Why Beth Moore Is The Leader We Need Right Now
Complementarianism acknowledges that men and women are different, yet they don't seem to recognize the deep need we have right now for what women bring to the table.
I’m going to be honest here. I have spent most of my adult life not being a big fan of Beth Moore. It wasn’t that I disliked her, I just felt very, very little ability to relate to her. Looking back now, I can see the irony is that I never actually read any of her Bible studies or listened to her speak. It’s just that what I saw when I looked at her was a perfect little Baptist wife and mother. In fact, I have found it difficult to relate to most female Christian leaders and influencers for one very specific reason.
I am neither a wife nor a mother.
It kind of makes sense that most Christian women would have a lot to say about being a wife and/or mother since by far the vast majority of women in Christian spaces are both of those things. But there are just as many men in Christian leadership who are husbands and fathers as there are women who are wives and mothers, and men speak on a wide range of topics that have absolutely nothing to do with being a husband or father. They do, however, almost universally speak about what it means to be a man. They also teach the Bible from a masculine perspective because that’s all they have.
That left me, and all the women like me, in kind of a no-man’s-land in churches. We weren’t wives and mothers but we also weren’t men and women have been historically been relegated to speaking on one topic and one topic only. A topic which doesn’t actually apply to women who are not wives and mothers. I suspect that women have stuck to speaking about issues pertaining to being wives and mothers, however, because that is the only thing they were allowed to speak about in patriarchal religion. If they strayed outside of those topics, they risked contradicting men and then they would lose their platforms. Which is exactly what happened to Beth Moore.
Churches like to use a lot of different words to define the nature of the relationship between men and women, but it really all boils down to one thing : who has power.
Churches acknowledge that that men and women were created to fill different roles. They even claim that women are to be “caretakers” but then give themselves “headship” and relegate women to subservient roles. They claim that women are equal but they literally create systems in which women are subordinate to men. They turn so-called “complementarianism” into authoritarianism as soon as they say that men were created to have headship. They like to believe headship is the same as leadership but it is not. Leadership has nothing to do with power or control, which is exactly what headship is.
What God said is that we should have no other gods before Him and that includes men. It is not men that are meant to be the head of The Church, but God. Men love to dance around and use a lot of words to try and hide their true intentions but it always comes down to one question: who has power? They call it “authority” - but that’s just another synonym for power. What has actually happened in the church is that women have been silenced. They have been relegated to the background where their role is to keep quiet and keep the church running. while men take all the credit.
When women have small children, they are often fine with this. Children demand an enormous amount of time, energy and attention, so women are often grateful when men run things and leave them free to devote their energies to raising their children. As women age out of the intensive focus that caring for small children demands. however, they begin to have more time and energy to turn their attention to other things. And that’s when things start to get ugly.
When Beth’s eyes were opened, she walked away. It cost her a great deal, but it didn’t cost her anywhere near what the patriarchy thought it would. Although they certainly helped her build a platform, she built far more of her platform on her own than they thought she did. And this is one of the big blind spots of the patriarchy. They take far more credit for the work of women than they deserve. And too many women are afraid to walk away because of what they think the patriarchy can take from them. But nothing the patriarchy has to offer is better than freedom.
It wasn’t until Beth walked away from the SBC that I began to not just like, but identify with her. In fact, I genuinely began to stan her.
Several weeks ago, I was scrolling through Instagram and came across a post for a Living Proof Live event in Colorado Springs. Although $90 is a lot of money for me these days, I immediately purchased a ticket. A few minutes later, however, I started thinking about walking into a church again and started having heart palpitations and cold sweats.
I was surprised by this because I’ve never felt particularly afraid of going to church, even considering all the trauma I have experienced there. In fact, I spent ten years in a traveling Christian theater ministry performing in thousands of churches of all denominations across the country. But just thinking about walking into a big megachurch began to cause me a lot of anxiety. So, I loaded up my hound and took myself off to the creek for the afternoon. By the time I came home I felt calm, relaxed and no longer anxious.
As the date grew closer, however, I continued to have mild bouts of anxiety every time I thought about walking into a church.
The night of the event rolled around and I left early because I had discovered that one of my favorite taco places was right across the street. They also happen to serve some damn good margaritas. I am product of both America and the American church, so I know all about just “pushing through” and “forcing yourself” to do things. What I have learned, however, is just to just be kind to myself when I am feeling afraid, so I stopped for some tacos and a margarita before heading over to the church.
As soon as I walked in, I started feeling jittery and shaky. I found a seat and had to do some deep breathing exercises to keep myself calm. I had a feeling I was going to completely lose it as soon as the worship started, and sure enough, I ugly cried the entire time. But, I made it through the worship and then Beth came out to speak.
I’m not sure what I was expecting but whatever it was, I definitely didn't find it at first. Now, I am going to say something that may not seem all that kind at first, but I hope you’ll bear with me because I mean it in the very best possible way.
