706: The Second Slap plus Leah Libresco Sargeant

who've been disillusioned because of abuse, scandals, or political idolatry. Some

“of migrated to more progressive church traditions, while others have deconstructed their faith”

entirely. Joshua Harris made famous for his seminal purity book, "I Kissed Aiding Good Buy," was in the latter category. Harris now says he is emerging from a season of overcorrection having seen the bully energy in progressive spaces, and that he's curious about Jesus again. Then, Caitlyn talks to feminist author Leah LeBresco-Sargent about her provocative new book, "The Dignity of Dependence." Also this week, new signs of hope as cities, states, and courts

are resisting ice. Hey, if you haven't heard yet, Holy Post media has launched a brand new show called "Advices." It's our version of an advice column where our hosts and pundits respond to your questions, conundrums, and difficult life situations. On recent episodes we've talked about how to find a good church, went to leave a church, how to discern your calling, dealing with political divisions and your family, we even get into financial questions like how much to tie and whether

“it's okay to spend money on a Disney vacation. We've called the show "Advice Ish" because we're”

honest with our advice, but there are always disclaimers. The shows what you've come to expect

from everything we've produced here at Holy Post Media. It's smart, fun, and always a little surprising, and it's exclusively for Holy Post Plus subscribers. So, to get adviceish, and all of the other exclusive shows and resources we produce, head over to holypost.com and sign up today. You'll not only join the wider Holy Post or community, but you'll be supporting our ability to make more faithful, pro-neighbor Christian content that our culture needs right now. Again, you can sign up at

holypost.com. Here is episode 706. Hey there, welcome to the Holy Post podcast. My name's Phil Vischer, and I'm here with a couple of dear dear friends. Is this NPR? I love a song. What an opportunity! Skydutani is here all the way from South Wheaton, Illinois, high-sky, high-fill, high, and Caitlyn Chess is here from Central, Illinois, from Central Wheaton. I was going to say, "I don't even want to tell you." Central Illinois, yeah, it's Illinois's fly

over. I'm about America's. Illinois is an American fly over country, Central Illinois is Illinois Fly over. Oh, okay. But between Christ, Chicago, and what other part of Illinois? St. Louis, which you go to St. Louis, which is, I guess, East St. Louis, which is in Illinois. I don't know what I mean even talking about. Now it's time for the theme song. What's the news that you like the most? Who's your favorite podcast host? If it's breakfast,

get your toast. It's Tyville, Caitlyn and the Holy Post. Skyville, Caitlyn and the Holy Post. And sometimes other people. World Relief is a longtime sponsor of the Holy Post. Last month, the unthinkable happened in Minnesota. Dozens of refugee families who fled war, violence, and religious persecution were unjustly detained, including children. These families followed every legal pathway available to them.

And we're told they were welcome here, yet they were swiftly and without warning taken from their homes into detention. Several of the families detained were resettled by our friends at World Relief. The organization believes this could quickly spread beyond Minnesota, putting thousands of legally resettled refugees at risk of detention, including over 17,000 refugees.

“World Relief is serving right now. What happens when a parent is detained?”

Everything collapses. Income disappears, homelessness, and hunger, looms, families are too afraid to leave home. Children live in constant fear. In this moment of crisis, World Relief is responding. They're providing legal support, emergency housing and food, and trauma informed care. Why am I sharing this with you? Because moments like these call for more than just moral outrage, they call for

sustained, faithful action. If you're looking for a tangible way to be the hands and feed of Jesus, would you consider walking alongside refugee families through your faithful, monthly partnership with World Relief. Go to worldrelief.org/holypost to get started. That's worldrelief.org/holypost. Holypost is sponsored by our place. Unless you just pick stuff out of the ground and put it

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I've never been past Harlem Avenue. That's funny. It's like an old New Yorker cover where

it shows the New Yorker to abuse the world. Indeed yes. Yeah, many Chicagoans do not consider themselves residents of Illinois. Right. That's I have told a bunch of people since I moved here that no one I know who lives here ever talks about Illinois. Yeah. They talk about Chicago. They don't talk about Illinois and I've lived in some states that are big on the state that they are Texas. And Texas, Colorado, California, like here, they're big on their state. They're big on their

state. We're not big on their state. You can buy so many things in the shape of all those states. But I've never seen Illinois do. You can get a lot of things in the shape of the city of Chicago

or the Chicago Flag or Chicago Hot Dog. You can buy a lot of things in the shape of a Chicago

Hot Dog or Mike Dicker. Mustache, Mike Dick's. I have no idea that is. You can not live here any longer if you don't know who Mike Dick is. That bears. Okay. Hello folks. Hi friends. How's it going?

“Are you? I last week I promised good news this week. Some love and puppies. That's what that's”

where are the puppies? We're getting a new puppy. Yeah. Okay. Have you said a little name? What is happening? It's happening. Have you said a little name? No. We've not. We went and saw the puppies on Saturday. Have you settled on a puppy? Yeah. Well, we have pick of the litter and there's six of them and five there's five left and so. So do you have a favorite? They're too little to know the

personalities. Yes, we have a favorite based on color and gender. Oh my gosh. Wow. What's that

that's how you picked on? Okay. I guess. I don't think I've answered that. Sheepers. Mike. I have a favorite based on social economic class. Not yet. Okay. Let's see which one is more original. We need a name. We need a name. See which one has some picks though. We have a long list of names that no one can agree on. What goes well with Steve? That's what I was asking. Yeah.

“Steve and 80. Cute. Do you remember Steve and 80? No. Steve and 80, gourmet. I don't remember. Yeah.”

They were singers. I may be getting this wrong. But they were classic singers that showed up on the Johnny Carson show a zillion times. Steve and 80. Some of the sky pod listeners, because I threw this out to them. They said we should name it Martin. Like Steve Martin. Oh, I was just going to be a way. Right? I came up Steve Irwin. Steve Irwin. Dusty or Dustin from Stranger Things. Steve and Dustin. That's cute. Or it could be Marty as in Steve Martin and Martin short. Yeah.

Marty is a cute puppy. Marty. It's going to be a big dog. Or it could just be completely grating like Steve and Fido. Yeah. Really exaggerate the weirdness of Steve. Okay. What's the good news? What's the good news you ask? Well, last week we talked about cows and that they're learning to brush themselves so they can eventually take up arms against us. But that's not the good news this week. The good news this week is that five year old Liam Konejo Ramos is back home in Minnesota.

He was now, if you say he was abducted, people will get very angry with you. He was obviously they was just taken into custody by babysitters by professional armed and masked babysitters who took great care of him all the way to Texas and then kept him there for a week taking wonderful care of him to keep him safe from the cold in Minnesota until a judge said,

“you have to stop keeping him there, let him go and get him back home. Was he with a parent the whole”

time? Yes. His father was, yeah. So here's the deal. This all happened in his driveway. This didn't happen out in the middle of nowhere. His father was bringing him home from preschool and ice followed him into his driveway and he saw them and ran out of the car. He says to yell to people that ice was here to warn them, ice says he was abandoning his child. No. That's why he ran away from the car, which was running with his five year old in it.

And then ice wanted to take care of the child. So they brought him to the back door and told him to knock on the door so that his mother could come out and take care of him and not get grabbed by the masked men who were going around grabbing people. No, no, no, no, no. That's not what

not to open the door because they were pretty sure she would get grabbed ice took the husband and the child because they couldn't just leave him there standing on the door of his own house. That's

dangerous to be that close to your own house with your mother right inside. She would never let him in.

It's like when a baby bird falls out and humans touch him and then the smell of human is on the baby bird and the mother won't take him back. Now the smell of ice was on the baby. So mother's not going to take him back. So what choice did they have? But to ship him to Texas, which is where safe children are. Any who an activist left his judge said this was not done correctly.

