SPEAKER_04 0:00

Freedom from a high controlled church environment, how to leave a high controlled church environment, what it's like being in and part of a high controlled church environment. Where you're not really free to express who you are in Christ, but the real emphasis is on conformity, conformity to the rules, conformity to the leaders, conformity to their opinion, conformity to the church doctrine as a whole. When that happens, something in us begins to die in a sense, doesn't it? Because we're unable to fully express Christ in us. We're unable to fully express the freedom that we have in Jesus when we're in a high control environment. My guest today is Emily Shepherd. Emily Shepherd has a podcast called Rest, R-E-S T, which I'm going to let her talk about in a few minutes. But Emily comes from that kind of an environment, from a high-controlled church environment. And today I asked her to come on the Un Sunday show with me and talk about her story.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

You're listening to the Un Sunday show.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

This is the Un Sunday show.

SPEAKER_04 1:45

And so let me bring her on here real quick to join me on screen. Emily, thank you so much for joining me. You uh you and I and Susan met uh several months ago, maybe a year ago. It it may have been a while, and you interviewed us on your podcast on the REST podcast R E S T. And I'm gonna ask you to talk about that again here in a minute. So we heard a little bit of your story there, and of course, you heard our story, and then you interviewed me uh solo, and we talked about uh uh was it tithing that we talked about?

SPEAKER_01 2:26

I think our last episode we did together was on Sundays and Sabbath.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

Oh, yeah, the Sabbath.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

That was a loaded topic.

SPEAKER_04 2:37

It was a fun one too, though, wasn't it? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So Emily, why don't why don't we start off by you just uh introducing yourself to everybody, you know, take this wherever you want to go. Who was Emily Shepard? If you want to start into some of your church background at this point, that's fine too. This is your time. So I want to just let you take it whatever direction that you want to take it. So tell us who Emily is.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Well, wow. So Emily um was a teenager in a public high school in Northern Virginia in the suburbs. Um when she was approached by a um peer, a friend. Uh honestly, I can't quite remember her face, which I regret at this point. We weren't very close, but she invited me to a Christian meeting. And at this point, I was not a Christian. I didn't have any concept of what that was. I had been raised in a secular humanist home and with no Bible teaching, no church attendance, except for maybe Christmas and Easter. And this friend was persistent, and she kept hounding me to join her at a Young Life meeting. So Young Life is a non-denominational Christian outreach to unchurched youth mostly. And uh it was, in my opinion, full of jocks and popular kids. And I definitely, as a band geek, was not one of those. And so I kept turning her down, turning her down. But I will say that prior to that pretty intense invitation over a long period of time, I was quite curious about who I was spiritually. Like, is there, is there a God? You know, and I at that age, I think that we are waking up more and more to these sorts of big cosmic questions. Who am I? Why am I here? Do I have a maker? If I do, is he personal? And I was asking these questions internally. And I thought, well, maybe a good place to start would be to read the Bible. And so I didn't think to ask my parents, but I scrounged around the house and I found one. And I started reading around uh age 14, I think I was at this point, started in Genesis, started reading the Old Testament. And you can imagine that I got pretty frustrated. I think I got up to the Psalms and at that point gave up and kind of raised my fist at God and was praying all this time. If you're out there, I want to know you. Raised my fist at him and said, You are not showing me how to know you. I am completely confused by this book. But I want to know you if you're there. And so it's interesting to me that at that point, this girl comes into my life and begins really hounding me. And I eventually give in and go to the first Young Life meeting. And at the Young Life meeting, which is crazy and fun and chaotic, and you know, the leaders are just so up on their pop culture and their ability to connect with teens and magnetic, all of that. And the speaker gets up for like 10 minutes, just gives a little, you know, 10-minute talk about how to know Jesus. And I remember thinking, this is it. This is what I've been waiting for, this is what I've been looking for. And at that moment, as much as I could understand, I committed my life to Jesus. And that's how they termed it, right? And began to grow, just a baby Christian at that time, of course. Um, my parents thought I was crazy. I think they thought I had joined a cult. Um, but I continued to grow and read the scripture, um, but be heavily influenced by what other people thought about this Christian walk that was new to me. And I tended to take whatever people told me as truth that were seemed farther along this road than I was. They taught me how to have a 20-minute quiet time. And that 20-minute quiet time became the first um link, as it felt like in a chain around my soul. That if I didn't have that daily 20-minute quiet time praying and reading the Bible, that I was um spiritually failing. And then that just, you know, the the links just became added to the chain around my soul. Different things. And it made sense that I would continue to be drawn toward ever-increasing high control communities. And so, to make a very long story short, as we're aware, our life stories are complex and circuitous, and don't want to bore your listeners here. Um, but my husband and I found ourselves drawn in 2002 to an Orthodox Presbyterian church. Orthodox meaning straight teaching. So we kind of felt that we had fallen in to those that had finally stumbled upon the truth, right? Orthodox, straight teaching. And they were high and tight. And we loved it. We loved it. For the first five years, it felt like home, community, the richest fellowship we had known, and some of the most um dynamic, beautiful, winsome preaching that we'd ever heard, honestly. And my husband was elected an elder there, began to serve there, and began to get exhausted there. And of course, I became exhausted because my husband is being worked there with three small children at home. So I would say that that was probably the first red flag, is beginning to see how my husband was being overworked as an elder, and then how that affected our family life. So I can pause there or I can continue, but that's really phase one, I would say, of my story.

