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Today I'm talking with Dr. Steven Tracy, author of "To Heal or Harm," about how scripture has been twisted to keep abuse victims trapped. We're diving into passages that discuss things like, "wives submit," "God hates divorce," and "a gentle answer turns away wrath" to show what they actually mean in context. And spoiler alert: none of them tell victims to stay in abuse. If you've ever felt like the Bible was being used against you, or if you're a pastor who wants to understand how to truly help abuse victims, this conversation is essential.

PLUS: A special announcement with Rebecca you won’t want to miss!

TO HEAL OR TO HARM: Get the book here!

COMING SOON:

Subscribe to the Good Fruit Faith channel for our Love & Respect podcast coming soon!

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• Mending the Soul website
• Reporting on John MacArthur excommunicating Eileen Gray for leaving her abusive husband

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

• The Great Sex Rescue 
• She Deserves Better
• The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
•  The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
•  and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

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We're tackling three really problematic things that have happened recently with evangelical leaders that show just how low the bar has gotten for men. From Jonathan Podluka announcing he wants to sleep with multiple beautiful women, to pastors responding to Philip Yancey's affair by saying "it could be any of us," to Tim Challies telling people in miserable marriages to just stick it out until they die—it's all connected to this theology that refuses to hold men accountable and tells women they just need to accept it. The common thread? A theology of male hierarchy that steals intimacy from marriages, justice from victims, and Jesus from people who are hurting.

THE MARRIAGE YOU WANT:

Get our book that corrects this horrible teaching! It's got a study guide and video series too!

Subscribe to the Good Fruit Faith channel for our Love & Respect podcast coming soon!

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• Tim Challies' article on if you chose poorly
• My article about Philip Yancey
• My reel with the clips of Jonathan Pokluda
• Sheila's article about Jonathan Podluka’s 2023 sermon, and my new op ed 
• Sarah Diefendorf's peer-reviewed article
• My recommended books on porn
• Our podcast on the 5-point complementarian plan for marriage

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

• The Great Sex Rescue 
• She Deserves Better
• The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
•  The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
•  and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Send us Fan Mail

Today I'm talking with Lydia Grace about her incredible new book, Bible Truth About Women. Lydia grew up in the ultra-conservative IBLP circles and went to seminary to answer her own questions about what the Bible really says about women's roles. What she discovered was shocking: there are ore than 120 misleading tactics that complementarians use to prop up male authority that simply isn't in the original Greek. This is the comprehensive resource we've been waiting for that addresses every major passage about women in one place.

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• Get Bible Truth about Women by Lydia Kaiser! Kindle available now, or Pre-order the paperback
• Bare Marriage podcast playlists for people getting introduced to our podcast

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

• The Great Sex Rescue 
• She Deserves Better
• The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
•  The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
•  and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Send us Fan Mail

We're kicking off 2026 by teaching you how to think critically about Christian marriage and relationship advice! Rebecca and I walk through some really problematic articles and social media posts - from the Gospel Coalition's piece against therapy to Tilly Dillehay’s tandem bike marriage metaphor - and show you exactly why they make us feel unsafe. We'll teach you how to spot red flags, question who benefits from this advice, and why prioritizing your safety and discernment isn't selfish - it's Biblical.

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• The Desiring God article on tandem bikes
• The Gospel Coalition article on therapy
• Our book The Marriage You Want, and the video series that goes with it
• The study on followership behaviour

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

• The Great Sex Rescue 
• She Deserves Better
• The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
•  The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
•  and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Send us Fan Mail

We're coming full circle from our podcast on right-wing authoritarianism to talk about that viral Oklahoma student essay and why Christians rallying around bad arguments makes all Christians look terrible. Then Keith and I get vulnerable about how our faith has changed over the last few years—from realizing faith isn't just about beliefs, to understanding who Jesus actually called out (spoiler: not "the world"), to reframing the concept of sin as form of brokenness that God truly understands and has deep compassion for (as opposed to the angry God who is mad at us all the time). We’ll also share some of the exciting things coming in 2026!

JOIN OUR FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN!

Help us raise money to fund our research, our new podcast docuseries, and our translation projects! Give through the Good Fruit Faith Initiative (tax deductible within the United States) or join our Patreon!

CHECK OUT THE RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• The Whole Story puberty course
• The Great Sex Rescue

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• Our podcast on Right Wing Authoritarianism

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

• The Great Sex Rescue 
• She Deserves Better
• The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
•  The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
•  and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Send us Fan Mail

Keith and I went through 10 clips from evangelical influencers and pastors that have been driving people crazy all year. We break down why Josh Howerton's claims about conservative mental health don't hold up, why blaming women for divorce is absurd, and how complementarian teaching about male authority actually contradicts what Jesus taught.

