Episode 253: The 93% Myth: That Stat That Says Fathers Are More Important Than Mothers Is Made Up! Artwork

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Episode 253: The 93% Myth: That Stat That Says Fathers Are More Important Than Mothers Is Made Up!

October 03, 2024 • Sheila Gregoire • Season 8 • Episode 253

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Ever heard the stat from “a recent study” that found that, when a husband comes to Christ first, in 93% of cases the wife and kids follow, but when the wife comes to Christ first, it’s only 17%? Today Beth Allison Barr and Miranda Zapor Cruz, both academics looking into gender relations in church, join me to try to track down the source. Spoiler alert: People seem to have made this up about 30 years ago—and they keep quoting it! We look at what happens when churches assume this stat is true.

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Sheila: Have you ever the stat that when a man comes to Christ, in 93% of cases, his family follows but when a woman comes to Christ it’s only in 17% that the husband and kids follow? I’ve heard that a lot. I’ve heard it from a lot of people. But you know what I’ve never heard is an actual citation of where that study came from. Hello. I am Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidenced-based, biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage. And today on the Bare Marriage podcast, I am going to invite two amazing scholars on to talk about how this stat got started, is there a source for it, and what are the bigger ramifications with the fact that it is being cited everywhere. Now some of you may not have heard it. And so before I invite them on, I would like to play for you some clips of all kinds of different people citing this source. I don’t have a clip for this one. But Daniel Akin, who is the president of Southeastern Baptist Seminary—Theological Seminary—he talked about it in an article way back—I think in 2001 or something. And I will put that link in the podcast notes. I will put links for everything that I’m about to share in the podcast notes. There’s quite a bit. But here. Let’s start with J.D. Greear, who is the president—or who was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention at the time where he said this. So let’s listen to him cite this stat.

J.D. Greear: A recent study shows that if a child is the first one to come to faith in Christ in the family then there is a 3.5% chance that everybody else in the household is going to get saved—is going to follow. If it’s the mother that is the first one to come to faith in Christ, there is a 17% chance that everyone else in the family will come to faith in Christ. If the father is the first one to come to faith in Christ, there is a—get this—93% chance that everybody else in the family is going to come to faith in Christ.

Sheila: All right. Here is Tim Clinton, president of the American Association of Christian Counseling. And he is also talking about this stat.

Max: I think it was statistics we put in our book where if a man comes to the Lord and goes to church it’s like 90% that the rest of the family follows. Just amazing. But you take him out of the picture and that number drops way down.

Tim Clinton: Yeah, Max. That was actually a piece in Baptist Press that you and I had come across. Let me give you the full statistic here for a second because I love it. If a child comes to Christ, there’s about a 3.5% chance that the family will follow. If a mother is the first person to become a Christian in the home, there’s a 17% chance that everyone will follow. Listen to this one. If a dad, if a father, is the first one to come to Christ, there’s a 93% chance that everyone in the family will follow. The article went on to say this. “You want your church to grow. Bring in the men.” Do men matter, Max? Do dads matter? 1000%.

Sheila: Here is Josh Howerton. You’ve heard him a lot on this podcast. He is the mega church pastor of a SBC church in—Lakepointe Church in the Dallas area. And here he is citing the stat too, but he’s changed the numbers a little bit.

Josh Howerton: There’s a study that came out a few years ago that said this. It said if a family member comes to Christ the influence they have on the rest of their family coming to Christ—and it said if a wife comes to Christ—it’s really good. There’s an 18% chance the entire family converts and gives—surrenders to the lordship of Jesus. That’s awesome. Now sometimes what God does is he works down up, so He’ll work through a child up, generationally, to the parents. So actually, if one of the kids comes to Christ, 22% chance the rest of the family starts to follow Jesus. Now here’s what this study showed. That if a husband or a father came to Christ, there was a 94% chance that the rest of the family followed him and surrendered their life to the lordship of Jesus. Now I just want to make a point really quick having said all that. At all of our campuses, where are all the men? Would you raise your hand? All the men, raise your hand. Hands. Keep them up. Everybody look around. Everybody look around. The futures of the people with their hands down are dependent upon the futures of the people with their hands up.

Sheila: And now—I know this is getting repetitive, but I really, really want you all to hear that this is not something which just a couple of people have said. This is everywhere. This is mega church pastors. It is theological seminary leaders. It is the president of the SBC. But it’s also just your everyday pastor, and so I have a clip here of—here’s Joshua Poage, who is from Clawson Assemblies of God Church in Pollok, Texas, who is also citing the stat. Just to show you that yeah. It’s just everyday pastors as well.

Joshua Poage: There’s a 3.5% chance with the kid. 17% chance with the mom. If dad will submit their life to Jesus and allow God to transform their life, there is a 93% chance that that family is going to follow dad. Do you know why?

Sheila: So here’s the point. This is everywhere. This stat is everywhere. How did it get started? Well, I’m going to have two people that I really respect who have done a lot of research into this to join us and tell us where did the stat come from and what does it mean. All right. Well, I have brought on the experts to help us understand this stat, and I am very excited about this conversation. I have Miranda Zapor Cruz. Did I say that right? Zapor. Miranda Zapor Cruz.

