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They Choose Him: Survivors, Evangelicalism, and the Cost of Power Part 1

Season #3

STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO!

Key Takeaways:

      • Megan and Elle Arters discuss the difficulties they have had concerning politics and the Evangelical Church
      • They also talk about how politics have shaped the Church and how the Church has shaped politics.

Notable Quotes:

      • "We have different definitions for these words, and that's where the confusion comes in and the disorientation comes in...the disappointment comes in because we ultimately start to realize we're not saying the same things." — Elle Arters
      • "Those were the values that we thought Christianity held, and then to hear our leader going directly, specifically in the opposite direction and having our people of God still support that, especially surrounding women and children, and that somehow it's okay for people to abuse women and children, use women and children, ruin the lives of women and children, and still be supporting that." — Megan Owen
      • "...this wasn't the first kind of catalyst or moment that we had had with the evangelical church at large or a local church or at large. But for a lot of people, this was the first moment or the first event that they had with their church that was where they witnessed the leadership perform so differently from what they were preaching." — Elle Arters
      • "It was difficult. There was collective grieving for a sector of Christendom. And then we watched that unfold." — Megan Owen

Resources:

(0:00) MEGAN: Hi, Megan Owen here from Mountain City Christian Counseling. The podcast you are about to start requires a little bit of an extra introduction, in my opinion. When Elle and I decided to talk about our current administration and its effect on survivors, we were doing our best to not come from a political point of view, although I'm not sure that we could help coming from a political point of view, because we work with survivors of deep misogynistic abuse. And because of the nature of what we do, and what we did before running a non-profit for single mothers leaving abuse, the response of the Evangelical Church to our current administration has been incredibly triggering for our clients and for many others who follow us on social media or listen to our podcast. And we just didn't think we could not address the elephant in the room for much longer, because it has affected all of us. So we're coming from the point of view of people who have been disappointed by the Evangelical Church in the last couple of decades, of people who do recognize patterns in our neurodivergence, and coming from a place of deep disappointment in the values that were set aside by the Church. This is about our disappointment in the Church, not our disappointment in the current administration. We do believe that empire is a concept all throughout Scripture that was never supposed to be joined with Christendom, and we've seen over and over and over in history where that has been disastrous. And so that is the point of what we are addressing in this part one, and then of course in part two of this podcast on Christian nationalism and its effect on survivors of abuse. And also, we want to offer some healing and perspective. Again, this is not about Republican or Democrat. It is about how we've missed our calling, how we were supposed to be the third option, how we were supposed to be the Church, a light on a hill, and we still can be. So I hope you hear a heart in this, and I hope that you enjoy it. This is for all of you. 

(2:46) MEGAN: This is Pretty Psych, the podcast where we discuss and deconstruct the impact of Evangelical Christianity and cultural phenomena on the psyche, the deep and sometimes uncharted territory of the mind. We venture into raw, rough, and sometimes triggering moments, but we know that through this what we will find will be pretty fascinating, amazing, and pretty intelligent. My name is Megan Owen. I'm a pastoral trauma counselor, and I have spent decades studying the science of human behavior. I draw parallels between therapy and connection to God, self, and others. I love what I do, and I will walk hand in hand with you through the fire to help you find healing and rest. Most importantly, I want to bring you home to yourself.

(3:56) MEGAN: Hi, Megan Owen here of Mountain City Christian Counseling. Welcome to Pretty Psych. I'm so excited to have my sweetest friend Elle Arters here.

If you don't follow her on social media, you must. She also has Core Matters, which is an incredible business with resources for those of us who are people helpers and who are therapists and coaches, beautiful graphics, trauma-informed. Elle, tell us a little bit more about yourself before we jump in.

(4:27) ELLE: Yeah, thank you. That was very kind of you. Yeah, I'm currently a graphic designer and co-founder with my sister of Core Matters Counseling. She's a licensed therapist, and like you said, I like to spend all my time trying to create additional resources and products for other clinicians, practitioners who are out there helping, just finding other ways to help people get mental health support. So yeah, that's what I'm doing over at Core Matters Creative Center. 

