Sheila
What does it look like to make amends if you were one of the authors of purity culture, and you harmed a whole generation of Christians? That's what we're talking about today on the Bare Marriage podcast. Hi, I'm Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com, where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage.

And I am joined today by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach. And this is our third and final episode in a series that we've been doing, looking at when you when you're the one who hurt people, how do you fix it? Like, what should we be asking people to do? What happens next? And we've been looking specifically at Dannah Gresh and the fact that she has now rewritten “And the Bride Wore White,” and she's doing this media blitz where she's talking about how she's grown and changed, but she's not really admitting what she did wrong.

And we talked in the first episode about how Christians are rewriting the past to pretend they didn't say what they said. How they're changing the definition of fruit we looked at in our last podcast and how, yeah, we are actually measuring the fruit in the research projects that we've done. We’re not just asking people, “Hey, are you happy?”

We're asking people if they've got love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in their marriage. And yeah, we're measuring that. And I find it amazing how people just refuse to see that when you follow Jesus, things should actually be good. And when they're not good, maybe that's a sign that you got something wrong.

Rebecca
Well, exactly. And it's like it wasn't. But it's not just about happiness. And we're not talking about happiness, we’re talking about goodness. Yeah, it's not that hard to understand. And the fact that people continue to not understand it at this point is willful.

Sheila
It is willful.

Rebecca
Pearls and swine.

Sheila
Now, speaking of the research that we have done, we just. We always want to say a special shout out at the beginning of these podcasts to the people who make that research possible and do a plug to join our patron group. Our patron group is going to get even more interesting in the fall. In some of the higher tiers Joanna has been teaching a class on how to develop a sexual ethic, and she's going to be giving that same class. She's been doing it at Kings College, but she's going to be doing it in our patron group as well. So you can get that. There's also Joanna's book clubs. There's all kinds of unfiltered stuff. I always like this podcast. We asked our patrons to listen to a bunch of podcast episodes by Dannah Gresh and got their feedback before we even wrote these episodes.

Rebecca
Yeah, if you want to see some of the behind the scenes work and kind of see how we actually do what we do, the patron group is a really great place to do that.

Sheila
Yeah, so you can join for as little as $5 a month, you get access to our Facebook group, and at higher tiers you get even more, and all that money goes to support what we're doing. And right now we have some major stuff coming up in our Spanish translation, which we've been able to afford because of our Patron group and the people who donate to the good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosco Foundation.

And if you're in the United States, you can get a tax deductible receipt for that. So we're going to have both of those links in the podcast notes. And yeah, we've got a Spanish language social media channel starting soon, our channel starting soon. And we're going to put the links to those soon. And a lot is coming up in the fall.

We have our simulcast on October 2nd and 3rd, which you can be part of. Keith and I are giving a one day marriage conference on the Saturday, and your church can join in and it can be adjusted for time zones and everything. I'm giving a sex talk for women on the Friday night. Super, super fun. And it's a way to get me to your church for not very much money.

So we've got that in the podcast notes, too. All right. Ready to jump in. Let's go. Okay. So let's just, we're going to come back to Dannah, okay. And I want to start with something else. I've had a bajillion bazillion people send me this clip and I want to talk about it. So Carl Lentz, here's the background.

Carl Lentz was the Hillsong pastor for New York City, and he got a bunch of celebrities coming to Hillsong, Justin Bieber, etc., etc. and then in 2020, he had to step down. I think it was 2020. I could be wrong, but somewhere around there he had to step down because it came out that he'd been unfaithful. Okay, guess what he's doing now, Becca? 

Rebecca
Oh, I'm assuming that he's a dude, bro. Podcaster, book writer, speaker, evangelical bro?

Sheila
He is a book writer. He and his wife have just written a book. Guess what it's on?

Rebecca
Definitely on marriage and fixing marriage after affairs.

Sheila
It is! Very good! Ding ding ding ding ding. Yes. Okay.

So, how do you make amends? You go and you profit off of your infidelity. Okay. And here is the clip that has been going viral. The people asked me to share. So this is Carl Lentz and his wife talking on a podcast.

Carl Lentz
You're out of your mind. If you think you can be in a marriage that has no sex. You're just kidding yourself. 

Laura Lentz
When women withhold, it's very dangerous for both parties on both sides. There comes a point where you have to realize, like you're saying, if there is tension in this, there's things going on. Maybe he just needs to have sex.

Sheila
So let me ask you, Rebecca, if your husband had had an affair, do you think that is the message that you should be giving out there in the universe?

Rebecca
I think that it is definitely the message that you should be giving out if you're just trying desperately to not allow the Freudian defense mechanisms to slip. But this is the situation.

I'm sorry, but this is so clearly not someone who's actually dealt with the problems as much as a couple who has figured out a narrative that allows them to live with this.

Sheila
Yep, yep. And now they're going and sharing it with everybody else and they're still trying to profit off of it.

Rebecca
“If you had just had more sex, you wouldn't have had an affair” is a very common refrain amongst men who want to believe that it wasn't their fault that they did this. And women who don't want to deal with the fact their husband is the kind of man who does this.

Sheila
Yes. Yeah. Because if they dealt with that and they realized that they probably couldn't stay with him.

Rebecca
Or they'd actually have to do the hard work. Which not very many people are willing to do.

Sheila
Yeah. So there's a whole ton of people in evangelicalism who have messed up. And how do they make amends? What is that supposed to look like? And one of the things we were talking about as we were preparing for this podcast series is that there's there's different levels of culpability.

Rebecca
There are, there are absolutely different levels. Well, and the different levels of culpability is part of the reason why we are so stringent about who we will critique too. Right? Yeah. Okay. Here's the thing.

Whenever we talk about, like, accountability and stuff, I want to make sure that it's very clear I don't believe in the toxic, graceless, watchdogness that social media often has to offer.

There's a lack of nuance that often exists in especially ex-evangelical and deconstructionist spaces about this kind of thing, where like for example, I did actually see this once where there was a very well beloved Twitter account in the deconstruction space. And then, people found out that she disagreed on one aspect of theology. And it was like a very basic thing, like she still believed in, like, substitutionary atonement or something like that. Right, like something that it genuinely is very basic. And she was still technically Baptist, theologically speaking.

Sheila
Yeah. Okay.

Rebecca
And like, people went nuts on her. Because they were like, “Don't you know, this teaches children they're worthless worms,” all these things. And she was like, I just don't agree with you. And she got lambasted. Genuine thing that I've seen. It was crazy. Okay.

So when we're talking about this accountability thing, I want us to start by talking about when are we actually allowed to get it wrong and who does not actually need to apologize? We talked about how to apologize well, we also talked about who doesn't actually need to apologize. Or where's the culpability different?

Where is the apology genuinely “I'm sorry, I learned better and I'm doing better”? And when is it “I'm going to actively dismantle the things that I have done”?

Because those are two different things. And when is it “I'm going to remove myself from any authority position ever”?

Sheila
Yeah. Like for instance we actually have sort of guidelines that we try to follow on who we critique on this podcast because I don't want to beat up on like your 21 year old influencers, even if they've got a million followers, but they're like 21. They're babies. They don't have any institutional backing. There's no megachurch pastor or publishing company that has said this woman's words are gold. And if they're saying something that is absolutely crazy, then I'm not going to beat up on them.

Rebecca
No, because those people, quite frankly, I don't like how little responsibility is given to the person ingesting content in a lot of these discussions. I feel like we try to do a good balance of this where there are things where if you were taught them, you are more likely to be harmed, but also it's your responsibility to unlearn that and move forward. We try to really strike a balance, but what I often see is like, “No, like that 20 year old tribe like because she's so pretty I can't help but follow her.”

And I’m like, grow a pair. Grow a backbone. No. That 20 year old being pretty and wrong is allowed to be pretty and wrong. I'm sorry. She has no authority. She has no one saying “this is the smartest 20 year old trad wife I've ever seen in my life.” Who actually has any real way to know that?

This is not something where a 20 year old trad wife tells tons of women that they should all just quit their jobs and find a boyfriend who will marry them, who has lots of money because it's worked out great for her. And then people are like, yeah, and then I married an abusive man because of you, and I couldn't get out. I just struggle to think that that's her fault. She was just sharing her life.

Sheila
Yeah. And so there are different levels of accountability. There's the people that have written books that have been backed by, you know, Christian organizations that have been platformed by major Christian organizations and churches and etc. and those are the people that we really tend to try to hold more accountable because they actually have some authority. It's also why we haven’t, and I may do this differently, but we've never gone after “Created to Be His Help Meet”, I’ve mentioned it in passing, by Debi Pearl. It's fringe. It’s self-published. Okay. I know it sold so many copies.

