Uncovered: Life Beyond
Join the conversations of Rebecca and Naomi, two ex-Amish Mennonite women who jumped the proverbial fence in their younger years and later experienced college as first-gen, non-traditional students. They discuss pursuing formal education while raising a family, navigating the hidden curriculum of academia, and other dimensions of reimagining a life beyond high-demand religion. Send your questions to uncoveredlifebeyond@gmail.com.
Uncovered: Life Beyond
42. Daring to Seek Safety for Our Daughters
In this episode we discuss the recently release documentary, For Our Daughters, based on a chapter of Kristin Kobes Du Mez' bestselling book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. This relatively short documentary exposes toxic power dynamics with the Southern Baptist Convention among other religious institutions where victims are often shamed while predators are protected. We reflect on the predictable patterns that often accompany systemic abuse within institutions and the devastating effects of these conditions on those who are harmed by them as well as those deconstructing them. We question the protective mechanisms that shield abusers and the societal norms that keep victims silent.
In light of the historical dangers of melding religious and political power, we challenge those who identify with the Anabaptist tradition to lead the way in cautioning the broader American church from seeking political power at the expense of spiritual integrity.
We conclude with a brief non-partisan public service announcement about voting in the upcoming election and where to find accurate polling information in your local community.
Links and Resources
For Our Daughters (YouTube)
Resources and Discussion Guide: https://www.forourdaughtersfilm.com/
Distinctive Features of the "Radical" Anabaptist Tradition
Elections and Voting Information
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This is Rebecca and this is Naomi. We're 40-something moms and first cousins who know what it's like to veer off the path assigned to us.
Speaker 2:We've juggled motherhood, marriage, college and career, as we questioned our faith traditions while exploring new identities and ways of seeing the world.
Speaker 1:Without any maps for either of us to follow. We've had to figure things out as we go and appreciate that detours and dead ends are essential to the path Along the way, we've uncovered a few insights we want to share with fellow travelers.
Speaker 2:We want to talk about the questions we didn't know who to ask and the options we didn't know we had.
Speaker 1:So, whether you're feeling stuck or already shaking things up, we are here to cheer you on and assure you that the best is yet to come. Welcome to Uncovered Life Beyond. Hello everyone, welcome back to Uncovered Life Beyond. This is Naomi.
Speaker 2:And this is Rebecca, so look at us, we are actually back?
Speaker 1:We are. We found a little. What did I call it A fringe? No, we found a crack, a crack in the day that we could slide this into.
Speaker 2:And that's about the case. It is a crack, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Right, right. How's life for you?
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm always saying it's kicking my butt, but I think right now it is literally kicking my butt. I'm not, I'm barely treading water between my classes and I feel like the course load this semester is really heavy. The one class it's a three-credit hour and he just keeps throwing more stuff and more projects and I'm like, dude, I mean this is just a three-credit hour class, it's not that. Yeah, so yeah, between that and life and work and all the things, it's a lot.
Speaker 1:And just jumping around from one thing to the next. Right, you're like keeping up with all the things. I think is its own energy suck Right. Energy drain yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. How about?
Speaker 1:you. Well, same same, you know, flying by the seat of my pants, and you know, and the thing is that, well, I was telling you the other day, like in so many ways things are going great, uh, like my interpersonal stress is as low as it's been a long time. You know, I love the work I'm doing, but everything's coming at me like a fire hose and and I'm not I don't know if it's the weather or what, but my migraines have been worse and so, yeah, it's kind of a mixed bag of of of good and flying by the seat of my pants.
Speaker 2:It's one thing if we're busy and feeling okay, but it's another thing if you're busy and not feeling real well.
Speaker 1:Right, well, and it's frustrating to me because it's not like I'm. It's not like I'm miserable, it's not like I'm doing things I don't want to do, or that.
Speaker 1:I'm not enjoying the things I'm doing. It's not like the stress is all good stress, but it's still yeah, like the stress is all good stress, but it's still yeah. One fun thing is that the first year students at the college where I teach are reading Tara Westover's book Educated for their first year seminar, and so a number of the professors who are teaching those sections of that class are assigning parts of our podcast. Shut up that is so exciting.