JOIN OUR FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN!

Help us raise money to fund our research, our new podcast docuseries, and our translation projects! Give through the Good Fruit Faith Initiative (tax deductible within the United States) or join our Patreon!

CHECK OUT THE RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• The Whole Story puberty course
• The Marriage You Want
• Our Great Sex Rescue Toolkit to respond to pastors and friends

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• 2025 study on conservativism & mental health
• The 2015 study on conservatives and happiness
• The 2021 study on women's health in sexist churches
• Our study on women's sexual health in conservative spaces
• Our podcast on why women seek divorce
• Report on Child Marriage in the US 
• Report on Child Marriage in Canada 
• Our article responding to Josh Howerton's claims that evangelicals have better marriages

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

• The Great Sex Rescue 
• She Deserves Better
• The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
•  The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
•  and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Send us Fan Mail

It's episode 307 of the Bare Marriage podcast! Holly Fletcher joins us to talk about her AMAZING new book Missionary Kids. I devoured it in one sitting. We need to listen to the stories of these kids, because they're a microcosm of white evangelicalism!

JOIN OUR FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN!

Help us raise money to fund our research, our new podcast docuseries, and our translation projects! Give through the Good Fruit Faith Initiative (tax deductible within the United States) or join our Patreon!

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• Check out Missionary Kids by Holly Berkley Fletcher
• Holly's Substack: A Zebra Without Stripes
• Holly on Blue Sky
• Instagram
• Threads
• Etsy 
• Our book She Deserves Better

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

• The Great Sex Rescue 
• She Deserves Better
• The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
•  The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
•  and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Send us Fan Mail

Happy American Thanksgiving! We're rerunning one of my favorite episodes from four years ago where Rebecca and I talk about what God is actually like—spoiler: He laughs and takes joy in life, not just suffers on the cross. We also dive into why our Great Sex Rescue research matters and address all those critiques about our methodology (and yes, we're now peer-reviewed, so that critique doesn't really work anymore). Plus, we tackle that awful Missouri pastor story about "trophy wives" and explain why harmful marriage advice is like thalidomide—it might help some people, but that doesn't mean it's not causing serious damage to others.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR

Order Dorothy Greco's book For the Love of Women! Learn why it can feel so difficult to be female in our society, and what we can do about it.

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• Check out The Great Sex Rescue!
• Gretchen Baskerville's book The Life Saving Divorce
• Check out our new YouTube channel, with our five short videos you can share on key topics we keep returning to time and time again!
• Our peer reviewed article in Sociology of Religion
• A longer article I wrote on the Thalidomide analogy

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

• The Great Sex Rescue 
• She Deserves Better
• The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
•  The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
•  and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Send us Fan Mail

Complementarians use a lot of really nice-sounding words to describe their beliefs about gender roles, but when you actually break down what they mean, they're not talking about roles at all—they're talking about hierarchy. In this episode, Keith and I decode all the euphemisms like "different roles," "servant leadership," and "his headship is for your protection" to show what complementarians are really saying: that men should be in authority over women. The problem is, when you actually implement these beliefs in marriage, we see relationships struggle—and the statistics bear that out. And we work directly against the gospel, putting the husband in the place of Jesus. 

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR

Order Dorothy Greco's book For the Love of Women which just launched this week!

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• "The Marriage You Want" book on Amazon, or get the curriculum and video series from Baker Books
• "The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood" by Philip Payne
• "How God Sees Women" by Terran Williams
• Rebecca Groothuis essay on "Equal in Being, Unequal in Function"
• Previous podcast episode on John Piper's "harsh husband" advice 

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

• The Great Sex Rescue 
• She Deserves Better
• The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
•  The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
•  and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Send us Fan Mail

We're diving into part two of our discussion on Francine Rivers' "And the Shofar Blew.” While Christian fiction can be inspirational, this novel reinforces dangerous theology about marriage, telling abuse victims to stay and suffer "better," portraying women who report pastoral abuse as liars, and presenting an incredibly sexist view of women's roles in the church as normal and godly. Join me and my friends Merry, Sarah, and Joanna as we unpack why books like these—even though they're just fiction—profoundly shape how Christian women understand marriage, faith, and their own worth.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR

Order Dorothy Greco's book For the Love of Women which just launched this week!

TO SUPPORT US: 

• Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
• And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
• Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
• Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED: 

• Find Sarah McDugal on Facebook
• Sarah's help for women healing from betrayal trauma: www.wildernesstowild.com
• For women navigating high-conflict divorce or custody: My Freedom Navigator
• Find Dr. Merry Lin's book "Rebecoming" and listen in to her Bare Marriage podcast episode!

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!

Check out her books:

• The Great Sex Rescue 
• She Deserves Better
• The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
•  The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
•  and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!

Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.