Rebecca
But like, that's up to you guys to not like. At some point there needs to be some accountability that we hold for ourselves as well.

And you know us, we're all about accountability, right? You also must have some accountability for yourself. If you are expecting to live your life passively and never experience negative content because the world has been filtered for you. Congratulations, you are atrophying your critical thinking. There is a balance here. They need to not preach bad stuff, but also you need to not be duped. Yes, both of those exist. So when it comes to culpability, that leads us into the first one.
Sheila
Okay. Yes.

Rebecca
For example, if you are someone who was born into a cult, and raised up through the ranks of that cult, were in like a weird, secluded rural cult group commune, and after like a couple of years of being a leader in which you have brought more people into the cult you taught, you realize, hey, this is a freaking cult! You're less culpable than someone who joined the cult with a master's degree in philosophy, having lived the secular world.

Sheila 
And I mean a great example of that, I think that would fit that is Josh Harris. 

Rebecca
Josh Harris is a great example. 

Sheila 
Yeah, because he was groomed into this. I don't know if you want to call it a cult. I think Sovereign Grace Ministries was a cult. The church that he was in.

Rebecca
I think it was cult-like. The genuine thing is they did not actually have any way to keep people in.

Sheila
Yes, that's true.

Rebecca
Like with their bank accounts.

Sheila
Yeah. So, so yeah. So cult-like.

Rebecca
They were cult-aspiring.

Sheila
Yes. And a cult adjacent. Whatever. And so, you know, when he got older, when he saw the harm, he did take it back. And I think, like I think about someone like, I forget what her last name is. No, I was going to say Rebekah, because her last was Merkle? Doug Wilson's got two daughters who write books, and if they were both 21 or 22, I would see it very differently than I do now, because they've now written multiple books and they're well into their 30s.

Rebecca
Well we come to the next thing now, which has changed culpability these days, which is now we have the internet.

Sheila
That's right. Yes.

Rebecca
That is a big one. You can argue I didn't know better. You actually cannot argue that anymore. Because every comment section has people telling you differently.

Sheila
Yeah. So Dannah, when Dannah first wrote “And the Bride Wore White” back in the 1990s, but then she revised it a couple of times into the 2000s. Yeah, there really wasn't the internet, but it wasn't, it wasn't widely used.

Rebecca
We are lying to ourselves. Yeah. We think that there was a reasonable amount of the same level of understanding and knowledge that there is today with the internet.

Sheila
Right. The problem is that now there is obviously.

Rebecca
No, actually here’s a really good example. Okay. Now we don't go after Rebecca Saint James. Rebecca Saint James wrote all the exact same stuff as Dannah Gresh. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. You know what she's done since then? I don't frickin know. She’s not speaking in the purity space anymore, as far as I can tell. I've looked it up. She doesn't speak into it.
She was like, that was a time in my life that I am allowing to be in the past, and we are letting it be in the past.

That's the difference. So she did all of this before the internet, before you really had as big of a world in the same way.

And again, I know, people knew, different. There were conversations happening, sure. But we are once again lying to ourselves if we think anything related to Twitter existed back then.

Sheila
Yes, it was very different.

Rebecca
One had access to you in the same way. Sure, you had a P.O. Box that maybe your assistant would open.  But you couldn't just get DMs to your personal phone that was with you on your date night with your husband.

That was completely different. The second thing is like there are people who spoke up to this in this way at the same time, who I feel it would be really not necessary to go after in the same way.

Because it was in the past and they've left it in the past and they haven't continued to dredge up the horse and continue to beat it. Whereas Dannah here, dragging in the corpse of a Clydesdale and a bat in the other hand. Yeah. And it's like she keeps redoing these books and it's like it's no longer 1997 or 1998.

Sheila
And she won't. And the big thing is and this is what we want to talk about in this episode, is she won't admit specifically what it was that she did wrong. She just won't admit what was wrong with what she said. 

Rebecca
But that’s the thing. It's like we know better now. You have the internet. You have access to the people who you hurt.

But here's the thing. When we talk about culpability, when we're going into talking about all the stuff that happened with Dannah, I want to also talk about why is it that these people cannot say that they're wrong.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
Because here's the thing. In evangelicalism, the evangelical mindset for faith is if you believe the right things, you go to heaven. And if you believe things you go to hell.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
And it is very binary. It is you believe the Bible the right way. Our church is a Bible-believing church. Their church doesn't take the Bible seriously. That denomination doesn't believe in the Bible. We believe in the Bible and that's why we're going to go to heaven. And that is the mindset. And so when that is your mindset everything becomes good or bad. Yeah. Yes or no, in or out.

Sheila
Right or wrong.

Rebecca
And so how on earth are you supposed to be able to say that you were wrong when it's tied to your salvation?

Sheila
Yeah. And I think this is a really important point. I don't want to gloss over this because this is actually the key thing. We looked at this, last year, actually one of our most popular podcasts that we ever did, about authoritarianism and how the evangelical mindset actually maps right on to authoritarian mindsets, like, like people who support authoritarianism.

And a lot of it is because of this binary thinking. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, because that's kind of confusing, please go into that podcast. I'll put a link in the podcast notes. It is super interesting. There's there's links to tests that you can take to see how you would score on the Authoritarian Mindset Quiz.

It's really, really, really cool. But when our faith is defined almost entirely in terms of belief, like if you're a Christian or not, it's like, did you say the prayer? Do you believe it's not based on what Jesus said? Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 28? 19 to 20, they teach them to obey everything I've commanded you, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.

Rebecca
As we heard in the previous video, they believe that the obedience is to believe it, right? Even the belief is the obedience. So by obeying you believe me? It all comes back to what you believe.

Sheila
Yeah. It's a circle. Right?

Rebecca
The evangelical faith is not designed to but is able to exist entirely in your head without doing a single good thing on this earth. Not saying the majority of evangelicals do that. What I'm saying is the way that their faith exists, simply believing the right things, regardless of if you do anything about it or if you actually live out those beliefs, is enough to get you into Heaven. Yeah, they would all argue, but I was raised in this. 

I have studied this more than I’d argue most people who would take issue with what I have said here. But this is the fact of the matter. And so when people are told that you believe something wrong, you said something wrong. There is not a way to really and truly grapple with believing something wrong, because that says to you.

Sheila
I wasn't really a Christian.

Rebecca
Or the bigger question is, what if I then gave all those people a faith that's sending them to hell, right? What if I sold millions of copies of this book and it wasn't right, am I now risking people's eternal souls and sending them to damnation? And that is an internal, subconscious belief, I think.

Yeah, that people are not able to grapple with. And so they simply have to ignore it. Yeah. Have to ignore the fact that they're wrong. They have to live in a cognitive dissonance because their salvation depends on believing the right things, even in the face of other evidence. Yeah. And it's wild when you see it. You can't unsee it.

Sheila
And we are okay. We are not trying to get into a doctrinal conversation about whether you are saved by faith alone or by works or whatever, but it is very clear from the Bible that if you follow Jesus, works are going to accompany that and are going to be a huge part of that.

Rebecca
I love the way our church talks about it as just the idea of an apprenticeship. Yeah. Like, yeah, you're learning what to believe, what to think, you're learning the logos for your life and you're also learning how to put it into practice. And it's going to be messy and it's not binary. You're not either. It's a journey. But the problem is, evangelicalism doesn't allow for the messiness of a journey. Saved or you're not saved. You're either accepted or damned.

Sheila
And actually this, this reminds me too, this is, this is a sort of off road. But one of the things that often bothers me in evangelical churches is that the application point to each sermon is that you need to become a Christian.

Rebecca
Yeah.

Sheila
Because once you become a Christian, there's nothing else to do. And they will argue, oh no, we've got to grow and we've got to be discipled, etc. but the ultimate application point is you need to give yourself, you need to surrender to Jesus. And it's like, yes, but 98% of people in this church already have. And we need to like, look more like Jesus and grow and everything.
And anyway, okay, let's move on.

Rebecca
Yes.

Sheila
So here's the question that I want to ask then: I believe that Dannah Gresh is culpable for what she said in purity culture. And we talked in the last episode about what some of those things were. And I think that making amends means like listing the things that she said that were wrong and saying, yeah, I was wrong about these things.

And she went on a podcast with Julie Slattery. We played clips of that in the last, I think, two podcasts ago, and I want to play another one here. And this is the only place where she gives a specific example of something that she got wrong or did wrong. Interesting. Okay. And so here we go.