Speaker 1:If any of my students or other Laura's students are listening, hey, go do Hawks. So this past week one of those professors invited me to come talk to her class and we had a really good time talking about the impact of Wisconsin versus Yoder on schooling, or the lack thereof for religious reasons. You know beyond that, and so I was so impressed with some of the observations that the students made and like some of the connections they made, and I also had a picture of schoolboys in O'Line, iowa, so that's just a little ways from here, and there were some students who recognized that it's a very small town in Northeast Iowa and some students recognize that. And that was like back in 1965, and they were, you know, fleeing the truant officers who were forcing them, persecuting them by making them go to school.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so that was kind of a full circle moment, because that's not. I haven't really, you know, integrated these parts of my lives until the podcast, and so this is kind of an extension of that.
Speaker 2:That is so awesome and so validating for you and it speaks to the person you are and I love that. And the other thing I think that we forget is man, the kids these days are smart, like. They can make connections in ways that I don't think I was making. I know I wasn't making at their age and we like to diss the whole notion of social media and all that and it has its points, but at the same time I think it has really brought an awareness that we were desperately needing in the world. I agree, I agree.
Speaker 1:So our topic today is about a documentary that came out recently, and it's a really short one, only 30 minutes long. I loved it, right right. It's based on a chapter of the book Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen Kobes-Dumé, and it explores the culture of toxic power in the church, and it specifically focuses on scandals in the Southern Baptist Convention that came to light in a Houston newspaper expose back in 2019, and the aftermath and voices of survivors.
Speaker 2:You know, I think that this was such an important conversation and I'm so glad we're having it, but I think the part that always takes me by surprise is the ways that this is so connected and for our listeners, I think it's really important that you take the time to watch this. Like Naomi said, it's just 30 minutes, but it's so informative and you can't help but not notice the connections involved with Tia Loving's book and that whole conversation, and also shiny, happy people, like guys. These people are all in bed together, like it is all connected and to me it's really frightening.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely, and the patterns of behavior and of control are so predictable Like it's almost boring. If it weren't so tragic, right, right, it would be boring, for how predictable they are across organizations and organizations, religious organizations that claim to be the representatives of God on earth, that claim to be the one true way. Right, right, you claim to know the will of God.
Speaker 2:They claim to be the one true way, they claim to know the will of God, but they also tell us that by staying with them we'll be protected, especially we, meaning women will be protected, and the reverse is so true. That is where we are exploited the most. We are exploited for our labor, we are exploited for everything, and then also for our Right and they certainly aren't protected, certainly aren't protected.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. And just as a side note, I'm glad you mentioned those other ways that the exploitation happens, because I think the sexual abuse is absolutely serious, it's absolutely egregious and also it's not the only kind, and I think sometimes the other kinds of abuse the more you know like the spiritual abuse, the labor exploitation, those kinds of things are sometimes a little more subtle and maybe more easy to ignore. And yet it's all a package deal Right in the Christian nationalist elements. And the more these kinds of things are exposed, the more we see that they have. What they've been accusing their opponents of is the very thing they've been doing. Like. Again, it's boringly predictable.
Speaker 2:When it's such a lesson in projection oh right.
Speaker 1:I mean they claim to be the ones protecting women and children, but they are the ones harming so many women and children.
Speaker 1:I mean, they're the ones who are accusing the LGBTQ community, trans kids of all these horrible, horrible things, but they're the ones who are doing the abuse and protecting the abusers.
Speaker 1:And, at the same time, they accuse women of being power hungry for wanting equality in the church. They are the ones who claim to be speaking for God and on top of all this, it turns out at the top they aren't actually anti-abortion. It's that they want to choose which women get abortions and which ones don't. And just for an example of that, there was a woman named Debbie Vasquez, who and she's not mentioned in the documentary, but this is mentioned in some news reports about this situation and this is someone who was 14, was abused by a pastor and then, when she became pregnant and she was forced to stand in front of the congregation apologize for having sex out of wedlock and becoming pregnant, and then, behind the scenes, they were pressuring her to have an abortion. And so just the layers of hypocrisy and abuse all contribute to such a lack of integrity on the part of this major religious institution in our country.
Speaker 2:And I'm always surprised in this type of situation how often the 14-year-old, the 15-year-old, is demanded to not only repent at church but also apologize to the pastor's wife or the offender's wife. These girls are 14, 15 years old. I know two situations here in Holmes County where that happened.
