← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
An Evangelical Activist Embraces #MeToo
00:14:06
An Evangelical Activist Embraces #MeToo
Loading summary
Transcript36 lines
- [00:00]
A
As summer draws to a close and the kids go back to school, I know I'm going to want to keep in touch with my kids at a price I can afford. Back to school Shopping can be a hassle, but your phone plan shouldn't be. That's why I made the switch to Mint Mobile. For a limited time, Mint mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. So while other parents are sweating overage charges, I have a little bit more room in my budget for cool back to school threads. Say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plan's jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages, Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Dish overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month@mintmobile.com New Yorker that's that's mintmobile.com New Yorker upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
- [01:17]
B
I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, Eliza Griswold talks to Autumn Miles, a devout Christian and the daughter of a Baptist minister. When she filed for divorce from her abusive husband, she was threatened with expulsion from her church. Now she's a leader in a movement to reevaluate the place of women within the evangelical community.
- [01:42]
C
Praise to the name of the Lord.
- [01:47]
D
Earlier this month was the annual conference of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest and most important gathering of evangelical Christians.
- [01:55]
C
Hallelujah. One day we'll see him.
- [01:58]
D
The conference marked a change in direction for the sbc, a growing openness to women and minorities, and a growing distance from the Republican Party of Donald Trump. At the very same time, outside there were protests directed at the church's stance on women's issues, in particular against pastors who have counseled women to tolerate and accept domestic abuse. One of the protesters was Autumn Miles. Miles is an evangelical leader who for some time has been urging reforms within the church because she herself is a survivor of abuse. Autumn Miles spoke with the New Yorker's Eliza Griswold.
- [02:36]
E
Do you think, Autumn, that the MeToo movement has really caused a shift and even a rift within the evangelical community? I mean, are we seeing greater tension between those who want change and those who want to kind of grasp conservative principles?
- [02:54]
C
I think it's doing both. I think a shift needed to happen. It had to happen. We have to do a better job at supporting, helping, and aiding these victims of any kind of violence. That is the heart of Jesus. I know Jesus personally, and I know that he was. Would not want any one of his children abused. A rift. Yeah, that as well. But you know what? A rift. I'm okay with a rift for the shift.
- [03:33]
E
So you've talked to me about the fact that this is just the problem of domestic abuse is really. It's within the church and within a small group of pastors, including those figures like Paige Patterson. Paige Patterson, of course, being the recently ousted president of the sbc, the Southern Baptist Convention. And one of the things that you told me that I found so powerful was that when you heard Patterson's comments saying to a woman who had received, you know, so much abuse at the hands of her husband, to go back, that the idea there of submission and its. Its scriptural roots. Right. Is part of what your own abuser used against you. Could you talk to us a little bit about that?
- [04:19]
C
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. It is very, very often that I hear that abusers, if they are in the church, will tell their victims, you have to submit to me. And in order to control their victim. And the victim, knowing that that scripture is placed in the Bible, wives submit to their husband is what I'm. Is what I'm talking about. They will do whatever the abuser says. So the very word submission in the Bible is actually the word hupitasa, which means to willingly place yourself under. It's not a force. It's a willingly placing yourself under an individual. And we see that played out with Jesus on the cross. He willingly submitted himself to the authority of God and went to the cross. When I heard the comments, the dialogue back and forth that was said by Paige Patterson, I cringed. This is not just happening in the sbc. This is happening in churches, period. And it's a great opportunity for all churches to look at what's happened very recently in the SBC and say, I don't want that to happen to my church. I need to put a plan in place to protect these precious victims that even as we speak, Eliza, are right now suffering in silence while we're speaking. There's a woman that's involved in a church that's getting beat up by her spouse. Right now. We have to do a better job at taking a nod from what happened at the SBC this past week and changing the entire church culture by telling the church at large, domestic violence is not okay. And the reason it's not okay is because it's not the heart of Jesus.
- [06:23]
E
Okay, so you married your high school sweetheart? Yeah. Mm.
- [06:28]
C
Yes.
- [06:29]
E
Okay, so let's talk a little bit about that first marriage. What was that like?
- [06:34]
C
Well, I started dating my high school boyfriend when I was about 15 years old. And, you know, it started off pretty typical. I was very infatuated with him. I. You know, I remember him just slowly looking at me and saying things like, you're fat. Which. What girl wants to hear that? Nobody. You're ugly. You know, little things like that. You're stupid. And at first it jarred me, like, why is he saying this to me? But we had been in a relationship long enough to where I felt like I loved him, and maybe he was telling me the truth, and he asked me to marry him. I said yes. We were married nine months later, and things got really bad after we got married.
- [07:27]
E
You've told me that at some point, the sadistic games were so bad that you would even say, you know, just hit me. Just get it over with.
