also studying then, things that people were reading. And so we started to engage in conversation. And that was one of the best times as a young Christian, discovering also more about my faith and and what God is seeking to do with us and through us in the world.

Rev. Ruth Perry (17:20)
What did the gospel sound like when you were preaching it at eighteen years old?

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (17:24)
Well, this was one of the challenges that I had, right? I had a very interesting situation where the people in my church and other pastors in my congregation were preaching this gospel of condemnation. You know, you need to do X, Y, and Z. I remember going to the leadership of the church and saying, What do we mean by this? I said, we are telling people that they need to have faith and to accept the gift of God by grace.

But then that is followed by, but if you don’t come to church, then you’re not a believer. And so I said, how do we sustain this message? How can we seriously say to people that what is required here is your faith and accepting God’s grace? And then on the other hand, telling them, but if you don’t come to church, then you’re not a believer, then you’re going to hell.

Let me just say, we send so many people to hell. It’s not even funny. We were so hard. We were hard on ourselves, and we were hard on people, period. And as pastors, we were very hard. Because we wanted to have the most consecrated and the most holy people we could have in our congregation. Just to give you an example, we had a church gathering to judge one of our members. Like a trial.

And the trial was because this individual spent too much time studying; he was in college and he wanted to do good in school and he was not spending enough time in church so we expelled him from church because he was an idolater. He dedicated more time to the god of school than to the God of the gospel. That should give you an idea of how my church was that I grew up in.

There were many other examples, of the things we did to people. And I will say the things that I did to people because from my vast experience and knowledge at eighteen, nineteen, I thought that that was the right thing to do, to help people really become deeply connected and committed to Christ.

Just to realize that no, this is not God’s will. For me at least. I came to the point in which, after seeing all the things we have done to people, and all our contradictions, that were part of our faith community, coming to realize, no, this is not right. This is not how church is supposed to be. And if we speak about a gospel of grace, let’s live into that reality and what it means then to follow Christ within that context of grace. So a few years down the road, I was about, 24. my church divided. It was between me and another pastor. And I said, I could not divide the church. And so I re signed. Different from many other people, right? That says, I’ll take my people and I started my own church, right?

Rev. Ruth Perry (19:55)
Yeah.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (19:56)
I decided, no, that’s not the will of God. That’s not how this is supposed to work either. And so I resigned and I stay in the church as long as I could. And I got involved in social justice ministries, I got involved in justice advocacy, and got engaged a in a strike.

As part of all that journey, and I kept challenging my church. I said, if we speak of justice, if we believe that God is a just God that calls us to do justice, How could we not do justice? How can we not support people who are struggling to have a better life and to gain access to better pay and to better health care and so on and so forth.

And so of course, one of the things that happened in my church is that I became the communist. I was like, well, this is great. So this is damn if you do and damn if you don’t. And I finally said to folks in my church, especially in leadership, I said, if you consider this to be my actions and my joining a strike for the betterment of people in our community, then I guess that I am a communist, if that is what it means to be a communist. I said, but I’m doing this because I believe that this is what God ordains, that this is what God desires, that we all get involved in this and support our brothers and sisters who are struggling for better compensation, and so on.

And I realized, I cannot stay in this congregation because I’m gonna be just a sore person for everybody because, nobody wanted to discuss with me. I will be quoting scripture left and right. And so people didn’t want to be told that the scripture actually does indeed sustain what I’m doing. So I decided, this is not helpful to them and it’s certainly not helpful to me.

So the community that I mentioned earlier that I have prayed to the Lord and the Lord provided became very much a community of faith for me and and we became a community for each other. When I finished college, I came to the US. And when I came to the US is when I started then exploring other churches, and then I became a member of the United Methodist Church in New York and the rest is history.

Rev. Ruth Perry (22:00)
For me, I started questioning the patriarchal theology I’d been taught and I got labeled a feminist, which I hadn’t been reading any feminists. It was the Bible. So that’s how people use those labels to push people out really who are questioning and rocking the boat and making others experience some discomfort with the system that they have in place. So who are some of the theologians and activists and writers and thinkers that influenced you as your faith was changing?

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (22:26)
At the time when all this change was taking place, especially as I was still part of that church, interestingly enough, I didn’t have a whole lot of theologians who were supporting my my ideas, right? I remember reading, Francis Schaeffer that is sort of the theologian of the of the 70s, right? That every good conservative Christian was reading. My systematic theology was shaped by Louis Burkhoff, which was a theologian from the early 20th century. His book was the book on systematic theology. I was reading people like him and Francis Schaeffer and whatnot but like you said I found this reading the Bible.

I did not enter into this political process because I read this theologian or that theologian or that biblical scholar. No, I enter this journey because I read the Bible. And the Bible was challenging me to do something different and to respond differently to the world in which we live. It was the scripture that actually motivated me, because I gather from the scripture the idea that God is a God of justice and therefore we are called to do justice, right? If we are called just and justified, then my conclusion, was then we should be doing justice too, right?

And it was after I engage in this process of coming to do works of justice in the community. That’s when I started reading and encountering other theologians. And we had a wonderful Baptist pastor who was a professor at the university. And as we were exploring what the Bible says, he brought a copy of his doctoral dissertation, which he was working to publish. He just made a copy of the eighth chapter, he says, this might be helpful. And it was a chapter on biblical hermeneutics.

And since I liked the guy and I thought the guy was, an upstanding Christian man, I read the thing and it just blew my mind. It was a chapter specifically on liberation hermeneutics, and it just blew my mind. I said, how could it be that we that I’ve been in church all this time and we have never read anything like this. That was a very pro prolific writer in Puerto Rico. His name is Samuel Silva Gottai. He teaches on sociology of religion. And from then on I wanted to read other folks, and so I read Gustavo Gutiérrez, because of course I also wanted to read something that had to do with my cultural reality, right? The roots of where I am from, and in this case Latin America.

And so I started reading folks from Latin American context and little by little gaining access to these folks and these writers was an endeavor. Because you know, in the circles, my Christian circles where I was growing up, none of that was available. So you had to actually go out and find some of these folks. I of course read Moltmann. I also liked philosophy. So I was reading Nietzsche. I was reading Kierkegaard. I was reading, the classics of existentialism in the 19th and 20th century. Folks asking questions and challenging preconceived ideas, right? And it was just this wonderful moment of discovery.

And as a Christian in the 20th century, reading back into the nineteenth century and seeing these folks have been questioning, this is a journey. It’s been around us all the time. And we have been told that, no, this is a lineal thing, right? I mean, we started 2,000 years ago, and it just keeps going. And then seeing this reality of all these Christians challenging and questioning theology and biblical studies, that’s when I started to, awaken in me this idea that we had not been given all the information. We have not been even offered all the information about what’s available out there.

I was a Pentecostal fundamentalist, and the best theology that I had was given to me by Scofield in the Scofield Bible. That was the thing that every good fundamentalist will have. So I was a premillennial. I read all the things having to do with the second coming of Christ. That’s what we taught, that’s what we preached. It was our bread and butter.

