Aimee Byrd

An OPC Answer to Misogyny in the Church?…

Aimee Byrd

June 2, 2022

In the summer of 2020, a website pulled the veil back on what many church officers in Reformed denominations were saying about women (and also other minorities, but I’m focusing on women in this post). Its administrators were officers in the OPC. They were particularly consumed with the release of Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and how dangerous it is for the church.

One of their favorite Puritans to recommend was William Gouge. So naturally, they look to him for a possible argument against women going to college, as the image captured above shows.

Two years later, we can still wonder how the views of these church officers have been challenged. Yesterday, a soon to be released book was brought to my attention that an OPC church officer who is also a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary cowrote with his wife. It’s titled Gospel-Shaped Marriage. This is part of the description on Amazon:

Drawing from Scripture and the writings of Puritan minister William Gouge, their advice also prepares churches, friends, and others to support married couples in their lives.

We Need to Talk About the Theology Behind the Abuse

Aimee Byrd

12 comments

May 26, 2022

The largest protestant denomination in the United States is in the news after the Guidepost report of an independent investigation into The Southern Baptist Convention’s handling of sexual abuse.* The Washington Post headlines it as “a portrait of brutal misogyny.” And it is. Russell Moore is not exaggerating as he describes it:

The conclusions of the report are so massive as to almost defy summation. It corroborates and details charges of deception, stonewalling, and intimidation of victims and those calling for reform. It includes written conversations among top Executive Committee staff and their lawyers that display the sort of inhumanity one could hardly have scripted for villains in a television crime drama. It documents callous cover-ups by some SBC leaders and credible allegations of sexually predatory behavior by some leaders themselves, including former SBC president Johnny Hunt (who was one of the only figures in SBC life who seemed to be respected across all of the typical divides).

How did we get here? How do this many people let this happen? Is it just the SBC?

The Feminization of the Church?

Aimee Byrd

13 comments

May 20, 2022

After I spoke with a group of church leaders once on the topic of discipling men and women in the church, one pastor took me aside. He didn’t want to make this comment during the Q&A session we just finished. He told me that my message had merit, but he was concerned about the feminization of the church and he wanted my thoughts on that. Wasn’t I worried that investing in more women would lead to this? Anecdotally, he said that he’s noticed that women were eager to learn; and the more churches invest in them, the more they will rise in leadership over the men. Or in influencing the men. Which feminizes the church.

Have you heard something like this before? I’m guessing so, because I hear it often. When someone starts talking about the feminization of the church, it is an instant red flag for me. I talk about this some in The Sexual Reformation. Here is an excerpt:

Two Years of Peeling Yellow Wallpaper

Aimee Byrd

1 comment

May 6, 2022

It’s been two years since Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood published. I know because it popped up in my “memories.” It made me pause and think about how long and impactful these last two years have been. A lot has changed in my life. I’ve changed. Peeling yellow wallpaper is painful stuff. When writing my book, I didn’t realize how much of it was all over myself.

For those of you who haven’t read Recovering, I am referring to the infamous 19^th century novella, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It’s a brilliant and disturbing exploration of the effects patriarchal attitudes and constrictions have on female psychosynthesis.[1] Being forced into “rest therapy” for a bogus diagnosis of neurasthenia, the narrator of the book becomes completely fixated on the disturbing yellow wallpaper of the run-down estate she is made to stay in and becomes convinced that there is a woman trapped inside of its smothering pattern. She must peel it back to set her free. You see, the yellow wallpaper in this confined room of which she is made to stay is a symbol of the traditional patriarchal structures of family, medicine, and society. Following the stream-of-consciousness writing of the narrator’s journal-like entries, the reader joins her downward spiral from sanity. At the end, her voice changes to that of the woman in the wallpaper whom she’s set out to free.

In the Introduction of my book, I ask the question:

Is the woman in this story crazy for what she saw in the yellow wallpaper, or is everyone else crazy for not seeing it?

What Does Sexual Reformation Look Like for Me?

Aimee Byrd

3 comments

April 19, 2022

I’m in a church that ascribes to the brand of complementarianism your book is troubled by and I am a woman so I don’t get a lot of weight when it comes to how my church discusses these questions. What does seeking a sexual reformation look like for me?

This one of the questions submitted for tonight’s Sexual Reformation Conversation Series live Q&A. There are so many ways to answer it, right? I didn’t realize it then, but I wrote my first book Housewife Theologian because of the need for sexual reformation in the church. I wrote it because in many ways I felt uninitiated as a disciple in the church. The answer to the question seems to be in the question itself: I am a woman so I don’t get a lot of weight when it comes to how my church discusses these questions.

