Hey everyone, this is Aubrey from Faith Matters. Today’s episode is a personal one for me—and probably for many of you—especially if you’ve ever found yourself deferring to someone else’s inspiration, or noticing a tendency to believe that someone else’s knowing is more trustworthy than your own.

Our guest, Deidre Nicole Green, is a professor at Graduate Theological Union and a theologian and scholar whose work explores gender, faith, and the Christian life. The starting place for this discussion was Deidre’s just-released Wayfare Magazine article called "Envying Hannah".

At the center of the conversation is a concept called epistemic confidence—a trust in our capacity to receive and recognize truth for ourselves. And while this shows up differently for each of us, research suggests it doesn’t fall evenly. Women, in particular, are often more likely to feel that their knowing needs to be confirmed or mediated by someone with more authority before it really counts.

Deidre helps us see how quickly this gets complicated, especially at church—where the line between agency and people-pleasing can blur without us even realizing it. She invites us to ask harder questions: when does deference begin to erode our connection to the divine? When are we silencing something sacred within ourselves?

And maybe most importantly, what becomes possible when we show up differently—when we act with courage, claim our spiritual authority and sacred agency, and allow ourselves to be fully seen and known… even if it means risking being wrong?

You can read Deidre's piece, "Envying Hannah: Risking Respectability for Spiritual Fidelity" in Issue 7 of Wayfare or online at WayfareMagazine.org now, and you can get a sneak peek inside the issue (including two more essays!) here. You can also read "Finding Truth Together: Epistemic Humility in the Book of Jacob," an excerpt from Deidre's book "Jacob: A Brief Theological Introduction" on WayfareMagazine.org. You can find all these links and more in our weekly newsletter at faithmatters.org.

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Learning to Trust Your Own Inspiration: Deidre Green