SPEAKER_04 9:17

Well, before we go into phase two, let me maybe flesh out a little bit of this that you said. You mentioned, you know, the the 20-minute, I was jotting down notes while you were talking. You mentioned the the 20-minute quiet time. Do you find yourself, like me, more and you did kind of allude to this, but do you find yourself more um drawn to that kind of an environment where rules are set out for you and you find that you're a good rule keeper? Does that kind of describe you at that time? That this is what you thrived on, this is what you assumed was spiritual growth. You know, this is this was what pleased God in your life. I tend to be a people pleaser. Yeah, I tend to be a people pleaser, you know. Are you the same?

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Yes, for sure. Always was. Yes. Yes, always.

SPEAKER_04 10:15

And you know, it seems like those kind of personalities, those kind of people that fall into this are the ones that are kept there the longest. It takes us a while to see it. Took me a while to see it, took us a while to see it. Because you're you're you almost pick up a sense of comfort there. That things are so defined for you, that you've got these, you know, these walls around you, and everything is so well defined, and all the right words are in the descriptions, and it sounds spiritual. It sounds it sounds really good. And it can it can draw you into that sort of an environment, but in reality, that environment can be very toxic. But we don't see that. Yes, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

They they mm-hmm. You can't see it at first, and that's the danger. And Jesus warned us about this 2,000 years ago to be on our guard. And not only was I not taught that as a new believer, I completely missed it in my own reading of scripture. So that I wasn't on my guard and I was taken in.

SPEAKER_04 11:30

That's a good point. Because you know, we we tend to read scripture through the lens of whoever gets to us first, don't we? Right. I found that yeah, I found that to be true in my life that uh whoever gets us first is where we get the most entrenched in. And that can be good or that can be bad. And in your case, it wasn't good, in our case it wasn't good either.

unknown 11:58

Right.

SPEAKER_04 11:58

Do you want to continue on there with part two of your story? Should we go there next?