Dannah Gresh
We're starting to get, you know, hot and heavy on a sofa. And when I was speaking in front of a live audience of college students, I said, you know, we had made a promise that we were going to have a relationship that had sexual integrity and boundaries in it. And so when we were in this moment and things were getting too far, Bob picked me up and threw me against the wall and ran out of the apartment.

And as soon as I got off the stage, my husband pulled me aside. He said, baby, I did not pick you up and push you. That was very hyperbolic and I think for some women the way you said that could be triggering. And I was like, I was trying to be funny, you know? By the end of that night, there were three blogs written about me, and they were all by women who had been deeply hurt by the church's teaching on sex.

And I immediately got on those blogs, apologized, said I used hyperbole. I said, can I call you and talk with you? One of them wouldn't talk with me and erased all my comments. One of them talked with me and I was able to ask for her forgiveness. And she said, you are the first Christian teacher I've ever written about and confronted that ever cared to hear what I said.

What? How can that be? How can that be? And then she went on to say, when my sister was 11 years old, she was sexually abused by a leader in the church. And the reason that I am such a watchdog for the way the church speaks about this is because of her pain. And you know what? There was healing brought in that woman's life because I wasn't afraid to admit I was a teacher that blew it. And there was maturing, brought into my life because that woman was willing to call me to account.

Sheila
All right. What do you think?

Rebecca
I think the first of all, moving forward, was I know we're going to be talking about this episode. This proves that Dannah does know how to take accountability. Because she said she made a joke. And you know what? We're all performers who are recording here.We all know what it's like to be like, oh, this will be funny. And then realizing, oh, that was bad. That was embarrassing. That was not the call. I mean, totally fine, that's understandable. She did a really good job. I said this thing, I didn’t realize that would be triggering to certain people. I was mortified like, I like reached out to people, I apologize. I had these conversations where we each got our part out. Like, so you did it for that thing.

Sheila
There's one thing I would say about this is that she said that she went on those people's blogs, so three people wrote blogs about it. But she went on those people's blogs and apologized. I think she could also have put a note on her own blog and her own social media.

Rebecca
Oh yeah, 100%. Saying like, hey guys, I just want to say I made a really dumb joke and it's bothering me. I made this joke. Really, this didn't happen this way. I'm worried that that may have been triggered. So if you're at one of the events and that was triggering for you, I want to say I'm really sorry. And I just let the moment get away from me and I’m not going to do it again.

Sheila
Because this is the model of repentance that she's talking about, is that when people are upset at you, you go to them and you make it right with them, and you put out the fires, but you don't deal with it in your own space.

Rebecca
It is just putting out fires. It is very much a crisis management strategy. It's not actually a true repentance and change strategy now. Okay. Yeah. In this particular instance, I'm not actually sure how much she needed to make a big deal out of it like this.

This genuinely seems like one of those things I'm like, right, you need to go on like a self-flagellation apology tour for a silly joke that you made that could potentially be triggering, but also pretty much in the cultural zeitgeist for how we speak? I don't actually think personally. I don't think so. I think that she did a really good job.

Sheila
But let's listen to what she says immediately following that. For what she is asking authors to do to repent. 

Dannah Gresh
We've got to be humble. We've got to. If we have time to prepare a teaching and get on stage and teach it we have time to make the phone calls when we don't get it right and we won't always get it right. When the Bereans called Paul and Silas to account, it says that many believed as a result of that.

So I'd like to think that I don't know if Paul and Silas made any mistakes when they taught, but it seems like there was an open spirit of receiving the critique. And so part of why I'm writing this, rewriting this book, Juli, is because the teachers need to be humble enough to say, let me sit down and talk with you if you feel hurt. We have to take that time.

Sheila
All right. So what does she say you need to do? You have to be willing to pick up the phone. To pick up the phone. I have a big problem with that.

Rebecca
I mean, it's just ridiculous for one. The idea that you should. Because you're willing to talk on the phone of people, that means that therefore you're repentant is complete and utter hogwash.
I mean, there's literal verses about that. There's a verse about how, like, if you tell someone, wow, I hope that you get food and water and clothing soon. Then you don’t give them some food, water, clothing. It's like spitting on them. It's patronizing. It's not okay. Just picking up the phone and being willing to talk to people, but not being willing to change anything. Isn’t enough. It’s actually more insulting.

Sheila
And yet that and that. And she's so adamant, like she sounds so proud of herself for announcing. Yes, we should all be willing to do this, but this isn't what people have been asking Dannah to do.

Rebecca
But who is asking us to do this? This is evangelicalism, though, taking up unnecessary crosses while ignoring systemic injustice. Because the idea of suffering is biblical. Of course she thinks this is enough. This is what she's been steeped in. Yeah. She's like this feels bad. This hurts. This makes me feel miserable and depressed and like I'm a terrible person and I'm humiliated and debased. And so therefore this must be the right thing to do. Instead of it being like, you know, maybe that's just called conviction. And now you're supposed to do something. Feeling miserable isn't an action step. But it is an evangelicalism. And so that's another thing. Feeling miserable is not the repercussions. No one's like I want Dannah to be sad for 75 days and 14 hours to make up for how she hurt me.

Sheila
Yeah I actually don't want Dannah to be sad. All I want Dannah to do is say I shouldn't have said bellies are intoxicating, because blaming an eight year old for a grown man getting out of control, there was no excuse for that. And I should not have said that. And I understand how that made girls feel like they were responsible when someone sexually assaulted them.

I want her to say I should not have given the soul ties theology, because we know that that is damaging to people. I want her to say exactly what she did, and I want her to say it publicly. I don't just want her to pick up the phone with individuals, and she's making it sound like, if I just if someone's mad at me and I get to phone them, that's great.

And this is a common thing. Do you remember when we had our old Facebook page before it was stolen? We have a new Facebook page now, which actually has way more engagement than our old Facebook page. So what? Actually, it ended up for the better. So if you don't follow me on Facebook, we're just Bare Marriage on Facebook.

We'll put the link in the podcast notes. We've been there now for two years since our page was stolen. But Bob and Dannah, we were talking about the eight year old bellies being intoxicating, and Bob and Dannah actually came over and started interacting on that post. And every time someone said I was really traumatized by a Secret keeper girl event, Dannah put her phone number in the comments and invited them to call her.

Rebecca
Yeah, and then a lot of them were saying, I don't want to call you. That's ridiculous.

Sheila
Yeah, because it's not about a phone call with Dannah. It's asking Dannah to say I said things that were wrong and harmful.

Rebecca
Well, because these people who were saying “I was harmed by this.” All they want is for no more little girls to get harmed. They don't actually need anything for themselves, most of them have already healed and moved past it. They're all like, yeah, you're talking about this. It's like, congratulations, we did the therapy. We've gotten the certificate.

Yes, yes, you know what I mean? But what they want to make sure that Dannah takes this  seriously so that no other little girls go through this and instead, what they hear is Dannah thinks that she needs Dannah to tell her personally. Sorry, like no, no, no, no, you're not listening to me still. You're still not listening to her but I am this I gave you my phone number that's literally listening like no. That's not listening.

Sheila
Yeah. Because we don't want her to apologize to each individual. Her books like “Secret Keeper Girl,” I think was read by almost half a million girls. They're never going to call Dannah.

Rebecca
It's like, okay, if you had a surgeon who for every single surgery says, not even every single, say 1 in 3 surgeries made an egregious error that is fully preventable if they just chose to do differently. And every single time they made that error they went to that family and they apologized and they listened and they saw how much harm had been done. They said, “ Wow”  and then they went and they did it again. Yeah, again. And again and again. You don't take this seriously. What are you talking about? I have a week long like with these people. I listen to them, I take this very seriously.

And then they go back and they do it again and again and again. Listening to the people clearly doesn't change anything. And that's what's happening with Dannah and Bob here is they're listening there but they're not hearing.


Sheila
They're still not willing to say what they said that was wrong. 

Rebecca
They’re putting out fires, but not taking accountability. 

Sheila
And this is, this is going on even now. On a recent Facebook page, she did a Facebook post that she did in May announcing the new “And the Bride Wore White”. A woman commented about how this was the most harmful book she ever read as a teenager, and it set her up for years, well, decades even of harm in her marriage.

And it set her off badly. She again left her phone number for this woman to call them was like, I don't want a phone call. Yeah, I want you to apologize and to admit that what you said was wrong. Yeah. You know, and again, she's still not answering that. Now, interestingly, we were looking at what was happening, with Dannah and these phone numbers and some of these conversations were happening.

