Tag Archives: complementarian

030 I Sarah McDugal: Why Your Divorce Became High-Conflict: A Protective Parent’s Guide

Posted on October 7, 2026 by | Leave a comment
A smiling woman with curly hair sitting against a neutral background, promoting her role as a guest on the Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast, which focuses on high-conflict parenting and custody coaching.

This week, I spoke with Sarah McDugal, a Master Certified Professional Coach specializing high-conflict communication coaching for protective parents in divorce and custody court. Sarah shares her powerful journey from a conservative Christian upbringing to becoming an advocate for protective parents facing family harm. This episode explores the dynamics of abuse, faith, and the legal system, offering vital insights for anyone navigating these challenges.

We talked about Sarah’s personal story of escaping an abusive marriage, and how church culture and theology set her up for that and perpetuated the abuse by trapping her in the marriage. Sarah shares the four tools of abuse: isolation, deflection, manipulation, intimidation and the problem of moral injury in family harm cases. She shares the legal challenges faced by protective parents, resources for recognizing and responding to abuse, and the importance of language in understanding abuse.

Money quote: “Jesus wants you to be safe and loved.” This is the heart of Jesus for you.

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


TRANSCRIPT:

Rev. Ruth Perry (00:17)
My guest today is Sarah McDugal. Sarah is a master certified professional coach specializing in high conflict communication coaching for protective parents in divorce and custody court. And Sarah is trained in the Deceptive Sexual Trauma Model, the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialist. She is a certified assessor for the Johns Hopkins Danger and Lethality Assessment.

And she’s co founder of Wilderness to Wild, Trauma Mamas, and Freedom Navigator. And so I’m very excited to have you on, even though the subject matter is heavy because it’s a necessary conversation. Thank you so much for being here today, Sarah.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (00:58)
Thank you, Ruth. I’m excited to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this all summer since we talked about it. And also I’m gonna apologize to everyone in advance. I had this epic summer. We did this lifetime dream of visiting a bunch of national parks and everything this summer. I was fantastic at twelve thousand and fourteen thousand feet. I felt great and I have POTS and all kinds of funky autoimmune stuff. So I don’t always feel great.

While traveling or anytime. But I felt great at all those high elevations. And then now I get home, I got slammed with this upper respiratory infection, and I am still my voice is wonky. So I apologize in advance. If I just spin out vocally, you’ve been warned.

Rev. Ruth Perry (01:41)
Right now I’m feeling like your voice is perfect for radio. It sounds really good.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (01:45)
Well, thank you. I can drop it into a lower register if I need to, but I it may also stop and cough like a maniac. So there’s that.

Rev. Ruth Perry (01:53)
Well, please do.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (01:54)
Thank you. I appreciate it.

Rev. Ruth Perry (01:56)
So my podcast, I like to have conversations about gender, justice, abuse, and healing in the Christian faith specifically, because I think these are important conversations that the church tries to avoid generally and is uncomfortable with. And your work intersects in all four of those areas. And so I’m really hopeful that people will follow Sarah McDugal, your website is Wilderness to Wild. I just wanna say that right now. Wilderness to wild dot com. Like look this up, follow Sarah. Okay.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (02:25)
I have two. I have two. If you’re trying to figure out if what you’re dealing with is normal or is more than just difficult, then wilderness to wild.com is your spot if you’re dealing with betrayal trauma. If your marriage is so difficult and it’s just not getting better and you’ve done everything you can to think of how to fix it, and maybe you’re thinking marriage is just meant to be difficult. Wilderness to wild is your spot.

And we start there with just helping you recognize red flags. Is this an abusive behavior pattern or is this someone being human and flawed? Now, if you have fled family harm and now you are forced to co-parent by the court system with the person who harmed your family, you need my other website.

And that is www.myfreedomnavigator.com. So those are the two. And they they speak to people in very different stages of life experience. Sometimes the people who start out at Wilderness to Wild end up needing my Freedom Navigator. And sometimes they don’t. But yeah, so those are the two that we can start with right straight off the bat.

Rev. Ruth Perry (03:31)
And I will put those links in the show notes. So be sure that you visit those places. Can we start with your story, Sarah? And just introducing you as a person of faith that I admire that has an important expertise and message for the church today. Where does Sarah start? Where do you…how much do you want to share about your own life?

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (03:53)
My well, like we were joking before we came online. Are we doing a one off or are we doing a series? Cause you know, we could be here a while. But I just a little bit of background.

I grew up in a very what we would now kind of refer to as fundy, conservative Christian home. A few caveats. My parents are loving, caring, wonderful people. Flawed humans and all of that, just normal humans, but deeply love Jesus and deeply loved us as kids. I was a missionary kid. And before and after being a missionary kid, I was also an army brat. And we did a lot of humanitarian aid work. We traveled a lot. We moved a lot. And we kind of joked that we were on a mission movement all the time.

Our family nucleus was the constant because we homeschooled, which meant we could pick up and move anywhere, and nothing got disrupted from our academic and educational point of view. so I grew up with this kind of looking back on it now, in kind of a bizarre mix, from the outside circles around us, I got a ton of influence from Gothard, extreme right evangelical influences. Even though we weren’t in ATI or the Gothards, you know, group necessarily, we were very much adjacent to that. The long denim skirts, the long hair, no makeup, no adornment, longer sleeves a lot of the time. My dad had a big old beard. Back then, when he wasn’t in the military, it was kind of weird. It was like either dress greens, clean shaven, or big ol’beard and suspenders is two completely different looks. And I’ve been to like 45 countries and territories. So I mean we traveled, we had this global mindset, this very much an awareness that, and and I think this is very, very healthy awareness that there are a thousand ways of doing things well.

Because people have culture and language and differences and distinctions and all of those things can be equally good. They’re just different from each other. and at the same time, I grew up in a theological and conservative fundy social environment where purity culture was strong. I mean, if you held hands with a boy, you were damaged goods. Nobody might ever want you for life. You know, kissing, that’s probably how you got pregnant. Not quite, but you know, just that whole environment.

Rev. Ruth Perry (06:20)
Yeah.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (06:21)
I grew up reading the covers off of Passion and Purity by Elizabeth Elliott, and I kissed dating goodbye, and all of the things. Just all of those things. homeschooled through 10th grade. I played piano and guitar and violin and sang. The picture of the perfect conservative homeschool family, lived way out in the country, did gardens, we ate really healthy.

And now looking back, there’s so many things I’m so grateful for. I am a late diagnosed autistic adult woman. And I look back and realize that the calm, slow pace of living out in the country and having a lot of quiet time and a lot of time for reading and slow hobbies and low entertainment that was sensory overload, those were saving graces for my childhood. If I had had a fast-paced, hard-run, heavy sensory childhood, I would not be the same person and it would not be in a good way.

So it’s a mixed bag as I look back at it. I never doubted that my parents loved each other. I never doubted that my parents loved us, or that we were a secure, safe, connected, caring Christian home family unit. I genuinely thought that when people got married, they just talked about stuff and worked it out. I didn’t know divorced people. I didn’t know volatile family home life. I didn’t know what it would be like to have parents yell or fight or disagree or be physically reactive or violent. None of that was part of my worldview at all, except for maybe news stories. And most of my childhood we didn’t have a TV. So I didn’t watch a lot of news either.

So I had this very trusting and innocent and almost cozy idea of how marriage and home life was supposed to be. I thought you just talked, you worked it out, you both wanted the same things. Why how can this be so difficult? And then I got married.

I went to Bible college and did not date much at all. I I mean I didn’t have significant dating relationships, did not get physical with anyone. I did the whole purity culture, everything. And then I married a theology student who said he wanted to be a missionary and to be a pastor.

That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to have four kids by the time I was thirty and be a missionary and go live like Marilyn Laszlo and I don’t know if you know who that is from from the Tyndale translation. She had gone off to Papua New Guinea and I’d grown up on everything from David Livingston to George Mueller to Amy Carmichael and you know, all of the greats.

And I just thought it was going to be very simple and straightforward. I married someone who had not come from that kind of home. And I did not know that I married a sex and porn addict who had a lifetime of compulsive deception and who was not the person that they presented themselves to be.

By one year in I knew in my bones that bringing children into this would be devastating to my children. And at the risk of being labeled a career woman instead of a family woman, I decided I wanted to wait on children. And it was because I was terrified to bring children into the home. I thought, hey, I chose this, right? So I’m stuck with it for life. I have to live with this, but I don’t have to choose to bring someone innocent into it. And I was not brave enough to state my reasons why that I felt like raising children with this person would be unsafe. And just bad all the way around.

I also didn’t have anyone talking to me. The ministries now that exist unraveling the harm from purity culture, the harm from pornified worldview, the harm of all of the traditional marriage books like Love and Respect and His Needs, Her Needs, that were considered the Bible in our home. And I I was one of the pastor’s wives that handed those out. God forgive me now and a thousand apologies to anyone who ever received one from me twenty five years ago or whatever.

So I was operating in this vacuum of knowing in my bones that things were not okay, but not having language, not understanding coercive control, not understanding betrayal trauma, not understanding deceptive sexual trauma, not understanding the escalating nature of sex and pornography addictions, especially when it’s operating in secret, in the dark and unchecked.

And so I pursued ministry work. I got a master’s degree, and I dealt with a lot of allegations from my then spouse that I just hated family and I just didn’t want to be a parent and I just didn’t have a motherly bone and whatever because I was scared to say I can’t raise kids with you. I think it will be harmful to children.

And then there came a time where the reproductive coercion was so strong that he told me straight up, if you don’t give me kids, I will divorce you and tell everyone that you were an unsubmissive wife. And I couldn’t think of anything worse at the time. So I felt that I had to go off birth control, and I had to try to get pregnant. And then it took a year and a half.

And I want to pause right now and state unequivocally that I would not trade my amazing and incredible children for anything in the world. They are the best part of my life. And I am so proud of them and everything that they have overcome and their incredible passion for life and for people and for caring for others and for learning. They’re amazing humans. And I’m so glad that I didn’t end up living my life without them. I mean, I’m so glad that I had them. But at the time it was very overwhelming because of the nature of the environment and the relational dynamics that made me feel so trapped.

And I don’t know if you’ve talked about moral injury much on the podcast, but a simplified description definition of moral injury is the injury to your soul when for example, if you’re a soldier and you’re following orders, so you’re doing the right thing, but the orders are to kill a child. So you’re doing the wrong thing. You’re doing the right thing, but you’re doing the wrong thing. And by doing the right thing, you do a wrong thing. And if you refuse to do the right thing, following orders, in order to avoid doing a wrong thing, killing a child, you’re stuck with the consequences of refusing to follow orders. You might be court-martialed, right? So you’re caught between doing a wrong thing to do a right thing and doing the right thing to do a wrong thing. And that is what they call moral injury.

Well, I find, so this is a little caveat because there’s this whole journey, obviously, that led me to what I do now, working with protective parents who have fled family harm, family violence, family betrayal. And then they’re now forced to share children with a person who is actively harming them and their children. There is a sense of moral injury that very often goes unnamed and unarticulated and unidentified when you are court-ordered to hand your children over to a person that you know is neglecting them, psychologically terrorizing them, sexually molesting them, physically harming them. You can’t prove it enough to override parental rights to their time. But if you don’t follow the court orders, you will lose your kids and the courts will flip custody to the other parent who is causing them harm. They’ll be there full-time instead of part-time. That causes moral injury to parents.