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Sure. Sure. I'll go into the church that we um eventually left after 17 years. So we continued on with this pattern. We had had three young children by this point, and really were quite settled in the life of the church because we were enamored with the really tight community. Now, looking back, I would say that we were really enmeshed in an unhealthy way. But part of my story, and I go into this on my episode called How Did I Get Here, that I really believe I was set up to be attracted to this particular church in this particular time in my life. And set up because it felt like the end of my road where I could finally rest. It felt like home. And all of that appealed to me for all sorts of reasons that I go into on that episode. So we settled in, and everybody was about our ages, raising their young children at the same time, including the pastor and his family, who became very close friends of ours, and we loved them dearly. And it was tight. We were, we were all tight, living life together. They held that Sunday was the Christian Sabbath, which they also called the Lord's Day. And so the rhythm of our week began to revolve around this one day, Sunday, what we believed was the Christian Sabbath, taught in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which were the standards of this denomination, and of course our particular church. And we had to take vows to uphold that confession and to obey these standards, which meant that you were present on the Lord's Day, on the Christian Sabbath, on every worship service that was offered. And at our church, it was mornings and evenings on Sundays. And our church called that bookending the Lord's Day. And frankly, it was exhausting. It was exhausting for my husband, and it was exhausting for me, right? I was wrangling the three small children back out the door in the evenings. As our children began to get older, most of the families in the church at this time, at this time, not so much now, but at that time, was kind of considered the golden age of homeschooling. And where we're located here in North Carolina, there were a lot of homeschoolers because of our laws, make it very easy. So homeschooling was kind of the norm, but it was not working for our family. We tried it one year and I knew this was not for us. And so our children went to a non-denominational Christian school, which was way outside the norm for this church. And it almost felt scandalous when we made the choice to put our children in school. I had even withheld our children from going to preschool because of the advice of mostly women in this church with large families, lots of children, almost exclusively into homeschooling. And they told me it'll be better for your children to be home with you, especially at these younger years. Remember, my husband was being worked a lot as an elder. He had his own job he was holding down. He was also in seminary at this time. And so I think the homeschooling was the first red flag for me after the amount of work that my husband seemed to not be able to get out from under, which meant more work for me, of course, at home. And so when we began to not homeschool, I began to get a lot of flack. Now, my husband didn't get the flak from the men. I got the flak from the women. That's a whole nother topic we can talk about, how women really uphold these systems. And so the women began to come after me. You know, um, why? Why did you give up homeschooling? And of course, that made me feel like a failure, as if I couldn't do it. I would get comments like, we'll help you. I'll come over and walk you through it, I'll help you pick curriculum. But my children were not thriving at home. My children were thriving in school. And so they went back to school very happily. I was happy. And the school is ultimately what challenged the belief system because my children would get in the car after school asking me, Mommy, mommy, can we go to a movie on Sunday with our friends? Or, hey, mom, my friend's gonna have their birthday party on Sunday, can I go? And Mike, I could not answer them because I was sitting under the teaching and I had made a vow to uphold the Westminster Confession to regard Sunday as the Christian Sabbath. I was I was in a bind. I had made a vow, and vows are binding. And so I would kind of look at my children like I I don't know, but I was terrified to lose their hearts and not let them go. But I knew that this would be looked down on severely, especially because my husband was an elder and we were an elder's family. And so I did let my children go to those events. And those events caused me to find the answer to this. I had to know the answer. Who was right? Is there some list out there for the Sabbath day? There should be, because I didn't think that God would make this so arbitrary, right? So I began scouring the scriptures and just searching and searching what it had to say about Sabbath, Sunday, Lord's Day, all of that, reading historical texts, everything I could get my hands on that went back to the original Greek, that went back to the teaching of the apostles, the teachings of the early church fathers, where we got this concept of Sabbath. And so, yes, the Sabbath was the really the issue that forced me to look seriously at this confession that I had made with my mouth that I will uphold this standard because it began to affect our family. And my husband began to see that our oldest daughter in particular began struggling with some of the culture of the church. Um and she is my co-host on the podcast. So I don't necessarily need to go into a lot of that. You can hear her and I, she and I, dialoguing there about her story because I wanted to get her perspective, like as a child growing up in this high-control religious system. And so I pick her brain a lot. I ask her a lot of questions that I honestly didn't know the answer to until we recorded right at that moment. And I have learned so much just by sitting and listening to her, letting her talk, letting her process. And we have a very open communication between each other all the time. She knows she can tell me anything. She can express anger to me over what she had to go through. And she knows that we, me and her father, will receive her. Whatever she has to say, whatever she wants to tell us. We're gonna get through this together. And the podcast has definitely been part of that healing for our whole family.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

So that's phase two before we actually were able to leave. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:55

We'll get to phase three here in in just a minute. How's that?

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Yeah, sounds good.

