Brad speaks with author and pastor Ruth Everhart about her new book, "The #MeToo Reckoning: Facing the Church's Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct." They discuss the connections between rape culture and purity culture, how patriarchal theology contributes to toxic church environments. Link to Ruth Everhart The #MeToo Reckoning: https://www.ivpress.com/the-metoo-reckoning
"The #MeToo movement has revealed sexual abuse and assault in every sphere of society, including the church. But victims are routinely ignored by fellow Christians who deny their accounts and fail to bring accountability to the perpetrators. All too often, churches have been complicit in protecting abusers, reinforcing patriarchal power dynamics, and creating cultures of secrecy, shame, and silence.
Pastor and survivor Ruth Everhart shines a light on the prevalence of sexual abuse and misconduct within faith communities. She candidly discloses stories of how she and others have experienced assault in church settings, highlighting the damage done to individuals, families, and communities."
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Hello, welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi, and our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
Last week we had the, I don't know what to call it, debut or something of the new version, or the updated version, or whatever you want to call it, of the song Hottest is Modest, and there's been a lot of discussion in various corners of social media about the harmfulness of the song and its message.
It's thoroughly rooted in purity culture, And for me, it just brought up a conversation that I had about a year and a half ago with Ruth Everhart, who wrote a book called The Me Too Reckoning, and it's all about how the church has to—the Christian church, writ large—has to take account of the way it has fostered abuse and the ways that it has fostered rape culture.
And so, in light of the hottest-is-modest fallout, I thought it would be a good time to reintroduce this conversation into our feed.
I learned a lot from Ruth.
We don't agree on everything, but I do think she just has some amazing insight, and she's also very vulnerable in this interview about her own experiences with sexual assault and other very difficult things.
So I turn now to our interview.
I hope you all are doing well.
Thanks for listening.
And I am joined today by Ruth Everhart, who's going to be talking to us about her new book, The Me Too Reckoning, Facing the Church's Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct.
Ruth wears many hats.
She's an author, speaker, and pastor, has served in the Presbyterian USA denomination and various churches there for more than 20 years.
She graduated from Calvin College and United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities.
She travels a lot to speak at churches, conferences and retreats, written for the Christian Century, Sojourners, Washington Post, and is the author of three books.
Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land, and her first book, Ruined, which is a memoir, and we're going to talk about that one in a minute, and then we're really going to focus on her third book, which just came out, the Me Too, Hashtag Me Too Reckoning, Facing the Church's Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct.
So, Ruth, thanks so much for being here.
Oh, thanks for having me, Brad.
It's great to talk to you, and you've written a very timely and very challenging book, I think.
Um, you know, one of the things that I wanted to start with was just talking about the MeToo movement and when it gained steam.
And I guess I was, you know, as I was thinking about today, I was wondering kind of when you knew that you might, um, you know, might have a project that would sort of Bring to light the need for a reckoning with, a Me Too reckoning within the church.
And as I was thinking about that, I was thinking about your first book, Ruined.
And Ruined is a memoir, and it really includes some very harrowing passages from your life, things that I think probably went in and shaped your current project.
So could you talk about Ruined and how maybe that set the stage a little bit for the Me Too reckoning book?
Right.
Well, I wouldn't say that I chose to write about this particular topic.
I would say that this topic chose me.
I didn't set out to say, gosh, I'm going to spend the next five, six years of my life writing about sexual assault and faith.
But what happened is I wrote the memoir in 2016, Ruin, because I wanted to unpack why a sexual assault was so incredibly damaging.
And as a pastor, I wanted to look at my theology about that and what I believed about what happened to me.
So I wrote this book that looks at that traumatic event of rape at gunpoint by a stranger.
But then it goes on to look at the next 10 years and say, what did I believe about what happened to me?
And basically the title's the giveaway.
I believed I was ruined.
And so what happened is I wrote that book in 2016.
It was published in 2016.
And then in 2017, the Me Too movement began, and I was doing a lot of speaking about this topic, and I heard so many stories that I really hoped that as the culture shifted that the church would shift, but what it seemed to me was happening was the church was lagging behind culture.
And so I really felt called to do something.
I felt like I was in a position to do that.
My heart had been broken enough times that I was very soft-hearted to victims and to what they experienced, but I'd also been toughened by the experience of writing about this really tender topic and then of getting quite a bit of pushback in different places from my writing.
So I felt like that combination of of having become vulnerable and having become toughened would serve me well and I could respond to God's call on my life to do this kind of writing.
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