And a woman emailed me and said, Sheila, I know that you've been involved with Dannah. And I just got off the phone with her, and I was really disturbed by the phone call. And can I tell you what happened? And so I have a letter from her that she asked us to read. And would you like to read it because you don't need reading glasses, or would you like me to read it?

Rebecca (reading letter from a listener)
She says, “I was someone who introduced a purity culture in my dating years, and who really wanted to be a faithful Christian and to do things God's way. So I really took these teachings to heart and lived by them. Unfortunately, they led to a lot of harm, both in my relationship to my own body and sexuality and also my relationship choices.

I lived by the modesty principles laid out in “And the Bride Wore White” and other purity books, but instead of it leading me to well-being and a healthy and Christ honoring way of living in my body, the framework, when applied in earnest, led me to the opposite. The relationship teachings about bonds created in dating relationships also heavily influenced my decision to ultimately stay in an emotionally destructive relationship, out of fear that I would have given part of myself away if I ended the relationship. I didn't want to have less to give to a future partner, so I stayed, trusting that God would work it out.

It did not ever turn into a healthy and God honoring relationship, despite us both being Christians. I recently ended up getting to have a conversation with Dannah Gresh about her teachings. She rereleased “And The Bride Wore White,” and I was curious if she was correcting any of the harmful teachings from her early versions of her book, and was hoping to share with her how some of those things had done clear harm to my life and the lives of many others, so that she could perhaps consider how she could be an important voice of correction to the harm done by the movement.

Dannah was a lovely person to talk with, and I felt like she genuinely cared for my hurt. But what I realized after the conversation was that each time I shared a teaching and how it directly resulted in specific harm when applied in my life, she was not able to see the problem with the teaching, but instead found reasons why my application of the teaching was wrong or why I was not in the right environment for the teaching to have a good effect.

But it is a huge problem if a teaching offered to everyone is something helpful is actually harmful in a large number of cases, as we are now seeing so clearly as we see the fallout from purity culture in countless people's lives. The subtitle of her book at that time was Seven Secrets to Sexual Purity, and now is Seven Truths to Live in Sexual Integrity No Matter Your Past. Both of these subtitles imply that her principles are for application by anyone. The whole premise of the purity movement is that these are rules that everyone can apply in order to be pure. To then say that the damage happened because of misapplication or the wrong circumstance is not taking responsibility for the fact that yes, perhaps the teachings could be good for some people, but in fact they were harmful to many, many others.

I tried to bring this up and ask her how much harm was acceptable and worth keeping such teachings in circulation, but did not get a clear answer. I believe Dannah genuinely wants to help people. I just wish she would be willing to recognize the scope of the unintended harm and that she would choose to be a voice to boldly recant those harmful teachings and uphold a healthier way forward for women and girls of today.

She has such a platform and such an opportunity to really offer new teachings that would result in health and well-being, and that would please God and heal a whole lot of harm. I still hope she'll choose this.”

Sheila
Yeah, and I found that really interesting because here she is on a phone call, and she's still not acknowledging that the teachings themselves are harmful. It's just that, no, it's just that for certain people, they might be harmful.

Rebecca
Yeah. And you know what? We've talked about this I think we talked about in the patron group a lot more. Now, there are definitely some teachings which are necessary for some people and are bad for others. We call those blood clotters and blood thinners. So in medicine, if you are someone has a stroke risk, you need blood thinning medication. However, my coauthor, Joanna, has been open that she has a blood clotting disorder. She needs blood clotters.

Just if they were to swap medications, those two people, that would be bad for both of them. But then some things are just poison, where sometimes you eat rat poison and you don't get sick, and some do, but no matter what, it was still rat poison. You were lucky if it didn't get ya, but you weren't lucky if it did.

And that's the difference here, right? Blood clotters and blood thinners vs poisons. We're not talking about blood clotters or blood thinners here. We're talking about poison.

Sheila
Yeah, exactly. And I want to pick up on the fact that she was like, it's only going to hurt you if you're that certain, but like, it's not going to hurt most people. All right. Because this is something that came up a couple of years ago too. And I want to read this from our book “She Deserves Better.” Okay. Which is specifically about the purity culture. So a couple of years ago, Matthew West put out a song called Modest is Hottest, and it was supposed to be a parody song, but it ended up very much agreeing with purity culture, and the backlash was immense. And he had to take the song down.

Rebecca
And it just wasn't as funny as he thought it was.

Sheila
No. And he did. He did a podcast with Allie Beth Stuckey. Talking about the backlash and how people were so triggered by this. And I just want to read something that we said about this.

Too often when people like West are called out for promoting harmful teachings, they seem eager to paint themselves as the victim of yet another abuse victim’s triggered outrage. As Christian commenter Allie Beth Stuckey said on Matthew West podcast, where the two discussed the Modest is Hottest debacle when there are people who elevate their truth above the truth and everything is personal, lived experience trumps any kind of objectivity.

They framed the pushback not as legitimate correction, but rather as an emotional overreaction due to people's prior abuse. Here's what West and Stuckey don't seem to understand. It wasn't that women were projecting their hurt from past traumas onto the modesty message. It's that modesty messages themselves cause trauma.

Rebecca
The ironic thing is, when people like Dannah are saying, if my book helped you, it's because it was my book. And if my book didn't help you, it was because of you, that is also elevating your own personal truth over objective truth. I'm sorry. If your book has a ton of people who are like, this book was actively contributing to my repeated abuse, then you don't get to say, well, I think it's a you problem. When you were writing to children.

Sheila
Yeah, exactly.

Rebecca
And that’s the big point here with Dannah. It is unlike other authors whom we have held their feet to the fire. Dannah was writing exclusively to children, almost exclusively.

Sheila
Yeah. I mean, I think some young 20-somethings were reading “And the Bride Wore White,” but it was teenagers. And her “Secret Keeper Girl” stuff was to children.

Rebecca
And not in all of herself to mothers is about teaching mothers how to.

Sheila
Yeah. And “Lies Young Girls Believe”, which is also highly problematic, etc., etc.. And I really do want to stress this is that this is the whole point of our research projects, is that these messages themselves are traumatic. It isn't just that people who have been abused might be hurt by these messages, it's that these messages themselves are traumatic.

And as we talked about in a previous podcast, the modesty message, we found this. We recently published a peer reviewed paper on it

If you go to a church that teaches these modesty messages, you are twice as likely to be abused or assaulted as you would be if you went to a church that didn't teach this stuff and the boys are more likely to become abusers too. Like this stuff itself causes harm. You are also more likely to marry an abuser.

You're more likely to have a sexual pain disorder. It's really problematic. And that's what she won't admit. You know, when I first saw and I. Someone alerted me to it, it might even have been this woman who wrote to me. But Dannah had gone onto Juli Slattery's podcast to talk about what she did wrong. I was actually kind of excited, but I didn't want to listen to it myself because I find this stuff very emotionally draining.

And so I put it up in the patron group and I said, does anybody want to listen to this and tell us if it's worth talking about? And that's how we ended up doing this.

Rebecca
We don't have the emotional energy to listen to every single hour and a half long podcast someone puts up so they can say that they can dance around the subject of accountability.

Sheila
But our patrons are great. And so I just want to read a couple of the comments that came in from our patrons as they listen to this podcast. “20 minutes in and this is a tough listen. It takes so many words to avoid saying, I'm sorry.” Someone else said, “Both Juli and Dannah seem to have an allergy to really directly head on facing accountability. They are incapable of saying this teaching was wrong. It hurts people and instead uses softer language like even though those resources were rooted in Scripture, they were written in a different time when language was used differently, our assumptions were different than they are today. So it's not that the teaching was wrong, but it was taught wrong. We didn't say the best. It was a different time.” 

And then someone else said, “The spiritual bypassing is wild. When we have lies, we believe about sex. Lies we believe about ourselves. Lies we believe about our past, lies we believe about God's forgiveness. And those things all get agitated by Satan when we don't take those hurts to Jesus, potentially setting up more. If you are hurt, angry, or critiquing us, it's because you've been agitated by Satan and not taking your hurt to Jesus.”

You know, and yeah. So, has she internalized the harm done? I don't think so, but I want to play one more clip which lets us in on this. So this is from her interview with Focus on the Family. And I want you to see what Jim Daly does here and how she responds.

Dannah Gresh
What God is doing is he is taking the sin, has stripped their dignity, and God is saying, I am putting these garments on you to remind you of your dignity. So what we have here is that clothing says the saving power of God was here. So I really believe if you go forward to the New Testament, it says we're supposed to be clothed in Christ. The way we dress matters.