Back up to reproductive coercion. Feeling that in order to be a good wife, you must follow your husband’s directives to bring children into an already known abusive environment is a seed for moral injury because you’re being told that you’re doing the right thing by being submissive to his leadership, but in essence, you’re also by obeying, you’re doing the wrong thing by bringing a child into harm.

So these are heavy things to wrestle with, and it took me years to wrestle through. and so many parents don’t have someone to wrestle through these things with.

Just a quick caveat as well. I work primarily with women who are protective mothers, but there are times when the genders are flipped in these scenarios. And there are protective fathers who are up against the same dynamics in the system where they are fighting to keep their children safe and protected and not continue exposing their children to neglect and even overt harm. And the mom is the harming parent on the other side of it. And those dads need help and support and strategies to navigate toward freedom, just like protective moms do. So just throwing that out there, I recognize that there are both. And I do work with both when those cases are on the flip side.

But anyway, back to that, I ended up having two children, almost back to back. They’re 17 months apart. A son and then a daughter and for a while I believed that I must stay for the children. And then it came to a point where things came to a head and it was very clear that I must leave for the children.

And as those things, some simply harmful and others straight up criminal, came to light. it shattered our world as the pastor’s family. And my kids were not even in pre-K at that point. they were very little. And we started life over in went through four months of homelessness and joblessness for a a while, and Medicaid and food stamps and absolute uncertainty and CPS investigations because of things that had been done to my children and happened to them. And police investigations and legal processes and it took nearly a decade of custody litigation as a protective parent to finally stabilize an ongoing environment of safety for my children.

And just as a side note, they are now on the tail end of high school, touring colleges, planning careers, and thriving. And I couldn’t be prouder of them. But it’s been a long road. And the result of that was that I decided I didn’t want to see other protective parents going through what I went through.

And getting upside down in the court system and sh coming in hot as an activated mama bear protective parent, and not realizing that sometimes what makes the most sense to us as a protective parent, based on our parenting instincts, is actually what’s going to work heavily against us in a legal system where the person who tells the calmest and best story wins.

So now I work with those parents.

Rev. Ruth Perry (16:58)
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing your story, Sarah. That’s really it’s astounding what you have survived. And there’s just hearing it, I’m hearing two big aspects where you would think these institutions would be places that protect you and that

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (17:15)
Ha ha ha.

Rev. Ruth Perry (17:16)
are purveyors of justice and healing. So first the church where we learn our theology and we are formed in a culture. And then second, the court system where you would think they’re gonna look out for the most vulnerable and the victim. Can we start

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (17:30)
Right. Right.

Rev. Ruth Perry (17:32)
with talking about how your faith and your theology and your church trapped you in a painful and abusive marriage instead of liberated you from that.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (17:43)
Sure. I mean, let me see if I can distill that down into a couple of main points because we could have a lot of wandering conversation on that, I’m sure. As as could many of our listeners, I’m sure. First of all, I was raised not so much in my home where my parents very much worked together on things and were Teammates, but in the church environment and youth groups and programs and books, I was raised very much in the mindset that the endowment of male genitalia empowered a human to make wiser, better, and more credible decisions than someone without male genitalia.

And I absorbed the idea that I needed to be compliant even with bad ideas for the sake of A submission or B good image. So that other people would not think that we are not something that we are.

Now I know that those who teach this concept intentionally often say, of course, any woman should obey Jesus rather than her husband, but those waters get very easily muddied when you’ve been taught to gaslight yourself out of all of your strong instincts. As an autistic woman, I have some pretty terrific superpower in pattern recognition.

But I was told for years that I was just being suspicious, that I was being prejudicial, that I was being judgmental, that I was not giving people the benefit of the doubt, that I was just catastrophizing, although not using that psych word, but just making things worse. And even though each of those times would come in the end where the pattern recognition had been accurate.

Anytime there was a new opportunity to anticipate what was likely coming, it was brushed off. And I was told to basically butt out and mind my own business. I also remember being told by a youth leader that had extreme prominence in my circles that I needed to make sure that I married someone essentially whose umbrella was bigger than mine. Because it was going to be very important that I be smaller than my husband. Theologically, psychologically, intellectually, emotionally, personality, et cetera.

And so I was I was overtly, bluntly, straight-forwardly instructed that I should not marry someone like my father. Now, in my childhood home, my dad is the quiet one, and my mom is the bubbly social one. My dad’s, I’m certain, on the autism spectrum. My mom got her formal ADHD diagnosis at the ripe old age of 73. And yes, you know, I was used to a home where it worked. Mom was socially engaging, dad was a quiet thinker.

I tend to be actually a lot like my dad, but also enjoy people. And I was told you can’t marry a shy or quiet person. You must marry someone bigger and louder than you. I was not taught to look at character.

Like so many girls in the 70s, 80s and 90s, I was taught to look for strong public leadership. Essentially, I was taught to imbibe the halo effect, where if someone is really good at a microphone, you assume that they must also have great integrity and great compassion and great follow-through and great service and work ethic because they’re very good at this one public thing.

And I believe that that did an entire generation of young people a disservice. So recap your question for me because I have rabbit trailed myself into forgetting your question.

Rev. Ruth Perry (21:19)
Well, you’re answering it beautifully. I asked about what was the theology and the church culture. Yeah.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (21:24)
Yes. Okay. Okay. So that, pre-marriage and then post marriage, power of a praying wife. Shut up, say nothing, and pray. Don’t confront, don’t bring up issues, don’t have conversations about things, just get new lingerie, cook a great dinner, get naked, and be quiet. Along with love and respect. Emerson Eggrich’s stuff. Where he says, you know, don’t bring up anything negative to your husband. Don’t criticize. He gives the illustration of him leaving wet towels on the bed and is disrespectful for his wife to ask him to stop leaving molded towels on the bed. You know, don’t let the linens mold. She’s being a disrespectful wife.

The fact that his dad was in his sermons, you know, that his dad was physically violent to his mother and he blamed his mom instead of placing responsibility on his dad for attempted strangulation of his mom as he describes things. Things like Gary Thomas’s book, where he talks about making your no sound like a yes. And so all of these, I don’t know that we would have defined them as theologies, but they were relational maxims that were taught with such fervor that I think they would qualify as relational theologies. The theology of marriage was very much one of inequality and one that silenced half of the partnership in a systematic way.

I remember my little sister lived with us when we were newly wed, and having to mediate a massive argument between her and my husband. And it finally came out that the problem he had with her was that when she asked him a question that disagreed with him, she looked him in the eyes, and that was disrespectful. She should have looked down at the…

And I look back at stuff like that and I am just appalled at the impact, the negative impact that would have had on her.

I look back at the time that he was in seminary doing his grad degree, and I realized there was a massive tuition subsidy for seminary spouses. And I was like, hey, we’re here for another year. Can I get my master’s degree too? Like no one in my family’s gotten a master’s degree. I just, and I was down on the floor, sitting on the floor beside him at his desk, begging permission. To make the decision for myself as a twenty four year old adult to go back to school. And he made me promise that it would only be used for self fulfillment and never take me out of the home.

So all of those theologies of hard and rigid, gender-assigned roles, regardless of who is good at what, of recognizing or failing to recognize that the Holy Spirit speaks to both adults and honestly to children as well, that we should each have our own thriving, direct, connected relationship to God.

That we should each answer to our own consciences first and foremost before any other human. And that when Jesus said to call no man Lord but Him, that also includes the marriage relationship. Neither one is to Lord it over the other, and that goes in both directions.

I look back at those theological roots and I think that for me, the one thing I’m so grateful for is that my own childhood home lived out none of that crap. It gave me a glimpse of what could be, even though we were immersed and just swirling around us, was all of this other stuff that definitely gave me a negative impact. That I saw what mutually supportive, loving teamwork could actually look like.

And now what I teach my kids is it doesn’t matter who makes a decision. What matters is if both people are living with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If that isn’t there, there’s something very wrong, and you both need to get yourselves to some help. Focus on that. And like 99.9999% of everything else is going to work itself out if you are living each for the other with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. The fruits of the spirit are what we should all be striving for. Be a good human.

Rev. Ruth Perry (25:28)
Amen.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (25:29)
Vows don’t make a jerk human into a good partner. And vows aren’t, I’m not saying this against marriage. I’m just saying vows aren’t required to make a good human into a good person to live with. Whether that’s a roommate or a family member or a sibling or whatever. If you are working to allow Jesus to be central in your life in a way that does not lord it over anyone else, that controls yourself based on your conscience, and where all the power you have, in whatever way you have, is being lent to others to empower them wherever they are weak.

We’re gonna be okay. And our homes will be safe places for Jesus to be hanging out right there with us instead of hanging his head and crying at how we misuse his name.

Rev. Ruth Perry (26:15)
Amen. When you were sharing your story, you said that part of the reason why you didn’t recognize how dire your situation was is you didn’t have language for abuse. Can you share some of that language that is helpful to recognize

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (26:27)
Yeah.

Rev. Ruth Perry (26:28)
that you’re not living in a healthy relationship?

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (26:31)
Absolutely. So I’m going to, there are plenty of terms. Coercive control, betrayal trauma, infidelity, financial infidelity. There’s a lot of these catchphrases. But instead of just dwelling on those catchphrases, which could be interpreted many different ways, I would love to give you four tools.

So in an unhealthy relationship, you will see these four things. And this could be a church parishioner relationship, a parent adult child relationship, a sibling or friendship or a boss employee, or in a marriage. They span the options.

The first tool that an abusive person will use is isolation. This can be seen in triangulation, pitting people against each other, or pulling you away from the mainstream outside world, telling you that everyone else is dangerous except them, or telling you not to read books unless they’ve approved of them, don’t get knowledge from anywhere else, or dating relationship. Maybe it’s you and me against the world.

Baby, when I am angry like the Hulk, you are the only person that can calm me down. I can’t live without you. That isolation also often shows up in families that bounce from church to church. As soon as the isolated partner and the children start to make friends, the controlling partner will decide it’s time for a new church. They don’t like this pastor. There’s something wrong. We’re gonna move, we’re gonna go somewhere else or packing everyone up and moving them to the opposite side of the country away from support community, relatives, friends, people who would see through the rest of the relationship. So isolation comes first.

Second is deflection. And deflection is, don’t know if you’re if if your kids liked Star Wars or sci-fi,

Rev. Ruth Perry (28:12)
Yes, I do.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (28:13)
but mine, big, big deal in our house. so deflection is like a shield that has a force field where everything slides off of it. It just bounces everything off. So all the bad stuff, when I have my when I have my deflection shield up, all the bad stuff slides off me and onto you.

Or anyone else. It’s quintessentially, you know, go back to the 1950s, the devil made me do it. But it can be if the child would have stopped crying when I told them to, I never would have hit them. Or if you hadn’t talked to me that way, I wouldn’t have shoved you into the wall. Or if my parents hadn’t beaten me as a child, I would be able to have conflict resolution conversations with you. But I can’t because childhood trauma. Because you whatever you did. Because I had a bad day at work. Because my mom is mad at me and I took it out on you. Because whatever.

The refusal to operate with self-control and then the deflection. That my reason for acting wrongfully is not because I chose to do the wrong thing. It is because you or someone else created an environment. So that was my only choice was to take it out on the vulnerable person or persons around me. So we have isolation, we have deflection.

