Content warning for mentions of sexual assault and stories about sexual harassment.

Today, Suzie and Sy are talking about women in the church, Suzie’s experiences with both discrimination and empowerment in Christian spaces, systemic and personal aspects of church patriarchy, how sexism manifests in institutions that both forbid and affirm women leaders, and a lot more.

Mentioned in the episode: Diana Butler Bass’s explanation of Elizabeth Schrader’s work.

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show and subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com.

Hosts

Suzie Lahoud – follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to shakethedust@ktfpress.com and we may answer your question on a future episode.

Transcript

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]

Suzie Lahoud: I remember growing up, walking on the street and just having this feeling of eyes being on me and getting catcalled and just wanting to disappear. And having that same feeling kind of triggered in the context of the church, was just so horrifying to me. I just so wish that as a young woman growing up in church, that they would have done a better job of supporting and empowering women to protect ourselves. I feel like instead, all that we were taught was to cover up and to not be too enticing.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Suzie Lahoud: Welcome to Shake The Dust: Leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God. I'm Suzie Lahoud.

Sy Hoekstra: And I’m Sy Hoekstra. Today we're going to be talking about women in the church, giving Suzie an opportunity to talk about some of the times that she's felt discriminated against or empowered being in church spaces, and we're going to talk about some of the systemic and interpersonal factors that are at play when it comes to patriarchy in the church. Just because of some scheduling issues, Jonathan Walton is not with us this week. We are going to have some content warnings for this conversation in the show notes. I'm not going to say them now because we haven't had the conversation yet. So I don't know what all is going to be content warning worthy, but they will be in the show notes if you want to check.

[The show notes include content warnings for mentions of sexual assault and discussion of sexual harassment.]

Suzie Lahoud: Please remember to take a look at ktfpress.com and consider subscribing to our publication. You'll get our weekly newsletter where the three of us send media suggestions for your discipleship and political education as we leave colonized faith. You'll get access to all the bonus episodes of this show and support all our work on writing, podcasting, book publishing, and keeping our material accessible for our disabled readers and listeners. Also, please write in to shakethedust@ktfpress.com with any questions you have about this episode or any other episode you've heard. Our next episode is going to be a season finale question and answer session. We've already gotten some great questions and we're excited to hear more. Write in or send us a voicemail as an attachment.

Sy Hoekstra: Okay. So let's start with this Suzie, if you don't mind. I'm falsely asking your permission, like we haven't talked about it, if it's okay to start with this ahead of time.

[laughter]

Suzie Lahoud: Permission granted.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, thank you so much. We have talked a couple times on this show. You have said a couple times on this show that you growing up sometimes felt like you were a second-class citizen in the kingdom of God because you are a woman. Can you just expand a little bit on why you felt that way?

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah, I mean, so it's something that I feel like is just kind of in the air that you breathe growing up in white evangelical spaces as a young woman. That just the subtle messages that you pick up are that you're created to be in sort of a servile position. And the way that I justified that for myself theologically as I got older, because this was something I very much bought into— on top of this, I was very much into complementarian theology— and the way I justified it again, was Christ came in a servant role, so as a woman, it should be okay that that's what I'm created for, that's what I'm supposed to do. Which is a really beautiful concept, except that I was actually using that to justify a lower view of myself that I had imbibed and that was presented to me continuously in subtle and not so subtle ways.

And so the difference there is that Christ coming as a servant is not that Christ is worth less [laughs]. If anything, Christ is the God that we worship, and so the way that that was then lived out by myself, was that I really believed that I was worth less than the people that I was serving. And that I was never meant to have a role that would in any way put me at the center or in the spotlight, and it was because I didn't deserve to be there and I didn't have the gifting that that required. And because it would've been wrong for me to do something like that. And so it’s subtle ways that you're kind of, you get your hand slapped if you're — any hint of you having authority over a man or, heaven forbid, trying to teach a man in any way.

And specific ways that I saw this growing up, so my parents as missionaries, they would travel around to a lot of different churches and they would be speakers at conferences and things like that. They were sort of on that circuit, and I was always really proud as a little girl, seeing my mom get up on stage and share. It was usually my dad would be invited to share and give a sermon and he would preach, and then he would invite my mom up, and she would essentially give another sermon [laughs]. My mom to this day is an incredibly gifted speaker and communicator and storyteller and just a real force of nature. And again, it always made me feel so proud to see her doing that.

But I remember one conference that we attended, it was a college ministry conference. And at one of the sessions, they were getting feedback from the students. And this like 19, 20-year-old kid stood up and chastised my mom in front of everyone for thinking that she had the right to stand up on stage and teach any man anything. And my mom to her credit was wise and mature enough to not take the bait and to bounce back from it pretty quickly and actually finish the conference in the way that she had been requested to lead. But for me, I cried myself to sleep that night and I'll never forget the shame that I felt by association, because he used the Bible to justify this really inappropriate take down of my mom as a woman who — how dare she think that she could do that? And so it's just really, it's things like that.

And then I remember in college, I was a student leader in my campus ministry and was actually chosen to be one of the two. Every year they would have a guy and a girl share the final parting words to the graduating class at our weekly meeting, and I was selected by my peers to be the one to give the final message. And I remember a woman that I deeply respected hinting to me that she felt like maybe it wasn't quite appropriate for me to be doing that. Even as a college student speaking to a room of other college students, she was hinting to me that she felt like maybe that wasn't my place to be standing up there.

Sy Hoekstra: Just solely because you’re getting up and talking at all. You're not giving a sermon, you're not filling the role of a pastor, you're just talking to your friends basically.

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah, because it was a mixed room, it was men and women. And up until that point, my role as a student leader was mostly leading other girls in Bible studies and stuff like that. But yeah, the implication was that that would've been inappropriate.

Sy Hoekstra: So look, a couple things I would want to point out there. One is, A, in that case in colleg...

Sexism, Servanthood, and Second-Class Citizens