“You must send him home. And he's back home now with his father with his father. And his brother”

and his mother people said he was abandoned by his parents. And that's why I said to take him. His brother was there the whole time. How could he be abandoned by his parents of his father's

with him? Yeah. Oh, because he was in custody because he ran away from the car. I know, but

that's not the whatever. Anyway, a judge ruled he and his father had to be released. The Trump administration complied and released him. Do you think it's because they would they have complied with this order had this story not gotten so much media attention. I don't know. That's interesting because they have defied 96 court orders just in the month of January just in the city of Minneapolis. Okay. That's a lot. What? That's a lot of defying court orders. And I assume

when the administration defies a court order from a lower court, it just gets bumped up to a higher

“court. Again, they just plain the delay game here. What are the consequences when the executive”

branch defies the order of the legislative branch? Well, the consequences of constitutional crisis eventually because obviously you can't I mean the federal judge, the highest ranking federal judge in Minnesota was about to call the head of ice into court to declare him in contemptive court for for continuously defying court orders, which would do what? Well, ideally someone would get arrested except since the Justice Department is also under the same leadership. Nothing's going to happen.

Exactly. That's that's my point is when we've been flirting with constitutional crisis for the last year. I almost wish the crisis would just get here so we can deal with it. I don't know how you

we don't know how to deal with it. It's it's territory we've never been looking before.

Am I my non-expert reading of the Constitution would be when you have an administration which is continually defying the authority of another branch of government? Yeah. Then the third branch of government steps in which constitutionally has the authority to remove the president? Yeah, the third branch of government has already capitulated for not upholding his constitutional oath. They have capitulated. I know, but that's this one. Whenever whenever you dig deep enough into the disfunctions of our

government right now, it always comes back to the fact that Congress isn't doing anything that Congress, particularly the Republicans and Congress right now refused to uphold their constitutional oath. Well, we should do something about that. Anyway, the good news is five-year-old Liam Good, Konejo Ramos is back at home with his mother and his brother and his father. Do you think I'll ever step outside the house again? I do wonder what this experience does to a five-year-old.

Thinking it probably not good or his brother or his mother, right? Yeah, that's not without consequences. Yeah, what was what was also interesting, I probably spent more time on Twitter in the last week than I should have shocker. We should stop that. Yeah, which is what the encouraging news is we had a big meeting here at Holy Post last week and someone showed me our Instagram page and all the nice comments we get on our Instagram posts and the volume of that. Yeah, I was like, wow, a lot of people

watch our clips on Instagram and they seem to like them. Maybe I should spend some time over here, but then what I lose my edge would I become so often complacent? Maybe some of the edge? What was interesting on Twitter was how many Christians will bend logic to defend the administration

“to defend the mistreatment of migrants that you have to find a way that it's you're on the”

good side. Yeah, like we said last week no one wants to be on team evil. Yeah, so the number of people regarding the Liam Konejo or almost case number of Christians who said to me, "Well, what did you want them to do?" He'd been abandoned by his parents and they took very good care of him. They even took him to can got him some fast food, dire if that's true or not, but not sure if that's

it happens on both sides. Oh, there I said it, I said both sides. It's motivated reasoning. This is what

“happens when your loyalty to an identity surpasses your commitment to the truth. Yeah, and it's”

where we are all susceptible to it for sure. Yeah, so other cities are learning from many apolis and our preparing Philadelphia City Council, just introduced a bill, just introduced a new beer. It's on ice that would prohibit city agencies from working with ice, prohibit the wearing of masks by ice agents, prohibit local police from acting as ice agents. You cannot freelance as an ice agent. Can our town Seattle mayor signed an executive order barring ice

from using any city owned property and this is ensuring directing a local police to document ice activities. So, in most cities, it's independent ice watchers in Seattle, it's going to be the Seattle police that are ice watching. And more and more stories of misbehavior and people being mistreated, people having their cars rammed by ice and then ice reporting it as no they hit my car and that and we need to arrest them for hitting my car until someone shows dash cam footage. This

is no you hit their car. So, there's a lot of nonsense going on. It does feel like though other good news, other love and puppies. This is from the love and puppies desk that the administration is getting the impression the bad PR might be more costly than they want to pay. Perhaps in November is what we're looking at. Okay, you think so. I would feel better if there were people in the administration who felt the cost to human lives and families and communities was too

costly rather than just pure. That's not as long as Steven Miller's calling the shots. That's not going to happen. Yeah. But, there's encouraging, there's encouraging things in my own little community because supposedly ice is going to return to the Chicago area in the spring. It's funny because that's usually when ice melts. I know, but no, not here. Christians are training to be

able to help their neighbors during what we expect is a second wave. My own little church is having

a training session next week. So, we can learn how to be ice watchers and how to blow whistles.

“I've never blown a whistle before myself, so it takes some lessons, I think. I was thinking about”

following ice around playing the recorder. I don't know. That could be more effective, actually. And you think you can just annoy them out of West Chicago? What they can't, can they get mad at you if you're if you're playing music? Yeah, they can. On a recorder? Yeah. I can. How's this going to say? What if I followed them around with a zither? What's a zither? It's a multi-stringed instrument that you tap with tiny hammers. Not that was like zipper with a lisp. All right, all right,

that's all I really wanted to talk about that. But it's, it's, it's a positive story this week. I mean, it's still bad. It's still horrible and terrible and and horribly bad. Yeah. But it's positive. Well, thank you, Phil, for finding that little bit more kernel of this week. And in that phyla poop for us. Liam Konejo Ramos is back home with his brother and his mother. And other cities are learning from Minneapolis and saying, all right, we're going to be ready. We're going to be ready.

They're not going to abuse our residents. And churches, churches in Minneapolis are doing all sorts of

amazing work. They're new food pantries. They're delivering groceries to people. And in many cases,

it's a family where one member of the family is undocumented. And so it's, they're not fearing all deportation. They're fearing the family being broken up. And so no one will leave the house. And that's true in our area, too. There are families that haven't been out of their houses for months now. And so people are delivering groceries or taking their kids to the doctor to school, helping out in any way they can. A lot of people are inspired by what churches are doing,

which is interesting because for a while we were really discouraged, but by what Christians were supporting. And now we're getting more stories of being encouraged by what some Christians are standing up for. It feels like this is what trials are supposed to do. They reveal the truth.

“Yeah, on all sides. Yeah. So you know who Josh Harris is? You know who Josh Harris is?”

I do. Can you can you just tell us in the brief sentence? I think he's most famous for having written eye kiss dating goodbye, which people might know from the man in the cowboy hat on the cover. That's not a cowboy hat. It's like a fedora. Well, yeah, okay, a fedora somehow. I can't picture it. There's a man with a hat on the cover, sort of like tipping his hat. It was after I had already kissed dating goodbye because I was. Because he remarried. Yeah. Yeah, when was that book published?

It was 97. Oh, 97. I was born. I had been born by that. Yeah, he I don't think it's totally fair to pin all of purity culture on him, but he is often the name of his purity culture celebrity. He was a purity culture celebrity. I mean, his two brothers, twin brothers wrote a book called Do Hard Things. Like he had family members that were very involved in like evangelical publishing speaking, but he was the one that was very famous. They were influencers. They were influencers.

Because they weren't pastors now. They weren't. And they were very adult. I was going to say all of them published quite young. Yeah. Almost as young as you. Almost as young as you. We were talking about in the dark. Yeah, when did you get your first publishing contract? I was 23. Oh, my gosh.

That's too young. That's amazing. Can anyone we know how old Sojash Harris probably

perished, we're probably in his teens. He was probably quite young. Yeah. Yeah. So he's probably got you beat. Yeah. But his book was not as heavy as you were. Well, I'm going to read his head more influenced by it. No, not only barely. Only just barely. So Josh Harris,

“kiss dating goodbye. And then how many years later kissed Christianity goodbye?”