The third one is manipulation. And it’s the exact opposite of that. You have a force field shield on deflection. Manipulation is all the good stuff comes to me. Everything comes to me. If we did a great job, I did it. If the family looks good at church today, I’m great. If you got a raise, I’m spending the money. If you know whatever it is, it creates this sense that no matter what negative thing happens, they’re the ones that come out smelling like roses.

So we have isolation, deflection, manipulation, and the fourth one is where we assume that abuse starts, and that’s intimidation. That’s the my way or else. And generally, there’s a fear-based operation under this. If we don’t do things the way the controlling person wants, there will be a price to be paid. Now, a lot of times you think of intimidation as, my goodness, you know, up in your face, physical violence, and it can include that.

But intimidation can also be I know that if I don’t clean up all of the children’s toys from the living room floor, there will be silent treatment through dinner and everyone will suffer. So I scramble to make sure the house doesn’t look lived in before my partner comes home, just so that they will talk to us between now and the kids’ bedtime. It can be the withholding of interaction. It can be refusing to cover bills. It can be whatever the fear-based punishment or cost is, even if it’s not violent or aggressive. That’s intimidation. And we usually think intimidation starts, I mean abuse starts down here where we start to see the intimidation, or it’s been going on so long privately that it’s now becoming public. But the abuse actually starts back here at isolation and then it’s not my fault. And then I’m the best. And now do it or else.

So those four tools are used in, you will see some mix of them, all or some, employed in any abusive relational dynamic. And when we look at abuse, I want to make sure that we point out that abuse is not an incident or an event. You may have a physical violence episode. And that may be someone you’ve never seen before and you will never see again. That’s not an abuse. That is an assault. It’s a crime. It may be a felony. It may need criminal prosecution. They should go to jail. Harm was done, but that’s not abuse. Abuse is the overarching pattern of one person using the power they have to coerce or control another person to their harm.

So it kind of shifts how we look at that. And when we are dealing with parents, especially godly, conscientious Christian parents who have decided that the only possible option that lies ahead of them is to file for divorce, to separate, to try to build a home that is safer and that is.

Free ideally of all of these things, we see those behaviors follow them into the court system. And the parent who has been so good at the public image presenting a glossy public presentation is also the one who is most skilled at presenting that continued glossy public presentation to the court system.

Then you have the protective parent who is exhausted, terrified, emotionally fragmented, trying to remember all the stuff that they have just put away in their minds in order to survive, in the process of losing support because their church doesn’t understand, their family may not understand, their friends are telling them they’re being crazy or they shouldn’t be doing this. They’re losing their community or what they thought was community.

Their kids are traumatized, and now, especially if they were a stay-at-home parent, they’re working one, two, three jobs trying to apply for state subsidies and supports and interventions. Their kids are now going back and forth, and they recognize that there are problems that are continuing, and they’re being painted as the problem parent because they fled for safety. And that creates so much, not only an insane level of legal expense on just the price ticket side of things, but also exhaustion, fatigue, anxiety, overwhelm for the protective parent.

Because these behaviors do not stop just because you exited the home. They will continue, they may morph and shape shift. But they continue. And it is so important to know if you are that kind of protective parent, especially if you’re the conscientious one. You’re showing up and you’re telling the truth and you’re just seeking safety and you’re thinking, why isn’t this justice system here to give me justice? And you don’t know what the system expects of you.

You don’t what they’re looking for. So you keep giving them what you think makes you look like a good parent because you are trying to do the right things by your children. And then it backfires against you. And we have countless conscientious, loving, exhausted, overwhelmed, protective Christian parents who waited longer to leave than any secular person might have because of their theology of the seriousness or permanence of marriage. And so when they finally decided that leaving is the better, safer, wiser option, they are going against everything they have ever been

Rev. Ruth Perry (34:39)
And then they’re faced with a justice system that’s more concerned about making you go away than caring for the vulnerable and caring for the victims of these abuses.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (34:50)
Yes, exactly. Very much so.

Rev. Ruth Perry (34:52)
Well, I feel like we could keep talking forever that we’ve just scratched the surface on this. But what I really

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (34:57)
We have truly. It’s just a just a tiny little sliver.

Rev. Ruth Perry (35:00)
Yeah. And I hope that if anybody resonates with our conversation today, I do hope that they look you up, Sarah. And if they need coaching from you, please seek out Sarah. She’s a good person with a good heart. And

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (35:13)
You’re so sweet. Thank you.

Rev. Ruth Perry (35:15)
I am just really grateful that you would share your time today. I want to give you the last word and I also want you to express again where people can follow you and find your work. And make sure that they do that.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (35:26)
So I guess I just want to say, whether you’re a mom or a protective dad, if you are facing this kind of journey, an unwanted divorce, an unwanted fracture in your family that you never wanted, but you have realized is necessary for safety and in order to be able to thrive with your children.

First of all, you’re not alone. And second, you can do this. It’s gonna be hard. It will be the hardest thing, it will be the second hardest thing that you’ve ever done. You’ve already done the hardest thing, and that is surviving in an abusive marriage in the first place. If you can survive living in one, you can survive leaving one. But you have to remind yourself of that quite a bit.

And if you are going through this and you are just twisted in knots with the expectations of the court system, wondering what to do next, how to protect your children, how to find a lawyer who genuinely fights for your kids, how to recognize the steps in the playbook that your co-parent keeps using so that you’re not blindsided and flattened by things that happen over and over again every single time. That is what Freedom Navigator is here for.

And I would be, I I will give Ruth a link for a free 15-minute consult. Anybody who’s dealing with this, I will give you a free 15-minute consult, hear a little bit about your case, and let you know whether you belong in our support group, our strategic support group that has weekly sessions and templates and tools and tactical guides for the court system, the whole works. Or if you need more one-to-one support because you’ve got a really gnarly case. Both of those options are available. And I’ll be happy to meet with you and no charge because I know that this kind of journey is also financially very, very stressful. So I will give Ruth that you can hop on my calendar and I will talk to you and help you figure out what is the best fit for what you need.

And also, if you are not at that spot, but something’s just not right, and you’re just not sure what it is, something’s not right. I want to invite you to go over to Wilderness to Wild and take our free explainer course. It’s a series of free videos that goes through 18 different areas of life. It talks about and it shows those the red flags of when something’s really unhealthy versus when it’s healthy.

In those different 18 areas of life. And I talk a lot more in depth about those four tools and another four relational dynamics that are present in any abusive relational system. So you can kind of dig into that. There’s the transcripts, all of it is free. It’s there for you at no charge. And you can dig in and see if you recognize yourself and what steps you may need to take.

In order to get good Christ-centered, faith-familiar, and evidence-based, data-driven help. If you’re a helper, a clergy member, a teacher, a counselor, or therapist, I’ll give you a link to that too.

I have a provider toolkit for those who are helpers to help you know how to support clients who are facing these kinds of situations. Because very often those are outside the scope of traditional counseling or traditional pastoral therapy. So I’ll give Ruth those.

And really, though, it just boils down to Jesus wants you to be safe. He wants you to be loving and to be loved. And he wants you to not have to live in fear in your own home. So whatever you need to do to reach that. Jesus is walking by you on the way.

Rev. Ruth Perry (38:57)
Amen. Thank you so much, Sarah. God bless you.

Sarah McDugal/FREEDOMnavigator (39:00)
Thank you.

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026 I Lydia Grace Kaiser: What if We Misread the Bible on Women?

Posted on September 9, 2026 by | Leave a comment
Image of Lydia Grace Kaiser, author of 'Bible Truth About Women', featured as a guest on The Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast, with a logo of the podcast and a link to her website.
Buy your copy of Bible Truth About Women and find more from Kaiser at lydiakaiser.com

In this latest episode of The Beautiful Kingdom Builders Podcast, author Lydia Grace Kaiser shares her journey from traditional complementarian views to a more egalitarian understanding of women in scripture. She discusses biblical translation, cultural context, and how Jesus elevated women, encouraging listeners to explore scripture deeply and embrace their calling. Be free!

You can find more about Lydia Grace Kaiser on her website, where there are links to her social media accounts as well. And I highly recommend buying Kaiser’s book and reading it for yourself. It is a treasure trove of insight on Scripture’s message to women.

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

TRANSCRIPT:

Ruth Perry (00:17)
My guest today is Lydia Grace Kaiser. She wrote a really incredible book titled Bible Truth About Women, What They Don’t Tell You. And Lydia has a wonderful blog, lydiakaiser.com, that I highly recommend. Thank you so much for being here today, Lydia.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (00:34)
Thanks for having me, Ruth.

Ruth Perry (00:35)
Before we talk about your book, can we just go back and hear more about you and where you come from and especially about your faith journey, where it started to where you are now?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (00:45)
Okay, well, right now I’m fifty-nine years old. I have three adult children. I used to be able to say they’re all in their twenties, but the oldest one just turned 30. And I homeschooled my kids all the way through high school. And so that’s a big part of my education was that I, you know, got the education, the classical education that I never got before by teaching them. So it was a lot of work, but I’m grateful for it.

We have three grandboys. We live in rural Missouri with a little bit of acreage and chickens and bees. My education is I graduated from Pensacola Christian College in 1988. And I’ve been in ministry for four decades, mostly working with parachurch organizations because of the restrictions in church. I have done a lot of teaching, you know, training volunteers.

Administration, marketing, all of the admin stuff too, you know. And I have studied and taught the Bible all of my life, but in my 50s I became interested in this topic and realized that I did not have the research skills to study it adequately. I would read from this person, they would say this, and that person says that, and I’m like, I don’t know who’s right. You know, they say, well.

This Greek word or that Hebrew word, and how do I check that? You know, so I enrolled in seminary in my 50s. I

Ruth Perry (02:08)
That’s spectacular.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (02:09)
Yeah, well, I finally had the freedom to learn what I wanted to learn instead of worrying about what

I needed to teach everybody else around me, you know. So I just encourage people that it’s never too late. but my first class was hermeneutics. I went to Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Not to be confused with the other three Bethels, I think. But yeah, my first class was hermeneutics, and it was just mind blowing. My professor was a internationally renowned translator, which was just fantastic. But I was able to learn all of the challenges involved with translation. You know, all my life I had just, I had believed

That there could be a literal unquote word-for-word translation. And translators would say, well, I’m just giving you what the text says. I’m not interpreting. Oh yes, they are. You cannot translate without interpreting. I learned how to look up the Hebrew and Greek words for myself and check what people are saying and check different types of commentaries

with differing views and see how well they supported what they were saying. And that also helped me decide which theologian scholars I trust when I’m doing a deep dive into something, how to check their background and see really how much study they have in that particular topic. For example, Marg Mosco is my most cited scholar in my book.

Let me spell her name, M-O-W-C-Z-K-O, for those who want to look her up. But she’s not just a great translator, but someone who’s put in thousands of hours on these particular passages and issues, you know, comparing the passages and researching original documents. So she’s able to articulate the reasons for her conclusion that’s on a whole different level than, say, someone who’s also a great scholar, but they spend 99.2

Nine percent of their time on other topics or issues, you know? So yeah, people say, Well, I follow so-and-so, or I follow so-and-so. And I’m like, Great, I’m sure they’re a good scholar, but have they studied this topic like this? You know? So yeah, there is a little about

Ruth Perry (04:21)
Exactly.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (04:22)
me and my education.

Ruth Perry (04:24)
So just responding to that introduction, first of all, I’m a homeschool mom as well. I homeschooled three children. I had two boys and a girl.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (04:31)
Wow. Same here. Yeah.

Ruth Perry (04:33)
Were they two boys oldest and then a girl like me? Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (04:36)
No, the girl was in the middle. Yeah.