But then starting to move away from not thinking that Jesus was not coming, simply thinking, there is more right to Jesus coming. And it is fine to, teach about Jesus’ returning, but what do we do in between? And when I started asking those questions, this is what everybody got extremely uncomfortable. But my readings really began after my discovery that the Bible had a whole lot more to teach than we have been taught.

Rev. Ruth Perry (26:50)
So now you’ve been in ministry for decades. I won’t say how many.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (26:54)
Yeah, not counting the time that I was a pastor in the Pentecostal church, I was ordained in nineteen eighty nine. I started my first appointment was in nineteen ninety. and I’ve been serving the church since then.

Rev. Ruth Perry (27:06)
So how do you articulate the gospel now?

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (27:09)
Well, the gospel of Jesus Christ simply for me is a liberating gospel. The teachings of Jesus made clear his demand for the proclamation of the values of the kingdom of God. So if we hold truth to the values of the kingdom of God, which we find in Jesus’ teachings and throughout the New Testament, that’s what it means to live according to the gospel, right? That gospel that calls us to live a holy life.

With that understanding that holiness is not about how much I pray and how much I fast and how much I read the Bible, but actually holiness is based precisely on the idea that I love the other, right? That love is the thing that actually makes me truly a holy person when I love the other human being that is next to me, because our holiness is precisely inspired by God’s holiness.

A holiness that is based on the idea that God loves humankind and therefore is open to receive and welcome everyone. And so when I understood God’s holiness from that perspective and I understood what the gospel is requiring folks to do, is when I realized, this is about preaching the good news of the kingdom of God and living a holy life. And as John Wesley taught and then the Wesleyan movement have taught is that to be a holy person is to be a person who loves.

And if you spend your life in a monastery, which to each its own, but when I was doing my doctorate, and I was in a class on Christian spirituality. Some of the folks in the class were, district superintendents, and I was just a humble pastor. and these, pastors, these district superintendents talking about, the spiritual life of going to the mountain and spending months at a time or going on a year sabbatical and spending time in the monastery and praying and doing all those things. And I said, that’s nice. And once you do that, what do you do? What’s next? Because for me, holiness is to be people who love each other and that’s true holiness, people who are willing to sacrifice for each other. And if we teach the values of the kingdom of God, and help people to connect with the values of the kingdom of God, then it will lead us indeed to live a holy life.

As Christians, we cannot proclaim a message of salvation and the message of the good news without being willing to sacrifice in love for those whom God has called us to love and to serve. My doctoral dissertation was precisely on Wesleyan theology and its commitment to the poor or to the impoverished. The first part of my dissertation was the biblical foundation, right?

As a good fundamentalist, biblical foundation and then the rest of the stuff comes later. That’s what I have found is that this is the way we come to be closer to the message of Jesus Christ is when we indeed do what he called us to do. Live the way he called us to live and love each other the way he loved us. If we’re able to do that, then we certainly live a life of holiness and in the will of God. And, part of this is that because we accept that in humility, we also accept that, we’re going to fail.

This is not gonna be a straight line, if you do the following steps, one leads to two, two leads to three, and so on and so forth, and you’re gonna get it to ten. No, the reality is that it’s not like that. We don’t live in a lineal world, we live in a time in which the reality is more complex, and so we know that God is present through it all.

But we are indeed limited. And so accepting our limitations in that humility, we also accept that we’re gonna fail and we’re gonna mess up. But the important thing is that we are willing to redo, to retake, to redouble the effort to do the right thing. And the right thing can only be a right thing if we are able and willing to love each other the way that God has loved us, even to the point of death. So, it’s not a popular message. People don’t like the idea of suffering and giving up their lives.

But at the end of the day, this is what Jesus lived, and this is what he taught his disciples, and this is what we see in Paul, and we see throughout the New Testament. Anything that speaks about becoming, rich or wealthy, or anything that is about us gaining power and serving power so that we can dominate other people and we can bring everybody to their knees to praise our God missed the point. They missed the point. This is not about subjugation, this is not about oppression, this is not about showing that we are right and you are wrong, and therefore you need to come to my side.

No, this is about us being able to work with each other and then that loving of each other, realizing that we’re in this together, and God intervened in human history so that we can actually work with each other. And if Jesus died on the cross for all of us as we proclaim in the gospel, then it must be because God loves everyone. And so, how can the God who loves everyone not love the one who’s next to me? And who is different from me, who thinks differently than me? Well, it might be that that is the case, but it’s also the case that God indeed place me in this space so that I can be a part of that person’s life.

And I have to say in that humility is how much I have learned from other people of different faiths. How much I have learned from people that I did not think they were Christians and they have taught me what it means to be a Christian. And again, for me, it’s simply just accepting that we are not in control for God’s sake. I can’t control the results. if I could, the world will be a complete different place, right? But we cannot. And every time we try to do that, we simply show that what we’re looking for is to shape our church, to shape our society in our own image.

And that’s why we’re having so much trouble in the church and in society, right? Because we want to shape our society in our own image. And that goes across the board. I mean, this is something that applies to Christians and Jews and Muslims and anybody else. When you want the other to be just like you and on your terms, then oppression ensues. And the thing is, in the last two thousand years, we have changed.

Biblical studies have changed, understanding of the Bible has changed, understanding of our theology has changed. and it’s just amazing to think that there are people who still want to have a theology and a biblical understanding that is based on the first century. Even the people from the second century didn’t agree necessarily with what happened in the first century and so on.

But thinking that we can actually hold time and that things are gonna be just the way they were, and that that’s the only way that this is gonna be a godly experience, is denying the reality of the divine, and it’s imposing on God our will, our desires, right? Our our own understanding of what God is supposed to be about without allowing God to be God. Which again goes into the the same thing we do with each other. We want other people to just be like we are, to believe like we do, without allowing people their own agency, their own experience, and accepting the fact that, God is working on everybody. And so if we open ourselves to God, that it means that we can meet the folks where they are so that we can be pastors of the people where they are and we can provide the guidance that they need. And in that journey, even we might be able to learn a thing or two.

That’s that’s where I am, sister. That’s where I am.

Rev. Ruth Perry (34:46)
Well, I wanna ask one more question before we sign off.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (34:49)
Sure.

Rev. Ruth Perry (34:49)
So you’re coming from a background in the Pentecostal denomination and Pentecostalism and Charismatic churches are growing in a time when a lot of denominations are in decline and they emphasize the Holy Spirit. But then on the other hand there’s that whole seasoning of condemnation and building walls around the theology instead of building bridges towards people and loving neighbors of all kinds. So I’m curious, how do you see the Holy Spirit manifesting itself in mainline denominations like the United Methodist Church?

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (35:20)
Well, that’s a great question, Ruth. I see the Holy Spirit in the mainline churches, and specifically in the United Methodist Church, when we have come to that point of discovering that thing called humility, right? That we we we need to be humble. And therefore accepting also the possibility that God is working in spite of us, right? I think in all honesty, and this of course will be a point for debate for many folks, but I think that when we have opened ourselves to be an inclusive church, and I don’t mean simply gay and lesbian people, right? This is the inclusive church means how do we welcome everybody? Just by talking about the idea that we are a church that is welcoming those who have been rejected and despised and marginalized, I see the Holy Spirit working in our church through that.