SPEAKER_04 20:01

So, you know, you talk about the Westminster Confession of Faith. Some people may not know this, but in reformed circles, which is what we're talking about here, head knowledge is like a crown. It's um you read a lot. You're encouraged to read a lot, you're encouraged to investigate, you're encouraged to dive deep into things. And the Westminster Confession of Faith is one of those documents, like you mentioned, that you have to adhere to. Now I've never been in the Reformed faith, I've been next to it. You know, I've I've debated guys that are in the reformed in reformed circles and had di had conversations with them, had dialogues, had public debates with them. So I have some exposure to it, but I've never actually been a part of it. But I can see the control that's there. I can see what a controlling environment it is, and it's almost like some of these documents that tradition has given the reformed community are almost like the fourth member of the Trinity. You know, or maybe the fifth member of the Trinity. Maybe the Bible's the fourth member, but then you know, these documents become so important that non-adherence to them makes you suspect. You might not even be a believer. You know? It's very possible because we need to adhere to these things because they're that important in that environment. They're such a part of it. And, you know, the idea of taking a vow, you said you took a vow to uphold that. I immediately thought of Jesus' words, and I don't remember where they're at exactly. But when he said, you know, don't don't take a vow. But you know, let your yes be yes and your no be no. Because anything beyond that, he said, can become sinful. And you know, that's so true. I mean, that's true in all of life. And I thought of that when you were saying that, you know, about the the Westminster Confession and um you know, taking vows and stuff like that. Another thing that you mentioned, you jump in here anytime if you want. I'm just gonna go through some of these points to recap what you said. Some of the stuff about you know, women interfering in your life, and uh you know, we've experienced that. Susan's experienced that, even though we weren't in a a reformed environment, it was kind of a pseudo-reformed environment, I guess. But she experienced the same thing. A lot of pressure from other women. Other women, a lot of pressure to conform, to be a certain way, to not think independently, but to submit to their opinions, to submit to their view of what you should be, to submit to their version of you. You know, and and yeah, we saw the same thing. It's kind of just being nosy. I guess for lack of a better word, sticking their nose where it doesn't belong.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Oh yeah, yeah, I agree, agree. Yep. I think I think if the busy bodies, yeah, in uh the Paul mentions, um There you go. There seemed to be a lot of that, um, an encouragement to be busy, um, raising your covenant children, um, providing hospitality, um, being available to your husband, um, having dinner ready when he got home, um, being prepared to um support and help his agenda under a complementarian mindset that you're his helper. I would even have friends that would ask their husbands, you know, every morning, what can I accomplish today that will help, you know, pursue your agenda and accomplish the whatever the goal that you feel like God has for you today. So it was kind of a, I wouldn't call it an extreme complementarian. Actually, it was pretty close to the most consistent form of complementarianism. I think most complementarianism is soft, it's not consistent in the home. And at least this church was attempting to be somewhat consistent in their complementarian patriarchy, that the man is the head of the woman. And I think that they would say, well, a husband is the head of his wife. But as soon as you got into male over female, that became very gray, even to the point that women were not allowed to teach Sunday school to teenage boys after a certain age. And that always made me say, why? How do we know when that boy has become a man? And you're deciding when he can't be taught by a woman anymore. So there was so much inconsistency, not around just the Sabbath, what they called the Sabbath Sunday, but around these male-female roles and this pretty um semi-consistent complementarianism with hierarchy. I prefer to quantify that, that if you're going to say I'm complementarian, I'll say, well, so am I, but without hierarchy, I don't believe that there's um a hierarchy of male over female. I believe we complement each other in a mutually beneficial way. So that is a whole nother aspect that was at play that probably affected our oldest daughter the most. She, of course, was watching all the ways that men and women interacted with each other in the congregation, the way that girls were treated differently from boys, without a doubt. She goes into this extensively in the podcast, in our interviews with her own firsthand accounts of that.

SPEAKER_04 25:56

Yeah, those are good episodes too. I highly recommend those. And we'll talk about your podcast in a moment a little bit more. And I'll be sure and have a link to it in the description too. By the way, this is this is available. What we're doing right now will be available in both video and audio on the Un Sunday show, the Un Sunday Show podcast is audio, and then on the Un Sunday show YouTube page as video as well. So I'll have links to either one in the description, depending on where you're listening, what you're listening to.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

So yeah, you'll be able to do that. Maybe I should say here too, Mike should say that the the acronym REST stands for recovering from spiritual trauma. I didn't say that at the beginning, just for your listeners. You can find it. If sometimes people have a little bit of trouble searching for it. And so if you put rest all in caps, typically it'll come up. But if that doesn't work, try putting in recovering from spiritual trauma, and it most definitely will pop up then.

SPEAKER_04 26:55

Okay, good. Yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:59

So Susan and I, a couple of years ago, probably we addressed that whole issue of uh complementarianism, comp complementarianism. I can talk.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Don't you love that long word they create? It's so impressive, Mike.

SPEAKER_04 27:14

That long word is so impressive, and it's all about being impressive with long words that nobody can understand.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Absolutely. It'll go on the books on the bookshelf. So the more books on your bookshelf that you had in this church, the more impressive you were spiritually.

SPEAKER_04 27:28

That's right. Okay, carry on. Yes. Then when I did my crash and burn, I literally gave away all my books. As did we, yes. Yeah, just don't need them anymore. Don't want them, don't want them around. You know, that stuff's toxic. I don't want it.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

So I literally we know the word of God. Yeah, just the word of God. We know him, he's a person, right?

SPEAKER_04 27:50

That's right. That's exactly right. Exactly. And he's been given all authority in heaven and earth, and he lives in us. And wow, what a setup. That is cool, right? I mean, how do you meet that? The bookshelves in here. That's right. But years ago, Susan and I went back and addressed that whole topic of complementarianism and top-down authority hierarchy in marriage. You know, and in a lot of ways, you know, especially that hierarchy, that we concluded that that really reduces a wife to the oldest of the children in a lot of ways. Because you really don't have an opinion. You don't get to express yourself. You know, you have to submit to the man all the time. And that can get abusive, quite frankly. You know, for sure. It really can. But you have no option there. And so, anybody listening, if you want to go back, this is on the Grace Cafe podcast, not on the Un Sunday show. We have several episodes on that topic. But if you're watching this on the Un Sunday show YouTube page, look at the podcast tab up at the top, click on that, and you'll see both the UnSundae show and the Grace Cafe podcast in there. And those episodes are in the Grace Cafe. So you can pull those up anytime, watch them, listen to them, and see what you think. So I appreciate you bringing that up, Emily. That's such an important point, that whole thing, you know, about spiritual the spiritual head and all that stuff. I think it's just been misrepresented, it's been misinterpreted, in my humble opinion.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