Ruth Perry (04:39)
Well, my oldest, he ended up going to public middle school. He didn’t love homeschooling. And so that worked out well for him. And then my next two homeschool through middle school, but then they went to high school because I was really burnt out by the time. It did so much work.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (04:55)
yeah, it’s a slog. It it really is a slog.

Ruth Perry (04:58)
So I commend you for that. How are they doing now?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (05:02)
Well, they’re all entrepreneurs. None of them felt the need to go to college, which made me feel like a failure because they didn’t just love education so much. But it turned out they just know how to teach themselves whatever they need to learn, and they’ve all

Ruth Perry (05:14)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (05:15)
been very successful in their chosen careers. I mean, some careers need advanced education and others don’t. And so, I guess we dodge three bullets without having to help out with, you know, higher education, but they’re all doing very well in their chosen fields. And, they’re all so different. The kids are different, you know, and it’s been fun

Ruth Perry (05:34)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (05:34)
to watch them blossom in their own ways.

Ruth Perry (05:36)
Secondly, you said you went to Pensacola. It’s Baptist, right?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (05:40)
No, but it’s Baptistic, very Baptistic. You could probably say it leans Reformed,

Ruth Perry (05:43)
Mm-hmm. And Bethel is too,

Lydia Grace Kaiser (05:47)
Bethel is from a old Swedish Baptist heritage, yes. The difference is they are a little broader. I don’t wanna speak for them. I wouldn’t say they leaned reformed, but you know, they’re in the same town as Bethlehem. Which was Pipers and and

Ruth Perry (06:03)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (06:04)
they’re not the same. I’ll just say that.

Ruth Perry (06:06)
Okay. That yeah, I was wondering if there was a relationship there.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (06:09)
So yeah, they’re different. They are also egalitarian. They have female professors and it was so refreshing to just engage with male professors that treated me so respectfully, honestly, and male students as well. It was a different experience than what I have felt in the past.

Ruth Perry (06:29)
So did you grow up believing that there were restrictions on w what roles and what things women could do in the church and the home?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (06:38)
Absolutely. And it was pretty much pounded into my my brain, you know, all these particular verses like Sarah called her Abraham Lord, and women need to be silent, and women are not to have any authority or teach. And so the practical outcome of that is that

All females really we knew not to give our opinion if it differed from the males in our presence. Especially my father who was a Baptist pastor, if any female gave her opinion in his presence, he would, say things about how she needed to shut her sassy mouth. I mean, he just really did not like to hear from women.

Ruth Perry (07:13)
So you’ve been on a journey in that regard too then changing your views.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (07:16)
Right, right. Well, and I have a high regard for scripture and it appears that there are some passages that do restrict women and so I’m just like, well, can’t argue with the Bible, you know, you just gotta use the plain reading of the word and so I thought that that’s what it said for the longest time, even though I looked around me and saw that it didn’t really work. I saw that men basically lost their partners, with this teaching and it’s harmful for men as well as women. They lose their partner and just everything is put on them. And the women are also taught, well, something doesn’t go right, it’s all his fault, because it ultimately, it’s on his shoulders. And so the women can just play along with that and like, well, it’s his fault, you know.

And so that’s is hard on him. He’s more likely to feel defensive or or just entitled. You know, he can go one way or the other and just become extreme in those feelings. And you know, no no person should feel like it’s all on them sink or swim. It should be we’re in this together, we’ll make these decisions together. And if it doesn’t go well, it’s on both of us, you know, and we

Ruth Perry (08:26)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (08:27)
We celebrate together and we mourn together. The practicalities of so called complementarian teaching are are just really devastating even for relationships.

Ruth Perry (08:38)
I also was a Baptist minister’s daughter and very

Lydia Grace Kaiser (08:42)
really?

Ruth Perry (08:43)
like grew up I wanna say like twenty something years I read the Bible through that patriarchal complementarian lens, never questioned it, it just made perfect sense and I didn’t recognize that I was culturally conditioned to accept it as making sense because that was the system I grew up in. Those were the gender norms and the cultural norms that I was used to. And so it was definitely a lens. Can you tell me about some of the things that started to create cognitive dissonance for you about complementarianism?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (09:15)
Sure. But before I forget, you’re talking about the cultural lens. I don’t know if you’re on Substack.

Ruth Perry (09:21)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (09:21)
Nick O’Brien just posted something about the culture and how the culture is very patriarchal. And so when these complimentarians say that we’re just giving into the culture, it’s not at all true. And he goes through every aspect of the culture and you know gives.

Hard stats. I mean, it’s just, it’s pretty amazing.

Ruth Perry (09:42)
I’ll look that up.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (09:43)
Yeah. Okay, so how did I first start getting feeling the dissonance? So I stumbled across a explanation for First Corinthians 14, 34 and 35, where you know someone just said something about how if this

Can be if if this is supposed to be taken at face value that women are to be silent in the church, well then it contradicts other scripture, like in this very same book, 1 Corinthians 11, where it says, when women are speaking and praying and prophesying in the church gathering, they should have their head covered. And I realized I have always been in circles it worried about whether we should have our heads covered, more so than the fact that.

Paul is nonchalantly mentioning that women are speaking and leading really in prayer and prophesying. And so, yeah, there, I had always been taught that the Bible doesn’t contradict itself. And I realized that every other topic out there, you know, biblical topic, if we see an apparent contradiction, we work really hard to resolve that.

You know, we look at all the possibilities, we do word studies, we have these long explanations for in order to reconcile that. But I’ve never seen that done with these passages about women. And the more I looked, I you know, I thought, well, if we’ve done that with that passage, what about the other passages? Have have we have we missed things or or failed to reconcile contradictions with those, but so I began looking more closely. I took my rose colored glasses off. Actually they weren’t rose colored, but I took those lenses off that you were talking about and just started reading a lot more critically and thought, there’s some issues here. I need to learn more. And then I started reading more broadly and that’s when I was like, I don’t know who to believe.

So there I went to seminary.

Ruth Perry (11:35)
Well the subtitle of your book is What They Don’t Tell You. What

Lydia Grace Kaiser (11:38)
Mm.

Ruth Perry (11:39)
are some of the biggest things that you believe Christians have not been told about women in scripture?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (11:44)
Okay, well, what I do with the book is I compiled 20 categories of misleading tactics used by translators and interpreters, you know, some by translators and more by interpreters. And I just number them in the introduction of the book, one through twenty. And then I go through all of the passages and explain which of those misleading tactics has been used with that passage. And then I summarize in a little sidebar. So if someone is just like, I’m not a book reader, well just flip through and read the sidebars and you’ll get the gist. But yeah, there’s 124 sidebars or examples. And sadly it’s it’s not exhaustive. But did I answer your question?

Ruth Perry (12:26)
That was helpful, but I was asking about the subtitle, what they don’t tell you. Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (12:30)
what they don’t tell you. Yeah. So like what I was explaining about challenges to translation, and the whole idea of plain reading, what I thought was that I could read my English Bible and those English words were, just as straight from heaven and straight from God as if those English translators were filled with the Spirit and led by the Spirit, just the same as the original authors. And yet I have also been told all my life that the Bible is inerrant in the original languages. And finally I thought, I haven’t been living that way. I have not been reading my English Bible as if it’s not completely inerrant.

I’ve been putting far too much weight on every one of those English words, every one of them. And so, what they don’t tell you is translators make a lot of decisions. For example, take a verse that talks about the word head. Ephesians 1:22 through 23. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over, you hear that preposition, over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. So the translator needs to put a preposition in there. And it’s up to them to decide which preposition to use. And they could use the word of, because there’s not a preposition, there’s not any indication of superiority or overness in the Greek there. But they, because of their ideology, they choose the word over. And now listen to how it sounds if they had chosen the word of. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head of all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness.

Okay, here’s another thing that they don’t tell you is that some of these words that we take as a metaphor, such as head is a CEO or the boss, they didn’t have that same metaphor back then, the first century. It was coming in as a military term, but in ordinary usage, not so much, and especially prior to Paul’s writings, the idea of head, they thought that the head provided everything that the body needs. It was the source of provision. they even one of the philosophers even taught that the semen comes from the head, everything comes from the head.

So when you realize, okay, Paul wrote this to that audience, this is their understanding, this is what they would have understood when they read these words. then you see that this particular verse, and also in Ephesians 4, he says, We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint, with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Do you see the source of provision that is being described? So this is how Paul uses the word. And then elsewhere, there’s a couple verses where it indicates more of he is the head of the whole universe, that sort of thing. But when he’s talking about the church, there’s an entirely different nuance there. And so understanding that the church doesn’t tell you that there are these nuances to translation and that these verses have other ways of being understood. So I’ll just leave it at that, although I could go on all day about even just this particular thing with with the head, you know.

Ruth Perry (15:55)
Yeah, it’s so true. there’s just a so much conditioning when you grow up in these complementarian churches that the people who aren’t coming to the same conclusions as you about the interpretation of the scriptures are playing fast and loose with scripture or they’re twisting

Lydia Grace Kaiser (16:10)
Well

Ruth Perry (16:11)
or cherry picking and all these things. But then you look

Lydia Grace Kaiser (16:13)
Yeah.

Ruth Perry (16:14)
at it deeply and you realize, well, wait a second. It’s not

Lydia Grace Kaiser (16:18)
And you know,

Ruth Perry (16:19)
the egalitarians doing that.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (16:20)
Yeah, and I hate to even use their word complimentarian because it’s such a misnomer. It’s one way complimenting is what’s happening. And they coined that word in the late 80s. Like I said, I graduated from college in eighty-eight. So as a young person, as I was just learning my deeper theology and hearing some of these words, I didn’t realize they were new words and that I was learning new teaching. This was not around before.

So really hierarchicalists are what they are, or the hierarchy, the hierarchical teaching is a more accurate term for what they are putting out there. And then as far as egalitarian, they’ve used that so pejoratively and then there are some egalitarians who are more extreme where their thinking is more androgynous, like there isn’t a difference between man and and woman, which of course I don’t believe. And so I really like the term mutualist, because what I’m looking for is mutual love and respect. You know, that that’s more of a partnership term.

I think believe that’s what God intended in Genesis, when he made Eve out of Adam’s body so that they would be of one flesh, one material, and then together gave them dominion over the earth. And then in First Corinthians 11, Paul says, yes, woman came from man, but then man comes from woman. And so, you know, everything comes from God. So stop making a big deal out of the fact that Eve came from Adam. Every other man has come from woman ever since, you know. So it was God’s way of showing that we’re equal and yet people have twisted that and just focused on one aspect of it.

Ruth Perry (17:59)
Yeah, absolutely. Can you tell us about the context of the Greco Roman culture and the Jewish culture and how they viewed women and the purity codes that were all enacted at the time that Jesus lived and then how Jesus countered those beliefs in his ministry and his treatment of women?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (18:19)
Sure. Now I go into the some in my book because it’s hard to say the culture was all like this. It was a very varied culture. It had the Greeks, even though we call it the Greco-Roman, the Greeks and the Romans were different in ways. You got your Jewish influence. And then even within the Jewish system, you have, the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the Zealots and the folks who followed Herod, the Hellenists. But there’s there’s just so many aspects of culture that you really can’t say, well, it was all like X.

