Inviting Doom Podcast: Recent Episodes
Inviting Doom Podcast
Welcome to Inviting Doom - a podcast about faith, bad theology, and stepping into ideas marked as dangerous for the soul. Sarah and Christa discuss unlearning old beliefs, current issues, and explore previously unexplored religious frameworks in their lives.
Christa and Sarah return to an evangelical favourite: bad marriage books. Whether this journey continues on to additional bad marriage books, nobody knows, but for now they start with discussing Dr. Emerson Eggerich’s much-adored “Love & Respect” 2004 release which they both had read (and accepted) prior to marriage.
This episode delves into Dr. Emerson’s theory about love and respect that he claims is god-revealed, how women and men can save their marriages if they accept their essentialist roles and deepest (differing) needs, the overarching themes of the book, and the first introductory chapters. If you are not in favour of rants about complementarianism and essentialist tropes, these episodes are not for you.
Christa and Sarah take an uncomfortable deep dive into the Adam and Eve story and the underlying teachings perpetuated regarding obedience, purity, punishment, and forgiveness.
They have an honest discussion about deep theological flaws and what the Eden story - as told by evangelicalism - reveals about God’s character, and discuss what true justice and an actually loving framework should have looked like for God’s children.
Not wanting to miss out on discussing the impacts of Hillsong’s far-reaching culture and mega-church experiences in general, Christa and Sarah share their thoughts on FX’s “The Secrets of Hillsong” documentary and the undergirding values perpetuated by mega-church structures.
From Christa’s own 10-year stint in a mega-church, to looking at broader cultural norms that make “mega” feel natural to modern evangelicals, they question the lack of discernment, and poke at the drivers of mega-ministries: endless growth, expansionism, and monoculture.
Sarah and Christa continue the discussion based on the Religious Trauma Syndrome symptoms outlined by Dr. Marlene Winell’s three articles discussed on the previous episodes ( https://www.journeyfree.org/articles-manual/).
From struggling with being authentic and revealing her actual self to having difficulties relating to those outside the church, Christa discusses her battles with feeling disconnected and disempowered in certain areas of her life. She outlines how these symptoms impede everything from friendships to making future plans, and how an underdeveloped sense of self has impacted her relationships and sexuality.
Sarah and Christa expand on the Religious Trauma Syndrome symptoms outlined by Dr. Marlene Winell’s three articles discussed on the previous episodes ( https://www.journeyfree.org/articles-manual/).
Sarah discusses the emotional, relational, and physical impacts of the doctrine of original sin and being taught to distrust “the flesh”, police emotions, quarantine thoughts, reject doubts, and continually be vigilant against Satan, the “prowling lion”. She also addresses the lack of tools believers often receive when having to face complex and nuanced real-life situations and the anxiety this can create when trying to navigate both being authentic and doing what is “right” before God.
Christa and Sarah discuss Dr. Marlene Winell’s three articles on Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS), the term which she coined ( https://www.journeyfree.org/articles-manual/).
They discuss the very real impacts that leaving a high-demand religion has on a person - socially, somatically, emotionally, and cognitively - and some of the related symptoms that manifest both while coping within rigid belief systems and when attempting to leave.
Often framed by the fear of ultimate loss of community and rejection by God, people questioning their faith have extreme difficulty navigating what lies beyond due to the lack of tools and deep fear of getting it all wrong.
Christa and Sarah discuss intergenerational trauma and the difficulty of addressing harmful interpretations and applications of scripture. When God is never changing, people can misapply His constancy as meaning that their human interpretations of the Bible ought not to change as well. When better approaches are dismissed for the sake of keeping the doctrine and community borders static and clearcut, God becomes tiny but manageable. However, this tiny God and rigid interpretations of Him ensure that harmful and traumatic applications are perpetuated.
Audio Block Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more
Christa and Sarah give a “brief” overview of their lives in 3 zoom recordings that Sarah had to edit down to 1. They discuss experience, key events, and throw in a few theological quandaries they had along the way.
In a Part 1&2 combo, Christa and Sarah discuss Christa’s ‘deconstruction’ blogpost that she wrote and posted during the pandemic. They discuss the problem of institutions v. individuals, and how difficult it can be to address systemic issues when there is a gap between good intentions and actual result. Problematic is the lack of recognition and space to discuss that scripture is contradictory and therefore individual interpretation and out-workings of faith vary widely. Church inadvertently creates an insulated “safe space” for itself by not addressing conflicts, contradictions, or discomfort; yet what would actually be safe for processing life would feel unsafe: a place that allows room for processing these discomforts, contradictions, and conflicts without the intent to control, correct, and dominate.