No, I I agree. And I think there's been so much work done around this right now in podcasts, in books, in blogs, men and women just writing in this space. And so there's so many resources people have to do their research. And I just challenge those that hold to a complementarian position with hierarchy, so that you believe that men are somehow over women or that husbands are somehow elevated over their wives with authority, that you I challenge those that hold to that, that you research it. Just just research it, just read both sides. Um, I I would, when I was complementarian with hierarchy, um, when I was fully committed to that position, I but I didn't really research it again. I just was taking what people told me.

SPEAKER_04 30:18

Same. Yeah. So same thing.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:24

Should we launch into part three of this saga? Okay. The Emily Shepherd. So this will be uh saga.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

This is this will be the departure if we titled it, if it were a chapter.

SPEAKER_03 30:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

So around 20, I'd say 2010 to 2015 or so, I knew that I had to get out of there. Now it took me seven years to untangle, and that just shows you how enmeshed we were and how terrified I was at confronting my husband because I believed that he was my head. And if he felt that this was the best place for our family, then it must be. So it really was this complementarian teaching with hierarchy that kept me in bondage, that silenced me, that gagged me, so that I felt like I could not even speak to my husband, that I couldn't even speak in the church. Women should remain silent, right? That teaching is taken completely out of its context.

SPEAKER_04 31:26

Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

And and held up one line held up as truth that has silenced half of the ecclesia, half of Christ's body, and shackled her gifts such that she is not able to contribute to the building up of the body of Christ. And when I realized that I could no longer hold my tongue or remain silent, I began to see that our oldest daughter really was falling behind. And my husband now refers to it this way: since we're avid hikers, we view the way that we um were struggling in this phase three, that we were on a trail and he was blazing the trail, and he was way ahead of us, and we were beginning to lose sight of him. And I'm next in line, yelling toward him, sweetheart, stop. The kids are way behind. And I don't think we're on the right trail because I'm looking at them beginning to slip, especially our oldest daughter. But my husband said, in his mind, because he was taught that he's the head and he should guide and lead his family alone as the head, he makes the supreme decision ultimately. He felt that this environment was the very best for his family based on what he was hearing from leadership, from other elders, from other men in the congregation, and so he kept foraging up the trail. And it took years for us to really see and hear each other, and for him to finally break from a position of leadership, respect, and fellowship that he had enjoyed for 15 years as an elder with no sabbatical, no break for 15 years. And this is a life um office they serve for life. So you can imagine how exhausted he was.

SPEAKER_04 33:42

Can I just interject? No pay, no pay.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Right, no pay-free labor.

SPEAKER_04 33:47

Oh, we're we're free labor.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

And we're actually paying, right? So we're paying in the form of a tithe for this whole system to continue. And my last two episodes in the podcast are on tithing. And my daughter comes on on the last one to talk about her perspective as a child raised under a tithing mentality. So in 2019, we decided to leave. It was mostly my decision, but my husband did join me in that, which I count as a miracle. Very few men, if any, ever leave these types of high-control religious systems where they have a position of authority, respect, and fellowship, and they're still in agreement with the standards, which he was on all of that. And I was not. And so he said, Well, we'll all go, we'll stay together, and we'll all go. And we left at the end of 2019, and we we had no way of knowing what 2020 would bring with the pandemic. Um, but it was such a gift because it allowed our family to really cocoon together and heal in that time of quarantine. And since then, I would be lying if I said that it's been smooth sailing for our marriage. Our marriage went through the fire, a crucible, and we had to enter therapy. Um, and I really feel like our marriage was deconstructed as we were both deconstructing our faith. And then my husband began to, the all the shackles, I got to watch the shackles fall from his eyes, begin to see how free he is under the new covenant, that he's not bound in any way, shape, or form to the old covenant, to some eternal moral law of God, as expressed in the Ten Commandments, that the Westminster Confession is archaic at best and um evil at worst. And so all of that began to fall away, not right away. It took lots of conversations, lots of books, lots of um podcasts, lots of spaces where he could explore. And I know we just talked about books and not having big bookshelves behind us. So I agree that we have to caution that in saying that the books that we do read, we now go in with a lens of weighing both sides. We're able to do that now. We have a clarity that we feel like we weren't able to access when we were in our 30s and knew in our faith. And that frankly, that podcasts, blogs, and social media have sped up our ability to connect to these sources of information and our ability to see large swaths of information now to take in and evaluate. Versus back in the 90s, 80s and 90s, and early 2000s, this was mostly just books. And a lot of these books were reprinted Puritan books, right? That came out through various press. Um, I'm trying to think of the name of some of these canon press or other publication companies that were reprinting Puritan writings. And these became hugely popular with the rise of the Reformed theology movement through Ligonier Ministries, R. C. Sproul, Table Talk, things like that. And we got caught up in all of that. And that was really the majority of what we were imbibing. There wasn't anything to read to counter that at that time. To find it was difficult because we really didn't have the internet and things like that. So I am so grateful for those that are writing, um, blogging, podcasting now, offering to those of us that were so confused, I so wish the younger me had all of these resources. But I didn't. I didn't. Um so I just preface that to say the books that my husband and I did and the podcasts and the blogs that were so helpful helped us to balance the the way we were really um one-sided for decades, right? Under the the um teachings of reformed theology that were so abundant and filled bookcases in the homes of all these church members and were handed around to each other. You have a question about that? Here's a book by a reformed theologian, a covenant theologian. But it was never, oh, you know, you really need to wrestle through that with God and examine both sides and explore the issue uh critically. That that was never part of the program.