So for example, I think it’s very interesting that Jesus came when he did, because in the Jewish culture, women were more oppressed, I think, than any time in history before that. You look at all the things that women were doing in the Old Testament, Deborah being both a judge and a prophet, Huldah being consulted by King Josiah. Even though there’s some other very famous prophets who were living at the time, she was his first pick. Did the church ever tell you that, by the way? No, you never heard that in church.

Ruth Perry (19:25)
No.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (19:27)
Yeah, kind of kicked Jeremiah and some others to the curb there to call on Huldah. So Jesus, when he came, when he started his ministry, he was baptized, you know, by John. And then he went out into the wilderness. And then he came back. And the very first thing he did was go to the synagogue. And they handed him the scroll of Isaiah. He turned to Isaiah 61 and he read that passage about the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me, and I’m come to give sight to the blind and freedom to the prisoner and the captives and declare the day of the Lord. And then he rolled it up and said, This day, this is fulfilled in your hearing.

So he kind of gave his manifesto for his ministry, for the start of his ministry. And from then on, he began healing people and treating women who were basically oppressed. I mean, the verse says that he’s bringing good news to the oppressed, he elevates women at every turn. And the Pharisees had come up with something like well, hundreds of extra laws. I think there might have been six hundred laws in the Torah, and they came up with an extra 400 or and a hundred of them restricted women in very specific ways, which really restricted them in society and their movement and their ability to economically and all those things. And so it’s interesting to me that he came at a time when women were more oppressed than at any other time.

But at the same time before the coming of Jesus, you had the new Roman women who were basically they were kind of doing the ancient bra burning type marches, you know. Feminism is very old. But Rome had tried to restrict women and what they could wear and what they could do, and so they wouldn’t have it. And so they marched and threw off everything and they were dressing very extravagantly. This is why in first Timothy it says, you know.

Dress modestly. They weren’t talking about not showing too much skin. They were talking about, not flaunting your wealth, basically. So then this was also affecting the Greek women. For example, in Ephesus, they had the Diana, or also, so there’s a Roman name and there’s a Greek name. So there’s Artemis and Diana are the same. And so you have women a lot more involved in civic affairs. Now, the men still dominated. We want to be clear about that. But the women were moving about much more freely. So you have women like Lydia and Phoebe, who were able to travel and you know, do commerce. I’m sure they had an entourage for safety and that sort of thing, but they were wealthy and in fact, these old Egyptian parchments show that in the first century around 25% of Greco-Roman households were headed by women.

Ruth Perry (22:14)
wow.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (22:15)
So you have a lot of changing power dynamics, but I think that the Jewish women were especially oppressed, and it was the religious people who were oppressing them. And I I feel like the same thing is happening today. We have this resurgence. The Baptists had the conservative resurgence. you have the the new

Ruth Perry (22:35)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (22:36)
Calvinists that are resurging that are very much about restricting women. And so I just wonder if we’re seeing history repeat itself here and if God is not intervening by exposing all of the corruption in today’s church and also helping us women with the with the new tools that we have, with the internet and the ability to call out sin and expose it on a national level. And not let these guys continue to just, go to another town and take another pulpit and, abuse a whole nother congregation of people. So I find all that very interesting. did I answer your question?

Ruth Perry (23:18)
Yeah, so that is the context and then how did Jesus treat women?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (23:23)
Okay, so I have a whole section of my book, part three, is all about the example of Jesus. And the point that I want to make is that we so often, at least in my background, they took the epistles in what they thought were clear passages and put that back on Jesus and held that as the highest standard. Whereas we need to remember that the authors of the epistles were followers of Jesus, you know, not the other way around. And so we really need to start with Jesus. What did he say? What did he do?

And it’s interesting, for example, Mark 15, names women who follow Jesus into Galilee and minister to him, and it references quote, Many other women who would come up with him to Jerusalem. And then of course you have Luke 8, 1 through 3 names women who traveled all the time with Jesus. And then also says, quote, many other unquote women. Now the really interesting thing in Mark 15 is that this word for for the women who follow him is Akalitheo, which is the language of discipleship.

So that is shocking in its first century Jewish context. And it confirms that unlike other rabbis, Jesus elevated women to the position of disciple. They were considered just as much a disciple as the Twelve or anyone else who was in the entourage. And then, of course, we have the story of Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet, and Jesus will not let that be taken from her.

So I’m sure that just threw the door open, and as many women as as could t took that posture. And we also want to remember that the first century posture there of someone who quote, sat at someone’s feet, was not just doing it to sit there in adoration. This is the picture I always had, you know, the woman

Ruth Perry (25:18)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (25:19)
was just sitting there, like, you know, hands folded, looking adoringly at Jesus. No. The the context here is that people would follow the master, the rabbi, in order to then turn around and have followers themselves. Now, of course, with Jesus, the followers should not think that they become greater, a greater teacher, you know, like you’ve got Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and they each tried to, perhaps eclipse the other. But this is a long tradition of choosing a rabbi or a master and following them and then continuing to teach. And, we totally missed that. I mean, again, have you ever heard that in church?

Ruth Perry (26:01)
No. No.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (26:03)
so yeah, we could go into all the stories where Jesus gave special attention to women touched them, commended them like the woman with the issue of blood; shouldn’t have even been out of her house while menstruating according to the Pharisaical laws, let alone touching a man’s clothing, you know. And yet Jesus had her say in front of everyone what she did and then commended her.

So the ways he interacted with women just were in your face to those who wanted to hold women back. I just gotta tell one more. Like when Jesus said to the Pharisees Simon, look at this woman. It could have been because some Pharisees wouldn’t even look at women. And he was making him look at her. Or it could just be that he was saying really look. Pay attention to this woman instead of dismissing her. Truly pay attention.

Ruth Perry (26:55)
What do you make of the people who want to say that Mary Magdalene and the women that witnessed the resurrection and were told to go and tell were just giving a testimony they weren’t preaching. Like what do you feel about the squabbling over the language of testifying or sharing versus preaching when it comes to women?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (27:14)
It is straining at a gnat in order to swallow a camel to use Jesus’ words.

Ruth Perry (27:20)
Amen. Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (27:22)
Because if you look at all of the language from all through the New Testament, for example, I was having a little debate with a man on Facebook due to one of my posts, you know, right?

Ruth Perry (27:33)
Yes.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (27:34)
If they if they stop being civil, I bid them, you know, adios. But this one, you know, was being respectful. And so we w we went back and forth probably 20, 25 times, you know, just and it was very interesting. And I I enjoyed the challenge because it helped me to look. And one of the things he said was, Well, when Priscilla taught Apollos, that word is more of an explaining word. It’s not the same authoritative.

You’re gonna hear that word a lot. Authoritative teaching that is used elsewhere in Acts, and that word was very much available to Luke. So he could have used the more authoritative word, but instead used this explaining word. so because of just having some basic skills, which any of your listeners can acquire, we have these wonderful tools like Bible Hub.

Where you go on there and you pick your passage, you you choose interlinear so that you have the Greek and the English next to each other. You find the English word, you see which words, word or words are are being used, where those English words came from in the Greek, could be one or more. You click on them, you can see everywhere else they’re used and where they come from and what the

core of the word is, what the prefixes and suffixes might be versus the root. And you can do your own word studies. You know, again, you gotta be careful not to draw big conclusions without checking with maybe some commentators. But you can at least do some exploring. So what I did was I just went to this so-called authoritative word, and then I discovered that, look, here it is in Colossians 3:16, where the entire congregation is being told to teach one another. Everyone in the congregation. So Paul uses these words, and Luke and all of them use these words very freely for all kinds of things. And so, all Luke was saying was, they sat down at length to explain because Apollos was teaching this and he wasn’t quite there yet, so they had to.

It says explain to him more fully. So this was a lot of teachings. That’s all he’s trying to do is say, this took some significant explaining. It wasn’t a ps come over here to the foyer for a second, you know. So yeah, this hair splitting about whether the women were just delivering some news or

bringing an authoritative message from Jesus. The big problem with all of this debate is a huge misunderstanding about authority. Let me get back to that for a minute, because

Ruth Perry (30:07)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (30:09)
when we start thinking that there’s a special kind of authority that people have, then I think that’s where we really get off the rails. I think we need to remember that it’s the word of God that has the authority, not the vessel who’s delivering the word. It’s the Holy Spirit that has the authority that gives me the word, that gives me a prophecy, you know, a word that I need to deliver to someone. I’m impressed to deliver that. It has nothing, really nothing to do about me except perhaps my level of surrender and a willingness to listen, willingness to obey. And we all know, we’ve heard the stories, I could name names of people, vile men that we know who delivered the truth, the word of God, and lives were changed.

Ruth Perry (30:58)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (30:58)
Millions around the globe. And then we find out, say after he’s dead, the horrific things he was doing. Did that particular man have authority? No, it was the word of God that had the authority, it was the Holy Spirit. And that’s

Ruth Perry (31:12)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (31:12)
the only comfort that I can take. Because so many people, they leave the church and they say it’s a bunch of hypocrites or it it doesn’t work because look at these people, they’re messing up and

You know, my own father was very abusive to my mother. And so for years I was like, How could he have the Holy Spirit? How could he be a Christian even? And when he was physically and verbally and emotionally and spiritually abusive, you know, in every way. And we have our besetting sins that we need to humbly address. But God will still use us when we deliver the truth from his word. And so it’s something to be cautious about in that we know that we we will not have reward in heaven if we didn’t do it with the right motive. Paul said some people preach out of jealousy.

Ruth Perry (32:03)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (32:03)
You know. and yet it’s also a comfort in that we know that with the right surrender and humility that God can still use us even though we’re not perfect and at all times holy, you know. So

Ruth Perry (32:19)
I like your point a lot better than the one I’ve heard a lot is well, God spoke through Balan’s document so he can use women too.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (32:27)
Yeah, that’s cute. but it’s still kind of putting down the vessel as if women are just one step above a donkey.

Ruth Perry (32:32)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (32:35)
And the fact is, we’re

created in God’s image exactly the same way men are. It says male and female, he created them in his image, he created them. And the hierarchalists will say, Well, sure, they’re ontologically equal, but just have different roles. But then here comes the so-called roles. One of them is to always be spiritually over and authoritatively over the other, only because they were born with the right physical, you know, is not at all logical, even. It’s just

Ruth Perry (33:08)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (33:09)
it is not obeying scripture, it is finding a way around scripture. Scripture couldn’t be, you know, okay, I shouldn’t use the word clear. I’m trying not to say clear, but they’re always saying clear. I could

Ruth Perry (33:20)
Yeah.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (33:21)
I could say it’s clear because God said, Look, I’m giving you dominion together. He had all these opportunities to say, man is the boss, man is overwoman, woman follow man. He never said any of those things. We’re just adding to scripture and assuming those things because that’s what people want to believe and assume. And then they flip it around and say that’s what we’re doing. It’s it’s it’s kind of maddening.

Ruth Perry (33:44)
Yeah, it really is. And I also really liked when you talked about Paul and the way that he spoke about people in ministry. And then how we turned those into

Lydia Grace Kaiser (33:51)
Right,

Ruth Perry (33:53)
titles. Can you tell us about that?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (33:55)
Yeah, again, all these words, he’s trying very hard to just use servant based egalitarian type words like co-worker. This this guy’s my coworker. You know, he doesn’t say I’m the senior elder and he is the junior elder, the assistant elder, or anything like that. It’s these diaconos servant, and co-worker type words, not titles, and yet this whole debate is based on titles. And now what functions supposedly go with those titles?