Quite a few. It's only in the last few years. I mean, he a few years ago was involved in a documentary talking about the effects of his book. Okay. I kissed dating goodbye. I am just his talks. I'm purity culture on a generation of evangelical teenagers. And for a while, there was sort of a symbol of the deconstructing, you know, ex-angelical type. And then announced that he was no longer a Christian. And getting divorced. For background, he was 22 when that book was published,

which means he probably wrote it when he was 21. Yeah. Yeah. Or younger. Yeah. Did he even have time to date before he could kiss it goodbye? Well, yeah. He didn't,

which is the right thing to do. Did he never date? Do we know? I think he courted. He courted.

Okay. Where where your parents arranged things. There's a shop where you have a sitting room. And you can repair it. There are horse must be involved. And a carriage. Oh, where's the carriage? Yeah. So Josh, you're supposed to do something on Instagram, which I've just learned is a thing. Good for you. Fascinating. Posted something on Instagram, a multi-page message that has blown up a little bit and really caught our eye. On the first page,

it just says, "Is Trump leading me back to Jesus?" Hot take? Hot top. That's provocative.

“That's click-bady. I clicked. What does that even mean?”

Because I don't know how to say this and it probably won't make sense, but it feels like President

Trump is leading me back to Jesus. Eight years ago, when Donald Trump was first elected President,

I gave him partial credit for the unraveling of my faith. Trump broke my faith. Watching the evangelical world embrace him was a moment of significant disillusionment for me. It felt like seeing behind the curtain. This is not an uncommon reaction. Like realizing what had really been driving so much of the church all along. It made everything feel compromised. In the years that followed, I went through a season of over-correction. I can admit that now.

I lived in reaction. If Trump and his supporters were forced, something I was automatically against it, not being like them, became a defining force in my thinking. All right. Can we pause there? Yeah. Because I think a lot of, I've seen this a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate that he's acknowledging this, because a ton of people are going to resonate with this narrative. Yeah.

“I agree. Okay. I don't know you want to say anything. Anyone wanted to add to that?”

Wow. I'm going to call your some color comment. I'm very interrupted with such a concise statement. I will continue. I adopted a condescending posture. I uttered people. And whenever we do that, we lose some connection to our own humanity. At the same time, I started noticing the same bully energy in progressive spaces that I'd experienced in conservative ones. There was just a different orthodoxy, a different list of correct beliefs that made you righteous and acceptable.

But underneath it, I felt the same fear I had felt in the church, the same anxiety that if you said the wrong thing or didn't signal hard enough, you'd be judged, labeled or pushed out. I thought I'd left a high control environment, but I had mostly just joined a new one. Now, you've brought this up before. Yeah. This idea. I love your name for it. Or did you come up with that or someone else? Me and a friend, we talked about the second slap. The idea that you get slapped once by the

conservative evangelical world that you grew up in. And that slap is not just being hurt by them. It's the sense that I thought that these were the people who cared about scripture, who wanted to be faithful to Jesus. I believed them when they said they cared about those things. And then they acted in ways that made clear that that wasn't true. And then you go and you find more progressive Christians. And you find those spaces online. I think mostly. And it feels like,

talking about the injustice that's happening in the world. And they're reading revelation as this, you know, unraveling of earthly power. And they are the people who are serious with their faith

and the care about scripture. And I can put my lot in with them. And then the second slap is

oh, wait. Actually, some of the same dynamics in that first group are here again. And part of the

“dynamic is you have to believe exactly the same things I believe are your out. There's a kind of”

certainty with which all beliefs are held that make it impossible to ask questions or to make mistakes and get forgiveness. And and so the second slap is not just, oh, the same dynamics are replicated in this environment as the one it came from. It's also where are the people who actually care what scripture says and are trying to be faithful to Jesus. It feels like in different ways, both of these camps are really concerned about different kinds of power or different kinds of

virtue signaling or different kinds of in-group behavior. They're not actually concerned with following

Jesus. And it sounds like what Harris is saying here and what you've expressed to him, I've certainly

experienced is that both groups have deep fear and contempt for those outside there. Yes, right? It's about other in and demonizing the opposition. They're the bad people. And yeah, good guys and bad guys. Exactly. How do you how do you draw the the other people in your political cartoons? Yeah. What did they look like? Yeah. Then they look slightly less than human. Josh writes fast forward to now. Trump has been back an office for over a year. This time

that use of power is more blatant and ruthless than ever. It's authoritarian and decent crushing. It looks like ice raids. It looks like families being torn apart. It looks like people being detained disappeared into systems with very little recourse. It looks like people being shot in the street. Going to the next page. And as I sit with all of this afraid and unsettled, I find myself drawn back to the stories that shaped me. The stories of the Bible, the stories of kings and

prophets of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel of Ahab, any Elijah of Pilate in Jesus. Not as doctrine, but as story. Story is a way of making sense of the world. And when I look through that lens, I find something new. I find a fresh awe at what it takes to stand up against unchecked power. I'm seeing Jesus not as a mascot for anyone's politics, but as someone who stood alone before the bullying power of his day and refused to bow. Which brings me, he says, to the old

Keith Green album cover I shared at the start of this post. And this, like, really resonated with me because I had that album. When I saw this, I literally thought, Phil's going to get excited about the album. And I had done it. Yeah. It's the Keith Green album. No compromise. And it's really amazing piece of art on the cover. One of the better illustrations I've ever seen on a Christian album of a Daniel-like figure standing up when everyone around him is bowing before a, you know,

Nebuchadnezzar like King. And the interesting, if you can Google that picture, Keith Green no compromise, but Google the image. Because Josh talks about, he says, I used to stare at this album cover for hours as a kid. Everyone is bowing before the King. Everyone is face down. Maybe they bow because they believe, maybe they bow because they're afraid, maybe they bow because it's easier. But everyone knows that if you stand, if you refuse, if you will resist, you will be crushed,

“except for one man. I always assume that man was Jesus. I think it was Daniel. But he's still”

standing. And what I always stared at in that picture wasn't the guy standing, but the friend

next to him. If he'd figured out, yeah, who's just looking terror up at his friends saying, what are you doing? Get, you know, I care about you, stop it. You know, in that kind of social pressure, not even negative social pressure, you idiot. But but concern social pressure from a friend to say, don't put yourself out there like this. You know, this is not going to end well for you. What if the evangelicals evangelical churches blind support for Trump doesn't disprove the Christian

story, but actually points to its deeper truths? What if Trump is just the latest example of the pattern of people being deceived by the false promises of earthly power? What if he's just another manifestation of the bully spirit that followers of Jesus are called to humbly resist? So, yes, I'm thinking about Jesus again, and weirdly enough, I have President Trump to thank for it. That's interesting. I find this encouraging, but I don't know Joshua Harris at all,

“and he's got his own journey, and I think it's got to be incredibly difficult to go on that journey”

so publicly, because he was forced into the spotlight as something. Even if it is Instagram, which seems to be a friendlier play, I know about it. I appreciate that he's sharing this part of his story openly, because the prior parts of his story were so public and open, so, and it's much

the way he is. Nonetheless, what I appreciate about what he's acknowledging here is his reaction back in 2016, eight years ago he says, and the abandonment of his faith he's now beginning to recognize may have been an overreaction, because it's clear he was reacting to the particular form of evangelical Christianity he had grown up with in, and that his rejection was of that, maybe it wasn't a full rejection of the actual Jesus revealed in scripture. So, we might be seeing

in real time a deconstruction to re-construction? No, I hope not. Wait, re-construction is good, right? No, they're safe back together. I think, huh, I know, this sounds strange. Okay, if you're deconstructing a false vision of Jesus, I don't believe you reconstruct a correct vision of Jesus. Okay, I believe you receive it. Oh, you receive it from whom, from the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures, the Spirit inspired. And you're new, group of friends. And hopefully by people who were also filled with

“the Holy Spirit and genuinely trying to follow Jesus. Yes, that's what you thought the first time.”