Speaker 1:Like it's a way of it's a way it's one dimension of it is protecting the men involved from taking accountability as adults for statutory rape.
Speaker 2:Right. But it also sends a broader message out to the other people, to the other women, out to the other people, to the other women, to the other girls, to the other children to keep your mouth shut.
Speaker 1:Yes, and if you speak up, you're going to be the one taking the fall. Right, right, right.
Speaker 2:And I think we are told from infancy to trust and to respect our spiritual leaders and that they're God-ordained, and all this other Dogma, dogma, yeah, I was going to say ideology, but dogma is probably a better, but it's so ingrained in us and we're told that they protect not only us as individuals, but they protect our souls.
Speaker 2:They fight for our souls and so often it's not a fight for us, it's not a fight for simply a casualty. In this fight for power, in this quest for power and abuse, victims end up being a casualty. That is simply a shrug. It's like well got to take one for the team.
Speaker 1:To use their own words. It's a distraction.
Speaker 2:It's not a problem.
Speaker 1:I mean it's not a serious problem and it's certainly not a problem that's indicative of larger issues, right, right, least about the Southern Baptist Convention, because for years there had been calls for them to have some kind of a database for tracking abusers in the churches so that they're not moving around from one church to the next. And in the report that came out by a third party in 2022, it turns out that as far back as 2008 already, the leaders of the SBC were refusing to do this, even though they were privately saying. These same people were privately saying that, yeah, this could be a really practical way to stop predators, but they didn't want to do it because they said, well, all our churches are autonomous, there's no way we could do this, no way we could do this, but no way we could hold local churches accountable. But then what came out in 2022 is they actually did have a database, they actually had been tracking abusers all this time and in no way did they try to reach out and try to protect the church people, right, the church members, the vulnerable who were at risk of being abused. No attempt to prosecute those abusers, to bring them to justice or stop them in any way. I mean essentially, the database was there to protect them them in any way. I mean essentially, the database was there to protect them.
Speaker 1:And since then the SBC has just doubled down. They are more concerned about women in leadership. That is a bigger problem. They're more concerned about the LGBTQ community. Those are worse sins to them than abuse and earlier this summer at their annual convention, they did disaffiliate four churches. One was about a church that had a woman who was in leadership, another one had to do with acceptance of LGBTQ folks being open and affirming, and I think one of the churches had to do with sex offenders. I mean it was two of them, but this is who they're lumping together. It's so sad and I think it's. I don't know, do they hear themselves? Do they see how much their actions reveal about what actually matters to them?
Speaker 2:I think they actually do know. I just think they're counting on the rest of us not paying attention. And I also think my observation has been there is nothing more dramatic than when a church restores an offender. It is so easy and so romantic, almost so godly, to side with a sinner who has repented and to witness this restoration of his faith and his relationship with God. On the flip side, it is so messy and it costs so much to enter into the pain and the grief and the devastation of abuse. And I think time and again we see those in power siding with what's easy, with what is flashy and also what protects them.
Speaker 2:Because, if they protect Joe Schmo over here, Joe Schmo is obligated to protect them in the future.
Speaker 1:Right right. It's more about protecting their image which they're pretty open about that and deferring to the most toxic person in the room, right in the documentary where that was happening, where a young woman who had been abused by a youth minister who then went on to this highly successful career in church ministry, and years later than when her daughter was about that age, she went, oh my goodness, and she realized just how egregiously she had been betrayed by the people who should have been looking out for her. And so when she reached out and wanted to address this, then at that point that youth minister now years later, in more senior positions of leadership he goes up there and, yeah, this whole thing about his repentance is romanticized. And then they throw her under the bus by saying, unfortunately, this person he had this relationship with, no, he assaulted her that she has not chosen the same path of healing that he has, and this is how they talked about her call for accountability is by throwing her under the bus.
Speaker 1:They're not even. I guess, when people get so drunk on their own power at a certain point they don't even try to hide it anymore. And, like you said, I think that secondary betrayal, I mean that's ongoing wounding by gaslighting and scapegoating, and so many victims have said that that goes so much deeper even than the initial attack because of, I mean, that's your social circle that the human body, the human nervous system relies on for safety, and it's not, it's further betraying you and it's an ongoing, it's not a one-time event but it's ongoing wounding. But, as you pointed out earlier, it's not just about protecting the abuser, but it's also about being a warning to other potential victims to keep silent if it happens to them cape dresses.