Beth is not a great speaker. At least not in the way of the silver-tongued orators we are used to hearing or based on the standards set by men. She doesn’t have her three key points laid out in perfect syncopation. She doesn’t deliver a perfectly polished speech, she talks like friends having coffee. Listing to Beth speak is a lot more like attending Sunday School. It’s part of why I love this photo of Beth I used for this article. She has plenty of photos with her hair and makeup all did up perfectly and professionally lit, but this photo is pure Beth. It radiates all the joy and love of life that she does. THIS is what Beth brings to the table, that all the boys can’t.
For those of us who have spent hours of our lives listening to big-wig pastors like Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and Andy Stanley, Beth is… different. It’s little hard to follow her train of thought sometimes, or figure out what her point is. She goes off on rabbit trails and sometimes forgets what she is talking about. She is exactly the kind of person that God is constantly using in scripture. She is Moses with his speech impediment. She is the “foolish” thing of this earth that God uses to confound the wise (1 Cor 1:27). But here’s what Beth has that all the Mark Driscolls, Matt Chandlers and Andy Woods never will.
Beth makes us feel okay about being imperfect because she is imperfect.
She doesn’t bring perfection to the table, she brings love. Her love is so strong, it can fill an auditorium - all the way up to those infamous cheap seats. I think this is why she is constantly getting attacked by the Theobros. Because deep down, they realize Beth has something they don’t. Something they never will. She has mama love. A love so deep and strong it can even reach right through a screen and wrap you in its warm embrace. I’m not a mom and I can tell you this. There is something about the way moms love that nothing else in this world can touch. It’s not just Beth that The Church needs most right now, it’s moms.
In her own twisty way, Beth said something that night that only God could actually interpret. She said essentially the same thing that I too had been starting to see and feel. Something I think many are starting to see and feel, even if we can’t all quite put it into words yet. In secular vernacular, they are calling it a “vibe shift” and I think it’s happening both inside and outside of The Church. Because like it or not, The Church is part of the culture and vice versa. They are not two separate entities because we are all ONE BODY.
Beth made an anagram that went something like this:
Son of God
Eternal
Incarnate
Sinless
Crucified
Dead
Buried
Raised
Ascended
Seated
Returning
Reigning
Now, when you put this all together, her anagram is SEISCDBRASRR. It literally makes no sense, but I’m also coming to understand that’s classic Beth. And it’s literally what we need right now. Complementarianism supposedly teaches that men and women are different but complementary. Theoretically that should mean that both are important and necessary, but all-too-often, so-called “complementarianism” is really just authoritarianism in disguise. It plays lip service to the idea of equality while stacking the deck in favor of men. It really says “both are important, but this one is more important.” In the end, however, it’s not just men the deck is stacked in favor of, but law.
When I was in jr. high and high school, I attended a non-denominational fundamentalist church. Just prior to my arrival, it had been a thriving organization that had a Christian school and college. The pastor decided he wanted to build a gym so they could participate in athletics. The Coors family, who’s children attended the school, offered to pay for it from their family’s charitable foundation. The pastor wasn’t having it. Although we were not officially a Baptist church, he came from a very fundamentalist Baptist background and was not going to have the name of a beer company on “his” gym.
That was the start of a conflict that eventually ended up ripping the church apart. The Coors family yanked their kids out of the school and the school principal quit. It turns out that the school principal was the “grace,” while the pastor was the “law.” Without the “grace” the church and school just became more and more legalistic. Kind of like what’s happening in churches across America right now.
It took several years for the church and school to go bankrupt. Although the pastor spent all those years trying to get “his” gym built, it was never fully completed. Men and women are like grace and law, light and dark, introverts and extroverts. Each of these things balance each other. Both are necessary but when one becomes too strong, it throws everything out of whack. Women have been slowly being silenced and shuffled to the back of the room in churches for decades. Sure, there are churches that allow women to speak in church, some even have female pastors, but that doesn’t mean they are allowing women to lead in the ways that are unique and natural to them.
All-too-often, women are forced to become more masculine or embrace a more masculine way of thinking in order to gain the approval of the men that hire or ordain them. Beth is neither an ordained minister or a trained theologian and it shows - in a very good way. God gifted women in a very specific way and rather than creating space for women to bring their very unique and special gifts to the entire body, men have placed themselves at center stage and pushed women to the fringes.
And that is why I was anxious about going to a church.
Everywhere you look in our culture, “superhero syndrome” has taken over. Go to any streaming service and look at all the movies and shows. Action adventure, superhero, action adventure, superhero. You may find a few comedies or “chick flicks” sprinkled in, but we are a nation obsessed with notions of our own greatness. Even the shows and movies featuring women are just action/ adventure and/ or superhero movies. Men have turned us into men with tits. They have taken all of their ideals and ideologies and simply created female characters that act, think and behave just like men.