SPEAKER_04 39:03

Right, exactly. So I really appreciate everything you just said there, Emily. Yeah, I I can relate to a lot of it. You know, you talked about in this segment of, you know, that we're titling entitling Leaving, you're leaving that environment. Women being silent. You know, taking that verse out of context where Paul, you know, Paul didn't tell women to be silent, he told them to be quiet. That's a big difference. Earlier in that same chapter in uh 1 Timothy, right? 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy. Hey, I'm 70. Give me a break.

unknown 39:41

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_04 39:42

But early earlier in that chapter, you know, Paul used the same word for the entire church. And he wasn't silent, it was quiet. And yet the translators translated it silent when it came to women, but it's the same word. That's because there was a lot of interruption going on in the culture at the time through the Temple of Diana. And again, you know, you can go back into the Grace Cafe and probably on yours too, and look for episodes dealing with that and putting that back in its context. But the whole idea of women being silent, you're exactly right. You said that. We miss out on what half of the body of Christ is thinking. We miss out on half of the gifts, spiritual gifts of the body of Christ when we do that. You know, Christ expresses himself in both male and female. You know, it's not a it's not a male-only kind of a deal, for lack of a better word. The body of Christ is all of us.

SPEAKER_05 40:43

Right.

SPEAKER_04 40:44

As equals. As equals. I have a little booklet here. You know, we're talking about books. I do have a little booklet here that I want to just show everyone. It's real thin. It's a thin little thing. It's got uh what's it got? 74 pages. It's my kind of book. This is by John Zinn that I've interviewed here on the podcast. And it's a it's a book on about women, and it's called No Will of My Own.

SPEAKER_03 41:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 41:14

No Will of My Own. Can you see that okay? I don't know if I'm getting it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

Smothers Female Dignity. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 41:23

Yeah, let me do this. Let me go full screen with it. No Will of My Own. And it's subtitled How Patriarchy Smothers Female Dignity and Personhood. Excellent little booklet. Quick read. I mean, you can sit down and you know read it pretty quick and glean some really good things from it. It's a book that I've really enjoyed reading, and it put a lot of things back in context for me. It helped us tremendously. So, yeah, there was that, you know, the women being silent. And let's talk about the pressure that a man faces in that environment to lead, a husband faces in that environment to lead, because I was under the same pressure, maybe not quite as extreme as what you guys experienced, but in the circles that we ran in, you know, which were patriarchy and top-down authority and uh the man being the spiritual leader of the home. I had to make all the decisions all the time. You know, my wife could have input, but when it came right down to it, she couldn't decide. I had to decide.

SPEAKER_03 42:29

Right.

SPEAKER_04 42:30

And I made some really poor decisions and I regret that. But the pressure that it put on me to be that person and to do that, I didn't realize how much pressure I was under until after we did our crash and burn in 2009 and we left. After we left, I began to realize when I wasn't under that pressure anymore, I I began to realize what kind of pressure I was under as a husband, because I had to have all the answers. But I don't. I don't have all the answers. I have very few answers. And together as a team, you know, Susan and I as a team make decisions now. We do things we talk. And I get her input because I value that input, and she gets mine because she values it. And we make decisions based on you know, that conversation. And it's different. It's totally different. I am not under the I'm not under pressure to be right all the time. And she is not under pressure to submit to my decisions even when they're poor, even when they're bad, even when they're you know, they kind of suck. You know, to put it to put it bluntly. And I've I've made some sucky decisions, and I regret those. But that's not where we're at anymore. We're not there anymore. But religion gave us that. Religion and the reform. Tradition, the history of the whole thing, uh really gave us that. And then one more thing I want to circle back on that you mentioned is how when a wife starts to see these things but her husband doesn't that can put the wife in a very scary position. Because the Holy Spirit can show you things. Yeah. So often that ends in divorce. And I'm so glad it didn't with you. I know you went through hard things, but I'm so glad that it didn't end in that for you, that you didn't have to go through that, that your husband Your husband obviously loves you very much and he values your opinion. And just the fact that he would talk to you about it even though he wasn't there yet, that speaks volumes. That's huge.