Additionally, they address how the continuous messaging of “God is always present/ God is always clear” drives believers into secrecy about the struggles they’re having when God isn’t present and isn’t clear, and how they often feel to blame for God’s absence. Because of many pat answers and sayings and this aversion to “division”, deep issues remain undiscussed and therefore unacknowledged and the grief of losing community because of this gap is potent. Christa proposes that what is needed is kind, humble, “unsafe” spaces that allow for pointy edges, friction, and sharp ideas.
Christa and Sarah continue the conversation around the C-PTSD response of “fawning”. They discuss the shame cycle built into the theology of being born a depraved sinner; how difficult it is to question ideas when the standard you’re handed as a child is divine and infallible; the resultant need to continually hustle to perfect your faith and learning to regain a sense of self.
They cover an article found in Medium written by an ex-pastor named Emily Hedrick called “Fawning of the Flock: Trauma Response in Ministry”. Hedrick covers how, in Christian spaces, fawning often looks like good Christian devotion, where the individual self is subsumed by the demands of God or the larger community, and failure to meet these standards results in self-loathing, doubt, and fawning in attempts to be better to meet this divine standard.
“As a toddler, [a child] learns quickly that protesting abuse leads to even more frightening parental retaliation, and so she relinquishes the fight response, deleting ‘no' from her vocabulary and never developing the language skills of healthy assertiveness…Servitude, ingratiation, and forfeiture of any needs that might inconvenience and ire the parent become the most important survival strategies available. Boundaries of every kind are surrendered to mollify the parent…'
When God is the abusive parent, fawning looks like good Christian devotion: constantly praising and adoring God, feeling guilty for getting angry or doubtful toward God, surrendering critical thinking skills in pursuit of believing correct doctrine, trading individual sense of purpose for ‘being used by God,’ and submitting to the belief that anything about you that doesn’t fit the prescribed script demanded by your religious group (sexuality, thoughts, lifestyle choices, experiences, etc.) is your fault and requires self-loathing as penance.”
https://medium.com/interfaith-now/fawning-the-flock-trauma-response-in-ministry-4bcef6c3edbc
Sarah and Christa discuss the Fawn response – one of the complex post traumatic stress disorder reactions that is largely unaddressed, especially in comparison to the more dramatic C-PTSD responses of Fight and Flight. Often referred to as ‘people-pleasing’, this response encapsulates the deep fear of stepping out of place, anticipation of needs, failing perfection, and subsequently worrying about being outside of the church community’s acceptance or, ultimately, God’s salvation.
“'Fawners’ are typically individuals who were raised in a dysfunctional or abusive system and were ‘trained’ by their primary caregivers to repress and deny their feelings, thoughts, and needs. Such children learn early on in life that their true self-expressions and natural impulses are not acceptable to those they depend on for survival and that their self-worth must be extracted from those around them in a never-ending quest to feel ‘okay’, accepted, valued, and loved.”
- https://www.pacesconnection.com/blog/the-trauma-response-of-fawning-aka-people-pleasing-part-one
In a mere 31 minutes, they talk about “Betty” taking care of problems that should be addressed and dealt with by Christians themselves, the pressure to conform to a surface “good Christian” communal standard, the lack of space for doubt and long-term struggle, and of course…baking.
Christa and Sarah talk about marriage, biblical interpretation, and harmful sexual messages perpetuated by the church. In the context of health, they touch on two research papers that discuss abstinence and pleasure and talk about the mixed messages they received around their bodies and women’s sexuality.
Christa and Sarah continue their discussion of deconstruction: unpacking closed boxes, the formulaic Christian to-dos meant to prevent doom, and rejection of the ‘good enough’ baseline. They delve into Job, God’s “divine plans”, and how church places human suffering in an end-justifies-the-means framework that disallows proper discussion and marginalizes those suffering. Towards the end, they muse about what post-evangelical spaces might look like, and some factors that prevent structural change.
Christa and Sarah talk about some origin points that led to questioning the religious frameworks they had accepted and fully believed, from profound loss and divine absence, to just plain failure of “truths” about the nature of God. This episode marks the start of their discussions around learning to ask questions, trusting their paths, and being unafraid to wander into the areas they had always thought doomed.