Jim Daly
Dannah, there always is that appropriate criticism that, you know, the, the male side of this equation should have some responsibility. You know, just because someone may not dress totally appropriately shouldn't give a green light to a boy or a man mistreating that woman. So we need to make that disclaimer known, obviously you need to, boys, men need to restrain and, you know, behave themselves in that context.

Dannah Gresh
Yeah. I've taught frequently on the fact that a man's behavior is a man's responsibility. Period. That the way that a girl shows up or dresses has nothing to do with giving him a right to behave badly. At the same time, I want to be very careful to say that because that thinking is out there. Let's not be silent about teaching our daughters the beauty of reflecting.

You know, the way we dress isn't about not being sexual. I want to be very clear about that. The way we dress is about making sure that nothing that I show up in today distracts from people seeing Jesus in me. That's the point. There's, if there is any sin in modesty, it's not about our bodies. It's about saying, I want more attention than Jesus.

Sheila
So Jim Daly has learned. Jim Daly has learned okay, there's some red flags and there's some stuff.

Rebecca
Now do we think Jim Daly has actually changed his mind? No, I think he's being politically correct in the modern climate, personally.

Sheila
Yes, but he gave her this most perfect lay up. Yeah. He said hey, but we have to hold men accountable too.

Rebecca
And she said yeah, but also girls.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah. Which I mean and so I don't, I don't think she's learned.

Rebecca
I don't think that she understands. And maybe there's something like maybe she can't, maybe there's a psychological block there. But that also means then that the people around her need to remove her platform from her, in essence. You know, grandma doesn't get to drive anymore. Yeah. Like if you can't understand that easy layup then we need to take Dannah’s keys.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
Yeah yeah. Do we take Dannah's keyboard?

Sheila
Okay. And then here is how she describes her new version of “And the Bride Wore White” too. And see if you think this is taking accountability for the messages that she had.

So here is what she wrote on her Facebook page announcing the new version of “And the Bride Wore White.” In a survey of 900 women who follow my ministry and have read “And the Bride Wore White” as teens, 90% wanted to share the experience with their own daughters who are now teens. This, the fourth edition of “And The Bride Wore White” builds on a long standing message of grace-based sexual integrity, now strengthened with fresh research and responses to today's cultural questions. Okay.

Rebecca
I asked 900 people from my fan club if they were in my fan club and 10% weren’t. 

Sheila
Hahahahahahahaha. 

Rebecca
Here’s the thing. You know what? You know what's funny, Dannah? I think that if you looked at the raw data for “The Great Sex Rescue” survey, you probably also would find that a lot of people said that they were helped by “And the Bride Wore White”. Do you know that’s not reported? Because it doesn't actually matter what they say. What matters is the objective measures of what did they believe and how is their life today? And the fact of the matter is when people believe things that were in your book, regardless of if they said “And the Bride Wore Wite was the best thing ever, their marriage is suffering. They have worse sex and have lower self-esteem in our society because there's been a survey. 

This is the thing. People are not actually reliable narrators of what helped them get to where they are. So that's something that you have to realize that research shown is I mean, we're pretty good in some areas, but like we often misattribute things, this is why these kinds of surveys are so important, because we might think, oh, that book helped me so much. But what really just helped was that I was at a point in my life where I was sitting and reading books and thinking deeply about these things, and that book just happened to be there. Yeah, like we don't actually know.

Sheila
Yeah. And this is why people say, you know, oh, I know that “Love and Respect” helped me. And it's like. But you don't actually know that, though, because what you need to measure is, okay, if you believe and practice the things that are in “Love and Respect”, your marriage is far more likely to be worse off. So you may feel like the book helped you, but it didn't. And that's what we're saying about this too, is like the messages that were in that book and in other things that she wrote were harmful.

Rebecca
But also, hello, survivorship bias.

Sheila
I know exactly.

Rebecca
Because those who followed Dannah as a teen who are still on her page today who have children today who like her book of course they are going to be there. The ones who didn’t like “And the Bride Wore White” unfollowed Dannah years ago. Yeah, like oh my word!

Sheila
And this is the group of people that criticizes our research methods. Okay.

Rebecca
Just bring you back to surgery, because surgery makes sense to people. A surgeon had a 20% success rate and the other 80% died. And in order to figure out how well he was doing at surgery, he just interviewed the people who survived. Like, I'm the best surgeon in the world. Yes, that's what this is. What's happening here?

Sheila
Yeah. Quite crazy, quite crazy. Okay, you know who endorsed the book too? Lots of people, but Shaunti did. I just thought that was funny. Okay, so guess what I did yesterday? Okay, I read it.

Rebecca
Yes you did.

Sheila
Did. I downloaded the new version of “And the Bride Wore White.”

Rebecca
And then I got a text all in caps. “Oh my gosh, call me, call me, call me, call me.” And then I got a text. “No wait, don't call me I need to tell you live on the podcast tomorrow.”

Sheila
Yes, that's coming up soon. I'm not going to start with that bit. Okay?

Rebecca
Just so everyone else knows what I’m anticipating.

Sheila
So you know what? It's not terrible.

Rebecca
That's good.

Sheila
Yeah.She actually listens to us, okay? 

Rebecca
That's good. 

Sheila
She took every single thing that we said in “The Great Sex Rescue” and “She Deserves Better” that was wrong with “And the Bride Wore White” is gone. 

Rebecca
That's awesome. 

Sheila
She changed the word purity to sexual integrity, which I think is great.

Rebecca
Very good. I think that's actually a good change.

Sheila
Yeah. There's nothing on modesty. Nothing. Yeah. She even refers to it as a word that can be triggering for people.

Rebecca
Amazing.

Sheila
Yeah. A lot of the big teachings that we identified as problematic, a lot of them, like some of them are still there that you can dance around, but it's not laid out.

Rebecca
It's definitely different than how the original version was.

Sheila
Absolutely. And if someone had sent me this to endorse, I wouldn't endorse it, because it's just it's still a little banal and it's not really evidence-based like and that's actually my big critique that I want to get to. But it's not terrible book.

Rebecca
Like it's what you would expect from a middle of the road evangelical book.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah. I don't think it's going to harm you, I really don't. But she never says, you know, she doesn't identify the things that that people would have believed. 

Rebecca
No, no. But in her press tour she's not mentioning any of them.

Sheila
Okay. Here's some of the problems that I did have. And these again I might be picking at things a little bit, but one of the, one of the big issues that I have with evangelical books is they don't define consent. And we talked about that when we looked for “The Great Sex Rescue” at the 15 bestselling books, the word consent didn't even appear, anywhere.

Here's what she says about consent. I will read you the entire thing. This is what she says about consent. Okay? The whole thing in the whole book.

Rebecca
Interesting.

Sheila (quoting Dannah’s revised book)
“The public conversation about sexuality today revolves around two central ideas: ownership and consent.”

Rebecca
Oh gosh. No, she doesn't only talk about things. I'm sorry. I'm not going to interrupt anymore. I unfortunately think I know where this is going.

Sheila (quoting Dannah’s revised book)
“These are values that shape how countless women understand their worth and their rights. My body, my choice. I said no. These phrases echo loudly in our culture and for good reason. Ownership and consent are valuable. You are responsible for your body and absolutely have the right to use it in a way that honors your convictions. But as Christians, we look at ownership a bit differently. It is sacred to us.” And then she goes on from there.

Rebecca
So she doesn't talk about what nonconsensual looks like.

Sheila
Absolutely not.

Rebecca
She doesn't talk about the difference between date rape or coercion? Or like abuse of power? In a book to teenagers about sexual integrity?

Sheila
No. And she mentions abuse many times and sexual assault and she keeps saying it's not your fault. But she never teaches people how to recognize non-consensual stuff.

Rebecca
And the problem is, here's the thing. We talk to women who, specifically because of Dannah Gresh's teachings, were not able to recognize they had been assaulted. They still wouldn't be able to recognize it. And we were blatant about that in “She Deserves Better”. Dannah knows better than that. 

Sheila
And we were amazed at our survey, of women when we asked about their understanding of date rape, that how many women said no. And when I was in high school, I didn't understand date rape and how many women felt like.

Rebecca
In terms of like, well, the world says if you consent, it's okay. And like, yes, you should be able to use your convictions.

Sheila
But then she goes on about how sex needs to be sacred.

Rebecca
So in essence, it’s still painting consent as the bad guy. Because it's still worldly. Consent is  worldly. That’s wild!

Sheila
That's not the way that we should be thinking about sex. Yeah. So she never says, like, things like this are so important for people to understand that if you get aroused, even if you were assaulted, you didn't consent. Like arousal does not mean consent. She never says if someone pushes your boundaries and you say no and pushes it your boundaries and you say no, it pushes your boundaries and you say no until you realize your no means nothing. So you stop saying no, that you didn't consent. She never explains any of that.