It’s getting to the point where it’s just untenable because how are we going to distinguish which functions are pastoral, when Al Moeller’s amendment said the pastoral functions, including preaching to the gathered assembly. Well, what are the other functions? You know, there’s a lot of things that are pastoral, and women are especially good at taking care of others and shepherding them. So where is it gonna end? It’s just so confusing. It is just unbiblical because yeah, Paul does not set up all these titles.

Ruth Perry (35:03)
Well, what would you say to somebody who is at the beginning of this journey of questioning complementarianism, but they have that fear of losing their community and their identity and you know, it’s a costly journey. What would you say to them?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (35:18)
Well, first I’d say read my book, because you really need to understand this inside and out and have deep conviction and not only conviction but excitement. I mean, the biggest tragedy in all of this is that our view of God has suffered. And so when you get a true and proper perspective of God through all this, and how actually God Himself is incredibly humble and what he’s done for us. It helps not only give courage, but it helps you to enter into that suffering with Jesus that is spoken of in Philippians, and you understand God’s heart, you feel his heart for you, and it helps you on that tough journey.

Because yeah, there will be a personal price to pay, more so for some people than others. But then you can know that Jesus is walking through this with you because he did it first. He was highly misunderstood, by family, especially, by people close to him and his community and the town that he grew up in, all the people that they knew his character, they knew he was a good, honest, hardworking businessman and took care of his widowed mother and siblings, and they knew all these things about his character. And yet they dismissed him. And, we’re told to expect the same. And sometimes we think that’s too hard. And sometimes we think, well, I’m not going to make that stand because I can’t bear to lose this that or the other. But what you don’t want to lose is Jesus. You don’t want to lose your relationship with Jesus. And this is so precious. I can’t even tell you how very, very precious it will be to you.

Ruth Perry (36:56)
I highly recommend your book. It was excellent. I really enjoyed reading it. I related and I learned new things. I’ve been on this journey myself for a long time, and I learned a lot from you. And so thank you for all the hard work that you’ve done. And I’m just so excited that God has led you into this study and that He’s gifted you so beautifully. And I pray that God uses you in amazing ways.

Can I give you the last word, Lydia, before we sign off? Is there anything else you’d like to share with my audience?

Lydia Grace Kaiser (37:23)
Well, thank you for that encouragement. I spent I think six years on the book. And no one but God knows, how much work that was and the price I’ve paid for coming out with it. And so just hearing that from you is really encouraging. I guess my last word is just that God is all about elevating and empowering others.

And I would like for each of your listeners to be free. Especially if you’re a woman who’s felt inhibited, who’s felt confused by why God would give you perhaps leadership or teaching abilities, but then tell you to hold back and wait for a man to do it. Just be free. Be free to say what God puts on your heart, with graciousness, of course, but with the same courage and conviction that any man would say it. Be free to dream and let God use you in big and small ways that you didn’t feel free to dream about before.

And be free to embrace the role of pastor, you know, to recognize that you’re a shepherd of those whom God has given you to disciple, even if it’s just a small group. Take that seriously and be a shepherd to those people. You don’t have to wait for someone to ordain you. You just do it. You have ordination from the Holy Spirit. And you could even consider starting and leading a small microchurch in your neighborhood or friend circle. And whatever dream God gives you. Find a common interest with some other people and bring the Lord into that and lead however God leads you. And I tell you what, let your life open up with all kinds of possibilities and it’ll be exciting.

Ruth Perry (38:57)
Amen and praise God. Yeah. Thank you for that good word and thank you for being here today. God bless.

Lydia Grace Kaiser (39:03)
Thank you for having me, Ruth.

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025 I Dr. Rob Dixon on Challenging God’s People to Embrace Gender Equality

Posted on September 2, 2026 by | Leave a comment
Dr. Rob Dixon has written Allies in Ministry, Together in Ministry, and Penny Preaches. Click the links to add them to your library!

I was so delighted to meet my old friend, Dr. Rob Dixon, for a face-to-face conversation after being internet friends for close to fifteen years! In this insightful interview, we talked about Dr. Dixon’s new book, Allies in Ministry, and he shared his journey of advocating for women in ministry, biblical perspectives on gender equality, and practical steps for developing allies within the church. Listen to our conversation to discover how his research and personal experiences challenge traditional views and promote justice and mission expansion, through the full inclusion of women in ministry.

You can learn more about Dr. Rob Dixon on his website, drrobdixon.com, and find contact information there if you would like him to coach, train or speak with your organization.
You can also follow him on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Substack. 

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 Rob Dixon. He’s a writer, trainer, and consultant with over three decades of ministry experience, known for his work promoting equal partnership between men and women in ministry. And he is a distinguished scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary who teaches at Fresno Pacific University. And you’ve served on the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship staff for nearly 30 years. I feel like the way that I know you best is from your writing. I started reading your blog, Challenging Tertullian, many, many years ago. And

Rob Dixon (00:45)
Yeah, yeah.

Ruth Perry (00:47)
I also feel like I know you personally, but this is the first time that we’ve spoken. So I’m delighted to have you, Rob, and I’m delighted to talk about your work today. Thank you so much for being here.

Rob Dixon (00:57)
Thanks for having me. And boy, that’s a callback. The Challenging Tertullian blog of like, I don’t know, twenty fifteen, something like that, earlier maybe. So yeah, wow. Great to meet you in person, Ruth.

Ruth Perry (01:08)
I probably started following you right when you started doing that because I was devouring anything I could find about women in ministry at the time. I had been called by God to be in ministry, but I was in circumstances where I wasn’t getting that support. I didn’t have allies at the time. And so I was finding them online and I’m just really grateful that I found you and many other men who have been great allies and great sources of encouragement and information and scholarship. And one of the books that I have by you, I know you’ve written multiple books. Penny Preaches a great children’s book by Amy Dixon and Rob Dixon. It’s delightful. Highly recommend it. Get that for your kids, sons and daughters.

Rob Dixon (01:53)
Yeah, yeah, thank you. That’s a definitely a cherished you know, process writing that book with Amy, my wife. she’s a full-time picture book writer. And so if listeners like the storyline, that would be me. If they like anything else about the book, the characters, the dialogue, you know, that would be all Amy. So we had a great time working on that together. So yeah, it’s what’s been fun for me is to watch women who have been in ministry and have fought the battles, like I’m sure that you fought Ruth and have been through the the struggle to read that book and feel like you know, boy, I wish I’d had this when I was younger and coming up in ministry, but what a gift to the church. And so I hope so. I hope it pushes the conversation down to when we’re raising kids and we can talk about things that matter, like women in ministry. So yeah, thanks for thanks for the shout out for Penny.

Ruth Perry (02:44)
Well, I’m always really curious to know people’s faith journeys and their stories. Do you mind going back and telling us when you came to faith and how your faith has grown and have you always been an ally for women in ministry?

Rob Dixon (02:56)
Yeah, happy to happy to share about that. So yeah, I grew up in the church. I grew up in a church down in LA with my family. I mean, it was like what we did. It was it was the thing that marked or one of the things that marked the Dixon family was we were really involved in our church. In fact, when I joined the church, became a Christian, was baptized, joined the church, like my dad, my uncle, and my grandfather, I think were all on the session, the leadership team of the church and greeted me. So that was what we did as a family.

Interestingly for me, where I am now, hoping to be an ally to women in ministry, that did have its sort of sovereign foundations, I think would be a good word for it in my childhood experience. So as part of a church that endorsed the Ministry of Women, they weren’t perfect about it, but women were on the pastoral staff, women would preach from time to time. And then on top of that, in my family I’m not saying the men in my family were spiritual weaklings or something, but definitely the women in my family were the spiritual drivers in a lot of ways. So my grandma, both grandmas, super involved in in issues of faith. My grandma on my dad’s side was a prayer warrior. on my mom’s side, she had become a Christian later in life and her faith was vibrant. and then my mom as well. So I always identify with is it Timothy in 2 Timothy, who and when Paul reminds Timothy of his faith heritage that flowed through his mom and his grandma, Lois and Eunice, I think. And so I always think of that too for me. So yeah, I think I had a really good foundation to be where I am now based on some of those life experiences early on.

Ruth Perry (04:28)
So when was it that you realized this was an issue that you really cared about passionately enough that you would devote your life’s work to it?

Rob Dixon (04:36)
Yeah, great question. I I think coming out of that sovereign foundation phase, I carried a value for women in ministry and I would have said if you’d asked me, Should women be in ministry, absolutely, of course, why not? Let’s do it. but I think there’s a difference between and I see this in a lot of guys that I work with, there’s a difference between holding a value and then holding it as a conviction. and I think for men and for women too probably, we need to make that pivot from yeah, I endorse this, I have a value for it, but I’m I’m I’m actually now convicted of this because conviction, and this came out of my research for my doctoral work, conviction carries with it this value with an intent to act. There’s a the it’s a deeper thing.

And so for me that process of shifting from, yeah, sure, women should lead to, women should lead. That that shift happened when I first started in ministry, so I came on staff with Intervarsity in the what was this way back, Ruth, in the in the mid 90s, late 90s, I came on staff, and early on, I was ministering in a University’s college ministry, and I was ministering in a part of California that’s more conservative. The churches tend to be more conservative, and so this would flare up as an issue every year, sometimes more than once a year.

And I could tell a lot of stories, but at one point I had a pastor sit me down and tell me I was being a false teacher. And he just went deep. I mean he was on and on about being a false teacher and I was like, Why? And he goes, Well partly because you are allowing women to preach.

And at that point in my journey, I hadn’t done a ton of the theological study, the biblical work. but boy, after that experience of being called a false teacher, for about an hour, I mean it was really awkward. I just launched into this season of study and preparation. And I think that would be one moment of of several where I was really galvanized from, yeah, this is something we should care about too. we’re gonna care about this now.

And I actually emerged from that season kind of militant about things. Like if you weren’t an egalitarian, if you weren’t pro-women ministry, I was on the war path a little bit. And a mentor of mine finally at one point sat me down and said, Look, you need to learn how to hold your conviction with humility. And that’s been a good word for me then and it’s a good word for me now. Yeah.

Ruth Perry (06:48)
I was curious about if you like I knew that you had experienced the cost of your conviction because I experience it in a lot of microaggressions and in people outright telling me I don’t believe in women in ministry just as I meet people and go about my life and I’m a woman in ministry and people make sure that they let me know that they’re not okay with that. But

Rob Dixon (07:08)
So sad. Yep.

Ruth Perry (07:10)
I know that even for you being a man in ministry, having that view, I knew that there was a cost that you had.

Rob Dixon (07:17)
Yeah.

Ruth Perry (07:17)
Have you experienced that cost in other ways besides that one conversation?

Rob Dixon (07:22)
Sure, yeah. Yeah, so in my latest book, Allies in Ministry, I lay out a pathway for developing men into more effective allies to women in ministry and one of the steps is called The Pushback Step. And I I think in a lot of ways, as a guy I don’t think you can fully think of yourself as an ally until you’ve experienced some degree of pushback because of your convictions and because of your advocacy, your allyship. And so I think that comes with the territory a little bit. Sometimes when I’m talking with a guy who w would aspire to be an ally and I ask about pushback, no, I haven’t really done that yet. And then my question is, well, maybe you should be doing more to advocate or to be an ally to women in ministry.

I mean, there’s a lot of stories I could tell you. I mean, another one kind of in that same era where I had the false teacher conversation was I was working with a student who the year prior had been mentored by my wife Amy. This is what we did back then. We had up and coming leaders and we assigned them to Amy’s leadership and mentoring because she was so good at leading a Bible study and she could develop them and then after nine months they’d be prepared to lead their own small group.