When I see how leadership has increased in diversity. And I see the values of the diverse leadership we have in our churches and how they are helping us to grow. And I mean growth spiritually. I see the Holy Spirit moving in our church in that process. When I see churches that decide that they need to close their doors so that they can, turn their buildings into community centers because the community where they are need a community center more than they need a church and they realize that if they do that they will be a blessing to their community. I see the Holy Spirit working in them through that. I see the Holy Spirit working in the church and working in our denomination when we are willing to accept that we have sinned when we have tried to keep people out of our churches, that we have tried to tell people where they belong or not. And I see the Holy Spirit when I see churches that are opening themselves to experience the other fully, right? I see the Holy Spirit’s work on that.

Perhaps I just have also a little bit of a a discrepancy with the idea that Pentecostal churches are growing, at least not in my book. They’re not growing. They’re just experiencing the same things we’re experiencing in our churches, which is, people are not coming. And interestingly enough, it’s like the church, where I live, used to be a church that held between nine and a thousand people on worship on Sundays. And by the time I became their pastor they were a hundred and fifty to two hundred people on Sundays.

And they saw themselves in this, decline process, right? We see the Presbyterians and we see everybody just having issues with membership, right? One of the things that I learned is also counting who’s going to these other churches, independent churches, Pentecostal churches, what have you. Many of the folks who have left my church have gone to that other church. But even then is not the increase in conversions, right? It’s simply movement from one church to the other because I’m looking for a church that is more in line with my views than the one that I was at. And not necessarily that I found the Lord and you know and it’s just booming with people proclaiming that they have found the Lord.

You know, what I’m seeing right now in the US, is simply everybody is struggling with membership, or retaining membership. Even Joel Osteen’s church is losing members and some of the other mega churches that we have known from the nineties.

Even conservative churches are losing members. So this is just an ongoing reality that we are seeing in the US and in the American churches, and we just don’t want to sort of admit to that reality. And so we’re trying to give excuses, right? In some cases it’s well, as I was told in a church that I visited last year.

Our church is not growing, but the Pentecostal church down here, the independent church down there, and the non-denominational churches, they’re growing. And I challenged them. I said, Go and look and tell me if they’re actually growing, or if it’s because, people are moving from one church to this church.

And so they have more people because people have moved to this other church but not necessarily because they have gained new members, meaning people who were not church connected. In my experience, consistently, that’s what usually have happened in those communities.

We haven’t had the desire to actually look into what is it that we’re doing or not doing that is not inspiring people to connect with the Christian message. Until we’re willing to do that, we are going to continue losing members in our churches because more and more people don’t find the meaning of why do we need to go to church? Besides the fact that this is what we have been doing for the past 100 years. But if that’s all there is, and only takes a pandemic to send people back to their homes, and then they don’t want to go back to church. I can watch it on TV.

And so we’re having this interesting experience right now where we are decreasing in church attendance and it’s going to continue. When you see that the percentage of people that are part of the nones has increased to 35 percent of the US population.

These are not atheists, necessarily. And when you count the atheists and the agnostics and so on, the number is a little bit higher. But you have this huge number of people who decided they don’t need church anymore. It doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re atheists, it simply is that they’re not interested in church.

So when you look at that, it’s like, what are we going to be talking about? Why are people not interested in church? Which implies that we are going to be doing a self-examination of ourselves. What is it that we’re teaching? What is it that we are telling folks about the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ that is not jiving with people’s stories?

That is not making an impact, an inroad in people’s lives. I can say, I’ve been in prison ministry, I’ve been in different types of ministry in the life of the church, and I see the appeal when you are in deep crisis in your life, and how church can certainly be a wonderful place for people to become part of a community that welcomes them and sustains them and provides support for them. And those are part of our experiences. But you know, a lot of our people are not in that place. They’re not drug addicts, they’re not people who are in prison or coming out of prison. Most of our people happen to be regular Joes on the street. And they’re not interested in church.

And it’s not that they’re anti-religious, right? But it’s just church is no longer something that appeals to them, it’s not speaking to them. And what is it that we are saying and preaching and teaching that is not appealing to people on the street to help them make a connection, that what we preach and teach about this good news we proclaim is good news for them because they can’t see it.

And so, it becomes this really challenging experience right now, where we are living in this time, where we’re finding it really hard for folks to make a connection with the church. And we so we’re devising programs and we want to appeal to young people by having a contemporary service, right? I was watching last night the Elvis movie, Change of Habit, I think is the name of the movie.

This is the movie where Elvis is in New York, he’s a doctor and he’s working in this Puerto Rican community of all places, right? He’s working in the Puerto Rican community in New York as a doctor, and he’s committed to helping folks and a wonderful example of this message of, that commitment is exactly what makes a difference. This is in the sixties, so this is after Vatican II and nuns came into the community and they took off their habits. And they get involved in the community and in trying to make a difference, by being committed to working with the folks in the community.

At the end of the movie, the church was filled, and Elvis was singing in the front, was leading the congregation in singing and they have congas, they have drums and guitars, they have a great band and a backup singers, on the side. And I was telling my wife, look, that is an amazing ensemble in the church. And of course my cynicism is, and this is what we think is going to bring people to church.

If we change our way of doing things by bringing this new stuff, right? That is going to to help people make the connection. If you have better music in the church, the pews will be filled, right? This is sister act. You sing it and they will come, right? It’s not the message of the gospel. It’s not the teachings of the church. It’s just having something that is flashy that is going to bring people to church. And we have been struggling with this idea for over fifty years. We’ve been trying to do that again and again and again and the results are the same. It’s not working. And so, again, this is the challenge we’re finding as we try to engage the world. But we’re not engaging the world by even asking ourselves what is wrong with our message.

What is it that we’re not doing? What is it that we’re not saying to the world in which we live, where the world is not seeing a need for church? And by that same token, what is the need of us church? What is the purpose of us being a faith community? And what is it that we’re supposed to accomplish in this society in which we live? Is it simply or solely for the purpose of bringing us Christians into the church? Or is it something deeper, which is what my contention is? You know, if we’re talking about the mission of the United Methodist Church, to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. So, how are we working this out? Because right now we’re seeing a whole lot of things that are not transforming the world and is transforming the world, but not in the direction we were hoping for.

Rev. Ruth Perry (44:47)
Yeah.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (44:48)
And that is our biggest challenge right now.

Rev. Ruth Perry (44:50)
Yeah, I think that that’s so true that it’s about better theology, not better music or better presentation. But I think people are turned off of the culture warring and the fundamentalism and the condemnation and the judging and the good news of Jesus Christ, a God that’s love and that God loves them is what really is needed and appealing to people. And we need to get back to

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (45:12)
Amen.

Rev. Ruth Perry (45:13)
being a ministry of God’s love to our neighbors. So thank you so much, Pastor Eliezer, for becoming on the Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast and speaking with me about your story and about your faith. And it’s really beautiful and I’m so glad that you were willing to share it. Thank you. Let me give you the last word before we sign off.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (45:31)
Ruth, thank you so much for doing this. As I’ve been hearing too many podcasts in the last several years, I’m feeling that this is a wonderful way of communicating something different that is not about how do we go back to the past because the past is always the best time, right? But actually how do we move to live into the future that God has installed for us? To me that is the most important thing. Just a recommendation for you.