But that wasn't what he experienced. I'm not doubting him at all. Okay, I'm just saying so many people who are quote unquote deconstructing or reacting to the Christianity they grew up in are not reacting negatively to true Christianity or the true revelation of who Jesus is. They're reacting to a false form of Christianity and Jesus that I'm, I would react to as well. Yeah, so I just think we have to some, I know this is awful and Caitlyn, you can correct my

theology on this, but like, there is a difference between those who call themselves the church and Jesus himself. Oh, yeah. And in a perfect scenario, you want the church to be an

accurate reflection of Jesus. Right. Right. You have never had a perfect memory. You want a perfect mirror.

You want to prevent a granted you're never going to get one. But you want one whose flaws are not so warping that it completely, right, clouds your vision that Jesus paints an incorrect picture.

“Right. And this, I think this is part of the reason I never really quote unquote deconstructed”

is my faith was never an American evangelicalism. Yeah. Yep. That's, or maybe you just haven't. Had to yet because you haven't really been confronted about your, your malformed doctor. Well, I mean, I see people on Twitter that have tried to confront you with that. Yeah, that's true. Malph. But I just feel like doctor every time I see something broken in one form of the church

or another, I'm just like, yeah, okay. Yeah, I know. It's not Jesus to me. You've always had an

outsider view of American evangelicalism, which makes sense. I have always had an insider view. It is, you know, my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents. It is just so, so for me, it's always a sense of, you know, much more profound disappointment. Yeah. Like, oh, is this, is this what I, is this what I grew up in? And this, all we've accomplished, I assume there's an instinct to want to protect the reputations and the faith and heritage from people you dearly love and

care about. Yeah. I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to, to deceive. I don't want to cover up, you know, in that sense of protecting the reputation. It's like, don't let anybody know about this. Some people do go to that experience. Yes, they do. I don't do that, but I want to talk a lot about corrective. Right. You know, like, hey, gotta do something about this because it's not supposed to be like this as opposed to other people just saying, well, just leave, just get out of it, just leave,

get out of there. It's stupid. Leave, come over here to some other. But then you risk the second

slap problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's always waiting with the second slap.

I, I really want us to eventually talk about the story and scripture part of this because I

“think that's really interesting too. But I do think to Sky's point, part of what is so important”

about this. Like his line, what if the evangelicals church blinds, blind support for Trump doesn't disprove the Christian story, but actually points to its deeper truths. To your points, Sky, it's like one, Christians are supposed to be the ones that have like a really strong sense of sinfulness of humanity. And we tell the stories every week in church of the way that God's people have messed up over and over and over again. Not us, right? Not us. It's always someone else.

So that's, but that should be that should be a story that forms us. But I was thinking, like while you were talking about like how devastating is it, how much faith are you putting in the evangelical church? A lot of the frustration I have felt towards some of the students I've had or friends I've had who would consider themselves like X van Jalacol who've maybe left the church entirely, but definitely left evangelicalism is that they believed that evangelical churches lie that we were the

center or some of the church. And I just want to be like, don't give that to them. Like that's

own country of the faithfulness of other branches of the Christian faith that did not capitulate to political power that actually stood up and took these stories that Joshua Harris is talking about and took them to heart and neary to their own experience of resistance through those stories. And I want to believe that the whole of the Christian church includes these deep failures of certain branches of it. I don't want to say that evangelicalism is like not part of the church

“or not like true Christians. I think for the most part those are faithful Christians who at some”

point made a decision to really turn away from some central truths of the faith or who have been blinded by it as he describes. And also there are these moments of great faithfulness and you have to kind of take it as a whole. But you also can't put your particular tradition whether it's their successes or their failures as the center of the whole church then you'll go astray. Right. So we can't if I decide the evangelical church has flaws. I can't run to another subset

of Christianity and say I found the one that got it all right and now I have achieved complete self-righteousness once again. That's that pursuit for certainty is what gets you in trouble. Yeah, right. I just want to know which lunch table I can sit at where I can in good faith look down on every other life. But that's also I have told students I had who left evangelical

“churches they went to Duke because they were like now I'm going to do the right thing and be in”

the more progressive churches and I told them so often I was like one if you're going to do that great don't obsess still over whatever the evangelical churches do like it is broadening your soul

to be so critical constantly have a group that you claim to have left behind. But also in your

pursuit of this like perfect pure church you are robbing that church of the gift of your discernment because you're not going to notice the places that they are wrong. I mean I have felt this we posted a clip of me talking about about progressive mainland churches and evangelical churches and there were some people in the comments that were just like no like this is the church that is more faithful. This is the church that's more like Jesus and it's like maybe on some

particular thing you are seeing some faithfulness and I want you to celebrate that. If you lose a sense that these are fallen humans that will make mistakes that will go wrong in certain directions usually characteristically like there will be certain directions they keep falling into. If you lose sight of that something really wrong can happen and your community will fall pray to it and you won't be prepared to be honest and to repent and to lament what was been done

and to be realistic going forward. Okay can I ask something? Yeah. He says I'm seeing Jesus not as a mascot for anyone's politics but as someone who stood alone before the bullying power of his day and refused to bow if I'm kind of re-picturing Jesus as primarily a revolutionary haven't had been made him part of a political maybe. So I don't you shouldn't just be a t-shirt for a rally. Yeah and I'm not sure I agree with the way he phrased that. Yeah because Daniel

literally refused to bow or shadrack me shacking a bed and ago refused to bow to the the idol in the book of Daniel. But Jesus responds to power was ironically to surrender himself to it to allow it to consume him and destroy him and kill him on the cross in order to show its ultimate weakness because he triumphed over it through the resurrection. So if you merely see Jesus as a revolutionary who resists the power of the world that's not quite the message it's how he resists that's

so critical because he resists through nonviolence, through surrender, through surrendering his own body

over it. So it's a very particular form of resistance that Jesus stood there and that the Christians is called Emile. Speaking of these stories, Caitlin, is there a danger when we say I'm not going to focus on doctrine, I'm just going to focus on the stories. Doesn't doctrine? There's always a danger. It's funny, I read this and that this is so interesting because I'm writing a dissertation about, I mean, very of a very specific example of this, but broadly my dissertation is like,

“what do we do with the fact that I think it is a good thing that we take biblical narratives”

and try and inhabit them to understand our own circumstances and find both the courage to act faithfully and direction as to how to act and yet those are also way slipperier. You give someone a story and say, live into it, you are, you know, your Israel that's waiting to be liberated out of Egypt or you are Daniel or your Esther, there's something powerful about that. There have been examples in Christian history where that motivated people towards great acts of faithfulness

and justice. It's also slippery. You tell someone today their Daniel, well, are you right about the

position of relative lack of power that they have or they actually never can assure you know

Right, you're not the point of the whole story, but so I'm writing a dissertation which I will not

“fully answer this question, but there's no one is going to read it, no, I'm going to care,”

but just like, how do we both say we want to be able to do that? And basically, ironically, my dissertation was trying to figure out what are the theological boundaries that can help discipline this, so you don't go off the rails into something that's really not faithful. So in one hand, I would say yes, doctrine matters, but I also, I appreciate, I really like this post in part because this is a description that sounds very similar to me of one of my favorite theologians, Carl Bart,

who who existed at a point in history, yeah, by his merch. I existed at a point in history where he not only stood up against great political evil and Nazi Germany, but he also existed in a theological moment where he very famously said, no, to all these theologians that were mistreating scripture, we're not treating it as this revelation from outside of human knowledge that came to

us from God. And he has this incredible essay, it's one of his most famous, called The Strange

