Bare Marriage

Latest Episodes:

Episode 311: The Misleading Tactics of Complementarianism feat. Lydia Kaiser Jan 15, 2026

Show notes

Today I'm talking with Lydia Grace about her incredible new book, Bible Truth About Women. Lydia grew up in the ultra-conservative IBLP circles and went to seminary to answer her own questions about what the Bible really says about women's roles. What she discovered was shocking: there are ore than 120 misleading tactics that complementarians use to prop up male authority that simply isn't in the original Greek. This is the comprehensive resource we've been waiting for that addresses every major passage about women in one place.

TO SUPPORT US:

Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED:

Get Bible Truth about Women by Lydia Kaiser! Kindle available now, or Pre-order the paperback
Bare Marriage podcast playlists for people getting introduced to our podcast

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:

The Great Sex Rescue
She Deserves Better
The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Episode 310: Desiring God Thinks Marriage Is Like Peddling Furiously on the Back of a Tandem Bike Jan 08, 2026

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We're kicking off 2026 by teaching you how to think critically about Christian marriage and relationship advice! Rebecca and I walk through some really problematic articles and social media posts - from the Gospel Coalition's piece against therapy to Tilly Dillehay’s tandem bike marriage metaphor - and show you exactly why they make us feel unsafe. We'll teach you how to spot red flags, question who benefits from this advice, and why prioritizing your safety and discernment isn't selfish - it's Biblical.

TO SUPPORT US:

Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED:

The Desiring God article on tandem bikes
The Gospel Coalition article on therapy
Our book The Marriage You Want, and the video series that goes with it
The study on followership behaviour

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:

The Great Sex Rescue
She Deserves Better
The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Episode 309: Evangelicals Shouldn't Be Embarrassing: The Oklahoma Student's Essay and How Our Faith Has Changed Dec 18, 2025

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We're coming full circle from our podcast on right-wing authoritarianism to talk about that viral Oklahoma student essay and why Christians rallying around bad arguments makes all Christians look terrible. Then Keith and I get vulnerable about how our faith has changed over the last few years—from realizing faith isn't just about beliefs, to understanding who Jesus actually called out (spoiler: not "the world"), to reframing the concept of sin as form of brokenness that God truly understands and has deep compassion for (as opposed to the angry God who is mad at us all the time). We’ll also share some of the exciting things coming in 2026!

JOIN OUR FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN!

Help us raise money to fund our research, our new podcast docuseries, and our translation projects! Give through the Good Fruit Faith Initiative (tax deductible within the United States) or join our Patreon!

CHECK OUT THE RESOURCES MENTIONED:

The Whole Story puberty course
The Great Sex Rescue

TO SUPPORT US:

Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED:

Our podcast on Right Wing Authoritarianism

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:

The Great Sex Rescue
She Deserves Better
The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Episode 308: “We Respond to Crazy Pastor Clips” Pallooza! Dec 11, 2025

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Keith and I went through 10 clips from evangelical influencers and pastors that have been driving people crazy all year. We break down why Josh Howerton's claims about conservative mental health don't hold up, why blaming women for divorce is absurd, and how complementarian teaching about male authority actually contradicts what Jesus taught.

JOIN OUR FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN!

CHECK OUT THE RESOURCES MENTIONED:

The Whole Story puberty course
The Marriage You Want
Our Great Sex Rescue Toolkit to respond to pastors and friends

TO SUPPORT US:

Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED:

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:

The Great Sex Rescue
She Deserves Better
The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Episode 307: How the Stories of Missionary Kids Unmask the Myths of Evangelicalism (and Purity Culture!) Dec 04, 2025

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It's episode 307 of the Bare Marriage podcast! Holly Fletcher joins us to talk about her AMAZING new book Missionary Kids. I devoured it in one sitting. We need to listen to the stories of these kids, because they're a microcosm of white evangelicalism!

JOIN OUR FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN!

TO SUPPORT US:

Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED:

Check out Missionary Kids by Holly Berkley Fletcher
Holly's Substack: A Zebra Without Stripes
Holly on Blue Sky
Instagram
Threads
Etsy
Our book She Deserves Better

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:

The Great Sex Rescue
She Deserves Better
The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Episode 306: Thalidomide, Bad Marriage Books, and a Jesus Who Laughs Nov 27, 2025

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Happy American Thanksgiving! We're rerunning one of my favorite episodes from four years ago where Rebecca and I talk about what God is actually like—spoiler: He laughs and takes joy in life, not just suffers on the cross. We also dive into why our Great Sex Rescue research matters and address all those critiques about our methodology (and yes, we're now peer-reviewed, so that critique doesn't really work anymore). Plus, we tackle that awful Missouri pastor story about "trophy wives" and explain why harmful marriage advice is like thalidomide—it might help some people, but that doesn't mean it's not causing serious damage to others.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR

Order Dorothy Greco's book For the Love of Women! Learn why it can feel so difficult to be female in our society, and what we can do about it.