Vanderbilt School of Theology has a wonderful program that is led by George Rieger and is precisely bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ into a different conversation today, by challenging the church, by challenging the institution to actually speak to the theology of the church. And I mean the theology of a church that is a tradition, right? This is a theology is not something that happened last year or the year before, 50 years ago.

Our theology is millennial. We have a history of theology that is exactly what we are just carrying over, right? And so one of the things that this institute at Vanderbilt is trying to do is to pursue that, is to speak about theology, but also to engage people in living

into what it means to be disciples of Jesus Christ. And there are a few other places around the country that are doing something similar. And the name of the organization, I’ll email it to you

Rev. Ruth Perry (46:49)
Yeah. I can put it in the show notes with a link so people can find that easy.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (46:54)
Again, as you were asking about, where I see the movement of the Holy Spirit. Well, I see the movement of the Holy Spirit in a group like that. I see the movement of the Holy Spirit in people who are teaching Bible on YouTube and in podcast. The Bible for Normal People has done a phenomenal job for the last 10 years helping folks to understand what the Bible is all about and what the Bible actually is teaching instead of what we have been taught for so many years that is misleading and is oppressive and so on. I see the Holy Spirit in many of those places, right? Because I see how people engage with those programs and I hear their testimonies, how God has used these platforms to strengthen their connections to the divine, but now in a non-oppressive fashion. And I think that, for me that is the Holy Spirit moving.

Rev. Ruth Perry (47:42)
This has been a delight. Thank you so much and God bless you.

Eliezer ValentínCastañón (47:45)
Thank you, Ruth. God bless.

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024 I Dorothy Littell Greco: For the Love of Women, Uprooting and Healing Misogyny in America

Posted on August 26, 2026 by | Leave a comment

Welcome back to The Beautiful Kingdom Builders Podcast for Season Two!!! I have incredible conversations in store for The Beautiful Kingdom Builders audience, and cannot wait to share each episode with you this fall.

In this season opener, I am thrilled to share my conversation with Dorothy Littell Greco about her book ‘For the Love of Women,’ exploring misogyny’s systemic presence in society and the church. She shares personal stories, biblical perspectives, and practical steps towards healing and empowering women within Christian communities.

As Christians, we are called to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Misogyny is ultimately a failure to love women. Addressing Christian misogyny is essential for faith communities.

You can learn more about Greco and her work on her website,
and follow her on Facebook and Instagram and Substack. Her book is essential reading
for anyone who purports to love women.

Please enjoy this episode of The Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Substack, and more! 

TRANSCRIPT:

Ruth Perry (00:15)
My guest today is Dorothy Littell Greco, who wrote the amazing book, For the Love of Women, Uprooting and Healing Misogyny in America, which I devoured. My copy looks like it’s been through the wringer because I was twisting it all sorts of ways so that I could write and take notes and I just loved

Dorothy Greco (00:32)
That’s great.

Ruth Perry (00:32)
it so much. It really spoke to me. I know that women who read it will really speak to them because we know this and I hope that men will take the time to read it as well and really engage with the subject matter because it really matters that Christians love our women and girls and care for them really well. And so just to start off, what compelled you to write this book and how has your own spiritual journey shaped the tone and vision of this book, Dorothy?

Dorothy Greco (00:58)
It does. Yeah, so I have, since the time that I can remember as a three to four year old little girl have not been sort of the typical feminine little girl. Like I wasn’t into Barbies. I wasn’t really into dress ups. I really loved to be off in the woods, exploring, investigating. I love sports. I started competitive sports when I was five, if you can believe that, and played Division 1 college field hockey all the way through all four years.

And then after graduation, I found myself in a very male-dominated field. I worked as a photojournalist primarily doing professional sports. So it was often me and maybe two or three other women sitting around the court of Boston Celtics while there were 20 or 30 men, or at football games or baseball games. So I had to figure out what does it mean to be a woman?

I was never sad or grieved that I was a woman, but…What does it mean to be a woman and to exist as a woman in a world that is dominated by so many men and often led poorly by those men? When I became a Christian in college, I think it was really disorienting to me because my initial time in church or parachurch organizations, they were more complementarian, meaning that there were very defined gender roles for men and for women.

And so here I was someone who felt a great deal of agency and autonomy and then was being told like actually you have to really get smaller and submit yourself to the men in your life. I, you know, there weren’t any men in my life at that time as a single woman. So I had to work out like how does the gospel really, what does it mean to me? What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to walk in my gifts?

So there was all that personal stuff. And then coming into the last probably 10 years in American culture, it just feels like there’s a misogyny epidemic. There’s so many examples of the ways that misogyny is playing out. Everything from the abuse of the American gymnasts by Dr. Larry Nasser to the women who have been abused within the Southern Baptist denomination. The ways that the current president is maligning women publicly, calling reporters piggies and I won’t say the word because I don’t know whether that’ll get us in trouble, but witches with a different first letter.

And I thought this can’t be what it’s supposed to be like. This can’t be what it’s supposed to be like, particularly for those of us who are following Jesus. So I felt like there was an invitation in a sense from God. It wasn’t like an audible invite with a here’s an RSVP, but there was a sense of the Lord drawing me in and saying, I think that you have something to say here and would you like to partner with me in writing this book because I think you could do it. So it really was just saying yes to that inspiration and that invitation and wanting to speak into the ways that I think that women are devalued and not loved, in the ways that I think that the Lord would have them be valued in love.

Ruth Perry (03:50)
Can you share what your definition of misogyny is that you start your book out with?

Dorothy Greco (03:55)
Yeah, I felt like I needed to stretch out the book definition and the definition that, you know, we can find in the dictionary is simply the hatred of women. And that feels way too narrow because it’s easy for men to say, well, I love my wife or I love my daughters. I love my mom. I love my sisters. Therefore, misogyny, this conversation about misogyny doesn’t apply to me and then just move on. And that just feels way too easy.

So I wanted to be able to define it in a way that stretches it out and makes us more aware of the systemic nature of misogyny because it’s not just an individual thing. There are systems that keep it in place. So this is how I define it in the book. Misogyny is a persistent, insidious belief that men’s ideas, wants, needs, and experiences are more important than women’s, and that legal, religious, and social systems, as well as intimate relationships, should uphold this principle. This belief system subsequently influences the laws, policies, practices, and ethos of a given culture.

Ruth Perry (04:50)
Yeah, that’s so good. And you emphasize that this isn’t just a women’s issue. That misogyny is also a men’s issue. Why should men care deeply about this?

Dorothy Greco (05:00)
Yeah, I think that they should care about it on several fronts. One is misogyny harms them too. You know, I’m the mom of three sons and there were so many times when we’re in a public setting or in a church religious setting and all of our kids were very emotionally attuned. Both my husband and I think of a pretty high emotional intelligence. So obviously that was important that we teach that to our kids. And there were situations where you know, our son would be crying about something that was legitimate. And somebody would say, stop crying, boys don’t cry.