Speaker 2:This is why we wear a head covering. This is why we are submissive. This is why we have a meek and gentle spirit. This is why we are demure. All of this will keep you safe. All of this is for your protection. All of this is for you because we care so much about you. And then, when it doesn't work, it's suggested, or it's as if obviously you got something wrong, and I think that it's a test that you can never, ever study hard enough for. You simply can't get it right, and it turns out that when you ask the question, who are you protecting us from? They like to act like they're protecting us from the world. They aren't protecting us from the world, they're protecting us from themselves and their buddies.
Speaker 1:They're protecting their buddies from the world from being held accountable by the world.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and I think at some point it's only fair to ask the question why am I doing this? Why am I looking to people like you for my protection? You want to get in line and you want to tell us women what we need to do, but you can't tell your own buddies to get their act together called in some churches.
Speaker 1:It doesn't explicitly say don't believe women and children who accuse men of terrible things, but it creates that power structure where a man who is accused of terrible things by those this theology views as beneath him is often given endless benefit of the doubt, and I think that was Christian Dumais who said that, and so it doesn't need to be said explicitly for that to be the effect of that teaching. And anybody who doesn't line up with it is then called immoral or out of line, or not listening to God, out of God's will.
Speaker 2:And I think in the process, then even well-meaning parents get themselves stuck between wanting to speak up and protect their kids while also risking both themselves and their family and their children from becoming cast out and making the situation even worse and I think we all know that a lot of these settings, these institutions, they need a scapegoat. They need someone that everyone can see who's not getting it right, and no one wants to be that person. No one wants their kids to be that person, right?
Speaker 1:And, yes, it puts well-meaning parents in an awful double bind, right, right, and I think it also does a secondary betrayal of, well, of course, other vulnerable people who are going to be hurt by the system, but also there's an element of betrayal of people who are genuinely well-meaning, upright people who want to do the right thing, who think that by following the rules, they're doing the right thing, and yet Well and oftentimes.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes, it's people who actually take the Bible seriously, right, right, it's people who are studying the Bible and the words of Jesus and who are taking it seriously, right, and I think that's the part that gets so messed up, because these same leaders will come back and say, well, these people weren't true Christians. No, these people were paying attention. Yeah right, oftentimes these people were the ones who were paying attention. These were the ones who were following the rules and who sincerely wanted to follow Jesus.
Speaker 1:Right and their sincerity is being used as a like a smoke screen for a corrupt system. Yeah, it's maddening and now we're getting out into like kind of secondary, tertiary kinds of dynamics here. But then I think of people who feel so much grief over the fact that I'm no longer in a plain community and there's a part of me that really wants to cushion them from that grief. And part of the way to cushion them from that grief is to implicitly endorse these religious systems. And yet I can't endorse these systems that are so corrupt and that are so abusive and harmful and have zero integrity. And not to make this all about me, but I think I'm not alone in this wanting to shield people who are sincerely grieved that I'm no longer part of the system, while also being true to myself and getting out of a toxic situation.
Speaker 2:And I think that is maybe one of the most difficult things of. I was going to first say leaving, but I'm not sure it's leaving as much as deconstruction. I have a theory that pastors are more angry at people who deconstruct than they are at people who leave their church, and it is easier to work with people who jump from church to church but never make fundamental changes. They might change on the outside, their covering shape might change or, you know, they might now wear skirts instead of cape dresses or whores, they might wear pants, you know. Whatever, whatever, there might be some outward changes. But deconstruction, done properly, changes the way you think, the way you view the world, and it challenges some of those fundamental quote truths we've been taught. That, I believe, is what scares religious leaders the most.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, they'd much rather someone makes those superficial changes or goes out and totally messes up their lives. Right, right, totally succumbs to addictions and all kinds of horrible self-sabotaging behaviors. They have a box for that they have a sin will take you further than you wanted to go line for that.
Speaker 2:They have something for those people, they have a narrative. But for the person who deconstructs and says wait, wait, wait, what you're doing is not okay, it goes against the words of Jesus, not okay and starts to seriously poke at some of those holes and then turns around and actually advocates helps the marginalized, the single mom, the immigrant Now that will piss off a pastor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the worst news is someone who knows the scriptures, who is deep into it and then dares to have an independent thought and begins to question the dogma.