Rebecca
She never explains any of that. Like if you had sex just to stop something else from happening, or if it's someone who, like, you're really confused. And it was someone who's older than you or something like, oh my gosh. Okay, interesting.

Sheila
And then here she is talking about the honeymoon night. Okay. “That includes the practical aspects of sex, like learning how to enjoy it, overcoming physical challenges, and experiencing the practical blessings of it. I got a head start on all three in my first week of marriage. Honeymoon cystitis is an infection that can sometimes happen after you first begin to have sex with someone. It creates a burning sensation down there, but it's easily treatable.”

Rebecca
Actually, I have mixed feelings about this. First of all, it's always good to be open and honest about, like, stuff that can happen that can go wrong. And reducing anxiety is easily treatable. Yeah. That's and that's one of the things that can happen, easily treatable. Good. 

Sheila
Can I say what I had a problem with? I had two big issues with this. When it's her personal experience, she brings it up, but she doesn't bring up the things that other people may have experienced in quite large numbers.
Rebecca
And that's not evidence-based; it’s based on Dannah’s experience.

Sheila
Exactly. So she doesn't bring up vaginismus. So she brings up this burning sensation because of cystitis. She doesn't talk about UTIs. She doesn't talk about all the other things that you could experience. But she also and this is something small, but it really bothers me. A burning sensation “down there”. Like, I know that she's just trying to be euphemistic, but that's actually part of the problem in evangelicalism is that we do say things like that instead of in your vulva.

Rebecca
I disagree because this is more not a book about the nitty gritty. This is not a book about it. I think that she's using the technical term there. People can Google it. We live in a world with Google and she's telling people they can get treatment. I personally think that, yes, it's immature to not be able to say in my vagina when you're speaking to other women. But I don’t know if that's something that I would necessarily like be hung up on. Because I don't know, her book is not about the nitty gritty of sex. It's not meant to be a sex manual. Yeah, if it were, like, something like “Sheet Music,” there's no excuse for that, really anything the Kevin Leman said there’s no excuse. But for something that’s about the theology or the theory of sexual integrity, I’m not worried about that. But I personally also find it a  little bit juvenile if you're talking to other women and you're going to talk or something as specific as this, you may as well use the right terms. It’s not going to bother me, though.

Sheila
Okay, what bothered you, though?

Rebecca
I don't like any time, like, although I'm, I'm like, okay, well, it's good to let people know this thing can happen. I'm not a pro any time that people normalize the first time having sex, being negative for women because of the research, for how the first time you have sex actually does really predict.

Sheila
Yeah. What everything else is going to be like.

Rebecca
And I know that that's hard for people to hear when they've experienced penetrative assault. But that's the research, there's also it's not 100% and also there's lots of ways to recover and to go through trauma therapies or there's all sorts of stuff you can do. No one should see themselves as doomed. Ever. That's not what I'm saying here.

What I'm saying is that, yeah, you have this chance to start off is really easy.  And when women say things like, oh, you might start to have burning and it's going to hurt and it's going to do all these different things, and you might bleed. And I’m just like, okay, so that to me is a recipe for being real tense.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
And that to me seems like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.

Sheila
Now it is hard because I think that you do need to warn people and like in our books, “The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex” and “The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex,” like we say, okay, pain is something that some people experience, vaginismus, but here's how to make it not that likely.

Rebecca
And so like way rather than just having a list of all the things. So if something goes wrong, here's your list. Check it out then.  And like here's what you're going to do. Like here. Like make it good. Focused on being aroused. Like don't have sex until you're like, “I cannot not have sex.”

Yes. You have all this stuff. And then like this, something's gone a little wonky or something feels wrong, you’re just not sure, just check out this list. Just a handy little list here. Yeah, like, I don't know.

I almost feel like that's a, there’s lots of ways to do it, but my main thing is I just feel like we're so quick to tell girls who haven't had sex yet all the bad things that can happen often. It's just usually it's, oh, the first time always hurts.

Sheila
We need to stop saying that.

Rebecca
It hurts because you're not aroused.

Sheila
Okay. Two more quotes. This is at the end of the book. And this is how she explains the need for a rewrite.

Rebecca
Okay.

Sheila (quoting Dannah)
“As I was writing this, I asked many of my earliest readers for feedback. The first question was, would you buy this book for your daughter? 90% said yes. They also offered hard critiques, wanting to make the message better. Here's what Molly Meyer said: Satan hates purity in marriage way more than I realized. It's a war zone that would have been helpful for me to know.”

Rebecca
Oh my gosh.

Sheila
So she’s seeing the critique as being, you know, you weren’t hard enough for purity. She's not acknowledging the actual critiques that came in.

Rebecca
But she didn’t get any actual critiques. She didn’t ask anyone who would have critiqued her. She asked her fan club members.

Sheila
So anyway, it's a problem. All right. Last, last quote.

Rebecca
Also, I'm so sorry. No, we're not getting up on this “it's a war zone” thing. Guys, just don't have sex with people who, like you don't want to have sex with, like, I'm sorry I find it so hard when people are like, “it’s a war zone.”

Sheila
Is it though?

Rebecca
This is a married woman. And it's like marriage is a war zone. I'm like. Like, it shouldn't be that hard to not sleep with people who aren't your spouse. Like, I’m not talking about before you’re married. This is someone who's married, who's talking about this. Maybe her thing is that she had sex before she was married. That was her thing. And maybe seeing it as a war zone from Satan makes it easier to understand that when you're in a culture where, like purity is something that you have or you don’t. Versus it being an idea of like chastity is, is a way that we continuously live out our love for Christ, regardless of past decisions or decisions that are made to us. Right? Like whatever. That's a different mindset. So maybe, maybe it's necessary to see it as a huge spiritual battlefield and war if you feel a lot of guilt about stuff. But I'm like, if we just were able to recognize that you don't actually have to live with a ton of guilt for what you did when you were 14, 15 years old, maybe we could stop seeing this as like a war zone, Satan's war on the battlefield. That takes some of the pressure off of it. 

Then it would actually be easier to not focus on it all the time, which makes it easier to not hypersexualize our children, which makes it easier for our kids to have a childhood where they don't have to grow up and be thinking of adult things all the time because we aren't like, “has Satan tempted your penis in the war zone of destruction yet”? It’s weird. I don't like how we talk about this stuff. And it reminds me of all that data and the research and all the stuff that shows that, like for a lot of evangelicals, sexual sin, like in sexual acts, have a lot more of an obsessive compulsive component than for non-religious folk. And I think it's because of stuff like this, because it's not just “I thought they were hot and I got horny” right. Yeah I know, I know that's, that's crass language for people who are listening. I understand. But putting it in like real terms, you can't say that. What you say is “Satan is tempting me on the battlefield of lust.” 

One of them sounds like something you can get over because you realize you still had a muffin in the fridge, like, oh, that tastes good. And the other one sounds like you now need to be, like, sweating and praying on your knees for like, 36 hours as you whip yourself in the back. Like a monk. Like I'm just saying the stakes do not need to be this high even for something which we believe has high stake and is important.

Sheila
Yeah. And this is, and this is the point. Like when I said, “Would I have endorsed this book?” I actually wouldn't because I think having all of these books about how you can not have sex is actually creating this obsessive compulsive thing. 

Rebecca
It makes sex such a big deal.

Sheila
Because you can teach someone to have sexual chastity just by teaching them to love Jesus. Like we're just again. Yeah, we're just blowing things up so much that it actually can create a lot of lifelong problems, which is what we're seeing, especially in the research about boys, especially how it's harder to quit porn if you've grown up in this culture.

Rebecca
Religious scrupulosity and OCD is very high in these kinds of religious spaces. Yeah, and especially the sexual component.

Sheila
And I'm not going to talk about who they are, because I don't want to name them, but it's in Dannah's book too, where you have some really big influencers who are now in their 30s. You know, coming out talking about all the struggles they had with masturbation when they were 14 and 15. And it's like, that is it's a little bit self-flagellation, you know, and it feels and I think they might feel like they have to come public and talk about it a ton so that they feel like they're I don't know, it's just.

Rebecca
But it’s like, you’re 37, I don't want to know how often you masturbated at 14. I don’t. This is not one of the things that James says we must confess– that was years ago at a different developmental– I hope you're not the same person you were when you were 14. I don’t need to know about your bedroom habits at 14. I really don’t. 