So that kind of constraining of male emotions, in particular, vulnerable emotions, emotions that are around hurt or pain or sadness, really makes their emotional palette quite narrow. And oftentimes then the feelings come out as anger, like because that’s the only acceptable emotion in American culture for men, they can be angry and they can be really angry, but they can’t cry. So we think that there’s that component which really harms men. But also being in relationships where there’s equality rather than hierarchy is just better for everybody because if it’s a hierarchical relationship then the one on top always has to be exerting energy to control the person underneath of him.

While that clearly has some payoff, some benefits to it, in the long run, it’s exhausting. And there’s a lack of true intimacy that happens in those kind of relationships. So I think for those very personal reasons, men need to care about misogyny. And for those men for whom they would say that they are followers of Jesus, it’s pretty clear in scripture that they are called to love women and that they’re called to serve, they’re called to treat others with kindness and with dignity and with compassion. So there’s that, larger, I think, ask that scripture makes of us.

Ruth Perry (06:47)
Yeah, and I also think what happened at the fall was that we became disconnected from that intimate relationship that we had with God and with each other, and that we all do better when we all do better. I think our culture is so independent and individualistic that we can think that we can be an island of one. But we really do depend on each other and need each other and when we care for each other and we are all doing well, we all do better.

Dorothy Greco (07:15)
Yeah, the goal should be mutual flourishing, like organizing our lives, organizing the world, organizing our churches so that we’re paying attention and helping everyone to flourish rather than just the people at the top.

Ruth Perry (07:27)
How does misogyny intersect with power and nationalism and then the fear that we see in public discourse today?

Dorothy Greco (07:33)
Yeah, that’s a big topic and we could spend an entire hour just talking about that. Lots of people have written about that. I haven’t written a whole lot about it, but I do talk some of it, about some of it in the book. think in David Fitch has a great book, Reckoning with Power, and he talks about two kinds of power, worldly power and godly power. And the former, worldly power, is finite. It’s very prone to abuse. It’s exerted over top of others.

And godly power is infinite and it is never used to force or to coerce or to manipulate anyone. So if men are relying on worldly power, and it is mostly men, not only, but mostly men, are relying on worldly power to get what they want, to influence, to coerce, to control, to manipulate, to be in charge, there is a limited amount of that kind of power and they fear losing it.

And I think that’s why we see the fear flare up like what happened in Washington on January 6th. Those folks were afraid that they were going to lose their power, their connection to power. So they abused their power in an attempt to protect their status. In my opinion, nationalism is a lot about fear, fear and pride, like the sense that we are better than other people. White folks are better than other people.

So there’s a fear of losing the majority, a fear of not having the kind of privileges that they’ve had. And that obviously plays out within the church, it plays out within marriages, it plays out through misogynistic systems where one person is afraid that they will lose control and so then they double down to try to make sure that they can get what they want.

Ruth Perry (09:08)
Yeah, that really resonated with me when you talked about worldly power versus Godly power. So then you systematically break down and with great research show how misogyny is present in so many aspects of our life from healthcare to the workplace to government, media and entertainment, sexual relationships and in the church.

As I was reading that first chapter about healthcare, I mean, I could spend an hour just telling you different ways that I’ve experienced misogyny in healthcare. And most recently, in October, I was bit by a black widow spider three times. And I felt it bite me. I had red welts where it happened. And I went to my local doctor’s office and showed the bites and said, I was bitten by something. I didn’t see the spider, so I didn’t know what it was and she told me I was having a panic attack. It took my body nine days to get all that venom out and I was in excruciating pain. But she just saw a woman, and I told her I’m in excruciating pain, and she told me I was having a panic attack.

Dorothy Greco (10:06)
Wow, wow, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry to say that that is not uncommon. That kind of treatment is not uncommon.

Ruth Perry (10:10)
But I thought it was particularly important that we talk about how misogyny in healthcare especially affects women of color and poor women and marginalized women. Could you share some of that?

Dorothy Greco (10:21)
Yeah, the word that’s often used here is intersectionality. both misogyny and racism sort of overlap each other in this space. Women of color are often seen in our culture as less than, as not credible witnesses, even to their own lives and their own experiences. So when they come into the ER, for instance, they’re more likely to be ignored or mistreated.

And I could share multiple stories that friends have shared with me, women of color, but it’s not simply anecdotal. Like there are stats that back this up. And I’ll just share a couple: that the US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among all industrialized wealthy nations. Three women die every day of causes that could be avoided just here in the US. That’s not worldwide, that’s just here. And the rate for black women is three times higher than for white women.

Black women are more likely to be refused pain medication when they need it because there’s this appalling myth that somehow they should be able to endure more pain than white women. Black women over the age of 55 are twice as likely as white women to develop diabetes and that’s a complicated issue, right? There’s genetics, there’s the ways that poverty factors in and there’s not as much good food oftentimes for folks of color.

But then there’s often the reality that they’ll go in with symptoms, just like you did when you had your spider bite, and say, this happened to me, this is a real thing, this is an experience that I’m having. And then the response is to dismiss them, to ignore them, to tell them they’re lying even. And as a result, if you don’t treat diabetes early on, the consequences are horrifying. Loss of limbs, and even loss of life.

So yeah, there’s just so many examples of how women of color within the healthcare system in the United States get even worse treatment than other women.

Ruth Perry (12:11)
I also thought it was pretty shocking how many more studies they do and research they do into erectile dysfunction versus PMS, which affects 90 % of women and just the horrible experiences of women with endometriosis. I know a lot of my personal friends have that and how painful that is.

Dorothy Greco (12:29)
Yes, and the fact that they haven’t prioritized funding to research that. Apparently it can take between eight to 10 years to get a proper diagnosis, and then there’s no protocol for how to treat it. How is that even possible that there are so many women who suffer from this, and yet it’s not bumped up high on the list as something that needs to be studied? Yeah, it’s tragic.

Ruth Perry (12:50)
One of the more vulnerable sections of the book was about sexuality and relationships. How has misogyny distorted the way that many Christians understand intimacy and consent and mutuality? And then what would a healthy mutual honoring relationship between a man and a woman look like in a Christian perspective that would differ from that experience?

Dorothy Greco (13:09)
I opened that chapter, which I think is chapter six, with a very vulnerable verbatim story from a young couple. And he, the husband, entered the marriage still struggling with pornography. Had made progress, but it was still an issue for him. And perhaps more significantly, having been taught that once he got married and was able to have sex with his wife, that he wouldn’t have a pornography addiction anymore.

And this led to a tremendous amount of pain for his wife in particular, and ultimately for him once he began to realize the cost of his entitlement, the cost of demanding sex whenever he had the anxiety that would promote him or that would push him towards pornography use, right? Because the woman is not the answer to the problem of a pornography or any addiction. Like that goes way deeper than being able to have a sexual release.

So the entitlement that’s often part of marriages where there is misogyny is so toxic. It’s that sense that the man is more important, that his needs are more important, that he has the right to expect sex, he has the right to expect his wife to do whatever it is that he feels like he needs in that moment. That includes a lack of consent.