Miranda: Yeah.

Sheila: There we go. Who first wrote the groundbreaking article about the myth of the 93%. And Miranda is a professor of historical theology at Indiana Wesleyan University. Hello, Miranda.

Miranda: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Sheila: Yeah. I’m excited about this. And then we have Beth Allison Barr, who is not a stranger to this podcast, who is the something—

Beth: James Vardaman professor of history at Baylor University. Yes.

Sheila: There you go. And, of course, you are the author of—

Beth: The Making of Biblical Womanhood.

Sheila: The Making of Biblical Womanhood. I knew that. And the new book that is coming out, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife. What is your official launch date on that?

Beth: March 18th.

Sheila: Okay. So we’re within two weeks of each other again. This seems to be (cross talk).

Beth: Oh wow. That’s really fun. Are you before or after?

Sheila: I’m before. So The Marriage You Want is March 3rd and then you, so I’m sure we’ll be overlapping there too. And Miranda, you have also written a book, Faithful Politics. Is that right?

Miranda: Yes. Just came out several weeks ago. Not related to this topic, but it is the political season.

Sheila: Yes. So very fun. And we will put links to all of those in the podcast notes, of course. But let’s get to the topic at hand. So I first ran across this stat a couple of years ago and thought it sounded weird. And so I put it in Google. And what do you know? An article from Missio Alliance popped up written by Miranda. And this was great, and I’ve been sharing it ever since on Instagram several times. And, Miranda, why don’t you explain why you wrote that article?

Miranda: Sure. That statistic has been shared so many times, and I’d see it in—on Facebook and the Christians for Biblical Equality group. It would often come up as something that people were asking questions about and saying, “My pastor said this, or my friend shared this meme or whatever.” I studied sociology. I teach sociology of religion. Just looking at the numbers, I knew surely the kind of study that would be required to actually figure out this data—surely, this hasn’t actually been done. And so I just went on a side quest and just hunted down everything I could and found basically this citation loop where you had these groups of articles. If they had any citation at all, they were just citing each other, and it all led back to sources that didn’t cite any study or anything.

Sheila: I want to just comment on that. So the Tim Clinton clip that we listened to at the beginning of the podcast, they cite an article in Baptist News. But when you go to Baptist News, they’re citing—I don’t even remember what they cited. It isn’t an original source. Nothing is an original source.

Miranda: Yeah. I could not find any kind of study that—the only source I found that listed—that cited an actual study went to a study that didn’t have any numbers related to this and that the question that study was asking of a sample in Switzerland. Didn’t actually relate to whether a family came to faith after the father did. It had to do with whether adult children kept up their family’s faith. So it wasn’t even the same question. I was actually able to connect indirectly with the author of the Promise Keepers book that some people cite. I happened to know someone who knew him. And he just couldn’t remember where they got that information, if they got it anywhere at all. There’s no citation for it. And so that, ultimately, let me to conclude it’s a myth. It’s something that people latched on to and keep parroting and keep building whole ministries around.

Sheila: Yeah. That’s really scary. And Beth, the reason that you got interested in this recently was because Josh Howerton cited it in that sermon.

Beth: Yeah. Because I saw you. Mm-hmm.

Sheila: So I talked about this. You saw this. And then this whole conversation started on Threads.

Beth: I actually had known about the statistic before. Back when my husband and I were still at the church before he got fired a long time ago and we were really starting to question what the church was teaching about male and female roles, and my husband came to me. And he said, “Hey, the pastor gave me this statistic this morning. He said that there’s been this study that shows this. Do you know anything about this?” And as an academic, I looked at it, and I was like, “How would they even know that from this? I mean it’s such a weird thing.” And to say that 93% of families will go to church if the father is the first one to attend. And, of course, all the questions in my head were like, “Well, what church are they talking about? How did they get the numbers on this? Did they follow people across 10 or 20 years or something to try to figure out when,”—I mean it was just all of those questions. And so I was just like that sounds made up. I was like, “Where did you get it from?” And he didn’t know where it came from. And I just kind of wrote it off. And so when I saw Sheila post that clip or somebody post that clip about Josh Howerton and I was like oh my gosh. That’s the statistic that my husband had been shown by our former pastor. And so I was like I want to figure out where this thing came from. And that was when I started it. And, of course, Sheila immediately sent me your article, Miranda, which was just fantastic. It had all the things that immediately ran through my head the first time I heard this quote. And then when I did because I just—I like to find where people got that stuff from. It’s kind of a fun sort of mystery trail to follow. So I started ordering Promise Keeper literature. My husband was like, “What are you doing?” In fact, I still have a couple more books coming. I started ordering this stuff trying to find it out. And I posted on Threads (cross talk).

Sheila: And just for clarification, it’s because the only source that we could find, other than this Swiss study, which doesn’t have any numbers that are anywhere close to 93% and 17% and just doesn’t say that—the only thing that is ever cited officially is this Promise Keeper study guide from 1996. Or 1994?