That’s not to say that women can’t be strong, tough or fierce - we can be, but even then, we do it differently. We have different thoughts and motivations, but instead of letting women create characters that are unique to who we are, men have just written all the characters and hire actresses to play them. Which is essentially the same thing happening in churches. Even when a church has a female pastor, she’s essentially just expected to walk, talk, act think and behave like a man. .
Rather than being a respite from the ceaseless pressure of the outside world, our churches just pile on. They push us to give more, do more, serve more - more more, more. I mean that’s what prosperity gospel is, isn't it? “God wants you to have an abundance but in order to get that abundance, you have to work harder, pray harder, get up earlier, do more, give more, serve more - so you can have, more, more, more.
ENOUGH!
Jesus said “come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you…. rest.” That is a far cry from both the message of the world and the church. And that is why I did not want to walk in that church door. After spending more than four decades in churches and Christian ministry, I knew exactly what I would find there and my soul just could not take it.
We have all been through three years of hell and the churches just seem to want everything to just go right back to the way they were pre-pandemic. Just like all the businesses do. But we were exhausted long before the pandemic, we just didn’t recognize it. After three years of hell, however, we see it now. People are angry because they are tired, weak and exhausted. Most people are running on fumes, if they are running at all and all churches seem to offer is more of the same thing they were offering pre-pandemic. Rah-rah pep talks to give more, do more, more, more, more.
But not Beth.
Because Beth is a mom.
What I got that day (and the next), was a great, big, giant heap of mama love. Men like Matt Walsh just love to stir the pot by pretending to ask the very innocent question “what is a woman?” The truth is that the one thing complementarianism gets right is that men and women are different. But men are also different from other men and women are different than other women and some women are more like men in some ways than they are other women and vice-versa. But there is something very specifically unique about moms. It’s not something that can or needs to be defined, we just know it. We feel it.
There is something absolutely gut wrenching about losing your mama, even if it’s just someone you considered to be a mom. When children fall or fail it’s not to dad that they run, but to mom, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We’ve just been through three years of pain and loss; it is not our spiritual fathers that we need right now, it is our mamas. I also believe we have done the entire church a huge disservice by continuing to only refer to God in the masculine.
The problem, of course, is not simply that we refer to God in the masculine but what we have come to believe about what it means to be masculine. Ironically, I came across this Tweet when I was writing this article, which I think sums up the American male image of God perfectly.
While he may be right, a love without law is sheer sentimentally, what is love without grace, without spirit, without kindness, tenderness and compassion? All the things that men in America seem to have defined as “feminine.” But what if they are? What is a church without kindness, tenderness or grace? Is that a place you really want to be in a time of loss or suffering? You know, like after three years of living in a global pandemic that claimed millions of lives?
I don’t know about anyone else, but right now I need a God who weeps and a God who sings over Her children (Zeph 3:17) more than I need a God who commands us to “girds up [our] loins like a man” (Job 42:7). Not that there’s not a time for that. God is not jut one thing. God has many faces and which one He/She/It/They shows us all depends on what we need at the moment. Kind of like moms and dads. There is a time for kicking butt and there is a time for tenderness, but the American church these days seems to only have one speed and one message. GO! To everything there is a season and that includes seasons for the different faces of God.
As I sat there in that auditorium and looked at all the empty seats, my heart broke for all the men who have been told that women can only speak to other women and men aren’t allowed. Beth never said that only women are allowed at her events, that’s something men decided. I spent the weekend getting my soul nurtured and fed by Mama Beth. Millions of men have been through all the same hell these last three years we have, but they can’t seek the same healing because The Church has silenced the women and relegated them to ministering to children and each other.
And what was Beth’s crazy anagram about? She was reminding us of what is important. What unites us rather than divides us. Jesus. God was gracious enough to set her free of the SBC and led her completely out of her comfort zone. Beth recounted how she spent months trying to attend “Baptist adjacent” churches, only to be met with various levels of hostility. Until one day she and Keith decided to visit a church worlds away from the tradition she grew up in. And there, she was embraced with open arms and she broke down and cried. I know the feeling. What she also found there was the exact same Jesus she has always served. The rituals were different, the words were different but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was exactly the same.
Americans have spent decades now sorting ourselves into Black churches and White churches, Korean churches, Japanese churches and Latino churches; Baptists, Mormons, Catholics, Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists - and the list goes on and on. And on and on and on. Why are there so many divisions? We serve ONE God, there is ONE Jesus that died on a cross, WHY do we need so many damn separate buildings and separate congregations? What divides us is so incredibly petty compared to what unites us, yet it is what divides us that we choose to focus most strongly on.
Leadership is not about power. Leadership is not about authority and it’s definitely not about control, but that is what it has become in the church. The Church has become an opaque world of NDA’s where the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. Leadership is about sacrifice. Men want to lead but they don’t seem to want to sacrifice, but also don’t want women to either. Whatever. I think men are shooting themselves in the foot right now and everyone is paying the price. But what do I know? I’m just a woman. But that’s okay. That means *I* get to bask in the warm, radiant light of Mama Beth.