New World of the Bible. And he writes very similarly where he just sort of says, if you're looking for something specific and scripture, you will find, if you are looking for boring historical details, you will find it. He doesn't say this, but you could say, if you're looking for verses that support your political position, you can find it, like whatever you are looking for, you will find. But if you go and looking for the strange new world of God, which to him is,

if you go and going, I will be confronted, I will be surprised. This is not going to conform to the things that I already believe. If you, and he gives this beautiful description of like wandering in the desert with Israel and the burning bush and waiting, you know, hearing the voice of God and that being a way to encounter scripture afresh. And so I appreciate this because

“I think anyone who is coming back to the faith or, you know, considering the faith and new,”

being in the stories and going goodness, this says something that is true about the world, but it also feels outside of human knowledge and maybe it's really, it could guide me and it's

really powerful. I think that's a beautiful way to start. And especially for many people who

were kind of beaten over the head in evangelicalism with like, no all the right things. If you know all the right theology, you'll do the right things. I think this is a good corrective to go, explore these stories that have shaped Christians for a really long time, see what you discover, expect that it will surprise you. Can you go very wrong? Yes, but also this is one of the risks of reading the Bible. Is it like you could get it wrong? But like,

if you are going in going, there's something beautiful and surprising here and I want to discover it, I just want to applaud that posture. I think that's a posture. Yeah. Yes, guys. I was just thinking about the danger if you're a young person growing up in any particular faith community. If that's the only exposure that community or that tradition is the only exposure to Christianity you have and then it goes sideways. This is what happens. Right? So at what age or what faith

development stage, when do you deliberately try to introduce people to other traditions, other doctrines, other forms of Christian faith and how angry you want their parents to be. I know,

“that's what's wrong. I've seen it back to my own experience and I never speaking as someone who”

may have experienced that. Because of the diversity of my home growing up, I was kind of a third

culture kid. I always knew many people in my life who were not Christians, who were not evangelicals,

who were wonderful people in many cases. So I never grew up with this illusion that evangelical Christians were the good people and everyone outside of the bad people. But beyond that, even when I was kind of faith curious as a teenager, I was reading so broadly the stories of people outside of white American evangelicalism who were followers of Jesus, whether they were Roman Catholic or from the black church tradition or other cultures or backgrounds or times. And I saw

all these different examples of Christianity that weren't did not look like suburban American white evangelicalism. And it inspired me. It gave me glimpses of who Jesus is in a way that I wasn't putting all my eggs in the evangelical basket. And I just wonder, what can ministries that are trying to form the faith of younger people do to give them that experience without getting in trouble with their parents all the time? I don't have it's possible. How do you help someone find the truth if you

don't start out by saying, "My tribe has it and I'm going to give it to you." So it's interesting that so many people were introduced to Christianity by an evangelistic tract or a Billy Graham sermon, not from starting with the Bible, but starting with a hyper-condensed version of evangelical theology. It's not the stories, it's the conclusions we've drawn from the stories and distilled down to a pill, a single pill you can take and you're a Christian. And so then there's just so much

to Jesus or even the Nicene Creed. Okay, last word goes to Caitlyn. Encouraging? Yeah, that's my goal. No, no, like this. Oh, this, yeah, yeah, I thought you were going to put you

“be encouraging. I was like, "I could try." I think it's encouraging. Yeah, and I think I hope that this”

I hope that this story from him encourages some people who might have had that second slap and

gone, I don't know. I've been told actually, maybe this whole thing is bad. Maybe this whole thing is evil. I hope that it prompts some people to go back and not only go to the stories of Christian history and say, "Okay, maybe he's right, maybe it's not all American white evangelicalism, maybe there's other things." But to his point, to go back to scripture and see surprising stories, we have to be attentive to the grading of the Holy Spirit, but also at the end of the day,

we will get some of this wrong. Yeah. And I think the failure of both of these camps to just acknowledge that whatever camp you were in is not perfect, that we will get some things wrong, that we will have to make mistakes and learn from them and try again. That's where both of them

“have gone wrong. That's why you get slapped both times. Since you can't acknowledge weakness”

or wrongness, and that's part of what healthy Christian communities should do for us is to say, "We as a whole might get some things wrong." I've become incredibly Presbyterian. There are times when I'm like, "We should all be Presbyterian because the Presbyterians are right." I need to have deep relationships with people who disagree with mythologically that help not just maybe push me on some things and maybe I change my mind, but to help me remember to hold the parts of my theology

that are not primary in the right place, like worshiping it in a physical church right now has been really good for me to go. There's some things about this, you know, in the way that we worship in the theology that we have, that I wish we're different, but this is a faithful church within the broad communion of saints. And I want to celebrate what they're doing here. When you talked about young people and how you possibly teach this, I think back to my church and Durham, where my

dear friend Kat, who was our youth director, part of confirmation for the teenagers, not just learning doctrine that the church believed or learning about the practices that we had, but part of their training was to go to a predominantly black Baptist church and to explore some other traditions

“racially, but also theologically, and I think it's important not just to say, "Hey, there are”

Christians who are different from us, who are doing faithful things, it helps us hold our own beliefs even if we are going to stick with them in a different way to say, like, maybe those teenagers will stay Presbyterian, they will not become Baptist, they can't be the kind of Presbyterians that think the Baptist are just evil and doing it wrong." And hopefully the Baptists at the other church can think the same way of us, and it's not just about exposure, it's about having that

internal sense that I could be wrong about this, and it will not cost me my salvation if I am wrong about this, and it won't cost me my community if I'm wrong about something. Trace stuff. Trace stuff. Can try. So being encouraged, Trump is turning people back to Christ exciting times we live in, don't you think, and Liam Ramos is back home with this cute little bunny ears. Could you, Caitlyn, as you're writing your dissertation, what if you published

each chapter to Holy Post Plus? I think my advisor would kill me. And then you could get feedback, it could be like a community interaction. All right, go to Holy Post Plus, there's lots of fun stuff from Caitlyn and Skye and others there. You saw McColley as well. And we have good cheer, puppies and love. We're doing okay. And Jesus has overcome the world. Jesus has overcome the

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Our guest today, Leah LeBresco Sergeant, says the world is not ready to welcome women as women. That's because our American culture fears dependence. Instead, our culture says everyone should aim for total autonomy and independence. Her new book, The Dignity of Dependence, aims to liberate women and men from this coercive and false ideal that we are strongest when we are alone. And it offers a different take on what it means to be a feminist. She argues that women's

equal dignity shouldn't require women to deny biological reality or attempt to be interchangeable with men. Leah LeBresco Sergeant works on family policy in Washington, D.C. and she runs a subject community called Other Feminisms. Here's Caitlyn's conversation with Leah LeBresco Sergeant. Leah, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me on. I am so excited to talk about your book The Dignity of Dependence. The cover of people are watching

right behind your head striking. I have had many coffee shop conversations with people about the book because it's so beautiful. And has a provocative subtitle, a feminist manifesto. One of the things I love about this book is that it brings together political, theological themes that in some corners of Christianity go together very naturally, but in many corners do not and are often separated out even in our partisan politics. Talk a little bit to us about the path that led you

towards this framing in this book right now. Sure. I would say the two core ideas of the book are that first women's equality, both equal dignity, political equality, doesn't depend on our being interchangeable with men. And second, that dependence, not autonomy, is quarter what it means

“to be human. I think when you put those two ideas together, you know, you get a way of valuing”

women as women in a world that often treats us like defective men and really sees our exposure

to the needs of others as a problem to be solved, not kind of an essential ordering of the

world that we have to figure out how to respond to and support. I love that. And there's so many directions of some of the things that you said that we could go that we will go, but let's talk a little bit first about the subtitle of this book. What makes this a feminist take? And if you could also give us a little bit of background on your other feminism, sub-stack and kind of the larger conversation, I think many of our listeners are probably not aware of some of the other

feminisms that are increasingly discussed in public right now. They might have an older view of what constitutes feminism, or even a more current view, but that one that's pretty constrained by the political options that are often available to us now. You know, I'd start by saying how I define feminism. I ran an event at my parish where I had

word kind of divided by whether they identified with it. So I think it's helpful to put your

“cards on the table. I think feminism is about thinking about what it means to be just to women”

as women, rather than as generic human beings, or kind of unsext or disembodied, or as defective

men, which I think is an error we can slip into if we would never endorse that idea explicitly.