I feel like we can take something seriously while still lowering the stakes. And that's a big thing we know in parenting, right? We know that if you smother your kids, if you're so hyper focused on everything that they do wrong, if you're watching and watching and watching for when they finally mess up. You know you're going to destroy that relationship. You know you're going to make it more difficult, and you know that if you just let up a little bit and be like, they need to take risks, they need to be able to have their own space. It doesn't mean you love your kids less. It doesn’t mean you take parenting less seriously. It doesn't mean that you take their safety less seriously. There's a level of laissez faire parenting that's a problem. And then there's also way too stringent. 

And the same thing is here with sex. You can not take it seriously enough and we all know parents who didn’t notice the red flags of their kids doing really risky stuff in high school. And we all know that parents who made jokes about stuff with their kids that was really inappropriate. And then, yeah, their kids end up making decisions that when they're older in life, they're like, wow, I could have gotten through my life with a lot less heartache and a lot less pregnancy scares.

You know, we all know that. But I don't think that we do a good job in the evangelical context of understanding when there are people who are just being weird about it because they focus on it too much. And you're smothering your kid. And you, you are the one hyper sexualizing your child.

Sheila
But, it's not just that you're hyper sexualizing them, it's that God is. Because when you do it, you ascribe it to God. and that's what comes out. So it's like, it's like the thing that God is most concerned about is my sexuality, and so, you know, if I masturbated when I was 14, then that affects me for life instead of realizing I was 14, I, like I was a child, still.

Rebecca
You’re  allowed to be a 14 year old with a ton of hormones..

Sheila
And we’re not saying that every 14 year should masturbate– 

Rebecca
No, that’s not what we’re saying either, but we are saying that we need to be realistic. And we need to stop making kids feel so ashamed of just the way that they’re bodies feel during puberty.

Sheila
We need to stop making 26 year olds feel ashamed of what they did when they were 14. 

Rebecca
Exactly, it’s ridiculous, it's sad.

Sheila
I have one more quote. Okay. Here we go. Even some of the greatest critics of the church's teaching on sex admit that Christians as a whole do tend to have better sex and happier marriages than people who are not religious.

Rebecca
Yes.

Sheila
There's a footnote.

Rebecca
Is it us?

Sheila
It is.

Rebecca
Oh my gosh. That's hilarious.

Sheila
I'm going to read it again– 

Rebecca
You know what, she footnoted us. That more than anyone else has done.

Sheila
Actually, she footnoted me and not you. She footnote us incorrectly. She only included my name. She didn't include you and Joanna. So. Hey, Moody Publishers, you might want to get better copy editors.

Rebecca
Yeah. That’s very interesting.

Sheila
Okay. But I want to spend a little bit of time on this because this is important. There's two big things in this thing. “First of all, even some of the greatest critics of the church's teaching on sex,” she is calling us the greatest critics of the church's teaching on sex. Dannah, when I first read this, I was dying laughing and I sent you texts and I said, you need to call me because this is too funny. I'm no longer laughing. I'm angry. Because I've had 24 hours to sit with this. But every single time we have critiqued Dannah, we have done it with a quote. We have said, here is what Dannah Gresh said. We have been very specific about what she has done wrong. You know, the soul ties theology, the modesty theology, which and we've and we've talked about what these things result in. She is calling us the greatest critics, one of the greatest critics of the church's teaching on sex without saying what we're criticizing. How do we deviate from the church's teaching on sex, Dannah? Like, what gives you the right to say this about us without ever saying what we said wrong?

Rebecca
Well, yeah, we've really, really big problems with how purity culture in the evangelical church talks about sex. Our views are very orthodox. Just not the same denomination as you.

Sheila
We don't disagree with the churches teaching on sex, Dannah. We disagree with you. And that's not the same thing.

Rebecca
Now we always say that we're trying to change the conversation in evangelicalism. That’s one thing, she did footnote us. But the thing is that she doesn't say, you know while people have critiqued ideas of this, this, this and that. You know, even people who are critiquing specifically purity culture like we all agreed that Christians tend to do better. That's not what she said. And that would’ve been better.

Sheila
Yep. Yep. Now I want to talk about the second half of this okay? What she seems to be saying and in context what she's saying is, “Isn't it amazing that even the critics have to admit that Christians do better?” We have never been surprised that Christians have better–  In fact, this is something we've said loudly over and over. We even wrote a peer review paper on this, that Christians we know, the Christians on the whole, have better sex and marriage. But–

Rebecca
There’s a subgroup.

Sheila
There is a subgroup, and in that subgroup, when you internalize certain key toxic teachings which we have identified in our surveys, things go badly. We have been so ultra clear about this. I don't know how we could possibly be clearer. Like, you know, we are not critiquing the church's teaching on sex. We are critiquing Dannah Gresh’s teaching on sex. We are critiquing purity culture. We are critiquing the people who have promulgated the teachings that we measured in our surveys for “The Great Sex Rescue”, and for “She Deserves Better”. 

That hurt people, that caused girls to be like 67% more likely to marry abusers if they believed modesty messages, or if they believed, you know, that all men struggle with lust, it's “Every Man's Battle”. That they're more likely to marry abusers, they’re more likely to have sexual pain disorders. Dannah never, ever deals with that or admits that like–

Do you know how hard it is to deal with vaginismus? You know, for some women, it's a year long thing. Please see a pelvic floor physiotherapist, too by the way, if this is your story. And she never admits that a big part of that is because of the modesty teaching that she taught.

Rebecca
She's doing the same thing that all evangelicals do, which is because evangelicalism is a blip in the data. It doesn't follow the trend, for the most part. It actually makes people worse off. What they do is they allow themselves to be graded on the curve. Right? So like if you are in a classroom where two of the kids came from super negligent families and they only showed up to 10% of the classes. But the rest of the kids had families who put them in Kumon after school, and read a classic book every single week, together as a family. And then you took the test scores and those two, kids with the negligent hippie parents said, “see that the test scores for this class were so good, kids only need to go to school 10% of the time.” Yeah, your kids drag it down.

And that's happening here. Dannah is saying “See, the church has better sex and better marriages”. No, Dannah, you're dragging it down. Everyone else does. You’re dragging it down and you're letting yourself be graded on a curve. You're getting swept along in the current of everyone else who you're calling the church. Even though you know, you're saying that they don't really understand God's design for purity then if they disagree with you. You don’t get to have it both ways. 

Religious and non-religious is a really big, big group. Evangelical and non-evangelical religious is the group that we need to be looking at here.

Sheila
Yes I know what you mean. But I just find it wild that there's this group of authors and organizations that are so hard on us and critique us when they won't even say what they're critiquing us for, you know, because they can't. Because there isn't anything they just simply are.

Rebecca
There are people who hear our critiques. They’re like, wait a second, that makes sense. And that explains a lot about my marriage. That’s what happens!

Sheila
And I mean, what does that say about character? You know, like, what does that say about character?
Rebecca
We’re back to what we talked about at the beginning. It’s not about character, but being in the right team. Yeah, it's all about team playing. It's about am I on the right side or on the wrong side?

Sheila
Okay. I asked on social media what people thought it would look like to make amends. And I want to let them have. Yeah I want to give them a chance to chime in here. So here's some of the comments that I gathered. “So first they need to be quiet and listen to those harmed by their books until they really understand the harm they caused, and then follow that with listening to experts about the harm they caused and the healthy alternatives.”

Dannah didn't do that. Liz Day, who's coming on the podcast later this fall with her new book, “Interwoven Faith”. She chimed in as well. And she said, “In my opinion, the best apology or repentance is one with no personal gain. I'm not entirely sure what that looks like, but publishing a retraction that earns publicity points and enables them to continue to use the same platform to publish doesn't feel like repentance. Maybe it looks like going back to school, earning credentials, and entering a helping profession. Maybe it's something away from the spotlight. Maybe it's more inner work in relational repair than outward facing ministry.” You know, maybe I don't know. All right, good thoughts. 

And, someone else. “I think real repentance looks like taking down their own books and not making more money off the harm. And repair would be nice too. But that generally is just them trying to make more money off their repentance, which doesn't seem genuine.”

Rebecca
And that's exactly it. Like, I think that again, this is a different conversation. If you're just someone who has changed your mind because of being more angry. Like if you're in theology, for example, and you’re writing a book on forgiveness and you've been reading more and you're like, yeah, I think that we were kind of off and you're in your journey, you kind of change what you're thinking. And feel like at some point you take your old ones out of print. I'm not sure you need a huge change.

Sheila
Mea culpa.