Beth: 1996. The key time. And I think it’s really important that people recognize in the 90s is when Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has come out. And when we really see this push for the complementarianism is about 10 years old, somewhere around then, and we see this significant push—and complementarian theology, of course, argues that men are to be the spiritual leaders. And women are to follow in almost everything. And this theology—we start to see it really pushed. I think in the 90s is where it starts exploding. And so it’s not a surprise to see this type of statistic appear now. What I think is surprising is that they really seem to have made it up. And that people continue to use it without trying to figure out where it came from. I’ll stop there. If we want to continue any of those threads.

Sheila: Yeah. I found one article that referred to—it said this. “A study on a father’s influence on salvation conducted by the Leadership Journal determined that 93% of families will follow the spiritual influence, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” And this was talking specifically about the Catholic context. And I found a number of Catholic websites that were talking about this from Leadership Journal. I could find nothing on it actually in Leadership Journal.

Beth: Yeah. I tried to hunt that down too. I found that Leadership Journal, and I had the reference my librarians at the university library helping me try to hunt things down. And I could not find—I feel like I may have come across like a blurb. But I think it still ended up going back to the Promise Keepers. I know that I never found any actual study.

Sheila: Yeah. Yeah. I really want people to get this. Okay? Everyone is citing everybody else. So a lot of people will cite Leadership Journal. But then Leadership Journal might have cited Promise Keepers or Baptists—the Baptist Press might have cited Focus on the Family. And Focus on the Family might have cited this Promise Keeper. Everyone is citing everybody. But no one is citing an actual study. And yet, they keep saying—J. D. Greear said it. Josh Howerton said it. A recent study. A study in the last few years. They have been using these same numbers since 1996. Even if it is a real study, it is not recent, and it is not from the last few years.

Beth: Right. And I think this gets at a bigger problem within the evangelical world, and that is simply that we do not do good scholarship within the church. We are not taught how to check out and see if something is really true or not. And pastors are not taught to check what they quote or cite from the pulpit. And this, to me, is just sort of an egregious error. I know, Sheila, you want to talk more about the impact of it. But just the impact of teaching people to accept these truths just because somebody preached it from the pulpit or wrote it in a Bible study guide that has no citation. There is something that we have done to the church that has made people be willing to accept this without any sort of verification of it. And that, to me, is just—it’s terrifying when you think about it.

Sheila: Well, one of the things that I—that we’ve talked about on this podcast before is how many authors actually cite secondary sources. So Nancy Pearcey does this constantly in her book that we’ve talked about, The Toxic War on Masculinity. We did a whole podcast on the problem with her citations in that book, which is held up as this amazing academic work. But she doesn’t cite peer reviewed sources. She cites newspaper articles of studies. Shaunti Feldhahn does the same thing when she’s talking about the brain science. She doesn’t cite actual studies. She cites newspaper articles of the studies.

Beth: Yeah. I was looking at Meg Basham’s Shepherds for Sale, and I listing that too. I was looking at her notes. And it’s all newspaper articles that she’s citing for all of this stuff. I mean it’s just—it’s crazy to me.

Sheila: Yeah. So, Miranda, if you were actually going to do a study, which could tell whether—who is the most influential to bring people to Christ, whose salvation first matters most, how would you do it?

Miranda: Yeah. So I think the influence piece—there are good studies that ask people who influenced your faith most. Christian Smith has done a lot of that work. His book, Handing Down the Faith, looks at that very thoroughly, and he’s a highly regarded sociologist with a good methodology. I think if you wanted to know the actual statistic if the father comes to faith first or the mother comes to faith first the only way I can think you would be able to do that would be to have a longitudinal study—so following the same families over a very long period of time. Say 10 years or more. And you’d have to have a huge sample size of people who are not Christian, families that aren’t Christian, who would agree to be followed for 10 years, and then have a statistically significant percentage of the people in that sample start attending church so that you could count who went first. So it’s hypothetically possible. The time and the expense and the will to do such a study, I think, would be really hard to come by. But certainly, as far as I can tell, nobody has done such a study. And I think if someone had it would be all over the literature. That would be fascinating. People who study faith formation, which I have several colleagues who do, and I checked with them on this. And they were all like this is just obviously not true. This just obviously contradicts all the research that does exist which very frequently, in terms of who influenced your faith first—or not first but who’ve influenced your faith most mothers are almost always at the top of that list. Fathers are usually on the list but a few slots down. And then other faith leaders, friends, the kinds of people you would expect to influence someone’s faith are on the list. But very consistently mothers are identified as having more influence in faith formation. And I see that just from my own students who are mostly evangelicals and, in my department, are mostly preparing for ministry. And just informally, they talk about their moms. Sometimes their dads too. But my experience bears out with the stats we do have actually says.

Sheila: Yeah. And that’s the thing. How does this even past the smell test?

Miranda: I think people just aren’t smelling.