And so for me, that takes a couple forms. I do use the name other feminism's for my sub-stack to make it clear both. I'm welcome a range of people, including people who disagree with me, and because I think it's pretty clear I'm not a mainstream feminist, because my focus on what it means to be just to women, you know, I'm not trying to solve the problem of there being women is part of my being pro-life. And that obviously does not put me in the mainstream of contemporary

feminism. But part of what I think about it is I think everyone, whether you identify with the word or not and whether you're pro-life or not, has the experience of seeing moments where women are asked to fix the problem of being women, where we are to accommodate it as we are. I think one example, Caroline Criotta Perez has a wonderful book kind of going through these different things in the built environment is surgeons whose mentors, women surgeons whose female

mentors teach them how to use equipment in non-standard ways. Because their surgical tools are proportioned for men's larger hands and they can't use them as they were designed,

because they were never designed with women in mind. No, I think you don't really matter whether

“you identify with the word feminist, whether your pro-life is a relevant to go, women should be”

welcome in the world as women. And my goal is just to apply that role consistently over a wide range of domains. Yeah, I so appreciate that. I would love any could give us some of the other examples you give in the book, both in this realm of kind of just generically how we live in the world. And even in this realm of fertility and reproduction of how you describe the world as not made for women. Because I think people might even hear that part of it and that we sort of expect

women in order to achieve equality to become functionally men or retreat them as defective men. Like you said, there's probably a lot of people who are like, I don't know anyone who thinks that, or I don't know how that could be true. Give us some color to how not even just these injustices exist that might not be intentional, but do affect women disproportionately. But also, how are we and even trying to remedy those problems, often asking women to be functionally men?

I think you'll find more explicit examples of them. There's a woman who's a doctor who really promotes perpetual contraception. So women who are on the contraceptive pill usually have a

run of placebo pills where there's breakthrough bleeding, and then resume the non-plicy

bo pills and it gives kind of the image of a normal period, even though it's not happening in exactly the same way. Understandably when people don't want to be pregnant, they do wonder what's the point of the bleeding intermittently. But you know, one woman is really doubled down on the idea to just take the normal pills the whole time. But she really frames it through the idea that having monthly cycles at all is kind of bad for women. Not only are there moments where you're

dealing with menstrual bleeding, but a natural cycle does involve kind of ups and downs, easier and harder periods. And it'd be better if she thinks to live within a narrower range of what normal looks like. So you might lose some of the peaks, but getting rid of the valleys would be worth it. And she really frames this through a matter of gender equality. She says, "Think about your daughter going take a test like if it's a hard day in her cycle,

shouldn't she have exactly what a boy has, the freedom from this?" And you know, I understand what she's pitching and I understand why it might be appealing. But I also think it's harder for Christians to sign on too. Because it really starts with the idea that there's something fundamentally not good about the way women are. And this Christians we have to add, the way God has authored them. We think women and men are both touched by the fall. But that's freely different than saying,

you know, the main thing women do has to have to transcend the tragedy of being born women. I think that comes up again and again. Yes, I so appreciate that. And I don't think we often, it might be even a little easier in the realm of fertility reproduction to think of the ways in which

“even whether it's medical or not, women are often given the options of, you know, if you want to”

have a certain kind of career, you want to have a certain kind of life, the standard that's already set for you is male version of success and the way that you get that is by changing something about your body in some way. Talk a little bit about one of the examples you give in the book that I was just so helpful for me as an example of how we just sort of assume that equality means men and women are treated the same way or should operate in the same way. Talk to us a little bit

about the basketball example. Yeah, I thought this was so helpful. You know, it's so funny. I saw someone in Twitter saying, really didn't expect there to be so much basketball. Yeah, this book and to be honest, it's the author I didn't either. Yeah, the surprise that emerged. But I like it because it's an example ever and has had some familiarity. So there's been a long running controversy that's kind of settled into equilibrium for now about where the three point lines should be for

women's basketball in contrast to men's basketball. And the question is, should it be equal

equally hard for men and women on average to sink a three point shot from their respective lines. Because however much you train in practice women on average are shorter than men. So the equal equal distance line isn't really equally hard for them anymore than the equal 10 foot hoop is equally hard to dunk on. And it's been really controversial and, you know, it's a matter of inches as the adjustment they're thinking of making in either case, but what's funny is for something

that's a relatively small adjustment whether you do it or not. It's provoked really harsh language

“on both sides in heart because there's a real fear. And I think a grounded fear that if you paint”

two lines on the court never can see the lines that when people see those two lines they go

"Why are there two?" And you say, "Well, the women shoot from the closer line." People say, "Oh, so they play an easier game." Like they don't play for real the way the men do. But they don't think it's as equitable. They just go its lesser. And I think what's fascinating is a middle of these fights. The women play with a smaller ball in the WMBA. And that's not as controversial because you don't start the game by bringing out both balls, which I think, honestly,

from your oblature seat you'd have a little more trouble telling the difference that you don't show everyone the difference for you start, but women get a ball that's better sized for their hands. But the lines you can see, and that's where I think you can kind of tell that this isn't about justice. It's about shame and stigma. The more visible and accommodation for women is,

the less likely we are to get it because to show the accommodation is helpful,

is to concede there are some real inerradicable differences between men and women. And if you really base your appeal to our quality on the interchangeability, any time you expose a lasting difference during danger in that claim. Yeah. Oh, I so appreciate that. Before we move into, you know, a lot of the book is not particularly about gender or sex. It's really about this false story that we have learned to tell about what it means to be human before we get into that.

I've listened to some interviews. You've done about the book, enjoyed so many of them. One conversation, I think it was on mere fidelity that I really enjoyed involved a little bit of discussion about, you know, the book is framed as, it is dignifying and it is valuable for us to be dependent because we are dependent creatures. And that relates in some significant ways to

how women experience the world. And I think one of the people in that show asked you,

is it true that women are uniquely dependent, that they are more dependent in some way because of their bodies or because of a spiritual or even emotional feature, or are we as women more uniquely aware of dependency or have an experience of our lives that makes us make us more focus on the areas where we're forced to realize that we are dependent. I'd love to hear you talk about that a little bit before we talk about how do these examples of women help us also see it's not just that

we get something wrong about women, it's something wrong about what it means to be human. That's right. So one way I put it is my claim is that everyone is deeply marked by dependence, so you may be more or less aware of that at different times. Now for Christians, I hope this is an uncontroversial plate because whether you're male or female, whether you're currently strong in your body or

“life is shaped by frail teas or weaknesses or pain in your body, you are deeply dependent on God.”