Speaker 2:And I think what's so hard is I all of a sudden came to the realization that it's not just a bug or a few rotten apples. At some level this whole system is rotten. I thought when I was in the Mennonite church in the Anabaptist world that it was an Anabaptist or an Amish Mennonite law. It was something rotten in their system. And then, darn it. I get out of the culture and into a mega church and I see the same things happening. It's like crap. I recognize these patterns.
Speaker 2:I get into a more liberal Mennonite church and I'm like, well shoot, they think like the beachy Mennonite people. And I'm like, well shoot, they still think like the Amish. Or they think like the beachy Mennonite people, they just don't dress like they do. They've got the same stuff going on. They've got the same abuser sitting in their church pews and they do nothing about it. And all of a sudden I had to come to the realization that this is not specific on a religion or a denomination. It's a systemic issue in the way institutions are organized, and I think religious organizations tend to be the most harmful because they have Jesus on their side. It gives them extra leverage, it gives them extra power.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and it's, instead of this being an exception, or yeah, we're all there's, there's, we're all human, or or whatever the thought stopping cliche might be it begin, you begin to see that it's. It's not a bug, it's a feature, right.
Speaker 2:This is how it's supposed to work. Right? It's a. It's a. It's one of the building blocks of the organization. It's what holds the organization together.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I thought was really telling was the responses of some of the leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention in the years since this came out. The report came out in 2022, and their line, their central talking point, has been oh, this is a distraction from our core message, which is evangelism. Now there have been people who say, oh no, those quotes are being taken out of context and blah, blah, blah blah. But when we understand that evangelism is code for recruitment, that is recruitment in a war, in a culture war in a spiritual war that once more reveals this is all about power.
Speaker 1:What is important to them is the continual building of power, the building of their institution, the building of their empire, not dealing with the people that they claim to care for. And one survivor tweeted in response. Thank you for exposing your heart by referring to us as a distraction.
Speaker 2:Yep. So I was in a conversation with a friend and the friend was telling me that local churches prefer to go overseas for missions instead of locally because they get more bang for their buck. They can reach more people overseas, you see, than they can by helping the single mother, so it's more bang for their buck. And I looked at her and I said has your pastor ever read the parable of the lost sheep? Has your pastor ever read the parable of the good Samaritan?
Speaker 2:Our churches gain power and funding by stepping over the abuse victim, by stepping over the single mom, by stepping over the obvious needs, exactly by stepping over the immigrant on their way to the airport for their next mission trip, for their next conference, for their next, whatever it is. We step over, we don't cross the street anymore. I think there was a point in time where seeing someone's pain might have forced you to cross the street, so you didn't have to be up close to it. These days, we are so callous to it that we see our pastors literally stepping over the victim in order to move on to the next big thing.
Speaker 1:And the victim's lucky if they don't get kicked in the process Right.
Speaker 2:And I just don't understand how we're supposed to reconcile this with the good news, supposed to reconcile this with the good news. I'm not sure how we're supposed to reconcile this with the life of Jesus. I don't understand how Sunday morning after Sunday morning, people go to church and don't struggle with these disconnections.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the complete lack of integrity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how did we get here?
Speaker 1:Right, right and in the documentary what happened? Again and again, as women brought these issues to light, they were attacked as attacking the cause of Christ and again. So the cause of Christ is about ignoring abuse. I mean, have they read their Bibles? And have they read their Bibles? Yes, and how do you sit in church week after week and observe this disconnect? I think to me like it's such an example of how we should automatically be suspicious when guilt and shame are used as motivations, because how many people are in those church pews because they have been guilted or shamed into showing up for church and they're there with gritted teeth.
Speaker 2:But there's also many who are there because it's comfortable, sure, sure, there's many who are there because their family is there, their extended family is there, their social group is there, and they clutch their Kate Spade purse just a little tighter if there's an immigrant who doesn't understand the language is sitting beside them and I have a Kate Spade purse. So, in all fairness, I've got Kate Spade purse. So, in all fairness, I've got Kate Spade too. So that's why I use Kate Spade. But anyone different, anyone who is messy or has pain, disrupts that comfort. And I don't mean this as a broad stroke, but I often wonder how many people go to church for their comfort.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Oh, I agree. End of story. I agree, yeah, that's very much present too, I agree.