Sheila: Yeah. But we all know if you think of—okay. Well, who started going to church first, we all know it’s moms. Or it was moms who took them to Bible study. It was moms who did so much of the spiritual disciplines in the house. And we all know that. And yet, this says moms aren’t important. I want to read from Miranda’s article where you list a whole bunch of studies that say—and I’ll just read it because I really want everybody to read this article. It is really good. So the link is going to be the first thing in the podcast notes. Please go read Miranda’s whole article where she just debunks this whole thing. But here is part of what you said. “One study from the mid-1990s found that 82% of adolescents identified their mother’s influence as a positive factor in their spiritual development, while only 69% identified the father. A 2016 Pew Research Center study of mixed-religion households found that, among children raised in interfaith families almost half of those adults now identify with their mother’s religion, while 28% identify with their father’s and the rest with neither. And that is actually closest to what the Swiss study was that people often cite. And it shows the opposite in our context. “Barna’s 2019 study on Christian households concluded that practicing Christians in their teen years consistently identify mothers as the ones who provide spiritual guidance and instruction and instill the values and disciplines of their faith in the household. Barna also found that among Christian adults in the United States who did not inherit their faith from birth, 68% identified their mother’s faith as most influential, compared to 46% who identified their father’s faith as most influential.” And what’s really interesting about Miranda’s article is that each of those things has a footnote. And the footnote goes to a study. So when you are reading things, people, and there is no footnote or the footnote is just to a news article or just a website, if the footnote is not to the Journal of Sociology, it should be to a journal study. And a pastor, if they are quoting a study, shouldn’t just say a recent study. They should say a Barna research study. Or the study that was published in The Sociology of the Family Journal or something like that. And if they’re not giving you that source, please, please, please question the source. I mean question it anyway. We should always examine. But that’s a really big red flag.

Beth: Well, I think the thing I find most egregious about this is the way it is used to try to minimize the impact of women in the home and on the faith development of children. This one particular study that does seem to have been an actual study in a particular context that is not the U.S. context that is in a very different type of religious environment that is talking about both Catholic and Protestant households—as I said, in a very different environment, even if it does reflect something that seems to suggest that in these particular households the children who stayed with the faith tended to stay more with their fathers faith, which meant not that the father started going to church first or that the father became a Christian first but simply that the father identified as Catholic and that child stayed Catholic which is what that study showed. What would you need to do is then take that and put it in the context of all of these other studies that focus on the impact of women. Daniel Silliman has a recent—really has a recent article, 2023, in Christianity Today which sums up some of this research including citing a 2023 study from the American Bible Society about the impact of the faith of the mothers. So it seems somewhat deliberate. You can think in the context of trying to build up this idea that the men should be the spiritual leaders, that there is something more impactful about having a male spiritual leader, and then you have all this research that says, “Hey, actually, if you go to church,”—I think Daniel Silliman’s article is titled, If You’re a Christian You Should Thank Your Mom. And so all of this research that seems to push against this idea of a male spiritual leadership. And so you can see people, who support male headship, just really latching onto this one possible study that might debunk everything else or they think debunk and then that becomes the only story that they cite. Not because it’s accurate but because it fits the agenda that they are pushing. And that is what I really want people to hear is that this article—this citation is usually made in places that are trying to prop up male authority over female authority and—which leads me to my favorite thing about Miranda’s article is we should not be trying to put men and women’s influence in competition with each other. This should be us both working together for faith formation of our families.

Sheila: Yeah. Exactly.

Miranda: Yeah. And I hear it too. I have students and former students, who are serving in churches. And in my sociology of religion class, students take it when they’re in a local church residency. And some of them are at very large churches. Top 100 largest churches in the United States. And every semester I have one or more students literally say to me after they look at this statistic, “We were just told this in a staff meeting the other day.” I’m like, “Well, are you going to ask your pastor about it?” Usually, they’re too nervous to do that. But it’s being used—some of these are kind of what we might think of as some complementarian churches. They might have women in every role except as the lead pastor or something like that. But it’s being used the reason that we really need to emphasize and pour a lot of resources and time into developing men’s ministries. And I have no problem with men’s ministries, but a lot of these are very particular vision of masculinity. This is how we get men into church, which is how we get families into the church. So just the time and the resources and the energy and the gender stereotypes and everything that gets wrapped up with this one statistic that has no grounding is really remarkable to me.

Sheila: Yeah. And I want to get to that. So let’s put a pin in that for a minute because I have a lot to share on how that’s actually affecting churches. But before we get to that, I want to ask another question which is do the people spreading this even believe it. Okay? So they’re saying that the husband’s influence is the most important, right? These are the same people that tell women your main job is as a mom and a wife. That is your calling. And so they tell women this, and then they go and they tell women but you actually aren’t influential in it. There was a great quote. It was shared by Orthodox Barbie, I think, just a few days ago before we’re—I love the Orthodox Barbie account on—she’s on Twitter and Instagram and everything. And I want to read this. She’s quoting a woman named Susanne Maynes. And I will put the link in the podcast notes to this too. If you’re watching on YouTube, it’s already on the screen. But here you go. She said, “The mixed message presented goes something like this. Your highest calling as a woman is following your husband’s lead, taking care of the home, and raising children. However, your children’s view of God will be shaped entirely by their father. So your tireless devotion to these tasks is of little significance in the end. Knock yourself out, Mom, but you still won’t count. Sorry. It’s all about Dad. Is this what God has to say about women? Does God call female humans image bearers but actually sees us as less than? Does God confine us to domestic duties, sugarcoating them as our highest calling but then negate our restricted contributions as being of no consequence?” I thought that was really well said.

