Saved by the City

They’re stylish, savvy, with podcasts, book deals, and massive Instagram followings. And they’re calling women back to the kitchen.

A new wave of conservative Christian women, many balancing high-powered platforms and hard-charging careers with old-fashioned family values, are gaining influence by promoting traditional gender roles, homemaking aesthetics, and “biblical womanhood.” But beneath the sourdough and matching family outfits is a politically resonant ideology that’s shaping national conversations around gender, faith, and power. On this LIVE Saved By the City episode, recorded in Austin at the Texas Tribune Festival, Katelyn and Roxy host a lively panel to look at what’s behind the rise of these “tradwife” voices, what their popularity says about the cultural moment and why women are leading the charge to rewrite women’s roles.

GUESTS:

Emma Goldberg is a reporter for The New York Times, covering cultural, societal and economic change. Her articles “‘Less Burnout, More Babies’: How Conservatives Are Winning Young Women”  and "The Moms of ‘Momcon’ Are Stressed, but Ready to Party" are essential reading on this topic.

Christine Emba is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a contributing writer for the New York Times, and author of the book Rethinking Sex.

Lauren Southern is a former political activist. Her new memoir "This Is Not Real Life" chronicles her experience as an online conservative influencer and how trying to be a tradwife nearly destroyed her.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Exploring the mystical, the skeptical, and the spiritually surprising with Ross Douthat.

What’s your woo level? In this episode, Katelyn and Roxy run through their most mystical instincts—angels, ghosts, manifesting, energies, astrology—and ask whether modern Christians have grown a little too allergic to spiritual experience. Then New York Times columnist and UFO enthusiast Ross Douthat joins to talk about the persistence of the supernatural, why he thinks religion is still the most rational bet, and the dangers of patchwork spirituality. A funny, curious, and unexpectedly grounding conversation about what might be lurking just beyond the empirical.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Let's call it 'passion fatigue'...

In the days of the early 'aughts, as Millennials began embarking into the workplace, companies noticed these young employees wanted a mission — wanted to feel connected to the work they were doing, even inspired by it. No longer was a paycheck enough, these bright-eyed twentysomethings wanted purpose. And in Christian circles, this generational trend was sanctified and spiritualized. Careers became callings. Jobs became vocations. And all of it could and should be done for the glory of God and for the common good. Extra bonus points if your deepest passions met the world's deepest needs. On this episode, Katelyn and Roxy examine this impulse to elevate paid work to sacred calling — how it has served us and how it has hurt us. We are joined by Karen Swallow Prior as we discuss all the different ways callings can present themselves in our lives. (That's right - callings, plural!).

GUEST:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it the holy spirit or is it a ponytail facelift?

What does it even mean anymore to age with grace in the era of deep plane facelifts and eyelid surgeries and celebrity procedures that have women looking 40 years younger? On this episode of the podcast, Katelyn and Roxy wrestle with tensions and fears about aging ... about why our faces just do not look like our faces in the mirror anymore. And we ask: Is "having some work done" becoming inevitable? Instagram and TikTok are full of posts on the dramatic changes these procedures can create — and they are no longer limited to celebrities. Social media is showing us just how accessible — and gosh darn effective — today's cosmetic procedures have become. But at what cost? Certainly at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars. But what else are we losing if we refuse to grow old?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beware the charismatic pastor?

America has long had a love affair with celebrity — be that of the Hollywood variety or the political ilk. From superstar athletes to celebrity chefs, their woo is not wasted on us. And the history of American Christianity was shaped by men (and a few women) who possessed that irresistible gravitational pull. They held evangelistic revivals, founded denominations and even new religions, and inspired movements. They also sometimes amassed huge amounts of personal wealth, had scandalous affairs and led their followers to commit deadly acts. Charisma has been a powerful tool in the American church and on this episode of the podcast, Katelyn and Roxy talk to historian Molly Worthen about how that tool has been used for good and evil ... and how charismatic politicians have begun to fill the void as religion declines.

Plus: we take a personal Rizz Quiz

GUEST:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The one where our BoOoOos take over ...

We're at the height of spooky season, and what could be spookier than two dudes talking theology? Just kidding, Roxy and Katelyn love the two men who are taking over SBTC this week!John Schmidt, Roxy's husband, returns to talk preaching, Fleabag, and lady editors with Jack Brownfield, who is also an Episcopal priest as well as Katelyn's fiancé. John and Jack discuss their respective callings to pastoral ministry, expectations others may have for priests' wives,  and some relationship tips John and Roxy have learned in their first year-plus of marriage. Jack also recounts his and Katelyn's meet cute, and the boys get both sporty and nerdy by doing a play-by-play with their favorite dead theologians.Don't be scared, Katelyn and Roxy will be back ... after they're done taking over John's and Jack's pulpits.