And so at the end of that year prior, he had told Amy the thing that maybe all ministers want to hear. Like, I’ve thank you so much. I’ve grown so much under your leadership this year, more than ever in my life with God. I’m so grateful. It was like the thing that you put on the bulletin board, like for really tough ministry days, right?

And fast forward a few months, and he has been through this process with his church of discerning his theology on women and leadership, and he had emerged from that process in a more restrictive position, complementarian would be the term that gets used sometimes in theological circles. Anyway, he’s telling me about his journey, and he’s arrived in this place of conviction that women should not lead and develop men. And and at the end, I’m asking all these questions, and at the end of about an hour, Ruth, I ask him the question I’ve been waiting to ask him since the beginning, which is: hey, I know what you told Amy last year, that you grew more last year under her leadership than in any year prior in your life with God, and I want to know how you’re holding that in light of what you’re telling me now and he pauses for a second, he thinks about it, he looks at me and he says, That was God using Amy in spite of her disobedience.

And a lot of feelings went through me in that moment, right? I mean, you’re talking about my wife here, buddy, you know, and I think I had a lot of hostility in that initial response, but I think that story has, I mean, that was a story of sort of this became personal for me, right? Like this was again not some sort of theological conversation that’s happening in the abstract. Now your theology, I’m talking to the student, has forced you to conclude that my wife’s sacrificial, laying down her life kind of service was in some way sin. And so I think I mean it’s maybe not a story of personal pushback, but definitely a story of like I’m invested in this thing in a way that I wasn’t before. and that really was another galvanizing kind of moment for me as a young ally.

Ruth Perry (10:08)
Can you tell us how you would defend your view of women being in full equality in the church and the home from a biblical basis?

Rob Dixon (10:16)
Yeah. Yeah, sure. I mean I should clarify I’m not a theologian, right? So there are there are great books out there and I’m sure you’ve had people on your podcast over the years that have written great theological books. My my book, my first book, Together in Ministry, has a chapter on the theology of it all and it makes appearances at other points. But where I would start, I think, is actually to ask the question, Are you open to exploring the whole of the scriptures?

And what all of the scriptures have to say on the topic of women in ministry. I think so much of the conversation starts and sometimes ends with First Timothy two. That’s an important passage. it’s deserving of its place in the discussion. But if I can get someone, if I could convince someone to start in Genesis and work our way all the way through the old testament, look at Jesus and how Jesus interacts with women, and then get to the epistles and the praxis of the first church.

And the effects of the cross. I mean, if we can cover that whole gamut, I’m pretty confident that at least it will challenge someone’s perspective and it might even change it. Because I think someone sometimes we take a verse often out of context and we say, Well, this must be true. That verse, again, it’s important, but let’s look at it in the whole of the scriptures. Sometimes I use the metaphor, you know, scripture’s like a symphony, and every piece of scripture is playing on the same sheet music with the same beat and the same melody and all of that. I mean I have older kids now, but I remember when they were in orchestra and it didn’t sound so good, right? And the scripture shouldn’t sound bad. It should sound excellent. It should sound perfect. It should be integrated, right? And so I think let’s look at the whole piece of sheet music and not just one kind of measure, to use the metaphor.

Ruth Perry (11:55)
Especially when you’re talking about student orchestra which I was definitely in back in the day. We sounded better by our performance date, but yeah. You gotta work it out, right?

Rob Dixon (12:04)
Yes. Yes. You do. And I think just to say, I meet a lot of Christians that have a theology on women in ministry, but it’s something they picked up from their church, this the vibes in their church maybe, or a sermon a pastor preached once upon a time, or an article they read, or the family of origin.

But they haven’t done the actual work themselves in the text. And so one of the things I always try to encourage folks is to actually roll up your sleeves. Ideally with other people under the leadership of the spirit, get into the passages yourself and do your own work on this, right? Again, I think we breathe the air of whatever theological air we’re around. that’s not bad, but I think it’s better to do work in the scriptures on this yourself.

Ruth Perry (12:46)
And you really have to learn to recognize the power that the gatekeepers hold because I grew up in a complementarian tradition and I was always warned. I mean, it was specifically a warning to not read outside of your tradition and not listen to people outside of your tradition. And so I do think that that piece of learning the humility of listening to people who think differently than you is really impactful and powerful, but scary.

Rob Dixon (13:12)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean there’s Yeah, yeah. There’s your theology and then there’s how you hold your theology, which I think it’s almost as important, if not more important sometimes, is actually how you hold your theology, right? And I think I always want to be the kind of person, Lord may it be so, that is able to dialogue with people who think differently than I do, and learn. I mean, I think the point at which you think you’re fully arrived theologically is the point where you need to be careful.

Because there’s a group of guys in the New Testament that thought they were fully arrived and when Jesus came on the scene, and we talked about the Pharisees, right? When Jesus came on the scene, it was the wineskins passage. They burst. They couldn’t handle the new thing because they thought they had it all figured out. So just a a word to listeners, be careful, right, about that.

Ruth Perry (13:56)
Yeah, absolutely. I’m taking that word to heart too. It’s a constant reminder where we have to be humble. And there’s all those one another commands in the New Testament where we’re supposed to consider others before ourselves. And how often do we just hold our own views so tightly that we’re not able to do that?

Rob Dixon (14:12)
Yeah, that’s right. Yep. Amen.

Ruth Perry (14:14)
I really loved your language about allyship because that’s something that I’ve learned over the process of my own faith journey is to listen better to other people and listen about their experiences and then interrogate my views especially how my Christian tradition has played a part in a lot of harmful oppression of different groups of people.

And that word ally that you use in your book, it’s really beautiful, but it’s a trigger word, people get triggered by it like they do critical race theory or all these other hot topics. Can you describe why you chose the word ally for your framing of your book?

Rob Dixon (14:51)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s I mean language is interesting, isn’t it? Because over time it accrues baggage, I guess you’d say, or connotations, maybe. So you gotta it’s always important, I think, to define terms. I mean, I think even of the conversation in the women in ministry, like egalitarian, complementary I mean y maybe the place to start even before you get into the scriptures is like, Well, what are we talking about here? Like what what’s your definition of all of these things? So same thing with ally. I chose the word and first of all, I’d say I read there’s a lot of books written about allyship, mostly in the secular space. So I think a book about male allyship in the Christian arena is a gap. Which I was trying to fill a gap in the literary, you know, picture.

And I read a lot of books in the secular space and it’s really helpful to sort of point out different pieces of what it means to be an ally. What so empathy or the idea that allies function interpersonally but also systemically. Or the idea that an ally an ally involves wrestling with their privilege, or the idea that allies listen well to the marginalized community so that they’re not sort of acting in a way that’s actually contrary to what the marginalized community needs. There’s all these sort of themes about allyship that come out in the literature, and you can s you can read all about that in my book. The other thing I like about the term ally is I view it as an umbrella term. There’s not one way to be an ally.

And underneath the umbrella, there’s, I mean, her name’s Karen Catlin. She wrote a book called Better Allies, and she lists off seven different tools, I guess, or expressions of allyship. And I use them in my book. There’s a whole chapter on each of those seven tools, which I think are pretty crucial. And and they run the gamut from quieter expressions of allyship to louder expressions of allyship, right? I mean we think maybe of some of the louder ones like being an upstander, so intervening when there’s injustice, or advocacy, which is a know, I think oftentimes people see it as a synonym to ally, but it’s not, it’s it’s a form of allyship.

And then the quieter expressions would be more like a scholar. I mean, Catlin talks about you’re expressing allyship when you’re learning, or another one would be confidant. So when I’m working with a woman quietly, no one knows about it, but I’m supporting her, I’m giving her resources, I’m encouraging her, that’s being an ally, right? So I love that range because I think some of us as guys are wired to make a splash, maybe the louder end of the spectrum, but others of us we maybe need to start out more on the quieter end of the spectrum and I like the flexibility within that larger term of being an ally.

Ruth Perry (17:19)
Yeah, I think that is really beautiful. I appreciated that in your book because it’s true. No matter who you are, you’ve been given a different set of gifts and personality and experiences and it doesn’t help to compare yourself to others and play that game of am I doing enough? Like if you’re doing something, God sees that and it’s valuable. Yeah. Can you explain in your book you talked about three biblical examples of allies: Jesus, Paul and Boaz, could you talk us through those examples?

Rob Dixon (17:49)
Yeah. Sure, sure can. Yeah. I mean well it’s funny, the Sunday school answer, right? The classic when I was growing up in Sunday school, right, the answer if you answer Jesus, you were right almost all the time, right? With whatever question. I think that’s true with an ally. And if you look at Jesus, he’s I like a quote from Walter Wink, who’s a theologian. He says that in every encounter recorded with with women in the gospels, Jesus is doing something culturally wrong. I’m paraphrasing the quote, but he’s doing s he’s transgressing the culture in some way.

And I think that’s a really cool way to think about Jesus. He is a game changer for women, and he’s doing things. So you could look at all kinds of passages in the book. I talk about like the the hemorrhaging woman from Mark 5. I prefer to think of her as the faith-filled woman, right? She’s it’s that amazing story, right? He’s advocating for her, he’s healing her. you could talk about, you know, the John 4, the woman at the well, and Jesus empowers her for service. So, Jesus is a great example, but I also like to point out Paul and Peter in the New Testament, I think follow Jesus’ example. And Paul gets a lot of what’s the right way to put this?

Well if you Google Paul and Misogyny, there’s a lot of answers that come up, right? Based largely on Timothy two, but if you look more deeply at Paul’s practice, he is faithful to empower women, he’s faithful to commission women, he’s got women that he counts as dear friends and coworkers and in a lot of ways women are a natural part of the narrative for Paul as co-workers. And then Peter’s kind of the same way. Peter talks there’s a couple of passages where Peter really does step into a role as his role as an ally. I mean, I think of how he engages with in the after the crucifixion, I think of the speech he gives in is it Acts two? The Pentecost speech where he talks about women prophesying. So there’s a way in which Peter also fulfills that allyship.

But the original ally in the scriptures is Boaz, like you said, and Boaz, I mean you’re talking about a culture that is I mean what’s the right adjective for this? It’s flagrantly patriarchal. I mean there’s a way in which all power, all cultural power was held by men, and in that context, Boaz does an amazing job as an ally to Ruth and Naomi actually. So for one thing, two levels of that, for one thing, he follows the biblical command to allow widows to glean from his field, and he creates space for Ruth to do that. But he goes a step further and says to his men, be careful with her, like treat her well. Like he goes a step beyond what’s actually written in the Old Testament law.

And then of course the second way he expresses allyship is as the kinsman redeemer to Ruth and Naomi and ultimately he has his place in the genealogy of Jesus because of that, right? So yeah, I think of Boaz is kind of the original the original ally in the scriptures.

Ruth Perry (20:28)
It’s beautiful. Can you talk us through how you did your research for your book and then what the framework is of your book, Allies in Ministry?

Rob Dixon (20:37)
Yeah. So I’m a learner. I love learning new things. And so doing research is kind of my like I mean I I’m trained and d for my doctoral program how to do research, but that’s my natural inclination anyway. So when I have curiosity about something, I’m gathering people that I think have some degree of expertise in that and learning, asking questions. and so I did that with with Allyship. I don’t know how many men, I can’t remember off the top of my head how many men I actually sat with, but a number of one-on-one interviews and then I did focus groups, which are more enjoyable actually as a researcher, because you’re in a room full of people and you’re dialoguing together and people are bouncing off of each other with ideas and it’s just a joy to to do that.