(5:00) MEGAN: I love it. And of course, Elle and I have been friends for 15 years. We did a lot of work together on Give Her Wings the Nonprofit, and now Elle also works with Mountain City, and she's just, you know, I jokingly call her my emotional support human, because she is. You are, Elle, and I'm so glad to have you here. We have a really interesting topic that we are going to attempt to comprehensively explain. I think it was your idea, Elle. We were both struggling a couple weeks ago, and you said, why don't we do a podcast on this? I wasn't even in a place to do it yet because my heart was so heavy, but Elle and I have unique perspectives as neurodivergents and master pattern recognizers and historians and Bible scholars. And so we've been watching the State of the Union, you know, I think since 2016, that's the first time I brought it up. I feel like it was about the same for you. I'm sure we talked about it then, but we have noticed the effects of our current administration on our own nervous systems, and definitely those of our clients. And we really would like to discuss what it's like to be us, what it's like to be our clients, and what we've noticed and how we can help. So I think we should jump right in. Yeah?

(6:32) ELLE: Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it.

(6:34) MEGAN: All right. So I'm going to go back to 2016. That was the first time I think we could just touch on this. This is when Elle and I and others just felt a really deep betrayal by the evangelical church as we watched them throw all of the values we'd been taught out the window in favor of policy. That's how it felt. Is that how it felt to you? 

(7:01) ELLE: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yes. They taught us all these values and then seeming to redefine and toss those out. So their behavior and their words were no longer matching. That was very confusing and shocking and jarring, I think, for a lot of people. 

(7:22) MEGAN: Definitely. Definitely. That's a great way to put it because that's what integrity is, is for your words and your actions to match, right? So it was jarring. It was difficult. There was collective grieving for a sector of Christendom. And then we watched that unfold. And we saw books like Jesus and John Wayne come out, books on empire by Preston Sprinkles and Walter Brueggemann and different resources like that as others seem to be calling this out sort of in a prophetic way. And then it happened again. So any vestiges of hope that things had maybe corrected themselves were pretty much dashed at that point.

(8:17) ELLE: No, I agree, I think. Of course, I agree with everything you just said, that those years from roughly 2016 to 2020 were just a whole beast in themselves. It was, I think, sort of that first peeling back for a lot of people. I'm sure we'll get into maybe the details more. I know for you and I personally, this wasn't the first kind of catalyst or moment that we had had with the evangelical church at large or a local church or at large. But for a lot of people, this was the first moment or the first event that they had with their church that was where they witnessed the leadership perform so differently from what they were preaching. And so, yeah, so collectively, I think those 2016 to 2020 were those years where they were processing that. And I agree. Then we had some years where we hoped that we were going to go in a different direction as a country, and we did not in 2024. And that was, again, predominantly because of the church support. And I think that I know for myself, that was, that was still pretty shocking and kind of tipped over into like another level of grief, like you said, in 2024. That really took the wind out of, I think, people's sails and then realizing we knew a little bit more what we were about to get back into and that enough people in the country were like, yeah, let's do that again and even more. That was a lot to receive. 

MEGAN: Yes, exactly. And as you're saying that, I'm thinking that is a deep betrayal trauma. And like you said, we'd already felt betrayed by families, by churches, by abusive systems and humans. And we know what people are capable of doing, even people who say that they're Christians. However, I think I thought that was a slice of the population of the church. And so the disillusionment for me centered around, it's not just a slice, it's the majority, which you and I have been voices for a long time, advocates for the DV community, especially for women who have been ostracized by churches and further abused by entities and families. And I just kept thinking, Elle, that we were getting somewhere, that our voices were being heard, we were seeing progress. And I know there's some progress out there, but it was just like this giant cloud of church people saying, we're going to squash this once and for all. And there was a deep discouragement for a long time and disappointment in people who maybe they couldn't see it, but also they didn't listen. And then I felt like they didn't want to hear it. And that was hard for me. 