You know, for creation, for being sustained in existence, for regeneration, through Christ. So that's a big dependence right there no matter how strong you are in the eyes of the world. But for secular readers, you know, I think that's still the case that there is going to be big moments in our life where the idea of autonomy cannot hold. And if you do take autonomy as the ideal of what it means to be the most full-influrishing human you can be. And if you take dependence

as un-personing you to the extent that you could become the lisid target of violence, whether through abortion or euthanasia, then you're really setting up people to look at their lives as failures for large swaths of it. You start as an infant in the womb, your born, you're not very particularly independent of the point. And even if you're strong and even if you can't get pregnant, even if you're a man that's of these particular forms of dependence that can

encroaching your autonomy won't happen to you as intimately. You'll have periods of illness. And if you love people, even though you can't just state your own mother, your mother's needs will make a big impact on your life. And we'll eat away at that sense of, I'm the master of what happens to me. Nothing happens, but what I will that goes with autonomy. So what I really say is the question isn't are you dependent at your core? The question is, if you're pretending to be autonomous,

when are you going to get caught? caught two ways, when will you get caught by yourself? You'll

“realize this isn't true. This is a mask you have to put on for the outside world that you”

can't lie to yourself about it. And when will you get caught by others? You just can't keep the lie or sustain the lie indefinitely. Now I think women tend to get caught in both ways earlier. Women because of our capacity to bear life are aware that we are not fully our own, that we can't define completely the boundaries of who we care for and how through our will alone. But women also are more often caught out visibly, publicly, by others as both being more

And living a long time within the lie passing as autonomous will make it harder to live well

“when you're eventually exposed as dependent. Yeah, I so appreciate that there were so many moments”

reading this book when I thought, oh, this is giving language, does something I have struggled to articulate in my own life and experience of, you know, many of my friends are in the thick of small children. And they're going, they're looking at their life and they have been taught to view kind of their, the value of their life based on whether or not it matches up to this particular ideal that you've described of what it means to be human. That is not just career success,

but is autonomy is like I have full choice to do whatever I want and I have a level of kind of security and choice that provides that for me. And it plays out in career things, but it also plays out in economic questions and where you live and all these things and they're frustrated by that.

And it often does get framed and it often really is a difference between men and women.

But I've often had the experience of looking at them and going, the men that we are looking at, who seem to be able to have this life that we are frustrated we do not have. I don't know that that's a good life for them either. I don't think they're living a full flourishing human life with, you know, complete autonomy and choice and the lack of people depending on them in their households and, you know, in ways that feel like a burden,

maybe there's something really lost there. My favorite way that you do that is in naming that this is an anthropological lie. Like we have said something untrue about what it means to be human. Talk to us a little bit. You've done a little bit of this already, but for people listening, help us understand maybe something that we've known our whole lives is true of how Christians

think about human life, but maybe we haven't so starkly seen how it is different than the story

that's often told. Give us some sense of what is the story that most of us probably grow up

“marinating in about what a good human life is and what is the Christian alternative to that?”

I think a lot of the autonomous framing is that you are the author of your life and things are valuable insofar as you made them and you chose them. And that a lot of your job is bound up in both cultivating your strength but being anxious about your strength and almost the same way you might be about your retirement account. Have I built up enough? Will I be able to spend it down at the rate that's required but not run out? If I love this person, you know,

whether it's my spouse or my child that they need more for me and am I going to have enough for them or am I going to be deficient? And I think the Christian story is very different where we are not the authors of ourselves. We aren't the creators of our gifts. We're stewards of the things that are given to us as gift by God. So there's still a measure of responsibility. People have said, "Well, you're in favor of dependencies that we shall just give up on doing things."

You know, there's a real sense of what you do with the talents that are handed on to you. Your strength may be passing. You may not have it forever. But in your periods of surplus, how do you make a gift of it to others? But it just does not start with the idea that we are sufficient for the responsibilities in front of us. That even in those moments where we feel like we have a sense of mastery. We're on top of what we're doing, which is obviously not how I feel

with three young kids day to day. That sense of mastery comes from things we have been given, not things we have earned. And that there will be days where if we love others, we are not enough for them. And we turned to God to ask him to lend us more strength. They're let us participate in his grace. But we don't start with the assumption we ever could or ever will be enough for all the people we love. I still appreciate that. I'd love for a minute to hear you talk about some of the more

like truly policy parts of this book that are not just attending to the story that we tell that is a false story about what it means to be human. But also point out, as you did earlier with sort of the like some of the fertility things, you give some other examples in the book of like crash test dummies, like real material ways that women are disadvantaged. But you also have a section of the book where you're talking about here are ways in which are legal frameworks.

Not just the stories we tell, but the legislative means that constrain us, cause problems and how we think about care and how care actually gets given in people's families and homes. Talk to us a little bit about some of the policy reasons that we devalue certain forms of care

“or make it really hard for people to give care. So I think two ways of thinking about this”

are that when we see people who have a big care responsibility, there's sometimes the impulse of policy of like, well, how do we take this responsibility away from this person so they can be freer? And I love Eva Fetterkide who's a kind of philosopher of dependency and need who says, often in those circumstances, people don't say, I want to be free of this person. I love they say, I'm not free to give a yes to them right now because it's too much for me to sustain.

I want to be given what I need so that I can give a yes. So I think more often thinking about supporting caregivers rather than just privatizing or subsidizing, getting care in the market. It'll vary when your large dad has intense memory care issues that may or may not be something

of her life where they'd like to be able to do more if they were free to say yes. And one way

that France addresses that is that in their pension system kind of analogous to our social security system, people get caregiver credits in the same way that paid work helps build up what you'll receive in social security. So when moms are staying home with very little kids and they're out of the workforce, you know, they may not be getting the full amount of credit towards their pension that they would if they were working at a wage, but they're also not being zeroed

“out the way they are in America. And I think that's really valuable so that you're making”

sure you're not borrowing too intensely from your future to give care in the present. In America in particular, there's often the tendency to treat care from the people who love you as though it obviously costs them nothing to provide, and then for doesn't need to be compensated, or as though it's kind of scammy to do in the first place. And so one that we think that really stands out is the SSI program. And this is a disability program for people who don't have a long

work history. You don't qualify for a more generous disability program. So SSI doesn't give you that much support. But what it does, it's really pernicious is that if we were sisters and I was on SSI, and you bought me groceries, sometime in the month, they're like, "Let me go pick up some of the things like a likes and drop them off." I'm not going to ask her to pay me back. She's on a really limited budget. I have to deduct the cost of the groceries, send the receipt to the government,

and get that much less in benefits per month. If my mom is letting me live in her bit-spare

bedroom, she has to calculate the imputed market rent for that bedroom, even though she would never

take in a rent a quarter so that the government can deduct it because if I'm getting the free from someone the government shouldn't have to support me. This is something that the Biden administration was going to soften a little bit so that you could get meals from your family. That was the amount of softening that we're doing. And it looks like that's getting rolled back.

“It's not being fully implemented as a rule. But I think that's one of the simplest”

absurd things we do where we treat people's care as fundamentally suspect or kind of cheating. Yeah, that was such a helpful couple chapters of the book to realize. There's not only the strength of the stories we tell that make it harder for our experience of our everyday lives to match what we believe a human good human life looks like, but there are also legislative ways in

which this is harder. Talk to us briefly about I think probably many of the people listening

probably at the very beginning thought like I'm a feminist in the sense that I like believe women are equally valuable and I care and many people listening are probably pastors, church leaders, who care about women and their churches, talk to us about what men can do, whether it's and how they think or how they act or if they have some level of power in an institution or a community, to recognize the ways in which as we talked about the beginning of the conversation,

women experience dependency in a way that men should also and men often do, but men often have

“more mechanisms to avoid. You know, I think especially in the workplace, the best fruit of the”

COVID pandemic has been more room for hybrid work, telework and flexible work that you know, giving people a little more room to say yes to something that someone else needs in their community makes our community stronger. It makes it easier for people to have those relationships of love whether they're familiar relationships or friends relationships and I want to say I was the beneficiary of this today because I usually take my son to the pediatrician by bike or walking.