SPEAKER_03 44:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 44:52

Especially in that environment, because if you start to see things but he doesn't, and then he decides, Well, I'm not budging, the church is going to side with him one hundred percent of the time. Because he is the head of the home. And you're going to be outcast. You're going to be the problem. You're going to be labeled as that person who, again, may not be a believer, probably isn't, that you're causing all these problems. And so that burden falls on the woman at that point, the wife, and that would have fallen on you as well. And it would have fallen hard. But thankfully, that didn't happen. But that's what happens a lot.

unknown 45:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

And you can't see it ahead of time. You have no idea how this is going to end up. If you're going to lose your marriage, if you're going to be um brought before the church for discipline and publicly humiliated, if you're going to be outcast, if you're going to lose all of your friends, if your children are going to turn on you eventually. Like all of that felt like potentials that for women in my shoes who you have this gnawing sense that something is wrong, but you continue to show up in the pew, but you're half dead. You feel like a shell. And but you drag your body there week in and week out because you're under that bondage that you can't speak to your husband. And then you're terrified of what could happen if you did. And it is a terrible, terrible bind for any woman to be in. And I do look back and I see evidence of the kindness of God to us for sure. And I acknowledge that very few men, as I've said before, will leave this sort of environment because it it feeds them. Honestly, it feeds their ego. It gives them a sense of power. And so it I hope that the listeners get a sense of how incredibly difficult it was. This was not an easy journey, and it cost both of us tremendously. But it is a journey that we would make again in a heartbeat. I think I could speak for my husband as well, because of the sense of true soul rest that we now experience, that we're finally free from the harassment of the law. And we could get into that, and we've gotten into this on the episodes. You've been a guest. And I love when we talk about this the harassment of the law. Wow, and the freedom of the new covenant. And this is what ultimately gave me the fuel to throw myself off this cliff. I believed that the new covenant would catch me. And that the grace of Christ was sufficient. And it was sufficient. It did catch me. It did set me on a my feet upon a rock and make my footsteps firm. And the fact that I can even come on here and talk about our story that has been incredibly traumatic. It has been spiritual trauma. And if listeners doubt that, and I've had many listeners doubt that in their comments, what I don't hear, I don't hear any abuse, I don't hear any trauma. You're just exaggerating. Go back, please, and listen to the episodes. And I actually go into the physical abuse of children's bodies under this um old covenant teaching. And primarily in spanking and how it was implemented in this church. My episodes, my daughter and I discussed this at length. So, yes, I was traumatized. I was not physically abused in my body, as were children in this church. And so the sense of spiritual harm, spiritual harassment by wolves that want power, that want your money in the form of a tithe, that want your allegiance, that want your presence, they want your body to work, to serve, to show up. They want your mouth to continue to proclaim these realities, to uphold this system. They want to hear honorific titles come out of your mouth, like pastor, elder, deacon, so-and-so. They love that. They hang on that. They want to hear that. If they didn't, they would say it. They would say it in humility and say, oh, don't call me that. I'm one of you. But they never said that. So for a woman to wake up to these realities, it costs her more than people will ever understand. And I hope that your listeners can grasp that a little bit through our conversation today. But I hope that they can also grasp that the new covenant will catch you. The new covenant is far, far superior and far, far more capable of making your footsteps firm and putting you on a rock that is a firm foundation for sure.

SPEAKER_04 50:26

Wow. That's a good way to wrap this up, Emily. I really appreciate you. I appreciate everything that you've said. I appreciate you sharing your experiences with us and being honest and open about those. And wow. Yeah. I want to be respectful of your time, but I also want to talk about your podcast real quick. Do you have time if we look at that real quick together? Yeah. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 50:55

Let me um I think I've got it set here. Maybe. There it is. This is um what I've got here is the Apple Podcast app.

SPEAKER_04 51:12

This is the Apple Podcast app. I don't know. Do you have a website too? You do. I know you're on Facebook and Instagram. But do you have a website?