This goes way back to ancient English law. think it was in the 1600s that there was something called coverture that was established and then it became part of the American legal system whereby when a woman said, do, she was giving up all her rights to say no to her husband’s sexual advances. And that’s part of why it wasn’t until I think the end of the 20th century, beginning of the 21st where intramarital rape was actually a crime in all 50 states. So it’s shocking to me that that took so long for the legal system to realize that no, wives can be raped by their husbands as well.

And all of that contradicts so clearly what the gospel is all about, right? Which is not to elevate men and to diminish women, but that we are all equal before the Lord, right? That’s what Galatians 3 is talking about.

And so in a marriage where both the wife and the husband are seeking to follow Jesus, they’re gonna endeavor to create a mutual relationship. Yes, sexually, but in all facets. They’ll be asking questions like, there anything I can do to help you to flourish? Is there anything else that you need from me so that you can really thrive as opposed to the husband being the only one who matters, like his dreams, his desires are elevated over the wife.

In a marriage where there is mutuality, there is a lack of hierarchy and a lack of control, which is just so much better for everybody involved, particularly the children. When they can see that kind of equality and that kind of respect that’s going back and forth between their mothers and their fathers, then they begin to have a healthy understanding of what a marriage looks like that is a place where people flourish and where they love each other deeply.

Ruth Perry (16:01)
Your chapter on the church may be especially painful for many readers. Why do you think can become deeply entrenched in Christian spaces?

Dorothy Greco (16:09)
Yeah, and I’ll just add that that chapter was the most painful chapter for me to write. I was alternating between tears and anger as I did research for that. There is a very long, I don’t even remember how many parts it was, five, six parts, the Houston Chronicle did on the abuse that happened within the Southern Baptists. And to read through that whole series was infuriating. Just the level and the depth of abuse and the cover-ups that happened were appalling. So it was a very, very difficult chapter for me to write.

And you know, it’s very complicated, it’s multifaceted, and if we’re honest, we can say that men and women working together to lead, to pastor, serving alongside someone who sees the world very differently than you do is more work, right? That requires more compromises, more listening, more slowing down, more empathy, more kindness.

And like one of the things that I was considering, think about parenting a two to three year old. I don’t know if you have any kids, but in that timeframe, I can remember we lived in New England, that there were times when we were getting ready to go outside in the snow. And it was excruciating for me, who tends to move quickly, to wait for them to put their own boots and coats and mittens and hat on. Like I wanted to just do it. I wanted to force them into it so that we could get outside more quickly.

And I think that that’s just like a picture of how we often look at the American church. Like we’re so driven by particular metrics and the metrics. are all connected to the size, how many people are sitting in the church, what is the collection, what’s happening with the collection, how many people raised their hand to get saved.

And those sort of things, I’m not saying that they’re unimportant, but if we rush into what it means to be a Christian, if we imagine that the only thing that matters is how many people come to church or how much money is being given, then we’re not necessarily focusing on what does it mean to mature? What does it mean to become Christ-like? What does it mean to really love each other like Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 13?

Like all those things should be every bit as important, if not more important than how big the church is getting. So there’s that. And then there’s also the church systems, denominations, individual pastors who function as if what the Bible is saying is that men are supposed to be the leaders and women are supposed to submit. And it’s all flattened out into that, you know, sort of sound bite.

Then, you know, the Mark Driscoll’s, the Joel Webbins, the Doug Wilsons, et cetera, who believe that women, their primary goal is to support their men and to have babies. Then that really reduces and shrinks what women’s lives are to be all about. And what about the single women?

You know, what about the women who are divorced or the women who have lost their husbands? Like there’s not even an option of how they’re supposed to live their life. And then layer on top of that, the fact that scripture does talk about dying to self and being sacrificial. So if you have a, if you have men who were entitled and then a system that’s both patriarchal and misogynistic, and then teaching that elevates being sacrificial and dying to yourself, I think it’s just a fertile environment for the abuse of women and children. And so women who don’t have confidence in their own understanding of scripture, women who were raised in a high authoritarian church culture and believe that it is their role to submit, then wow, I mean, that is just a total setup for an abusive system. And that’s what we’ve seen again and again and again.

Ruth Perry (19:46)
I’m reminded, I was just recently having coffee with a friend who’s a woman evangelist and someone that she knew sat down next to us but they didn’t know each other in church relationship and so my friend said she was an evangelist but she wasn’t a feminist. She wanted to clarify that she wasn’t a feminist. She felt like God called her to that but that’s not the kind of woman she was.

And then the woman that she was speaking with started talking about how much damage militant feminists have done, really turning off men towards wanting have equal rights with women. And she was saying, that’s why men were further behind. And I just interjected, but it is a problem that the most dangerous place for a woman is in her home.

Dorothy Greco (20:29)
Yeah.

Ruth Perry (20:29)
And she was like, well, I can’t even talk about that because I have personal experience, so don’t mention that, please. And I was like, where’s the disconnect where we’d be more angry about feminists than we would be about the abuse that occurs?

Dorothy Greco (20:41)
Right, right. And that is exactly how things played out like in the Southern Baptists, where when the women started to come forward and to say, this is what happened to us, they were vilified. I mean, the people who were the men who were the head of the Southern Baptists, the things that they said about those women, they called them demonic, they called them satanic, as opposed to being horrified about what happened to them, as opposed to saying, my gosh, I’m so terribly grieved that you had that experience in our church denomination. Like that wasn’t happening. And to me, that is really telling because that’s about entitlement, that’s about worldly power, that’s about men somehow believing that their sexual needs are greater than a woman’s autonomy and a woman’s right to an existence. Like it’s so warped from what the scripture really says.

Ruth Perry (21:33)
Yeah, it seems like once you see it, it’s hard to not see it, but it’s really hard to your brain around not seeing it. Although I was there myself, so I get it. What are some misogyny waste messages that women absorb when they’re in Christian spaces?

Dorothy Greco (21:47)
Mmm, there’s a lot. So where to start?

That you don’t belong here. I think that gets communicated both verbally and non-verbally. When it’s all male-led and there’s no seats at the table for any women, that’s a pretty clear communication. That your needs don’t matter, that your gifts don’t matter, that you don’t belong here, that in God’s created order, you’re not as important, you’re secondary, and that if you want to lead or if you have an opinion that’s different from your husband or from the male pastor that you’re in sin, like all of those kind of things are so wrong, but also they so mess with women, particularly those who have callings where they should be teaching and they should be preaching and they should be leading. Yeah, it’s very damaging.

Ruth Perry (22:39)
How have patriarchal church structures impacted not just women but men and then the broader body of Christ as well?

Dorothy Greco (22:46)
Well, I think the sense that when there’s so much control and there’s so much hierarchy and there is the message that women are less than, I think that that gives men a buy for growing up. It somehow allows them to feel like, I don’t have to do the hard work of maturing and the hard work of figuring out what does it mean to be a co-equal? How do I really listen to my wife or to my daughter or to my co-leader?