And I don't have a driver's license for a variety of reasons and it's 10 degrees with women's children. So my husband's work was generous, he's a teacher, but they got someone to cover, giving his test in the morning so we could drop me off at the doctor and then a friend of mine came and picked me up from the doctor. So it's those kind of little moments for you to say, okay, well, when I look at my way my work is ordered, if I'm a boss or if I'm running an organization,

if someone has a friend who's sick, is it easy for them to find a way to help? Hmm, and if it's quite hard or to be a weird exemption, well, can I do something so that those small interruptions that come from someone's passing needs of, I need to bring this person soup, I need to pick her up from the doctors. I need to go grab a prescription like, how easy is that for someone to do where you are and could it be 10% easier to start with?

I so appreciate that. Before we get to the last question that I want to ask, we said earlier, the title is the dignity of dependence. The subtitle is a feminist manifesto. We've talked about the feminist part. Let's briefly talk about the manifesto part. We've talked about kind of the main themes and arguments in the book. If it's a manifesto, I imagine there's like a little bit of conflict involved. Give us some sense of like who are, whether it's people or

ideas, like what are the main arguments being made and who is, you know, who stands to benefit from them that your book is interested in opposing? It looks funny. I really liked having the word manifesto in because to look at the cover, it's pink. It's got a woman carrying a baby and I really

I do like, it takes costs or something to carry the baby. But still, when you have this kind of cover, it's easy to be able to think like, oh, yeah, this is kind of just women or valuable, like it's the great amount of that, you know, maybe I'll put one of the quotes on Instagram, and it will be kind of warm. And I want people to like, my book is saying that we've made a fundamental mistake legally and culturally about the human person. And I want us to, you know,

nest stuff up to put that. And I want to be frank that, you know, when you make this kind of error, there's big injustices that come with that, but you also build a lot of load bearing stuff on that false idea. And so trying to rework it will break some stuff as you go as you're trying to

“rebuild on a firm refoundation. I think a manifesto conveys, if you read this book, like,”

it's going to be a little dangerous to change your mind about stuff. You won't fit as naturally into the world you understood because you'll see parts of it that you know longer feel comfortable living with. Yeah, I so appreciate that. And I, I'm curious, given that, how you have received the feedback from the book, I thought it was so interesting, both when I was like looking at interviews you had done, I was looking at people who endorsed the book, there's such a range,

theologically and politically of people who appreciated parts of this. And I read it and, you know, admittedly was sort of like, how could anyone disagree? Like, I just like matched my experience and put together pieces, I love so much. I'm curious who the naysayers have been or who has been disgruntled in a way that a manifesto might disgruntle someone. Well, one thing I appreciated is that at least in some cases were people pushed back, they did enough putting forward why they disagreed that

I think both readers have a real chance to evaluate their position in mind. Yeah. And that they're leveling critiques where I'm saying something controversial, right? Rather than casting any personal

“dispersion. So, you know, I think the most negative mainstream review I got was in the Washington”

Post, where the Washington Post reviewer back a Rothfield, you know, really was saying, look,

like, Leo's a gender essential. She's saying there's some, like, big differences between men and

women and that's going to always disadvantage women. I don't think she particularly made the strong case that I'm wrong. So in some cases, she just kind of dismissed it. She was like, you know, she talks about pregnancy, but men and women both go through other hard things like you can go through cancer. So there's lots of hard physical things. How is pregnancy only at really different shades men and women? Does she suppose in the question? I think lots of people

come into the review sympathetic with her might at that point say, wait a second. Yeah, let's see, it's great difference. Yeah, I think relevantly it's also different because unlike some of the other examples of physical suffering or hardship, she's talking about like, it is fundamental to who we are. If cancer disappeared tomorrow, we'd all rejoice. If pregnancy disappeared tomorrow, that would be the end of us, right? But I like that she laid her objections forward straight

forwardly enough that I'd never worried about people reading their view. I said, okay,

she's done a decent job painting our fundamental difference and a reader can decide, well, what do I do with this? Yeah, before we move on to the last question, I'm realizing based on a few things that we've said, there may be women in particular listening who are going, I'm very with Leah on. There are structural ways that women are disadvantaged. I might even really be with Leah on some of this like underlying question of what it means to be human in the stories we

tell about that. But I have never been pregnant. I don't have children. Maybe I'm struggling to get pregnant or will not be able to get pregnant. Is there some, and I just wonder if the heckles arrays a little bit of, is there some description of women here that does not include me and might say something, might be a critique of the argument that it's too based on this experience that is

“but only women experience and yet not all women experience. How would you respond to those women?”

Who might be going, I think I'm mostly with you, but there's just this deep part of me that bristles at anything that makes that connection too strong. You know, I think they're like the basketball parts, right? Like there's a bunch of ways in which the kind of differences between men and women that look more like to overlapping bell curves rather than the stark difference of pregnancy still affect and shape their lives where they want to be more curious about. Okay,

well, how can we talk frankly about real differences without feeling like we're giving up our claim to equality, even if they don't want to center the potential for pregnancy as one of them. But I do think that that potential, whether or not it's something you desire or something, you're able to achieve for not does divide the sexism in a big way. And it's actually really like that CS Lewis said in the letter to his friend Sheldon Van Hawkins, where Sheldon and his wife

specifically avoided having children because they wanted a relationship of full equality. And they thought

that pregnancy would make them two different from each other. And therefore, if they never

became mother and father, they could just be partners indefinitely. And Lewis says, you know, the experience of not being a mother or not being a father is still gendered and can be fully shared. You know, whether that's a difference that you're hoping for, you know, something that you

you never were able to step away from having a gendered relationship. You just took away the

possibility of children. Yeah, I found that part in the book where you're referencing that. Really helpful. Last question, Leah, one of my favorite things about the book is your description. In particular and even some of the people that you're you're citing of a Jewish understanding of this, I love the way you talk about making our indebtedness, our dependence upon God as creatures,

concrete, like taking this thing that is metaphysically true of us and finding ways for it to be

tangible for it to be concrete. We've talked a lot on this show about embodied communities and the church about, you know, seeking to care for each other in deep community. Give us some examples of how that idea might practically be responded to by people who read the book or listen, how might they go, okay, I want, let's say I'm not a father and mother of small children or I have passed that stage of my life. How might someone who says, yeah, I actually, I want to find a way to

make concrete in my life. This thing I know to be true to push back against this story that I don't

believe is true in the world, but is very powerful and has shaped me inevitably. My big advice for

people is that if you read this book, you're persuaded by it, ask for help with something in the next two weeks. And I know it may feel more natural that you read it and you feel fired up to say, well, we're can I help? Yeah. And if you see an opportunity, you have my permission to go for it. Yeah. But the

“reason I put my emphasis on asking for help is I think what people often need is the testimony”

from their family and neighbors and friends that it's normal to ask. You know, I was asking today for that ride from the pediatrician when everyone knows I could have called a lift. Yeah, it was possible for me to do something else. And I think it's easy to feel like if it's possible to have an alternative, is it fair to ask your friends? Yeah. I could have solved this problem with money. But I didn't want to stranger in 10 degree whether who was watching me try and load my car

seat into the back in my neighborhood for a five minute drive. I wanted a friend to come pick me up.

“And so I asked. And I think those small asks, especially the ones that ever knows you could have”

done without offer a testimony of, I think this is part of what our friendship is about. It's about asking even when you have an alternative. As if you're teaching your friend, you could ask me. I love that so much. Leah, thank you for the work of this book and for taking the time today. I said this before we start recording, so I feel like I should say it now. Truly one of my favorite books I read last year. I would highly recommend that people listening whether there were things

that they loved in the conversation or things they were like, oh, I think I might want to fight with her about that. I would just highly encourage them to read it because it's incredibly well written.

“It makes arguments. I think we really desperately need to hear and it puts things together that”

most of the time our politics tries to force into different camps. So thank you so much, Leah. Notes, news stories, holy post merchandise, and much, much more.