TO SUPPORT US:

Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED:

Check out The Great Sex Rescue!
Gretchen Baskerville's book The Life Saving Divorce
Check out our new YouTube channel, with our five short videos you can share on key topics we keep returning to time and time again!
Our peer reviewed article in Sociology of Religion
A longer article I wrote on the Thalidomide analogy

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:

The Great Sex Rescue
She Deserves Better
The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Episode 305: All the Problems with Complementarianism in a Nutshell--And How They Try to Make it Sound Pretty Nov 20, 2025

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Complementarians use a lot of really nice-sounding words to describe their beliefs about gender roles, but when you actually break down what they mean, they're not talking about roles at all—they're talking about hierarchy. In this episode, Keith and I decode all the euphemisms like "different roles," "servant leadership," and "his headship is for your protection" to show what complementarians are really saying: that men should be in authority over women. The problem is, when you actually implement these beliefs in marriage, we see relationships struggle—and the statistics bear that out. And we work directly against the gospel, putting the husband in the place of Jesus.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR

Order Dorothy Greco's book For the Love of Women which just launched this week!

TO SUPPORT US:

Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED:

"The Marriage You Want" book on Amazon, or get the curriculum and video series from Baker Books
"The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood" by Philip Payne
"How God Sees Women" by Terran Williams
Rebecca Groothuis essay on "Equal in Being, Unequal in Function"
Previous podcast episode on John Piper's "harsh husband" advice

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:

The Great Sex Rescue
She Deserves Better
The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Episode 304: Francine Rivers' And the Shofar Blew Part 2: What Can We Learn from Christian Fiction? Nov 13, 2025

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We're diving into part two of our discussion on Francine Rivers' "And the Shofar Blew.” While Christian fiction can be inspirational, this novel reinforces dangerous theology about marriage, telling abuse victims to stay and suffer "better," portraying women who report pastoral abuse as liars, and presenting an incredibly sexist view of women's roles in the church as normal and godly. Join me and my friends Merry, Sarah, and Joanna as we unpack why books like these—even though they're just fiction—profoundly shape how Christian women understand marriage, faith, and their own worth.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR

Order Dorothy Greco's book For the Love of Women which just launched this week!

TO SUPPORT US:

Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED:

Find Sarah McDugal on Facebook
Sarah's help for women healing from betrayal trauma: www.wildernesstowild.com
For women navigating high-conflict divorce or custody: My Freedom Navigator
Find Dr. Merry Lin's book "Rebecoming" and listen in to her Bare Marriage podcast episode!

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:

The Great Sex Rescue
She Deserves Better
The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Episode 303: Francine Rivers' And the Shofar Blew—Let’s Examine Christian Romance Fiction Part 1 Nov 06, 2025

Show notes

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We're doing something we've never done before—looking at a Christian fiction book to explore how fiction shapes our theology of marriage. Today we're discussing Francine Rivers' "And the Shofar Blew.” We're talking about how fiction doesn't give explicit advice but still profoundly influences our worldview about faith and marriage, and how even books with problematic messages can become part of our theological foundation without us realizing it.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR

Order Dorothy Greco's book For the Love of Women which just launched this week!

TO SUPPORT US:

Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED:

Find Sarah McDugal on Facebook
Sarah's help for women healing from betrayal trauma: www.wildernesstowild.com
For women navigating high-conflict divorce or custody: My Freedom Navigator
Find Dr. Merry Lin's book "Rebecoming" and listen in to her Bare Marriage podcast episode!

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:

The Great Sex Rescue
She Deserves Better
The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Episode 302: For the Love of Women feat. Dorothy Greco Oct 30, 2025

Show notes

Send us Fan Mail

Ever been told you're complaining too much about how women are treated because "things are so much better now"? Yeah, me too. In this episode, I sit down with journalist and author Dorothy Greco to talk about her new book For the Love of Women, and we dig into why sexism is absolutely still alive and well—and how it's affecting all of us in ways we might not even realize. This conversation is going to help you connect the dots, give you language to talk about it, and remind you that no, you're not crazy.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR

Order Dorothy Greco's book For the Love of Women which just launched this week!

TO SUPPORT US:

Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our work
And check out our Merch, or any of our courses!
Give to the Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation
Join our email list!

LINKS MENTIONED:

Dorothy Greco's website
Dorothy's Substack: "What's Faith Got to Do With It"
The song Not All Men by Morgan St. Jean

Support the show

Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!
Check out her books:

The Great Sex Rescue
She Deserves Better
The Marriage You Want and the Study Guide
The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex
and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex

And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!
Check out all her courses, FREE resources, social media, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

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