Beth: It is. And after having read 150 pastors’ wives’ books, which I have now done, I can tell you that that message is what is trying to be emphasized to women especially in the 90s and the 2000s. That your highest calling is to make your man excel in what he does, and this is rewarding because this is how women are created is to be in this background role. And some of them even say that. That your job is not to be on the front lines. It’s to be behind. And you just need to embrace that and not get frustrated with it because it’s prideful if you get frustrated with it because God has created women to support their man. I mean that’s exactly what the statistic fits into. That women’s calling is to emphasize whatever the man is doing and including doing all the background work that makes everybody go to church in the morning and spiritually ready. But yet, it is because of the husband that the family is saved. It’s so—it’s—yeah.

Sheila: And I have the perfect clip for that. This is from Ligon Duncan. And this was on the Gospel Coalition’s Instagram site.

Beth: Oh yeah. I quote him in my book too.

Sheila: Yes. I am amazed they haven’t taken this reel down because they have gotten so lambasted for this reel. But it’s like they just don’t care. But here is Lucan Duncan explaining about getting kids ready for church.

Lucan Duncan: I think when a man knows that his wife trusts him and respects him he’s more apt to take some of the risks that are involved in spiritual leadership. It’s very easy for men to be passive in the area of spiritual leadership. And let me say I’m not talking about anything complex. I’m talking about being the main person getting everybody to church on Sunday. It’s very easy to leave that to your wife.

Sheila: What I find so crazy about that clip is that it’s assuming that the wife is going to be getting the kids ready for church anyway. If he doesn’t do these things, the clip—the whole context of that is she’s already doing them. We know you’re already doing these things, but you can’t expect your husband to also do them unless you respect him first.

Miranda: Infantilization of men in general and Christian husbands in particular that that’s just one example of is, honestly, infuriating to me as someone who is married to a fully capable, professional adult man, who also happens to be a stay-at-home dad. It’s insulting to me, to him, to every fully grown adult I know.

Sheila: Yeah. It is.

Beth: Yeah. I think that sometimes what people don’t realize is how bad this is for men too. Is teaching men that they—that their success is completely dependent upon the people who are pushing from behind. And if those people don’t push in the right way, then you can’t do it. Just think about the impact that that has on children being taught that type of thing. On husbands, it’s almost a recipe for failure within marriages, which I know Sheila can talk all about that. But yeah.

Sheila: Yeah. It really is. Okay. So I’m not even sure they believe this anyway because they know that it’s women who are getting the kids ready for church. They know that it’s women who are doing a lot of this work in many of these families. Not in all obviously. My husband was full participant. Your husbands are full participants because they are grown adults. But in many of these complementarian churches, it is women who are doing most of this work. But then the result of it, which is what Miranda brought up earlier, is that churches are using this to say our main outreach is going to be to men. And our main focus is going to be to men. And I want to start this part of the conversation by playing a clip by Matt Chandler where he is actually saying that his job—he sees his job as preaching to the men.

Matt Chandler: On a whole, our girls are—they love that I go out—because I’ve said it publically. I teach to men. That’s who I’m talking to. I teach to men. On the stage, I’m not trying—I’ve seen—people have given me the books. Here’s how you preach in such a way that includes the woman. I go after the men. That’s how I understand the Scriptures. That’s how I understand. I want to go after them. I want to charge them. I want to push them. I want to—and if anything, it’s just been applauded—

Sheila: So yeah. I just can’t believe he said that out loud. This is mind boggling to me. So he’s basically admitting that he isn’t a shepherd to the women in his church.

Beth: I mean that they have constructed womanhood he can’t be a shepherd to her because she’s dangerous to him. And so the only thing that you can do is construct these types of ministries where everything pushes towards the men. And then the idea is that the men then will instill that within their homes and that the women work underneath in these very carefully controlled types of ways where they’re always underneath male leadership, and they’re separated from the male leadership because, otherwise, it might create an appearance of evil if the—and so I mean they’ve created this whole culture that shelters the leadership from having experiences with women and then being told that women’s spiritual leadership doesn’t really matter because it’s the men who impact salvation more. And so it justifies their not wanting—it justifies their separation from women. That’s exactly it. It justifies their separation from women.

Miranda: Yeah. And it justifies or reinforces the idea that when women do take any kind of leadership, spiritual or otherwise, they’re usurping the man’s rightful place. And this statistic that usurpation then is going to ripple down to the whole family. Because if you’re the one that’s exerting your spiritual leadership as the wife, your kids aren’t going to follow. So your job needs to be to even cajole your husband into being the spiritual leader of the home so that your kids can be saved and you can kind of fulfill your expected role as a submissive and supportive wife. Not a partner.

Sheila: And that is so manipulative. So then the only option a woman has is to passively aggressively manipulate him to fulfill his role.