There it is. Weight. Value. Contribution. Reciprocity. Dignity. Personhood. It looks like being seen, having a voice, and being asked to use it because it is gift.

The Queen of Holy Week

Aimee Byrd

2 comments

April 13, 2022

Did you know that the Jewish tradition is to read the Song of Songs at Passover? While the Song is placed right smack in the middle of our Bibles, in the Hebrew Bible it had a significant placement as the first of the five scrolls, or the five megillot. These “writings” were read at the major festivals, the Song being read at Passover.

The Song is also a great text for Holy Week. The beloved disciple himself was a singer of the Song in his account of the anointing at Bethany and the resurrection. Here is small excerpt from The Sexual Reformation on John’s cover of the Song:

It is fitting that we see reverberations of the Song in the beloved disciple’s, John’s, gospel. Ann Roberts Winsor wrote a fascinating book on the allusions to the Song of Songs in the fourth gospel.[1] The book begins with a chapter on John 12:1–8, noting the allusions to the Song, including hair, a king reclining, precious nard ointment, feet, and scent, in the account of Mary of Bethany using her hair to anoint Jesus’s feet with expensive oil.

I am Not a Brand

Aimee Byrd

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April 11, 2022

I wrote this article a little while after signing my first book contract. It was originally published on March 13, 2013. It was probably the first article of mine that was widely read. From other writers, there was a sense of “Aimee, we don’t talk about this part of Christian publishing out loud.” But readers were curious. About a year after it was published, a friend asked me if I regret writing the article. I didn’t understand why that was even a question. Reading it again 9 years later, I stand behind it even more. I’ve seen the effects of following the brand. And we’ve seen how much of a monster tribalism has become. Sure, I participate in marketing and think others should as well. But it’s good to struggle with our methods, not take ourselves too seriously, and always remember we are human beings and so are the people reading our books.

Carrying this conviction with me for the last 9 years that I am not a brand gave me the freedom to ask my own questions and write what I am passionate about. I didn’t always follow it well. That is a regret. There are times where I have to reevaluate and remind myself of this. It’s so easy to even turn our convictions into brands to package, sell, and defend at all costs. Branding is necessary, but needs put in its proper place. Convictions are not brands. People are not brands. Christ does not exploit his people.

The Sexual Reformation Conversation Series

Aimee Byrd

1 comment

April 1, 2022

It’s April!! Which means only 18 more days until The Sexual Reformation Virtual Conversation Series! With the purchase of The Sexual Reformation, you can register to join. I have prerecorded talks with

Beth Allison Barr

Do Women Have to Go to Seminary to be Discipled?

Aimee Byrd

13 comments

March 30, 2022

This is a question that’s been haunting me. My writing, publishing, and speaking were born out of both a desire and struggle to learn about discipleship in adulthood. I had some basic questions as a young adult:

If I’m going to take this being a Christian thing seriously, what does that look like?

If Christianity is true, what can I hold fast to when I don’t want to act like one?

And how do I grow into maturity?

In seeking answers to these questions, other women resonated with my curiosity and I was asked to teach a women’s Bible study. Of course, the beautiful answer turns our eyes to knowing and communing with the triune God. In this time, I experienced the thrill of discovering theology, a group of thinking women who ask the hard questions, and our joy in growth together. But this excitement came crashing down when the pastor revealed in a flippant comment that his expectations for our learning were lower than the theological questions we had. After all, we were the women’s Bible study. Keep doing your nice learning over there. Wink.

Where does a thinking woman in the church go to be discipled? Turns out we capped out.

My Trajectory

Aimee Byrd

9 comments

March 15, 2022

There seems to be a lot of concern and “I told you so’s” on social media this week over my trajectory. I find that an interesting word. At first, I was bothered by it as it is being used in the sense that I started off in a good place and now I’m headed to the danger zone. That all along, I’ve been deceiving everyone. I’m the devil in the shape of a woman, trying to take everyone with me on my trajectory.

But as I think about it, I am on a trajectory. That’s why complementarianism, as it’s defined in contemporary evangelicalism, can’t hold me. Women in their spaces can only grow in limited ways.

My trajectory is nothing less than communion with the triune God and all his beloved. My trajectory is the union of heaven and earth, Christ and his bride, behind the veil, joined with all who love the Son, the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband (Rev. 21:11).

Because, typologically speaking, the last man standing is a woman. I think of Christ’s words to his church/bride:

“Your neck is like the tower of David, constructed in layers. A thousand shields are hung on it—all of them shields of warriors.”
Song 4:4