And pay attention to the experiences she’s had and the things that she wants to bring to the table. It’s much easier to just try to control someone, though in the end you will be exhausted and you won’t have the kind of intimacy that I think we were created for. Like I really believe that God wants us to be known. He wants us to be fully known by the people who are trustworthy in our lives. And so if men institute the system where they’re the ones who can call the shots and the women are less than,

And if that carries over into their marriage relationships, they’re going to lose out on what true intimacy really means. You know, the men who feel like they should have the right to be able to have sex whenever they want. I can pretty much guarantee you that at least most of those wives are not enjoying their sexual relationship with their husbands. And if they were willing to give up control and if they were willing to give up entitlement, and they cared about women’s experiences.

I think women would probably enjoy their sexual relationships more, which would benefit the man, but they’re not doing that work to get that far.

Ruth Perry (24:15)
I was also curious if you could distinguish the difference between honoring scripture and weaponizing scripture. Can you talk about how that happens on this issue?

Dorothy Greco (24:24)
Yeah, and I feel like I have to be really careful of this too. You know, anytime I have the opportunity to speak or to teach, I don’t want to use that platform as a bully pulpit. I don’t want to, you know, pluck out certain sections of scripture that support my argument or my beliefs and not pay attention to the other ones.

So for me, if we look at like the full arc of scripture from the beginning in Genesis all the way to the end in Revelation, what it’s talking about is redemption. What it’s talking about is reconciliation. What it’s talking about is us really being able to love again in the way that Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 13. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what we’re being called to. We’re not being called to hierarchies. We’re not being called to racism. We’re not being called to Christian nationalism. We’re being called to love passionately, sacrificially in a way that is actually quite difficult.

So whenever I have conflicts with somebody about what scripture is saying, it feels really important to me to be able to be mindful of the whole. Like not just this one particular passage, but what is the whole, what is the redemptive hermeneutic of the entire scripture? And how can I apply that to whatever conversation happening? So when I consider the words of Joel Webbon or Mark Driscoll, those sort of men who I do believe weaponized scripture. I do believe that the folks in the 1800s, the American Christians who were using the scripture to defend racism, I think they were weaponizing scripture. They were taking it out of context. We know that slave owners cut sections of the scripture out so that their slaves would not have any understanding of the ways that the Bible really does speak of freedom.

It speaks of not of slavery, but of freedom and of equality. So I really don’t think that if somebody is serious about their faith, that they can use the Bible to say women are less than, women are not equal to men, or people of color are less than white folks. Like that is weaponizing scripture. And I think they’re gonna have to answer to the Lord for those choices that they’ve made.

Ruth Perry (26:30)
Amen, absolutely. If the church truly embraced the gifts and leadership and wisdom and voices of women, how do you think that it would change our witness in the world?

Dorothy Greco (26:39)
I think we’d be a lot more believable. Yeah, so my husband and I happen to be in relationship with a fair number of people who would not consider themselves to be Christians. And when we’ve had conversations about why my husband and I are, their main complaint is like, if Christianity was real, then more people would act like Christians, to which we would say, yeah, we feel the same way. So I think it’s when people take the scripture seriously, take Jesus’ call seriously, take it seriously to really be changed people, to be transformed people, to be transformed into the image of Christ. That’s when the gospel gains traction in the world.

It’s not simply the talk, it’s not simply what kind of worship you have on Sunday morning, it’s how radically are you loving people. Our little church is very connected to the local government’s foster care system. So we have an unusually high number of families who foster in our church. And to me, I don’t think I could ever do that. I don’t. I have too many control issues and not enough empathy at this point in my life. Cause it is hard.

Like we have walked with these folks and to say that is really hard work, but that’s just one of the ways that they’re seeing. I have this capacity. We have space in our house. I have space in my heart. I see that the Lord cares about these children, so what can we do? And those kind of witnesses to the truth of the gospel, to me, are very impactful.

Ruth Perry (28:09)
Well, what I really appreciate about your book is that you don’t stop at just naming the problem. You also talk about healing. What does healing from misogyny actually look like for individuals and for communities?

Dorothy Greco (28:21)
Yeah, first I think it is individual in terms of what we as women have to deal with, have to walk through if we have been harmed by misogyny. And most of us have, and there’s a spectrum from those who have been raped or repeatedly faced abuse within the context of their marriage versus other women who maybe have just had a boss who was verbally abusive or have been catcalled as they’re walking down the street.

But I think first we have to name it. We have to be willing to say this happened and then to call it for what it is rather than dismissing it or rather than simply saying, you know, that happened a long time ago, so it’s not a factor for me. As they do research, you know, we’re learning how much our bodies carry the traumas in them. It may have happened a long time ago, but our bodies still remember and our bodies know what happened to us and they carry it until we’re able to process it and it’s not move beyond it, but move through it, I guess is the best way to talk about it.

So first is reckoning with what happened, talking about what happened with trusted people, whether that’s a professional therapist or friends who have been through the similar situations who can really listen and who can be empathetic witnesses. It’s grieving. There’s a lot of grief involved. When I was writing this book, I did a lot of grieving both for myself and the ways that I’ve suffered from misogyny, but corporately as a whole, the way women have been so deeply, deeply wounded by misogyny. Paying attention to our anger.

For women in the church settings in particular, people don’t like it when we get angry. We are silenced and shushed and criticize when we express anger, but anger is really important to this process. We have to really understand what is the anger trying to teach us. So I think that that’s an important component for healing and then being willing to move towards forgiveness and that is a very organic process for each one of us.

And I don’t think it’s ever one and done. I really believe that the seven times 70 that Jesus talked about is true for all of us, that we forgive, we make the conscious choice to forgive, but then there are so many different layers that come up as we’re triggered or as we remember things that happened. And we have to then just revisit and say, okay, I guess that I have more work to do here.

And then for men, for those of us have perpetuated misogyny, it’s different for them. I think it’s really important that they acknowledge the ways that they have harmed women. And I think that that acknowledgement should be both to the woman, if it’s an individual woman, and also corporate. I really would like to see more pastors from the front saying, I have been thinking about the ways that we as a church have been maybe a little bit misogynistic and here I’m gonna name them and I want to take responsibility for that. That would really go a long way, I think, for women to feel seen and heard and for the experiences that they’ve had to be named because so often it’s denied and we then have to just think like, did that really happen? Is that what happened in that situation? But when somebody can name it and own it, I think that that really is very useful to us.

And then men being willing to say, I am going to do whatever it takes to make sure that the women in my congregation are thriving. And I want to have a conversation. I’m going to invite you women to come and have lunch with me after church for the next four weeks. And I want to hear what you have to say about the ways that you have been shut down or the ways that you have not been invited in. I’ve been going to church for 45 years and nobody has ever done that, ever, and I would love to see it. All you pastors out there, I’d love to see that.

Ruth Perry (31:59)
I think it was 12 years ago my husband and I went through a church planting assessment with Converge. And I was the only female candidate. Everyone else there was just the male was going to be the pastor and then the wife was there to support. And
Converge at the time was, you know, women could be pastors too, but they were partnering with Acts 29. And so the experience of that weekend was like, I’m the odd duck around here.