- [07:35]
C
I remember it very clearly. One night, everything was so bad, psychologically and mentally. The games that he was playing with my mind. And really, even at that point, I was probably playing with my own mind. Lies that I had believed and stuff like that. There was one night that I lay in my bed, I had not gone to sleep. I was terrified of death. I thought, at this point, God hates me. My husband hates me. I can't tell anyone because my dad is the pastor of this church. I don't want to embarrass them by telling my parents that I am in a bad marriage. And so I started contemplating suicide. And as I was really planning my own death, the spirit of God spoke to me and said, do you remember me?
- [08:32]
E
I think it's so remarkable and important to underscore that for you. You know, it's really this personal experience that you had with God that gave you the confidence to get out of your marriage. Right. That's really. Yeah. So just to pause on that and say, you know, that's. That is what motivated you. Because I think sometimes from an outside point of view, we don't understand that kind of flexibility within the church, that kind of empowerment. You know, and I think it's important just to note that. So you got up the courage, you know, to ask for a divorce, to file for the divorce, to tell your parents, who were remarkable in supporting you, and then you had to tell the church. So you went to a group of church elders, tell us what happened.
- [09:19]
C
The way the Baptist church that I grew up in was structured is that there was a deacon board, and that's kind of how they handle these types of situations. And they looked at me and they said, you know, if you file for divorce, God's never going to use you. You have to rescind the divorce. And if I decided to follow in my keeping my divorce, they were going to do what's called church discipline, which is to kick me out of the church. And so what these men were telling me didn't resonate with the Jesus I had met at 3am in the morning. So you're dead on. My courage came from my relationship in Christ. And I know that I was not the only situation that was handled poorly by the church that I was in.
- [10:18]
E
So when we're dealing with some of what are the biggest hot button issues in the church today, one of the things that's come to the fore as a result of the MeToo movement is the role of women's leadership in evangelical communities. And that's really being questioned in profound ways. Complementarianism has to do with church leadership and the relationship between a man and a woman being able to lead a church. Now, in, in conservative circles, people will say women cannot be leaders in the church. At the other end, people will say, you know, women can be head pastors. You lie in a role that says men probably need to be head pastors, but men and women can form co pastoring teams, and that's biblical. Is that accurate?
- [11:06]
C
That's exactly where I lie, right in the middle.
- [11:08]
E
Okay. So some people might think that something like complementarianism, which rests the ultimate authority with a man in the relationship, might give men, like the remaining hierarchy within the church, might give men license to demean women or to put themselves over women. Have you wrestled with that and can you help us understand that a little bit?
- [11:33]
C
I would say not if it's done well. You know, this is going to, you know, not everyone's going to agree with this, but I have seen it done well and I've seen pastors serve the women in their church. So there is a way that it can be done very unhealthily, but there is also a way that it can be done very Beautifully where the pastor is serving. And so that is where I'm coming from. When I see husband and wife co pastors, I see it's a very beautiful thing. You know, the woman is not less important than the man, and the man is not less important than the woman.
- [12:20]
E
Do you think that the evangelical community needs to rethink some of its approaches to gender roles in general?
- [12:28]
C
I think having this conversation is a great start to talking about the gender roles in the church. It's a great conversation to have. If pastors are saying, I believe in women, women should be in leadership positions in their church. They need to back up what they're saying. I believe that this is a moment for us to learn from, for us to grow from. We can't just breeze past this moment. We need to take a hard look at our organizations and make some changes based on what we find.
- [13:06]
E
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you told me you. I couldn't even believe it, but that you've been called a heretic for this work.
- [13:13]
C
Sure. Of course, when you put yourself out there at all, you're going to get all sorts of things. You're going to be called a heretic. People aren't going to understand. They don't have the same passion. They haven't lived the same story that you have. But you know what, Eliza? If I can help one woman that is suffering today, I'll take all of those insults that are hurled at me.
- [13:38]
E
So if you could make practical changes, what would they look like?
- [13:42]
C
Really, not respecting women is a matter of the heart. This is where we need to take a hard look inside of ourselves and say, listen, are we not elevating women to positions because of pride, because of religion, because of tradition? And if any of those things are the case, we need to change that. This is a time, Eliza, where our leadership and our pastors might need to repent.
- [14:10]
E
That's a word that I hear, and I repent. Okay, so what does that mean, Autumn, can you tell us what. What does repentance look like in practical terms in the 21st century?
- [14:24]
C
Acknowledging that you're wrong. It's as simple as that. Acknowledging that you're wrong. Repent is one of those words where it makes everyone cringe and we don't use it very much because it's not politically correct. However it's needed, we have to get past our pride in some of these areas. Say, you know what? I've been prideful. I haven't thought about this with grace. I haven't handled these situations as well as I could and acknowledge that we're wrong. Ask Jesus to forgive us and move forward.
- [15:14]
B
That was Autumn Miles talking with Eliza Griswold.
- [15:19]
C
Katie.
- [15:21]
F
I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial director. I'm Michael Colori, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.
- [15:28]
C
And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show Uncanny Valley is all about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.
- [15:37]
F
At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. So each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech, right? So whether we're talking about privacy, AI, social media, or a major tech figure, we will always explain the Silicon Valley forces behind these stories and how they affect you. Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [16:08]
C
From PRX.