Marie Griffith, PhD, John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. She served for 12 years (2011-2023) as the director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and the editor of the Center’s journal, Religion & Politics. Her research focuses on American Christianity, including the changing profile of American evangelicals and ongoing conflicts over gender, sexuality, and marriage. Author of several books, including Moral Combat: How Sex Divided America and Fractured American Politics, the book discussed in this episode. Uncertain is a podcast of  Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, or leave a review on your favorite podcasting listening apparatus. You can support the podcast by going to TearsofEden.org/supportTo get in touch with us please email tearsofeden.org@gmail.comFollow on Instagram @uncertainpodcastTranscript is unedited for typos or misspellings[00:00:00] I'm Katherine Spearing, and this is Uncertain. Hello. How are you? How are you hanging in there? I hope you're doing okay. I'm doing semi okay. It's been a lot inundation with this very real, very damaging type of abuse. One thing that you may or may not know is folks who have experienced spiritual abuse and folks who have experienced sexual abuse.They're very similar to each other. Spiritual abuse and sexual abuse are very, very similar. The impact is very, very similar because it is so, so vulnerable. You are so vulnerable when this happens and it violates our intimacy and it violates our very souls in a way that maybe other abuse doesn't. So if you are traumatized.By the abuse that you experienced in a church [00:01:00] or a high control environment or religious environments in your family. There's a reason for that. It makes a lot of sense. It's very, very serious trauma. So one of the things that we discussed in this episode is how the folks who. experience sexual abuse when they go to the religious institution where they experience that abuse and say, Hey, help me, this happened, this was awful, please help me.When they get dismissed or falsely accused or sidelined or silenced, that that is sometimes worse than the sexual abuse that they experienced in that institution. This episode is with Marie Griffith. She is the author of Moral Combat, How Sex Divided America and Fractured American Politics. It's an intense book.A lot of research went into this book. She's also a scholar [00:02:00] and a professor of religion at Washington University. And one of the things we will also discuss in this episode is how she literally taught a class on abuse in the church in a secular university. What? Crazy, crazy, crazy. Great conversation, lots of mind blowing moments about the connection between sex and sexual abuse and the rampant abuse that is happening in the evangelical church right now.Enjoy, or don't enjoy, but take it in for sure. And as always, take care of yourself, get some rest, give yourself some time after this episode to go for a walk, take a sip of water, breathe. You're okay, wherever you are, you are okay, take a deep breath, you are safe, you are here, you are now, you are present, you're going to be okay.[00:03:00] Here is my interview with Marie Griffith. Katherine: Hi, Catherine. Oh, how are you? How are you? And I have your big book here. This was a lot of work. She took this.Marie: And that was like I don't even want to tell you how many years. I mean, it was really sort of 15 years. I did other things as I was doing that, Katherine: but yeah. Yeah, just like the amount of research that went into just like one chapter I was like, this was a very large endeavor. But how are you this morning? How are you doing? How is your writing? Is it like a writing sabbatical? Is that kind of what this season is called?Marie: Yeah, I'm on, I'm on research leave. You know, it's