And I remember them asking me if women using their gifts in ministry was a hill that I wanted to die on. And I said no at the time. It wasn’t. That was 12 years ago. But as I’ve experienced these obstacles in me fulfilling my calling, I’ve come to realize that it absolutely is abuse when you don’t let women use their gifts, and be who they are and who God made them to be. If you’re trying to stuff them into boxes that fit your norms for your community and that’s all they can be, that is abuse as well, I believe.

Dorothy Greco (32:55)
Yes, and it can lead to religious trauma.

Ruth Perry (32:58)
Yeah, yeah. I did get some EMDR therapy recently and I realized I have religious trauma. It hadn’t occurred to me, but it was really helpful to go through that therapy.

Dorothy Greco (33:08)
Yeah, yeah, I did some EMDR last summer too as I was writing the book because there were so many things coming up for me.

Ruth Perry (33:15)
For women who have experienced harm and trauma in the church because of misogyny, what would you want them to hear the most?

Dorothy Greco (33:21)
Hmm. I think that healing is possible. It’s totally a journey and it’s gonna take work, but healing is possible and Maybe more importantly that God loves women like I believe that with all of my heart that the Lord loves women I think when we look at the ways that Jesus treated women the ways he listened to women the way he respected women the way he invited women in. The ways that he healed women. I can’t come to any other conclusion other than the fact that you know he was portraying God’s heart to women. And I really believe that if the church and if the culture treated women in those ways, that there would be just an incredible amount of healing and an incredible amount of joy that we could experience as a culture if that was in fact how we were treating women.

Ruth Perry (34:10)
How can women begin reclaiming their voices and gifts after years of being told to stay small?

Dorothy Greco (34:15)
Yeah, that’s hard work, isn’t it?

Ruth Perry (34:17)
Yeah.

Dorothy Greco (34:17)
I think that that is part of the healing journey and then being willing to start to take risks, you know, to start to push back. I think a number of years ago when our senior pastor was preaching a sermon about David and the way he phrased it was that David and Bathsheba’s affair. And I remember just in that moment thinking like, whoa, that was not an affair. An affair is consensual, an affair is mutual. And so rather than just sit on those feelings, you know, I had a conversation with him. Didn’t do it right after the sermon, because I understand how vulnerable people are when they preach, but waited a couple days and then just wrote a very thoughtful email to say, here’s some research, here’s some things that I’ve learned over the years, and I don’t think it’s really fair to call it an affair. I think that it was rape. It seems pretty clear to me that it was rape.

So taking, like finding the courage in those moments, to do just little pushbacks I think makes a difference. It gives us a sense of empowerment and voice, which is not to say that all of those conversations will go well or will be heard. But then really I think reckoning with am I in a space that is going to allow me to thrive and to flourish? And if not, is it time to think about finding a different church? Obviously that’s a much more complicated question when it’s marriage, right?

But for some women that is the story that if their partner is unwilling to listen, he’s unwilling to hear, if he’s unwilling to value, if there’s ongoing abuse, then I think that that is a question that’s worth asking is do I need to leave in order to be able to speak and in order to be able to find my voice. think Tia Leving’s book, The Well-Trained Wife and her new book as well, which is I Belong to Me, I haven’t finished that one yet, but she talks a lot about what what it’s like as a woman who is clearly super smart, very articulate, to be in a system that routinely shut her down, that routinely said she had no right to speak. And so both of her books talk about what it’s been like for her to find her voice and to journey out of those oppressive systems.

Ruth Perry (36:20)
Let me just ask a couple more questions before we close. What does the phrase, For the love of women, mean to you now, after writing and discussing this book with readers?

Dorothy Greco (36:28)
Yeah, originally the title was Love the Women. And then as we were working on both title and subtitle, was about a year and a half ago now, my main editor, Kyle, said, you know, I think that a more invitational title is for the love of women.

And I agreed with them. I thought yes, you’re right. I think that that that is a better title So I think when we consider what are the things that need to happen in order for women to feel valued respected loved in order to thrive I think it it really is about for the love of women like what can we do for the love of women? How can we change systems and cultures and churches for the love of women? So it is an invitation and I think that

This is only going to change if a lot of people are willing to come alongside of those who have these feelings and who have the level of conviction so that we can move forward. When you think back to the ways that racism had one of its falls, certainly it’s still there and we’re seeing that a lot within the Christian nationalist movement.

There was some real clear movement that happened in the 1960s. And I think that there was just like a groundswell of people who said enough, like I am just so tired of seeing this, of experiencing this. And then that collaborative effort, and there was a lot of prayer. I mean, there was a lot of prayer that happened during that time. So it has to come through a desire for transformation, both personally and corporately and there has to be a sense of it’s time. It’s time for us as a culture to stop oppressing women and to figure out what it looks like to really love them so that they can thrive and flourish.

Ruth Perry (38:13)
Yeah, I just think that’s such a profound and simple thing. But as Christians, we’re called to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. And are you truly loving someone if you’re controlling them and dominating them and having expectations for them? Yeah. And then I think of all the one another commands throughout the New Testament. If we applied that to our relationships with women in the church, would we treat them the way that we’re treating them now?

Dorothy Greco (38:37)
Right? Right?

Ruth Perry (38:38)
If readers walk away remembering only one thing from this book, what do you hope that it is?

Dorothy Greco (38:43)
I think it just goes back to that last question is that God loves them and they are worthy of being loved. There is nothing faulty about them because they’re women. We have gotten that message again and again and again that we’re less than, that we should be smaller, that we should be quiet, that we shouldn’t get in the way. And I don’t think that that’s truthful. think honestly, if I’m really being honest, I would say that’s a lie from the pit of hell.

That’s exactly what the enemy would want. The enemy would want us to make women subservient, to make them less than, to keep them down because if women are fully themselves and fully thriving, watch out.

Ruth Perry (39:20)
Well, thank you so much. Your book is For the Love of Women by Dorothy Littell Greco. Your website is DorothyGreco.com, and where else can people find you?

Dorothy Greco (39:29)
Yeah, so Substack is a great place and I’m under What’s Faith Got to do With It. I don’t post a ton, like maybe twice a month, but really solid articles in there, sometimes excerpts, and then I’m also on Instagram.

Ruth Perry (39:43)
You have two marriage books as well, right?

Dorothy Greco (39:45)
Yeah. The first one is Making Marriage Beautiful and that was published in 2017 by David C. Cook and then Marriage in the Middle, which is really about marriage in the years of between like 40 to 70 in terms of our age, not the number of years married. And that one, I really love that book. There’s nothing like it out there. It really talks very honestly about the challenges that we face in midlife as we’re married.

Ruth Perry (40:09)
Well, I’m 45 so I’m gonna pick it up. Thank you so much for being here today talking with me, Dorothy. Let me give you the last word before we sign off.

Dorothy Greco (40:18)
Yeah, just am appreciative that you care about this and my hope is that more and more people will read the book and will share it with other folks and the conversations will snowball so that we can really make some progress on figuring out what it looks like to love women.

Ruth Perry (40:33)
It’s a really amazing book. I highly recommend it. Thank you so much. God bless.

Dorothy Greco (40:37)
Thank you.

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