Miranda: And that’s what the advice is. So much of the advice that you’ve looked into is teaching women how to manipulate their husbands into doing things they don’t necessarily want to do or that don’t come naturally.

Beth: I was just going to say. As long as we’re not manipulating them, we’re only manipulating them in the way that the church wants us to which is making them into spiritual leaders. That’s the only correct sort of manipulation women can do.

Sheila: Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So they say, hey, we’re going to reach the men. I’m going to pastor the men. But then, in all too many cases, this turns into so, therefore, we don’t need women’s ministries. Because if you have a situation where the pastor is not shepherding the women, he says I’m not here for the women, well, then where do the women go in a church if they want some spiritual nourishments, if they want some counsel, if they just need some advice? Usually, it would be to a women’s ministry leader. And these churches don’t have any females on staff in that position. But increasingly, churches are getting rid of women’s ministries, and they’re getting rid of the places where women usually have been able to use their gifts.

Beth: My question, are they getting rid of women’s ministries? Or are they defunding women’s ministries? And making it all sort of volunteer basis so that it’s not—

Sheila: Oh no. It’s actually getting rid.

Beth: It’s getting rid too. Okay.

Sheila: It’s getting rid. Yeah. Let me read to you. I asked this on social media when I was getting ready to do this podcast because I’ve heard Lakepointe Church, for instance, with Josh Howerton that’s been in the news a lot ever since I shared that wedding night clip that went viral. Amanda Cunningham—I hope that’s her last name. I talk to her all the time, but I forget. Anyway, she used to run the women’s ministries at one of the campuses of Lakepointe. The main one. Rockwall. And she’s gone on the Julie Roys show to talk about how they got rid of women’s ministry. So they had people willing to serve. They had tons of volunteers. They had qualified women. They had people willing to staff everything, and they got rid of it because—at Rockwall—supposedly because they wanted all the campuses to offer the same thing. And so they promised, instead, we would do one or two big events a year, but that hasn’t happened. So these women who had been getting together and who had been able to exercise their leadership gifts now no longer have those opportunities. And when I asked about this on social media, I said, “Has your church done this,” I was inundated by messages from women saying, “Yes. Our church got rid of women’s ministry in favor of men’s ministry a few years ago.” So I’ve had reports (beep) Church did that. I had one woman said (beep), which is in North Carolina. They stopped allowing a popular and longstanding discovery Bible study group to meet along with some other women led groups over the last 10 years. They also drove away many women who led or did a lot of the work of several ministries. And then they added a bunch of guys’ events like fitness and brewery and sports related meet ups. When women complained they wanted to be included in social events too, pastor said men needed the social events to entice them to get involved in church. So women wanted to study the Bible and had people ready to lead those groups and met resistance while men needed to be coaxed for just entertainment. And that was emphasized.

Beth: Anyway, this is coming back. An experience right before we left our church. So my mom has led Bible study all of her life. She still leads Bible. She had one of the most popular Bible studies at the church we were at. Tons of women were in it. And the pastor was getting increasingly suspicious of the amount of influence she exerted within that Bible study. And towards the end, right before we left, they rearranged all of the women’s Bible studies, and they took away those individual Bible studies. And they put them all in a big group together where the material was overseen by the pastor and could only be taught by some select people. And then there were discussion group leaders. Essentially, it really did completely wreck the type of women’s Bible studies that had been really popular and had been run. And I’m now actually wondering if that paradigm fits in to this. I’m not for sure. But it sounds similar to the things that Sheila is saying. So I’m curious about that now.