Rebecca
Even if, like, what you said could have caused people to make like, I don't know, like it's just different when you're in like, more theology, heady space versus talking to children specifically about how to live your life so that God lets you into heaven and doesn't send you to hell, and just a different experience. But yeah, when you're talking about someone, all these people who wrote these big how-to, self-help books, I just have to ask once more, why is retirement not seen as a valid option for these people? I know they're young, but they've sold millions of books.
Sheila
Are they young, though? They're all in their 60s at this point.

Rebecca
I know, but I don't know.

Sheila
I mean, that's looking increasingly young for me. But yeah.

Rebecca
I was trying to be nice. Like when I don't understand why more people aren't like I've made millions. I’m going to put up a Facebook post and I'm going to say, “I'm rethinking a lot of what I've said. I hope that I helped you. If I hurt you, I'm really sorry, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the next generation does.”

And then they just leave. That's all we need. Genuinely. But you don't need to even say specifically what it is. You don't need to do any of it. You just need to get out of the way and like, you can go rescue puppies. You can become a bunny sanctuary. You can do whatever you want with your life. You just need to get out of the way. And you know what? People would actually feel heard by that. Yeah, it would be like, It happened. It's done. And then you just leave. You just no longer need a microphone or spotlight in this area. But what's happening instead is “Secret Keeper Girl” got rebranded to “True Girl” only a couple of years ago, and that's still going strong. So even if she removed all the modesty from that, it's still up in “True Girl”.

Sheila
Yeah, and the submission quiz is still up on her website.

Rebecca
Like again. So what this feels like to me, it's like, okay, awesome. The book changed. She did a really good job of editing the book so that if you read “She Deserves Better” and then read “And the Bride Wore White” you might not see it in the same way.

So she did a good job of putting out the fire. Did she actually change? I don't know. Because what I see this is the largest PR stunt that's happened because if it is actual change, I just don't see why her entire website wouldn't have been taken offline for like a month while they combed it for all this terrible stuff. And then put up a note and just say, “Hey, we're taking a sabbatical for six months. We're going to go, we're doing some soul searching, we're figuring some stuff out.”

Sheila
Or if she had just simply put out this book which doesn't have the harmful teachings, and then she had sold this book with, “Hey, here's the teachings I removed.” Why didn't she do that?

Rebecca
Yeah. Or like said, like, here's what I wish “And the Bride Wore White” had been. Here's what I used to say that I'm not saying anymore. And here's why.

Sheila
But she's not saying any of that.

Rebecca
Because she actually still believes what she used to say.

Sheila
And you can tell that from the clip on Focus on the Family, where she went on about modesty, even though modesty isn't in the new book.

Rebecca
Modesty isn't even in the book, and she's still dying on that hill.

Sheila
Okay, I want to, as we wrap up.

Rebecca
Like, Jim gave her so much rope. She just hung herself with it.

Sheila
I know I know, it was wild. Okay, as we're wrapping up, I want to go back to the very beginning and with the question of, “are they really sorry?” Let's just listen again to what Bob Gresh said.

Bob Gresh
Now I want to say something else. Dannah led purity culture. She wrote about purity culture. And I'm sort of sick and tired of hearing everybody beat up purity culture as the most traumatic thing they've ever gone through. And I'm also sick and tired. I'm sick and tired of that woke message. And I'm also sick and tired of Christian leaders and institutions and people that won't wake up to some of those messages.

Sheila
So I put up a clip of Bob saying this at Cedarville. And here's what one woman once said to me. “I started sobbing when he said, ‘And I'm sort of sick and tired of hearing everyone beat up purity culture as the most traumatic thing they've ever gone through.’ Of all the trauma I've faced, the lasting impact of purity culture is the worst. I could easily argue that it caused decades of damage. At age 11, purity culture made sure that I believed being sa’d was my fault, that I was the one responsible, not the man twice my age. Purity culture made sure I never told anyone. Purity culture had me clinging to hopeful phrases as a teenager, like ‘recycled virgin’ purity culture had me terrified to tell my husband, something that I kept from him for the first 15 years of our marriage, because I thought he would think I had less value. Purity culture had me carry shame and fear for years. I was a child when I was bombarded with purity culture messages from people I trusted as spiritual, and I soaked in all the shame and fear, desperately wanting to please God with my life. It's not just a book, it is a culture that shapes the way girls view their bodies, and a culture that heaps on damage to girls who have been sa’d.I remember sitting at one of those giant youth conferences in high school, and at the end of the purity rant, there was a little oh, and if your virginity was taken from you, you're still a virgin in God's eyes. I don't know what was worse. Being told over and over that waiting is the greatest gift we could possibly give our husbands. That is the ultimate in value or internalizing the idea that what had happened was not a big deal. It was the you're damaged goods now. But don't worry, honey, God doesn't hold it against you. I grew up in a nice Christian home. I went to all the youth things. I married a Christian boy. I still attend church. I held on to it out of fear and shame until my own daughter turned 11. And I realized how young I had been. Just one book can't do that much damage. But those books were what gave that culture form and the vehicle and culture shapes the way we dress, talk, walk, think and grow into ourselves. I am angry for anyone listening to him say that, whether it was days or decades worth of pain from purity culture, he wants to sweep it away because he's kind of tired of hearing it.I don't think he's heard enough.”
And here's the last one.

Rebecca (quoting a listener)
“Because of Dannah Gresh, I believed until I was over 30 years old that men automatically and reflexively visualize women without their clothing on if they show too much skin. I didn't walk around thinking about this belief. It was just coded into the world I inhabited. It was a background thread of uneasiness in certain situations and around certain people. It displayed itself loudly in the assumptions made whenever women being assaulted came up in conversation. But what was she wearing? And yet, because so much was taboo, I never thought to ask whether or not men actually could control their thoughts. Dannah Gresh taught little girls that male objectification of the female body was automatic, and every woman has had the experience of recognizing when a man is actively objectifying her. Before my husband and I got married, we had a lot of intense conversations. One of the most healing ones was the one where I found out that a good man does not automatically mentally complete the picture visually. Dannah Gresh harmed me. So much damage was done to both young men and young women. I still hope that those who did the damage will one day take responsibility and seek to facilitate healing.”

And that, to me, is the problem, right? Because Dannah may have changed her book so that our critiques are no longer as easy to find. But the fact of the matter is, she still has an entire ministry about making sure that teenage girls understand that purity is very, very, very important.
She still has submission quizzes up on her website. She still is peddling modesty messages. She's refusing to call out what she actually said that was wrong. And so the unfortunate conclusion is that the change we're seeing in the book is much more of a PR issue. It's image management. It's brand management rather than real repentance.

Sheila
Yep. And so yeah, we're still waiting for the change too. I would love to see that change. But I think, you know, as as we come to the end of this three-part series, I think what I'm happy about is that even if that change, even if we're not hearing the repentance and the sorrys and even if she's still doing stupid things like calling us the greatest critics of the church's take on sex or whatever, she changed her book.

Rebecca
She did, she had to.

Sheila
She had to change her book. And that's the effect that we're having. And not just not just us as a team but like us. Like all of us together. Like all of you who are listening, all of our patrons, everyone who tells others about “The Great Sex Rescue” and “She Deserves Better” and “The Marriage you Want.” Everyone who has our simulcast in October, like all of us together, are this movement. It's not just us, and it's this. It's this big movement where we're saying we all deserve better, and we deserve to be able to serve Jesus unencumbered by harmful messages. And we deserve to not have to live a life encumbered by shame.

And we may never see these authors truly own up, but I do believe that we will see the church change. So thanks for being with us on this journey. We've got another great podcast coming to you next week. Remember that you can be part of our simulcast, so please check out that link. It would be great to have more churches join us.

And just get some really healthy marriage teaching. It's a way to bless the marriages in your church. Or if you're a counselor and you want to provide it to your clients, you can do that as well. And all the details are in the podcast notes.

And check out “She Deserves Better” if you really want to understand what all the fuss was about with Purity Culture. It's a great book. Our course, “The Whole Story” is wonderful if you want to find ways to talk to your kids about sex and puberty in ways that aren't weird. And Becca did some of the videos with the girls, it's a great course.

So I'll put those links too. But yeah, hopefully purity culture is something that we can put behind us and we can just get healthier teaching, even if it's going to be all of us together who are going to have to lead the way. Because the people that we thought were the grown ups in the room just aren't doing it.

Rebecca
And let’s just keep making it the kind of environment where they have no choice but to change these books all the time. Again, I just want to reiterate, just because the book was changed so much, if it was really repentant, there's no reason that everything else should still be up.

Sheila
Yep.

Rebecca
That's the issue here. Yep, that's the issue.

Sheila
Yep. Exactly. All right. We'll see you again next week. Bye bye.