SPEAKER_01 51:20

I am on Facebook and Yes, the website is through the BuzzSprout platform that hosts the Apple Podcast. And so it feels a little bit redundant to me, and I don't really develop that. It's developed by BuzzSprout. Probably going directly to either Apple Podcast or Spotify Podcast would be enough for people to get the information they need, as well as the Instagram and Facebook pages. And they you will notice on the podcast that my ratings are not even in the fours. Look at that, still hanging at 3.9. So at the beginning of when I published the podcast, the members of the church were enraged. And of course, I can't prove that it was them, but some group came on and loaded my ratings with one stars. So if you please don't be put off by that, give it a listen. And if it resonates with you, would you give us a rating that could bring this back up? Because if you look at the ratings, you can see it's mostly five-star and mostly one star. So that tells me that people were coming on and trying to tank it that way.

SPEAKER_04 52:34

Yeah. I saw this about that time. I think that's when I first heard of you. I don't remember if we had a conversation about you interviewing us at the time. And I went to look at this. I gave you a I gave you a four or five star or whatever it is. You sure did. You sure did. Thanks. I made some kind of a comment that hey, this needs to be out there. This information needs to be out there. So again, it's rest, REST. And like you mentioned earlier, Emily, recovering from spiritual trauma. So it's rest. Uh, it's got some of your episodes listed here. You know, tithing our family story of regret. These are really good episodes. Should Christians tithe? Oh, and look at this. You had this guy on here. Meeting.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

Look at that. That was a great combo there.

SPEAKER_04 53:21

Yeah. We yeah, we had Sundays and Sabbaths together. And yeah, just kind of scrolling down through here, looking at these. Here's our guest interview. You you interviewed both Susan and I. And then I did enjoy that part one and two.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 53:37

We did too.

SPEAKER_01 53:37

And that's been one of my most popular episodes, is that part two with you and Susan. My um listeners have loved that. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 53:46

You are, and I've told you this to your face a few times, you are such a good interviewer. You have a real gift for the right questions, saying the right things, and drawing people out. Not only drawing them out, but making them feel comfortable in the process. So let's let's look at all of your episodes. I'm going to click on see all over here. Kind of changes the page a little bit, but you can kind of see where Emily's gone here with her podcast. I really encourage everyone watching, everyone listening, to subscribe to this podcast and to go back and listen to a lot of these uh past episodes. Here's one that really stood out to me. Mother and daughter discussion of the Sons of Patriarchy interview after you interviewed Peter Bell from the Sons of Patriarchy.

SPEAKER_01 54:34

Yeah, that's very hot right now, is Peter Bell's work with Sons of Patriarchy and Christian Nationalism and Doug Wilson and Pete Hegseth and all the connections there.

SPEAKER_05 54:44

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 54:45

Yep, absolutely. So I encourage you know everybody listening, everybody watching. Um again, I'll have a link to this in the description of this episode, but go there and check it out because I I would like to also um invite you, Emily, if you want to come back on. The welcome Matt is out. You're welcome on here anytime that you want to come on and share things. I really uh appreciate you and I appreciate um everything that you've uh done, everything that you've been able to say, your story, not only today, but you know, with all that that you do on your podcast as well. And if you ever if your daughter's ever so inclined to come on with you, that would be cool. And I don't know where your husband is in terms of that, but if he would like to come on at some point with us as well, that yeah, I'm open to that. So I guess what I'm saying is the welcome Matt is out. Love to have you back anytime. Is there anything else just Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you. Is there anything else just before we close that we didn't cover that you were hoping that we would?

SPEAKER_01 55:57

I don't think it's so. I think we've hit it. Um, you know, if anybody's interested in in more details, of course, they can head to the podcast and get so much more of the backstory. And I interview so many guests, bring bringing on guests. Um, and yeah, there's there's so much out there for for people that they don't need to feel alone. They're not alone. And I think meeting you, yeah, you and Susan were so instrumental in my healing journey, absolutely. And I'm so, so grateful for your work, for your friendship, um, for the times that we have to dialogue. I think one of my favorite conversations we ever had, and I would love to pick this up again, was around Melchizedek. Um just that was so rich and so magical. And I do think that that is a forgotten tale of the Christ, like this concept of this once-in-future king, like Melchizedek. So that I have a particular interest in that, and I do think that that's a topic we should revisit.

SPEAKER_04 57:03

Well, let's do it. Yeah, let's uh make it happen. Sounds good. I'm all for it. Emily, I'm gonna shut this thing down. I'd appreciate it if you would stay on for just a moment so I can say goodbye to you. But thank you again for joining me and everyone watching or listening to this episode. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time as well. And I hope that you were encouraged by this story. I hope that in listening to Emily's story, that you were able to relate two parts of it and that that's been an encouragement to you as well. So I'm gonna let you all go. And until next time, y'all take care.

SPEAKER_02 57:45

Thank you for joining us on the UnSunday show. To be a part of this ongoing conversation, visit us online at unsunday.com.