GUESTS:

The Rev. John Schmidt is the associate rector at Church of the Epiphany in Manhattan. He has broad experience leading teams and communities across difference, especially individuals experiencing food and housing insecurity, and those justice-impacted. He has a deep love of liturgy and people, especially when a community fashions a common life around practices and habits that lead to loving one another and their neighbors well.

The Rev. Jack Brownfield is an associate rector at St Michael's of the Valley outside Pittsburgh. Jack is passionate about preaching and teaching the Good News of God’s free grace toward the world and listening to God’s Word as it is spoken to each of us, here and now. He enjoys connecting theology and history to our lives in the real world, so these subjects are not just shut up in books but  make a difference for how we love and trust God and live with one another.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're on fire for Jesus — and each other.

It's a tale as old as time: young and zealous evangelical co-eds meet in college, fall head over heels, dream of a life in ministry together ... and also of having sex, something they can't do until they get married. So they do — they tie the knot, in front of friends and family and maybe over the concerns of their parents. God called them together, after all! What could go wrong? 

As it turns out, plenty. Such was the case for our guest today, Jen Hatmaker, who married at 19 and for 26 years lived what seemed an enviable evangelical life. A pastor husband, five kids, a home renovation TV show, a thriving career as an author and women's ministry leader. And then it all fell apart.

Katelyn and Roxy, who experienced a similar story, talk with Jen about the evangelical pressure to marry young, the surprising gifts of single life after divorce, and her ongoing spiritual awakening.

GUEST:

Jen Hatmaker is an author, speaker and podcaster with 15 books to her name, including five New York Times best sellers. She is most recently the author of "Awake: A Memoir." 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you there God? It's me, Mushrooms ...

Katelyn and Roxy are what researchers would call "psychedelically naïve." As in, we've never gone on a hallucinogenic trip before. But we're not necessarily psychedelically negative -- we're fascinated by how many people are using psychedelics for spiritual purposes. So when a new study released this summer from Johns Hopkins and NYU on the effects of psilocybin — as in magic mushrooms — on clergy, we knew we had to do an episode on it.

We're guided through this episode by RNS reporter Kathryn Post, who has been talking with the clergy participants of the study for years about their experiences. And, as she notes in her reporting, those experiences were overwhelmingly positive —  96% of the 24 participants retroactively rated one of their psilocybin experiences among the top five most spiritually significant of their lives. We're also joined by one of the clergy participants, Rabbi Zac Kamenetz, who in the years since the study has gone on to found his own organization to support "Jewish psychedelic explorers" around the world.

GUESTS

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who is really winning here?

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's very gruesome and very public assassination on September 10, the debate over his legacy has played out in real time and online. The responses to his death revealing just how fractured we've become. Some called him a martyr, modern-day St. Paul. Others pointed to his history of racist and xenophobic rhetoric and wondered why Christians were valorizing someone who had said such hurtful things. Workers were fired for their social media posts. Jimmy Kimmel was suspended. Pastors faced backlash no matter what they said — or didn't say — from the pulpit.

On this episode, Katelyn and Roxy grapple with how to hold space for both mourning political violence and reckoning with Kirk's troubling legacy. We are joined by New Testament scholar Nijay Gupta, whose viral substack post, "If You Are Elevating Charlie Kirk, Consider Who You Are Crushing Underfoot," wrestled with what it means to remember controversial figures honestly — especially when half the church sees a saint and half sees a devil in disguise.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If every generation of parents has their anxieties, the post-evangelical Millennial parent is perhaps most angsty about how to raise their kids as Christians — without all the baggage. Many parents our age — especially those who grew up evangelical — were raised in a time when Christian parenting books were ubiquitous and none more so than James Dobson's. Dobson, who died this summer, was the founder of Focus on the Family and the impact of his teachings on parenting — from discipline, to parental authority, to obedience, gender and sexuality — is hard to understate. On this episode, Katelyn and Roxy examine Dobson's legacy and the broader Christian parenting empire he helped build. We're joined by author Marissa Franks Burt to discuss what made these teachings so appealing to anxious Christian parents and why so many adult children are now processing the harm.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices