Sarah Stankorb Transcript from Sept 29, 2023 Podcast
Okay, welcome everyone. This is my new friend, Sarah Stancorb. And I came across Sarah, I guess was it through sub -stack or maybe a piece you wrote in one of the periodicals recently,
and I immediately recognized a voice that I was interested in. And so I jumped on that and anyhow, one thing led to another and Kelly connected us.
And so really glad to have you on the show today. Yeah, thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. Yeah, well, let me just say,
first off, before we get into it, well, we're already into it, but the book is called Disobedient Women. It's really good. I try to have people on,
well, I mean, I do have people on that I'm interested in and that I wanna hear, and it's a, excuse me, it's a bonus when there's good writing. So the content is strong and the way that you've written it is strong.
You're clearly a journalist. I'm a writer, I like to take pride in my writing, but it's different than the way you're writing. I mean, the way you wove and are weaving everything together is really,
really good, and I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that up front, and I appreciated that. And the work itself is like the word I had last night when I was finishing it up,
well, it's the word I had basically every new chapter, like, oh, crap, here we go again. There's some other train wreck and some asinine chicanery that some white Christian dude is doing.
So the word I had was relentless, like you just kept after it, and I really appreciate that. And I genuinely don't think I could have done it. I think after a few hours of it,
I'd just be like, these people are crazy except, first of all, I'm part of the religious group. So I'm not that I advocate for any of this stuff that you're writing about,
or I certainly hope I haven't perpetrated such craziness, but I'm like, the religion group's my group. It's where I come from,
so what am I gonna do? And then also, yeah, I couldn't have done it, but I'm glad there are people like you that have. And it's a really important book. I was not surprised to see people like Kristen Dume and Angela Dinker write endorsements for it,
because it's all in that same line. Like, if people read all three of those books, first of all, I'm not sure anyone would ever step inside a church again for the rest of history, but secondly,
really, really, really important stuff. So I'm, I'm basically, it's a rambling introduction to say thank you. It's really important work. You wrote it really well. And I hope that people,
I hope people will read it. Thank you. The relentless, that's really a good word for it. The relentlessness of this.
I tried to convey, for the advocates who worked on these issues for so long. It really has been relentless.
Every day it seems there's just yet another story and they keep going. So in some ways I wanted the reader to feel what that's like and maybe in that way respect the work that these advocates have been taking on for all this time because it's not easy.
None of it is easy. Right, I hear what you're saying. Like it seems like what they have been through, the victims and the people who have been manipulated,
abused, whatever, across whatever words we use, seems like maybe it instilled a bit of more strength in you to continue through the thing because it had to have been overwhelming and slightly depressing at times.
Yeah, yeah, it is heavy, it's dark. Although one woman said to me privately on Instagram yesterday, there are a couple of small jokes that I will have been throughout recognizing that if I didn't,
people might just, you know, fall into a deep depression and never fit the book back up. So I try, and it's more of a gala humor,
and it's not frequently, but it is something I do see from advocates in this space to where there is, if there is something absurd, if there is something ridiculous,
sometimes all you can do is laugh at it, so that you can keep going. So, yeah, I tried, I tried to be readable.
Oh, you did, and I really, an extra element to it was the way you wove little bits and pieces about your parents and your relationship with your dad through that.
I think that made the book kind of go next level because it was, all of a sudden, just the lens shifted and it was similar, but slightly different. What were you going for with that part of the book, in terms of you and your parents? And I saw that you dedicated it. I'm a writer, so I happen to always look at what people dedicate the books to. Sometimes it's interesting, sometimes it isn't. So you dedicated it to your mom. What was going on with all that?
Yeah, so initially I had only planned to talk about a little bit about my own faith and the change in my own faith,
and it just so happened that I think it was a month before I got the book deal. My father, who was an alcoholic and explosive through all of my childhood, he broke his hip and then I became primarily in charge of both my parents' care.
Both, it turns out, had dementia and I had a chord in all of it and both got sicker. My father ended up with lung cancer. As his memory was also depleting, it was just sheer chaos. So I was balancing all of the research in the book with my own family,
And my own family history. So I think in some ways there's just no way I could have written this book in that time without a little bit of it seeping in.
But because I was thinking a lot about memory and how memory works, given the dementia, and I was also in a lot of ways, reexperience my childhood through these events,
it also gave me a clearer lens for how abuse works. And I realized what I had grown up with as bad as it had been, It was an entry point for a lot of people outside the church to at least understand what abuse is. But also I felt like it let me differentiate between the abuse many families experience and spiritual abuse,
which is what the people in my book experienced. And I tried to be clear about this. When I was a child and my dad would have a bender and just be terrifying,
I was scared of him. I thought something was wrong with him. But unlike my sources, I didn't see him as the head of the house put there through some godly means,
or like some of my other sources, who's pastors are the ones who abuse these people who they saw acting with God's authority. There's this extra damage,
this extra hurt. When you believe the harm you're going through was God's will, was under God's authority. And there's a unique pain that I felt like sharing my story could maybe contrast.
Yeah, I really liked how you did that. And I totally was catching on to that and just being reminded of that. It's one thing, like what you're saying is you grew up in this dysfunctional home,
but at least it wasn't attached to this spiritual God -like father figure that so many people grow up in. So many people.
It's just really amazing. But nevertheless, you did a really good job with that. And I thought it added an extra dimension to the whole story. And it should be said,
even though you didn't have to attach it to the spiritual abuse, it sucks that you went through that for whatever it's worse. Sorry. Yeah,
thank you. And the story, yeah, you're writing this. It's so recent. COVID's happening. It's going on with your parents. You're tracking down all these crazy stories.
So you were really brave and strong. It's kind of messing me up, just thinking about talking about it. So when you started somewhere at the beginning,
you talk about all the difficulty that the readers are going to have to navigate as they read the book, but also that there's some positive stuff. So I read the book looking for the positive.
I didn't find it for a while. But by the end, I recognized something that was really resonating, was ringing true with me in other things that I've been through.
So I'm a former pastor. I've kind of been in basically evangelical world. My denomination wasn't so much evangelical -ish. Well,
it kind of is. It's gotten more that way. But mega church was definitely kind of like the thing that wields the strongest gravitational pull where I come from,
church planting and those kinds of things. And so I was, just for a little bit of backstory, I was asked to leave my denomination a few years ago over LGBTQ plus,
because I tried to be pro -human and it wasn't going to work. And that started a series of cascading things that I saw a lot of common denominators that were really,
really disappointing and evil, but also what I'm trying to say is I located some really positive stuff in the middle of all that, that resonated with what I read in your book.
And so before I say what I think the positive news is, what do you think the positive news is?
I mean, for me, it's human resilience. It's seeing people taking on this massive institutions, and really motivated to do it by nothing more complicated than the truth and that it could bolster a person through something so difficult.
That, to me, is the major takeaway and something that, throughout all of it, I mean, each of these stories, I had to,
I had to hold on to something. And I wasn't just report - interviewing people, I was actually ------- and chasing down documents and doing all of the things you have to do at a story.
But there are also times where I would just be forced to stop in the midst of all of it and think, my God, this is one person and over here is one other person and really without the internet,
they wouldn’t have known these other people existed and maybe they wouldn't have been fortified to get through this. But by finding each other, they got through,
and I'm not a church goer anymore, but there is almost the only word I can come up for, come up with for it, it's almost like a congregation of truth tellers who are motivated,
I guess, by the doctrine of protecting other people, and that's a beautiful thing to witness.
Yep, Yeah, me too,
and that's pretty much what I was going to say as well, about halfway through, 60 % through, I was like, oh yeah, I get it, I know why she's saying there's something positive here,
it's basically what you just said, and your last line is, you're talking about all these people,
mostly women, who have been victimized by the spiritual institution. So the last paragraph is,
they were called disobedient, Jezebel, Satan's mistress, while they tried to protect others, from them I learned a vital lesson. This obedience is not wrong when you defy those doing harm,
it might be the thing that saves the rest of us in the end. That's a good last line to your book. Thank you.
Did you recognize that, like when you thought of that line, or how did you decide to end on that?
So this book was at one point considerably longer, Thousands, tens of thousands of words longer.
It was massive. That section that is now the end of the book. I Remember When I write I often won't ------- over a line over and over again in my mind The first line of the paragraph until it's set and I write the whole thing So I have been doing it with the top of a section and I was just sat down in my office one day things clicked and I wrote it out and then I had a page or two after That when I was
Physically cutting the book with scissors to try to trim it down Um, I just I liked reading that bit out loud, I liked, I liked the sound of the words and because the book starts with Me trying to get saved. It felt like a good book end to the whole
Oh I hadn't thought about that. That's true the way you started with your hilarious story of the Or pathetic story.
I don't know what it is …
Little bit of both
Well, I saw I didn't mean to say you pathetic I meant the youth pastor and the whole environment So Yeah,
you start the book by by talking about getting saved as a teenager and then so to end that way is another Yeah, it's a really creative and it really good way and it it reinforces what what the positive thing here is and Which is the I don't know if you said humanity, but that's what I keep thinking of the strength of humanity and For people listening like like, um Well,
yeah for anyone that that's As my theology has shift, shifted and been reformed and re -approached um That's one of the common denominators one of one of the things that keeps coming up again and again is my interest and my commitment to like humanity and to the What if I'm not saying you have to believe this or anyone has to believe this but for me I think it's created to think in terms of like You know in church
world We were constantly talking about trying to be like god and yet all the while god became if the story is somewhat true god became like us Not only in jesus,
but also even more so the incarnation isn't just jesus. It's the whole world around us all the time So we're constantly trying to be like something else, but that's something else Maybe is already trying to be like us.
Let's just be awesome. Let's be Human and let's just elevate the strength of What's going on with humanity? I think good theology is good anthropology Yeah,
good good humanity and and and you get to that in the book and um, so if people are courageous enough They'll get there too. I really appreciated that I had a few things highlighted in the book.
Sometimes that's how I ask questions I highlight stuff Yeah uh, basically What in the world do you think this is just overwhelming like what's going on with white people in america?
What's our problem man? Um, uh Okay, that's a larger question that I think but i'm qualified to answer but um,
I think the lens of the book gave me some clues that maybe help get to answer um Focusing primarily on white evangelical spaces Where are all these stories reside, where these people in the book were harmed, something that became clear as I was studying different groups of people who talked about the abuse,
either on a blog or through hashtags, that became interconnected. That interaction they knew it wasn't only happening to them, they were able to see that there were structural issues within these institutions.
So whether it was a dogma that was pushed within many of their churches, like complementarian ism or Christian patriarchy, or a corporal punishment to discipline your children in the abuse of that sometimes led to
once they were able to see that it wasn't just them, and they were able to look at the institution and say, there is a larger problem here, that larger problem very often had to do with power,
it had to do with power of upholding the institution and that's why you have cover up. People don't necessarily have the motivation to cover up a crime, unless it's the most beloved person who committed the crime, or if the most beloved thing is its wider institution. So that's part of it.
And I think seeing that power and what it does in its naked form, then you can extrapolate what happens with other institutions.
So if you look at the political might, which is folded into all of this, you cannot extract the two. The political will to power has those same abusive tendrils.
So whether it's women or people of color or queer folks, holding out on one group helps elevate another group and helps them maintain their power with as folded into faith
and you have almost an easy answer when people start to question you from the outside. Well, it's God's will, it’s in the Bible? So I think that's part,
that's around about, I know that's the other direction, answer what's up with white people, man. But I think that's at the root of it.
And so you end up with a population of many, many people who have gotten the raw end of the deal. And a book like this, I think in some ways it's not enough that many of my sources are white women from within this powerful group of churches,
group of religious communities, and still what it went through. So then you add in people with even less power. And I think that it's a starting point,
but it's not the end of the conversation by any means.
Oh yeah, for sure. Well, for sure we gotta have people who pick this up and run with it even more.
What do you think would have happened on January 6th, was that 21? If the people scaling the walls had been black people or queer people, or people of color, what do you think our country would have done?
I mean, I'm careful with hypotheticals, I will say. So I was sitting at my computer wrapping up a story on January 6th. And I had popped over to CSPAN just to keep the window open.
and I saw people walking through the rotunda, and they called my husband, and we've been there on a tour, they're knocking, the stations over,
like what is happening? This isn't anything I would be allowed to do, and I think the lack of reaction speaks volumes,
and not to keep pulling back to the book, but I think it's difficult when you see yourself or you see an in -group behaving badly,
it's a little more difficult to call them on it, because you empathize this in a way, or you may think, well, I would never do wrong if I were here, like surely they just, if you want a tour, maybe they're just excited. I don't know what people are thinking, but it's difficult when you see yourself in a group to suppose they’ll do something unexpected or something you would not do,
and I think that makes it easy to give a pass when other groups of people would immediately have been arrested, or stopped, or at least they would have been in a more severe attempt,
they would been a fasters response from the President's office if they were not his supporters, I feel safe saying that much.
Yeah, I do too, I think it would have, yeah, thank you for, yeah, we probably should stay away from hypotheticals, but whenever I think of January 6th,
that's the first thing that comes to my mind, because that's what was coming to my mind as the day unfolded. unfolded. If these were anybody but these white men, mostly, I think the country would have imploded.
So in a roundabout way, again, your last line, like in some ways, the people who've been marginalized,
not reacting force for force in maybe that kind of situation, maybe did save the country in some ways, which reminds me of, again,
your last line about women in particular, but people who've been marginalized, saving all of us, there's something really beautiful about all of that,
though there's nothing beautiful about what people did on January 6th. I also wanted to say,
yeah, I totally agree with you on the power thing. I think that that's, that might be, it's hard to pin it down to one issue, but that might be the underlying issue.
And for American Christianity, you know, that that's all just assumed because we have this capital O omnipotent, top -down hierarchical idea of God.
When you begin to suggest, when any of us begin to suggest into these institutionalized capital O omnipotent thinking settings that, oh no, God might be incarnated in the midst of all of us and that there really is no hierarchy and it's all flattened and it really upsets everything.
Yes, yes it does. I think, so for the years, I initially started reporting on these women.
I thought I was reporting on something called Christian patriarchy and really for me after January 6th and it forced me to start rethinking, because the structures that were causing women demanding the women submit,
demanding women to keep quiet and other survivors but that mandate was really focused on women within these structures. It was also part of a larger project of dominion.
So there's this encouragement for women to have as many babies as possible. You just are a womb to populate the army for God. So now we are at a toll for this dominionist attempt to fill the nation with Christians.
So that's a part of it. So you have a role but you're low, you're low in this hierarchy. And then as I was studying other humanities,
there were a little more blatant about their hopes to create dominion over the people around them over the rest of the country.
I started to realize that this Christian patriarchy thing was just one element of Christian nationalism and I had a moment where I thought I should have seen this coming.
I don't know if anyone really saw it coming but now I think a lot of our eyes are open to this thirst for power that is very honest about what it wants and about the power and control I want to ------- the rest of the country.
And I'm hoping in some ways this book serves as a warning for people who don't exist in these spaces or not in these sort of churches who usually would roll their eyes and say,
oh, that's just church stuff. It's not. It's bleeding all over the place. And if that power gains more control,
what would that mean for the people within those communities, but also for you? And that's a big question. And I'm not sure I have an answer,
but I wanted to make a place for people to at least start thinking about that.
Yeah. And you do it very well.
For me, yeah, part of my reconstruction has been re -approaching power. I had to reframe it.
So now I think in terms of power, like relational power is different than authoritative power. So relational power is full of consent. And by the way, my dissertation, I wound up calling it theology of consent. But it's full of consent and agency and empowerment to others and autonomy.
That's relational power. Wanting the best for others. All this other stuff is BS, this hierarchical power. And sometimes I say it this way,
for those who care about the Bible, some people listening don't care, which is totally fine. There's a way to read the Bible that might lead you to think that if there's a God, that God's like capital O omnipotent hierarchy power,
I just think it's a really unhealthy way to read it. And the world is our American Christianity's evidence of that for the most part. Tell me about the rapture.
You had great story. That was you, right? In the book about junior high or high school. And that was that. That was with a UMC church,
which is typically not as kind of crazy, but maybe, maybe share that story and the kind kind of damage you thought it probably did or it did do. Yeah, so I was in junior high youth group,
which was my mother's fix for the fact that I had asked for therapy and we didn't have money. So we switched churches in a youth group.
She figured out that I did the trick and in a lot of ways it did. It was wonderful. I had support of an outside of the other kids and we had gone on other retreats just with our church,
just just our own youth group. THey was fun. We got away from home. So we ended up on a district youth group retreat, which meant other churches and other leaders from other churches were there.
And one night it must have been Saturday evening because it was a weekend. The leader of one of the other youth groups came in with a couple of youth with a boombox and we had been gathered for communion in the late large fellowship room. And they turned on the boombox and there was news that there were nuclear bombs coming directly toward Ohio, which is where I grew up. And they suggested we wanted to do communion in our final moments. There's a sense that later they were just trying to save us, save our souls.
But I fled the room, which is different for me. I usually would have done what I was told, but I was that frightened that I ran.
Went to our little room with the bunk beds, got on my bunk, and I prayed thinking I was about to die, and so was my family somewhere else in Ohio. And I heard screaming um and that's mental space for who I was I assumed I was a gonner and this was the sound of death , but no it was the other um kids from a youth group who had exploded in anger when they found out that, no, this was not true, this was
a farce um and after the aftermath of that was a lot of very angry kids in a Methodist retreat center in the woods. And I think it took me a couple years to really sort through that because it was a betrayal, um it was a betrayal of trust. I didn't blink at that at the sub betrayal over the other people from my church after the fact um it really in my mind it was like one bad actor and years later I actually I'm not
sure why I was reading it maybe it was hanging out with a youth group leader looking for activities but I did see it and recommended activities for youth book, um something similar to this not that you lie to them and you should help tell them there's just a nuclear bomb but instead suggest to youth what if this happened and you know it's more of a hypothetical something for them to consider well, how would how would
you feel there was the recommendation to act it out and convince kids away from home that this was actually happening to them um and I think also that would stick out to me even more was the look in the eyes of these kids that I was friends with. One of my buddies like he's a big guy he like got a little bit of trouble here or there but he had a temper, but he took a chair and I charged it at this wall of windows
and I bounced off the chair on the day of end. Some other kids ran off into the woods, no idea what they were, we were all afraid about what they would do. That turmoil and that hurt after the fact.
I just cannot imagine being an adult and not considering this as a possible outcome, but including it in the book, I wanted to show that there was, even out in United Methodist world, there was a string at the end of through the 90s and through the millennium,
there was this undercurrent about like the end, the end is coming, the rapture is coming, and we didn't call it that, but there was that thing kind of happening in Christian culture.
So I put it in the book, not really recognizing until later that I was also telling a story about betrayal of trust.
Yeah, it's a sad, but a perfect story. Right, I think you mentioned this, but also in the book, right, you had a friend who was kind of helping you realize that this might have been a bigger deal for you than you originally realized,
something like that. Yeah, I think that was a sub -stack. Someone asked me about it later and it kind of made me reconsider a lot.
I was thinking about this story when covering the way these topics impacted some of my sources of lives. Yeah,
Traumatizing, man. man. That's humans. We carry all of this, carry a lot of stuff. What's your, you don't have to go into detail or you can, whatever, it doesn't matter. Either way, so there's no pressure. But what's your faith like, your personal commitment, conviction like now? I know you don't, you don't really go to church.
So there was a period where I did call myself an atheist and I think I'm closer to an agnostic … I think it would be a stretch for me to have that level of certainty about the metaphysical universe in any direction.
So that feels like the most honest answer. I do spend a lot of time with people in the religious spaces.
I have a lot of friends who are clergy and I'll say that people who you think have a lot of faith, who sometimes are up at the people of the pulpit, are often more willing to ask questions than some of the people in the views,
and their answers are also far less certain. So I think I'm in a kind of comfortable spiritual place for me after a lot of,
a lot of time, really going through what I guess is now deconstruction. Back then I thought it was just me and it was just really bad and it felt awful and no one else ever went through this. So I think I hold on to things I see of value in other people. And
I don't think if I make sense of something in the world, that that's necessarily anything other than me making sense of it.
I certainly don't think everything happens for a reason or is caused by some omnipotent being. But I think with some wherewithal and some distance, we can find a reason or at least make reason out of some of the darkness in life and try to create something better for other people.
Yeah, it's a really good answer. I don't think everything happens for a reason, but with a little bit of patience and insight, we might be able to make reason. We might be able to reason ourselves into something better and new and good.
And I think if there's a God that that's what's happening, that God, he or she is encouraging us and pulling us forward into that. And I realized quite a while ago that some of my atheist acquaintances were probably being more honest to what's going on in life and maybe with the scripture or whatever else than a lot of my so -called theist Christian friends.
So if anyone's listening, yeah, let's see, I want to say this right because I'm not trying to like, I don't need you to be, I don't need anyone to be anything.
But it's possible, I think, to be an atheist and to be more in tune with love than it is to be quote unquote a Christian. Because,
and I'm really thankful for the atheists in my life who kept pointing out the inconsistencies of this God that I was introduced to, or I was told existed, that needed sacrifice or needed the death of his own son,
none of that. That just doesn't make any sense. Do you have kids? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I was just starting to say, especially when I became a parent, like, I never needed any of my kids to be hurt in order to give the other one forgiveness or something,
you know, so anyhow, I interrupted you, you were started to say something.
Well, no, no, I think I forgot. Oh, no, I did a lot of this work in reporting on abuse within the church.
I try to balance because it's true, because it's accurate that people in the advocacy world on this topic, some are very, very faithful, and I don't know how I'll end a very impressive, and some have completely walked away. And it's one of these interesting intersection points in this country,
and you don't get this publicly in a healthy way very often, but they just work together and there can be arguments and people can get it on. But it's a place where I can find a diversity of opinions,
and a wide breadth of people with a lot of different outlooks on how the world works, but they share a motivation, and the motivation is protecting other people.
And that's explaining that to like a magazine editor, I have a church story, all of you don't have a lot of Christian readers.
Well, it's not just for Christians. There are some universals, no matter what theology people are coming from, that I appreciate.
And it just feels more honest to be telling stories. So people do have different ideas.
There's not just one way of being alive in the world.
Right. That's a pretty cool, I'm sure, very hard job that you have in that space. That's a pretty cool job to be able to, like some of us just don't get that opportunity to step into some of those less theological or less quote unquote spiritual,
which is a silly way to look at it, because I think probably everything is as an element of spirit to it, but to be able to go into those settings and write those kinds of stories. That's pretty cool. I want to be like,
I want to be like you when I grow up.
Okay.
Oh, I thought I would say, you know what I've been thinking recently.
I don't know why something you just said about faithful. So recently, it came to my mind, which means I probably read it somewhere. Let's be honest.
I'm not particularly novel in and of myself. But the difference between the word faithful and loyal between faithfulness and loyalty. And I no longer, I'm just not interested in loyalty. I'm interested in being faithful and people who are faithful. And when you're faithful, I think the difference is you just have more creativity and space and imagination and grace to be able to back up and question things and We've done ourselves all of us have done ourselves a big disservice by yeah,
I just don't like the word loyalty at all anymore That's not a question. It's just a comment It's understandable Yeah Yeah,
so so I think that resonates with what you're saying like there's this really interesting middle Faithful space and you're being faithful to this like voice I don't know what it is this thing this whisper this invitation to stand up for people first of all Seems like a Jesus move to me but Jesus may or may not have anything to do with Americanized Christianity All right,
so the book Called disobedient women How a small group of faithful women exposed abuse brought down powerful pastors and ignited an evangelical reckoning Sarah Stancorb, that's quite the subtitle Me too,
that's why I had to read it, but that's what we do we you know, that's the whole that's the game Cool cool title, then you have to have a subtitle that kind of wraps it up, and you and you do it works It's really good.
Where? Where would you encourage people to find you?
So I am still on Twitter or X whatever Yeah,
because the people I write about are still there, so I have to be there My website is just sarahstancorb.com Yeah,
that has links to my sub stack I'm about to load on some a book club discussion I did for the book Yeah,
and there's just a Spotify playlist if you want to listen to what I listened to as I wrote the book ---------------- but I'm the only person in the world with my name So,
I'll find it.
That's good. That's good. Is your book club thing gonna be on your website or on the sub -stack?
On my website, at least. And then, good idea. I should put it on the sub -stack.
Yeah, you probably should. I'm literally in the middle of one of my projects right now is uploading some stuff to substack to try to give paid readers an extra thing. It's such a cool... I've only been on since February. I switched over, but I really am enjoying it.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, well, thanks so much. Thanks for allowing me to mess up the time zones. We still made it happen. And I'll say goodbye, but then I'll stop the recording here. And I'll say goodbye offline. So, to the listeners, peace, everyone.
Thank you.