(11:52) ELLE: For sure, for sure. I think a lot of us, you know, it is reminiscent in some ways to our own experiences with abusive spouses or abusive churches in the past. I'm kind of thinking of the categories that Leslie Vernick shares oftentimes when trying to assess the kind of relationship that you're in. Is it disappointing? Is it difficult? Is it destructive? And while we haven't used that language too often, or most people haven't, with regard to processing our neighbors and our family and our friends and our church members who have embraced this, can we just say, like this kind of Trumpism, MAGAism, and everything that it stands for. I think we have all been effectively trying to assess what is this relationship that we have and where do you guys stand? Is this disappointing? Is it more than that? Is it difficult? And is it even more than that? Is it actually destructive? Depending on where that answer is going to determine how we respond in those relationships and the kind of boundaries that we are going to need to set. None of us wanted that any more than we did really in our marriages or in other difficult relationships. That's nobody's first choice, but here we are again and having to figure out. To be fair, I do think some people—I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all for the most part. I think some people in their own involvement and relationship with Trumpism or MAGAism and the things that that stands for, they may produce more disappointment than destruction, and others might produce more destruction than disappointment. Trying to navigate that is— 

(14:00) MEGAN: Eventually, we have to land and say, we're going to radically accept that this is where we are and what do we do from this place, but before we get there, I just want to acknowledge that disappointment for everybody. Again, you and I know Christians who are rejoicing. They feel as though this is the best thing that could happen. This is the best case scenario. They say things like, he's a jerk, but policy, things like that, whereas you and I come from this place of, we thought women were made in the image of God. We believed that Christian values were to honor the Imago Dei in every human. We thought Christian values were neighborliness and table fellowship and helping the vulnerable, including the widow and the orphan and the prisoner and the immigrant and the sick and the poor and whatever the vulnerable are right now in this moment of time-space history. Those were the values that we thought Christianity held, and then to hear our leader going directly, specifically in the opposite direction and having our people of God still support that, especially surrounding women and children, and that somehow it's okay for people to abuse women and children, use women and children, ruin the lives of women and children, and still be supporting that. I can't find a file for that. I know there are arguments, but again, I thought those were our Christian values. That's what I thought.

(15:56) ELLE:And I think they are. I think the heartbreak and the challenge and the exhaustion comes from this relentless attack where these Christian leaders and now other men and women who call themselves Christians, and I'm not going to jump in here and judge the heart or anything, but they certainly would refer to themselves as that as well. This is what they believe, but I would argue there's a redefining of Christianity, and what some of these would, like if they had to make a list on their Christian virtues and values, it's going to look very different from the list that you just shared, and so that I think is what's so disorienting for us when we grew up in the Christian church or we were involved in the Christian church or evangelical church in adulthood, and we are all using similar language, and yet we are actually saying very different things. We have different definitions for these words, and that's where the confusion comes in and the disorientation comes in, and like you said, the disappointment comes in because we ultimately start to realize we're not saying the same things. We're not having the same conversations. 

(17:24) MEGAN: That's it right there. You said that a couple times now, redefining, and that's what's bringing the confusion in. Absolutely. Now, what do you think though, Elle? I'm noticing aggression also, which that was very shocking to me, you know, compared to the fruits of the spirit of love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, you know, all of those things to be aggressively attacked, be called names. My 17-year-old daughter was pretty viciously attacked on our Nextdoor app by other women, and I had to report them, and they were part of this group, I guess that's here in this area on Highlands Ranch called Moms for Liberty, but they went after my child, and they do it in the name of God, so that's also brought a lot of confusion to me because we know them by their love, right? 

(18:22) ELLE: Right, yeah, and I forgot about that. I remember when you told me that that happened to her, and it's just outrageous and unthinkable as a fellow mom, and yet I've heard these stories. This is, I mean, and again, it's what I say all the time for all levels, I think for so many different accounts of abuse, it is shocking but not surprising. That's how I read my experience of these things often, so it is shocking that a mom would do that, and yet also I'm not surprised because this is the fruit of, I would argue this is the fruit of the value system that is at the center of these communities, and so I've seen this fruit for a long time now. I've seen, I definitely agree with you that the aggression seems to be increasing, I think for a variety of reasons, socially or whatever. It may have been there all along, it's just socially it was unacceptable to share too much, or it was only in the fringe places where you could reveal your true thoughts, and now it's far more permissible to share these kinds of thoughts and to behave in these kinds of ways. That's a whole other conversation to me as well as is just seeing collectively how much our behavior has changed in the last decade. I have these conversations with my kids all the time because they don't know what they don't know. They were still young adolescents. I think my youngest was actually still in elementary school back in 2016 when this whole shift in politics occurred in America, and so this is all he knows, and trying to explain to them this is not just politics. It is absolutely fine to have different belief systems, even like it's absolutely fine to have different faith belief systems, it's absolutely fine to have different political belief systems, that we all hear these problems and we come up with different solutions is normal and wonderful, that diversity is great, etc, etc. I can absolutely hold space for all of that. What they don't realize is that the way we have gone about these differences and the way that we are trying, just the different behaviors and attitudes that we're now expressing and displaying in the last decade is radical. That is not normal. That is not how it used to be prior to 2016, and so yeah, that confusion and exhaustion I think is another, I mean obviously that example that you just shared is evidence of that, and that this group of ladies would feel comfortable doing it and would do it again just reveals, like we said, where we're at right now as a collective group.