Sheila: Yeah. I have a long testimony, and it’s really good. And he said that I could use the whole thing. So I want to read it because this really illustrates what’s going on. And this is from Christ Church of the Valley, which is a multisite church in Arizona. You can actually read their handbook. And I’m going to put a picture, if you’re watching on YouTube, of part of their handbook of their church on the screen. And it says this, “Who are we trying to reach? Number one, we reach the man, so we can reach the whole family.” And then they share the stat, of course. And they quote it from David Murrow, Why Men Hate Going to Church, whereas David Murrow quote Promise—it’s just all—again, it’s a circular loop. “Two, reach the younger generation, so we have a future. And three, reach our neighbors, so we can change our culture.” But the aim is to reach the man. And I want to read what this guy said. He was on staff. He said, “Christ Church of the Valley has prided itself on this reach the man, so we can reach the whole family strategy going back as far as 2006 when I first came on staff as a graphic designer. As part of the on boarding process for new employees, we were given the book by David Morrow, Why Men Hate Going to Church. That book is where much often referred to talking point of, “When a Mother comes to faith in Christ, the rest of the family follows 17%,”—just the stat—“comes from. One of my first major responsibilities as a designer on the MarComm Team was to help establish a target audience profile, which was a wholly made up profile of an affluent male in the suburbs of Phoenix. The only actual data that was used was salary data from the neighborhood the church was located in. The profile was similar in nature to the old Saddleback Sam concept from Rick Warren's book. CCV's target was a man named Mike Haas. Mike was a fictional profile we made up with a stock photo of a middle-aged man. He played golf, wore expensive watches, drove a Land Rover, was married with 2 kids, who played sports, was financially successful but also in debt. Once that profile was created, we used it to inform literally everything we did as a church. From marketing campaigns, to the way services were designed, and even into who we hired. They had to look like, talk, and act like Mike Haas would. The fictional profile, in addition to the strategy to reach the man, so we can reach the whole family, permeated every single aspect of ministry for the entire church, but especially the MarComm team. We were instructed not to use feminine colors, fonts, or photography in designing marketing materials. I remember creating a Mother's Day graphic in my first year on staff and I had to make it look as masculine as possible while still appealing to mothers. It was a lot. Eventually, the strategy also informed a narrowing of our focus by cutting women's ministry. Back in 2006 when I started, the women's ministry was thriving. They would do quarterly events where they would attract hundreds of women. But they would always use the excuses like we moved women's ministry into the Small Groups ministry where women can connect more intimately. In 2015, after nearly a decade of using the Mike Haas fictional profile as our guiding light as a church, the leadership decided to quietly let that fade into the background. The staff was growing quite a bit and the more staff that found out about the Mike Haas profile, especially the female staff, the more chatter began spreading around about it in a negative way. So in an effort to quell any of further objection, it became more of a background thing as opposed to a regularly talked about. In 2017, the founding pastor retired and passed the baton to one of the younger executive pastors, Ashley Wooldridge. Ashley, a male, is a massive proponent of the reach the male, so we can reach the family strategy.” And he goes on to talk about what’s happened since. I’ll leave some of that out because I think it’s a little bit identifying to people who are working there now. But he has since resigned. He resigned in 2022. But that’s how this stuff gets played out. That’s why this statistic matters.

Beth: Did it play out in Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill? I mean that clearly was a church that was designed to reach men. I don’t know. This is an honest question. Did this statistic influence him at all? I wonder.

Sheila: Yeah. We should Google Mark Driscoll 93%.

Beth: We should Google that and see because it sounds exactly like—that was some of that—the strategy behind Mars Hill was to reach the men. I don't know. Anyway, we can check on that one.

Miranda: The definition of who is the man we’re trying to reach is so—it’s so narrowly defined. Of course, churches do this to women as well.

Beth: Stereotyping now.

Miranda: Yeah. The stereotyping. Well, this is what men—these are the colors and these are the activities and everything that men are attracted to. I mean it’s annoying at best. It’s insulting to the many men I know who look at that stuff and are like that—I’m not interested in that at all—who would prefer the role that gets placed on a woman. The nurturing or the leading family devotions, those—whatever that might be. Who see that as more aligned with their natural personality and dispositions. But then they’re being told, well, you’re not really a godly man because these are the things you’re supposed to want from a church.

Beth: Right. Right.

Sheila: Heaven forbid you see pink on Mother’s Day.

Beth: Oh my gosh.

Sheila: But, again, here’s what’s happening. And I think Lakepointe Church is a perfect example because there we have the pairing of the two things. So Josh Howerton is sharing the stat, but he’s also cutting women’s ministry. And so all of these women who had had leadership positions in the church, who had had a way to exercise their gifts, to learn public speaking, to get to study the Bible and teach the Bible, that’s now taken away.

Beth: Yeah. And you think about the legacy of this after you have a generation, a decade, of churches that are focusing only on developing male leaders and focusing and putting their money—their money, literally—into all of this and then it reinforces for these women how their job is only to follow and support the men and that there is lots of gendered restrictions on what they can or cannot do in the church. One of the things that just continually strikes me is how young this theology is that infantilizes the male and subordinates the woman in this type of way. But even with how young it is, it really just took that 1986 to 2006 continuous reinforcement that has now created a whole generation of women that that’s all they know. And so you can think about now if it goes up that one step even more, which emphasizing primarily men reaching out to them because they bring in the rest of the family, what is the impact of that on the future of the church? It’s somewhat terrifying.

Miranda: I see it. I live in that impact. I’m teaching undergraduate and master students, who are preparing for ministry. And of my undergraduate students, approaching 50% are female. But I look at—the questions they’re asking. I feel called to ministry, but my ministry will have to take a backseat to my husband—whatever my husband does. Or questioning what if I know more about the Bible than my husband does. Well, what if you do? That’s okay. But then very practically my female students do not get hired at the same rate as male students do. And even in churches that ostensibly fully support and ordain women, the reality playing that out isn’t lived out in the—numerically. And a lot of the reason, whether they’re citing the statistic or not, a lot of the reason is that notion that they have to appeal to men and that men are not going to be comfortable with seeing a woman preach or the sound of a woman’s voice or—there’s all kinds of research on those kinds of restrictions. So it’s not just the statistic itself. It’s the whole culture that the statistic embodies. But there are hundreds, thousands, of called and equipped women who are educated and ready to serve and called by God, who the church—well, you’re not a man. Therefore, your impact is not going to be great. The return on investment of hiring you is not going to be as high, so we need to hire this type of man. Of course, also disenfranchises the men who don’t fit that type.

Sheila: Right.