Speaker 2:And I know. I know I have friends who go to church and it's more than that for them. So I know I'm not speaking for everybody, but I do wonder. What percentage sits in the pew Sunday after Sunday? And it has little to do about living the life and the words of Jesus and it has much more to do with what benefits them.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think what is so important to remember is that toxic systems rely on non-toxic people being complicit in wrongdoing, in looking the other way, in assuming the best about those in leadership, about letting the thoughts stopping cliches do their work. Most toxic systems are made up of pretty good people, right. People who are generally upstanding, who want to be decent and who don't rock the boat, right?
Speaker 1:Because they trust the Lord's anointed who don't rock the boat Right Because they trust the Lord's anointed. Well, I think there's like a whole range of reasons why they don't rock the boat. Sometimes it's because of that like kind of naivete, kind of naive buy-in to the dogma.
Speaker 1:Sometimes they've been guilted and shamed into going along with the status quo. Sometimes they are just trying to survive and they don't have the bandwidth to speak up. I mean I guess I'm just saying like there are so many ways that and reasons and reasons. I mean I go to dollar tree. Dollar tree is part of a toxic capitalist system that is harming the earth, it's harming people, it is harming so many people and I still go by that crap I, I buy that crap, nobody's making me, nobody's making me and I do right.
Speaker 1:So I guess I'm just saying toxic systems. What am I saying? I'm wanting to say several things at once. One of the things I think it's important for us to recognize there are good people in toxic systems and those good people are a necessary ingredient for keeping the system going. They're an important part of it. And also there are a variety of motivations for staying in a system like that. And also, if all those non-toxic folks in a toxic system were to collectively push back, we could change things. One person working alone can't change things, but working together we could. But there are all kinds of institutional barriers that are put up to prevent that, or at least to make it difficult, so it's just messy. That's where I'm ultimately going with this line of thought.
Speaker 2:No, and I think it's messy. But I also think your point is very fair and very true, and I guess that brings me back to my question of what the heck do we do?
Speaker 2:Like what do we do, and I think I would also like to point out these toxic systems are often built around charismatic leaders who have this perceived special quality that sets them apart from everyone else. And I think that's where I cringe about the whole Lord's anointed bullcrap. I struggle when I hear that the Lord's anointed is once again hiding abuse or overlooking the single mom who desperately needs help. If that's what the Lord's anointed is doing again, why do I want a part of that? Your version of Jesus is pretty watered down and it pretty easily can make your God look really, really bad, and I don't understand why we're not more aware and conscious of that. What kind of a God are we trying to sell?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a God that is based more on conquest. Yeah, it's based on conquest, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I get frustrated when people tell me that it is imperfect people doing God's work, because, while that is certainly true when the best of God's people are not simply doing imperfect work but damaging work, harmful, work, corrupt work, and doubling down on it when they're called out. And doubling down on it when they're called out. What do you have to offer that the world doesn't have?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I would say this is why the pews are emptying. Yeah, this is why the pews are emptying.
Speaker 2:I think so too, and I worry about what this is going to do long term, because I don't think these religious systems ever imagined what the world of social media, what TikTok, is going to do to their organizations and the way they're going to be exposed.
Speaker 1:Right, it's like they never imagined that the verse they love to quote about the things of darkness being exposed yeah, there's a verse about that. Yes, there is. It's escaping me, you know. That would be turned on them, right, it would be speaking of them.
Speaker 2:It's almost like they thought they could convince their people that God was watching them and their works and their thoughts and their actions, even in secret, but somehow they forgot that the same God was watching them and keeping a tally of their stuff.
Speaker 1:It's almost as though God was made in their own image.
Speaker 2:And I think these leaders think that not only God will forget, but that their people will forget. And if there are any leaders listening, trust me on this when I say your abuse victims will never forget how you treated them or didn't treat them. Your abuse victims will never forget. Your abuse victims will never forget. There's a pastor who keeps showing up on my feed every so often. We have mutual friends and every time his picture shows up I just get a little green inside. We remember.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And one connection the documentary makes is about the dark side of marrying faith and politics. And this is nothing new. This is something right, that's been around for millennia.