(21:42) MEGAN: Yes, and I think that feeds into pattern recognition. I've said the same thing, I don't know, you and I might have talked about this, that our youngest children for 10 years now, this is what they've known, so my youngest was only seven, your youngest was in elementary school. That kind of blows my mind, that it's all that they remember, and I've said similar things that this, you know, at 52 years old, this is not how I've seen politics go. I have not seen the church be involved to this extent. This is not normal, but again, that feeds into the pattern recognition, so it's not normal in our lifetimes, but humanity has seen it before, and so okay, so on a small scale, you and I have seen abusive behavior. We understand a lot about narcissism and PT cluster B personality disorders. We've been talking about it, you know, even though it feels shocking, nothing is surprising at this point because this is the natural trajectory of a narcissistic system. We've taught on narcissism in Give Her Wings Academy. We've done all of, you know, we've done all this work, and so you and I have said and felt compelled to say, here's the pattern, this is what's coming, and it's frustrating for people who are neurodivergent because we recognize patterns. We know what history is. We have all read about where this is going, and we're just unheard, and that is the nature of it, but it does affect us. People who stand there and say, hey, this is not actually God honoring are usually unheard. All throughout scripture, they were unheard except by a small remnant maybe, but Elle and I, we've seen it. We've taught about it. We've posted about it, and it's been an ongoing 10-year process for us.

(24:05) ELLE: For myself, at least, I feel like I spent some time. It's not been my main focus at all, but I have spent some time here and there from 2016 to like 2024 kind of sounding the alarm bells like you're saying, hey, I can see what's coming or what has happened and what else could happen, everything you just said. While it absolutely hit us like a ton of bricks when we had the election and we concede the majority of people who were embracing everything that we were calling wrong and we wanted to change, something shifted for me. Like you just said, there's always a remnant. Sometimes I think that can feel very, very small, but one thing I'll say is I'm trying to stay more focused on who does see the truth, who is still showing up to be those helpers, who is just speaking truth. Maybe they are still doing it fearfully, but they're still speaking it. One, I'm seeing that the number of people who fall into that group are larger than I fear, so that's encouraging. Then even at whatever number that is, for me, I've started to shift when I share things to encouraging and increasing this group as opposed to trying, this is for me, I'm not saying this is for everyone, but instead of trying to cast like a huge umbrella for everyone or instead of trying to sound the alarm bells, it's a little bit more like, well, here we are and here's the group who's still trying to show up for it and I want to empower and encourage this group. I don't mean it in any way like I'm not going to intentionally harm somebody who doesn't agree. I'm still going to do good wherever I can to anybody who believes differently if they want to keep showing up in my space, that's great, you're always welcome, but my personal focus is going to be for those who are like what you and I are sharing about, who are exhausted but trying to show up, who are confused but are committed to what we believe are the purest tenets of Christianity, who are anxious and worried about the future but are still trying to find places to engage in their agency and finding ways that we can still do good. That's become my focus more in what I'm sharing. Does that make sense? 

(27:27) MEGAN: A hundred percent.

(27:30) MEGAN: I hope this conversation has encouraged deep thought as well as helped you draw parallels between therapy and your connection to God, self and others. If you'd like some one on one time with me unpacking some of your most precious life stories to find healing and rest, contact me on mountaincitychristiancounseling.com. To help this podcast reach more people, do subscribe and review this podcast and share it with someone who would benefit from healing and rest. My name is Megan Owen and thank you for listening to this episode of Pretty Psych. Catch you next episode. And in the meantime, do find healing and do find rest.