Beth: I didn’t really think about the connections between this podcast and my pastors’ wife book. But everything that you’re saying—I mean this is exactly what women are being taught. This is why women are being taught that your ministry is to be a pastor’s wife. If you are called to ministry, you are called to be a supporter of men. And it’s just the impact that that has. Now I want to go back through all the pastors’ wife books and look for this 93%. I might have to do that.

Sheila: Yeah. And see if it’s there.

Beth: I bet it’s there. I bet it’s there.

Sheila: But, of course, now what we’re seeing in the last few years has started to happen for the first time ever women are leaving the church faster than men are.

Beth: Yeah. That’s exactly right.

Sheila: That’s the fruit of this. When you tell women, you don’t matter. When you tell women, you can fulfill your greatest calling, and it still isn’t going to be that influential because it’s only the man that really matters. When you deny women any opportunities to use their gifts and even get rid of the places, the very, very, very limited few places that they could, why would you expect women to say?

Beth: Right. Yeah.

Miranda: Yeah. Absolutely.

Sheila: So let’s do better. Okay?

Beth: It’s sobering. Yes. Yeah.

Miranda: And there are churches that do it well. It’s not like this needs to be invented. There are churches that do—not use these kinds of statistics and don’t set up men and women in these hierarchies and things like that. It’s not actually that hard not to do it. It might be hard to unlearn it.

Beth: Right.

Miranda: But there are models. It’s not reinventing a theology that doesn’t exist or a history that has never existed. It really is returning to what the church used to do and what some churches have always continued to do.

Beth: I think, Miranda, the way you ended that article was let’s cite our sources. And if people just walked away just being like, “Hey, next time somebody gives me a stat, I’m going to ask where it came from,” you know what? That would be amazing. If we started questioning where people got their information from and started embarrassing our pastors when they—I mean, honestly, if you’re using this stat, you—somebody needs to call it out and tell you. And that, of course, causes a lot of people embarrassment. But if that’s what it takes to get people to start doing reputable research, then let’s—then that’s what it takes. So don’t accept information that you don’t know where it came from.

Sheila: Amen.

Miranda: The reason my students lose points on assignments when they don’t cite their sources.

Beth: That’s exactly right.

Sheila: And primary sources. Primary sources, not secondary sources. So Tim Clinton citing an article, which cited a—no. That’s not good enough. I want to know where the sturdy came from. Yeah.

Beth: Right. Exactly.

Sheila: Well, thank you very much. This has been such a good conversation. And I hope that we have completely demolished this stat but also shown how this matters. Because when we spread information that isn’t true, it has repercussions on the church and on women and on everybody.

Beth: It does.

Sheila: And it’s not okay. Not okay. So let’s stop doing it. Stop, stop, stop. Okay, Beth. Tell us where we can find you and where we can preorder your new book.

Beth: Oh yeah. I’m mostly on social media. I mostly live on Threads and Instagram. Those are my favorite two places. You can also find me @bethallisonbarr. And you also can find—it’s starting to get out there—Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry. It is not a book about how hard the pastor’s wife job is. It is a history book about the origin of the pastor’s wife role and how it intersects with the decline of women’s ordination. And like The Making of Biblical Womanhood, it is a sweep of history from ancient, Medieval, Reformation, and up to modern and focuses specifically on the Southern Baptist Convention including a yet not talked about sex abuse—clergy abuse case that I found and followed and tell the whole story in the next to last chapter. So there’s quite a lot in it.

Sheila: I am so looking forward to that one. Very, very much looking forward to that. And, Miranda, tell us where we can find you.

Miranda: Yeah. I am mostly on Facebook because I’m old and intimidated by social media, I guess. But I’m Miranda Zapor Cruz Kingdom and Country. The bulk of my academic work, actually, focused on faith and politics. So gender, women’s ordination, all of that is also a passion of mine, but it’s something I more live in than write about. But I also have a book on faith and politics that just came out in August, Faithful Politics: Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters from IVP Academic.

Sheila: And that is—this is a perfect time to get this as we are all thinking about politics right now. So I will put a link to that in the podcast notes as well. So thank you very much, my friends. It’s been great to have you.

Beth: Well, yeah. It’s been great seeing you again, Sheila. And nice to meet you, Miranda.

Miranda: Nice to meet both of you.

Sheila: Really appreciate them joining us on the Bare Marriage podcast. And before we go, I want to play one last clip. This is from the J. D. Greear. We opened the podcast with him, president of the SBC. And this is the conclusion that he draws from that stat.

J.D. Greear: I really don’t think I’m over speaking or hopefully not going outside of the Bible when I say this. But I really believe the key to the whole thing is the father. And if we turn this thing around, it’s going to be because the fathers get engaged.

Sheila: Once again people are using this stat to say we need to reach the men. I agree we need to reach the men. But we can’t do it at the expense of women. We are all image bearers of God. We are all part of the body. And the church needs all of us, not just men. So let’s get rid of bad stats, and let’s invest in good churches. So thank you for joining me on the Bare Marriage podcast. And join us again next week where we’re going to be talking about purity culture with Dr. Camden Morgante. See you then. Bye-bye.