Speaker 1:But I think no one should be clearer about what's at stake, why this is a problem, than those who've identified as Anabaptists, those who are familiar with the Anabaptist tradition.
Speaker 1:You know, as we've been talking about here, the American church is running in the opposite direction from its own teachings, right, while also claiming to practice the Bible, literally Right, and they are more concerned about gaining power than they are about the teachings of Jesus. And it blows my mind sometimes how blatantly they do this without more people calling them on it, except I guess people are just voting with their feet and leaving. Think, those of us who have an Anabaptist background, whether or not we still identify with the tradition or not, certainly have access to a tradition, to our way of thinking about why connecting religion and politics can be such a problem and why this is something that thinking people should avoid, like people who care about humanity should avoid this. People who know what happens in history, what has happened in history when we have married those social forces of religion and politics in a formal way. I mean, history is rife with the horrors that happen and I think you have to be incredibly uninformed, not only about history but about our own Anabaptist beliefs, to not see that problem.
Speaker 2:I have often wondered what the missing link is, and it's been interesting for me because the more I question church and organized religion, the more I appreciate, actually, the core tenets of the Anabaptist faith, which I don't know quite how to make sense of in my brain.
Speaker 2:So that's something I'm actively working through. But I do know that for me the church has so undermined its own credibility that if I hear a bunch of religious leaders recommending option A, I kind of automatically assume that option B or C is probably a better choice. I have a really difficult time trusting anything that I hear coming from organized religion and it's frightening because shiny, happy people, tia Levings for our daughters, guys, this is all connected. It's all connected and it's connected into politics and I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that understanding the connection has probably made me the most aware of how damaging and how corrupt a lot of our religious systems are. When it's difficult to know the difference between our religious systems and the political systems, I think we should really really step back and reconsider the words of Jesus and what faith might mean to us.
Speaker 1:So to our listeners watch the video, tell us what you think, and maybe we should have said this early on. But if you are concerned about being triggered or about graphic descriptions, I didn't find those in the video. It's certainly not designed to shock, and I really appreciate the way they prioritize the voices of the victims and those who have gone on to survive and really become voices for justice. So watching the video is going to be well worth those 30 minutes, and I wanted to also put out there a quick public service announcement. We know the election is coming up in a few weeks and we're not going to go into a partisan rant, but I think we do want to acknowledge that voting involves complex, sometimes conflicting values and decisions, and I think it's important to remember, just in line with our conversation here, oversimplifying issues is often used as a means of social control, and so I think it's worth recognizing the complexity of the issues and recognizing that sometimes we might be conflicted about our vote for a whole range of issues, and I think that's probably healthier than approaching it with this really simplistic way, because being a one-issue voter makes it really easy for the powers that be to control you, and so I want to urge our listeners out there. We believe in you and we encourage you to vote in light of all the values that are important to you, and remember that your vote is 100% private.
Speaker 1:In a general election, you can vote for one party even if you are registered to another. Nobody else can tell you who to vote, nobody else can guilt you into it. Nobody else knows when you are in the voting booth. It is up to you, and anyone who puts pressure on you to vote a certain way is in violation of the way that our system is supposed to work. They are the problem, not you.
Speaker 1:Please know that your local county elections office will have accurate information available. Any information that comes from political party should be held with a certain amount of healthy suspicion skepticism, but if you go to your county elections office, that office is nonpartisan. They will have accurate information for you, and in many places, early voting is already starting. Certainly, here in Iowa, we can register to vote through Election Day I believe it is, but these voting laws change all the time, and so I think it's really important to be informed about our own local election laws, and the local county elections office is really the place to go get that information, and it's high time to make a plan for how to vote, if that is something you're going to do, so please watch the video, please tell us what you think.
Speaker 2:We always love to hear from you. Tell us what you think, we always love to hear from you. And until we find our next little pocket of time, take good care of yourselves and we will talk to you soon, take care. Thank you for spending time with us today. The resources and materials we've mentioned are linked in the show notes and on Facebook at Uncovered Life Beyond.
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts about college and recovery from high demand religion? We know you have your own questions and experiences and we want to talk about the topics that matter to you. Share them with us at Uncoveredbeyond at gmailcom. That's uncoveredlifebeyond at gmailcom.
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Speaker 1:Stay brave, stay bold, stay awkward.