So yeah I learned from a bunch of people and then I sifted all that data, which is the hard work of research I think, is to sit with everything you’ve received and discern what’s you know looking for themes and trends and things like that. And so what emerged from that was this seven-step pathway. The pathway is the language I use for it to get a guy from the starting position through what I call a disruptive encounter, something that shakes their kind of worldview, challenges their paradigms for how the world works, specifically around male privilege. So there’s an encounter that happens a disruptive encounter.

Then the third step is there’s a response to that disruption. So Whoa, what just happened? Let me synthesize that, let me process that. It’s one of the places on the pathway where men can opt out if they’re if they’re unwilling or unable to process that well. The fourth step would be trying stuff out. So initial attempts at allyship. That’s where men use those seven different tools I referenced earlier. Step five is pushback. Because of your allyship you receive pushback. Step six would be continued investment. So the allies’ work is never done. There’s ways to keep growing.

I think for example, I think men may start being familiar with one of the seven tools, but I think in step six you want to start becoming fluent in more of them. And ultimately in step seven, habitual allyship, it’s where you’re a you never want to say you’re a finished product, Ruth. Like I feel like people are always going to be growing. I’m always going to be learning and growing. But step seven would be this sort of place where you’re fluent in all s all seven of the skills. You’ve thought through things, you’re content. I think allies and this is hard for guys sometimes. I think we need to be content not being at the center of things. You know?

I mean Catlin makes this great comparison in her book. She talks about the contrast between being an ally and then being a knight in shining armor that swoops in to save the day and all the glory goes to the ally, right? Like like in step seven, you’re comfortable not being in that place. You’d actually prefer to not be in that place. And I think that’s a pivot for guys in a lot of ways. so anyway, those are my seven seven steps. And I I think the the beauty of the pathway is it my hope anyway is that it gives the church, Big C church, a roadmap. So if you want to be intentional about developing met developing men into more effective allies to women, there’s your here. There’s your roadmap to work with, right? to g to get men there and so I hope people use it that way.

Ruth Perry (23:38)
Yeah, I thought it was spectacular and brilliant the way you did that. It reminded me of like the Critical Journey book about spiritual maturity and that process of going from stages in your faith. And I think that it’s really important and powerful way to look at our maturity process to recognize where we are, first of all.

Rob Dixon (23:58)
Yeah, yeah.

Ruth Perry (24:00)
And where we need to go. I remember when I was in seminary, I’d read the book, Stages of Faith by James Fowler. And at the time I had never doubted anything about my faith. And so the whole book was kind of a puzzle to me. Like, I don’t understand this process at all. But then when I did have a period of time where I had gone through a lot of loss and grief and conflict and my faith was really shaken. Just having that framework from having read that book, I was like, my gosh, this is what’s happening to me. And so I would highly recommend people read your book even if

Rob Dixon (24:34)
Thank you.

Ruth Perry (24:34)
they haven’t really considered where they are on the path. I mean, it’s gonna illuminate things for them in ways that are really helpful. What is the problem with excluding women from ministry, do you think, Rob?

Rob Dixon (24:48)
What is the problem? I mean, where do you want me to start? I mean well, I think first of all, it probably needs to be said it’s contrary to scripture. I mean, if you look in Genesis 1, right, when God has the possibility of setting it all up free of sin, there’s no sin in the world, it’s God’s creation intent.

And you know, there’s these twin affirmations in Genesis one, right, where women and men share the image of God. It’s not like Adam has more of the image of God. You know. And then the second thing is the command to rule over the world and by extension God’s mission is given to women and men together. There’s no hierarchy, there’s no like, you know, Adam, why don’t you lead this process and Eve, give them the support he needs. It’s not like that. It’s this you together go and rule.

And I I think the rest of the scripture sits atop that foundation in Genesis one and confirms it repeatedly. Even when sin comes into the world, God’s intent still remains that women and men would share leadership. So I think the first problem with excluding women is it’s contrary to the scripture and to God’s heart. I mean, I could go on. A another problem for me anyway, as I think about things, I think a lot about mission. I want God’s mission to expand.

And the reality is the church has spent 2,000 plus years now with half the team on the bench, you know, relegated to the bench. And look, we’ve gotten so far with male leadership. Let’s try something different. And my personal conviction is that as women are empowered, released into service, able to use their callings and use their gifts, God’s mission will expand exponentially. And I’m invested in that project. I want that to happen, right?

Maybe a third thing, I’ll stop after this one, although I could keep going probably, but I think there’s a justice element here to me. Right? Women have been marginalized or worse, in the hands of the church for two thousand years. It’s unjust what has happened to women. Every time a woman is prohibited from using her gift, expressing her calling, that’s unjust. it just is. And so I think we have a God who is in the business of making unjust things just again.

And so I would love to see the church I mean, frankly, repent of how we’ve treated women for two thousand years and move in a different direction, which is what repentance entails, right? And so there’s a justice issue too. I again I could go on, but those would be three things. The scriptures, there’s the missional aspect of it, and then there’s the justice piece. Yeah. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

Ruth Perry (27:07)
Amen. I agree. Yeah. Was there anything that surprised you while you’re researching and writing your book?

Rob Dixon (27:18)
that’s a great question. I love that question. Yeah, I think what surprised me was the disruptive encounter. I mentioned that earlier. So that second step in the pathway. There’s your starting position and then there’s something that shakes the worldview or challenges the assumptions or paradigms. And I don’t know what I was expecting, but people told me stories that were pretty like intense. I mean back to where I started, I mean my own disruptive encounter was being called a false teacher for an hour. That’s one of many. The other one was having someone judge my wife’s sacrificial good leadership to be sinful.

I mean, those are those are moments that really shake men up in the in the context of male allyship. And I think that was surprising to me to hear some of those stories. Like you can reason with someone and try to convince them. I think that works for some men, but some men like me maybe need that experiential, emotional, earth shattering kind of experience, right? And I think that was surprising to hear that. The good news is I think sometimes disruptive encounters just happen, but I actually think in the church we can engineer them. So we can create disruptive encounters with a lot of pastoral work on the back end, right, to walk men through that disruptive encounter. And I think we should be thinking about that more proactively as a church.

Ruth Perry (28:32)
Something that I’ve learned because I’ve come a long way through my own pathway and I got really passionate like you describe in your book once you learned that this is an injustice, I got really passionate and I got really loud in my advocacy for women in ministry as a woman and I kind of believed I could make change because I changed. So I was really excited about helping other people see the light. Change their evil ways and turn back to God and yeah.

Rob Dixon (28:56)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ruth Perry (29:00)
But something that I’ve learned is that, you know, as a woman who’s had these experiences of not having my voice valued or listened to and realizing too that because I had grown up in a complementarian culture that I didn’t know my own voice either and I had to find my voice. And just the process of that and never being centered and then realizing, we’re centering men and having these realizations. And for a little while I was at a church where I was really passionate about this, really loud about this, and they changed the pastor’s wife’s title from director of children’s ministries to pastor of children’s ministries. And I was so excited and so thrilled, like I’m making a big change.

But as I’ve moved into other situations, I’ve come to recognize that the people who are most impacted by a problem are the best ones to articulate and explain what’s happening. But they have the least power to make any change. And you have to have proximity to the people who have the power to make change.

Rob Dixon (30:02)
Right.

Ruth Perry (30:03)
And so I think that’s why your book is so important. Where more men need to realize that this is a dynamic and that this is impacting women negatively and it’s impacting all of us negatively, that we all do better when we’re using our gifts for the kingdom and for the common good. and so I just I’m really grateful to you for writing the book and what do you hope will come of the book?

Rob Dixon (30:27)
Yeah. appreciate you saying that. And amen to all of that too. I mean I tell a story in the book, but there’s a guy that I know who I was interviewing and he started to think he knew best. And there was this moment where he advocated for a woman and basically usurped her agency. And there was this sort of like, wait a second, I messed that up. I got too far out ahead, I thought I knew what was best.

So I appreciate that emphasis on learning from and being with sitting with the marginalized community. I think that’s a good word there. I I mean in terms of what I hope, again, I wanna see God’s mission move forward. I wanna see more people love Jesus, follow Jesus. I wanna see I mean that is my big picture hope. And I think releasing women to lead and serve is a step toward that larger end and a crucial step for the church in this season. And so, my hope would be that this book, that the other book, that Penny preaches, that all those books just help that, Challenging Tertullian even, that that that pushes us towards that larger end, right? To to release women, to empower women to lead so that more people will know Jesus, because I really believe that’s gonna happen.

So, yeah, I mean that’s my hope, is let’s move the conversation down the field. Let’s move the church in a helpful way. I’m very aware as I say all of this, right, that the patriarchy is strong. It’s it’s remains strong. I’m starting to think more and more of patriarchy less as a cultural condition and more as like a power principality to use some sort of spiritual warfare kinds of language and so I think we should expect pushback. We should expect the patriarchy to lash back. I mean as we’re talking the Southern Baptists are doing their thing and the patriarchy feels alive and well from the things I read on social media about that. So I think we should expect that and all the more reason to be praying. And all the more reason to be pushing as hard as we can to bring change. So I hope Allies and Ministry helps us with that process process.

Ruth Perry (32:22)
This is a great book to do with a small group and with other people. One like if you just do it with one other person, there’s questions for reflection. where else can people find your work, Rob? And how can they is this something that you come and you teach on if people wanted to engage you that way?

Rob Dixon (32:39)
Yeah, yeah. I love to I always use three words for it to coach. So like an individual leader that wants to be better about empowering women, I can help with that. Consult would be in a second one. So, you know, what’s going on in your organization? Let me help you try to pick places where you could change, be better around this. And then train would be the third one. So always happy to do that on Zoom or in person. People can go to my website.

Let me issue a disclaimer, Ruth. This website is perpetually in process. If you’re expecting like slick graphics you’re in the wrong place. So Rob is not a web designer, but I do dabble and so drrobdixon.com, D R R O B D I X O N dot com.

That’s where you can find me, there’s contact information there as well if you wanna reach out to me to involve me in something that you’re doing. I I always say this, wherever people are talking about the dynamics of women and men working together or allies or any of these things, I wanna be in that conversation. So if there’s a way for listeners to involve me in that, I’m happy to think about that. Yeah.

Ruth Perry (33:37)
I think something that a lot of people assume from me just because I advocate for women in ministry and for women’s equality that I don’t like men. But I have to say I love men, I love my husband, my sons, I love all the allies in ministry that I’ve encountered, I love your work and I’m just so grateful for you and for the many male friendships that I have. And I love men that disagree with me about this too. I want us all, I want the best for all of us. And so I’m just really grateful that you would come on the Beautiful Kingdom Builders today to share about your work. And I’m gonna link to your website in the show notes and to your books. And I hope people check those out. And I’m gonna give you the last word, Rob. Thank you for being here today.

Rob Dixon (34:25)
Yeah, well thanks for having me. You know, listeners obviously know the value of your work, Ruth, and what you do with the Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast and the other stuff you do on social media. And I just would say blessings to you and may your tribe increase, right? We need more voices advocating for the full inclusion of women in the church. So thanks for all you do.

Ruth Perry (34:45)
Thank you so much. God bless.

Rob Dixon (34:47)
Yeah, you too.

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