30. Jen Hatmaker (Relaxed in the love of Jesus) - and Awake

🎙️ 30. Jen Hatmaker (Relaxed in the love of Jesus) and Awake

Alexis Rice welcomes NYT Bestselling author, podcaster, and spiritual trailblazer Jen Hatmaker (@jenhatmaker) for a tender, fierce, and raw conversation about her new memoir Awake. It's about the collapse of her marriage, and the systems that helped build the house that fell. Together they unpack patriarchy, purity culture, codependency, women’s leadership in the church, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, and how to survive the holidays with people whose politics and theology break your heart.
Grab a copy of the book for a friend this holiday season!

💡 Key Takeaways

• Why deconstructing toxic systems is faithful work - and why some churches and platforms simply won’t change
 • A blessing and a help for parents when a child comes out, and how to build a safe home
 • How to navigate holiday tables with MAGA relatives: what you can’t control, when to draw a boundary, and why clear is kind (THX @BrenéBrown)
• A gentler Jesus: relaxed, non-fragile, present inside and outside institutions - and what it means to co-create “the good life” right now

👤 About Our Guest
 Jen Hatmaker is a longtime Christian author, speaker, and podcast host whose work has walked millions of women through authenticity, agency, and spiritual evolution. She’s the author of Awake and Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire, host of the For the Love podcast, and a loud, unapologetic advocate for women’s leadership and LGBTQIA+ inclusion in the church.

📚 Resources & Mentions
 📖 Awake: A Memoir – Jen Hatmaker
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Awake/Jen-Hatmaker/9781668083680

📘 Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire – Jen Hatmaker
https://jenhatmaker.com/fierce-free-and-full-of-fire/

🎙 For the Love with Jen Hatmaker – Podcast
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/for-the-love-with-jen-hatmaker-podcast/id1258388821

🌈 Church Clarity – finding clear, affirming churches (women in leadership & LGBTQIA+ inclusion) @churchclarity

📗 Codependent No More – Melody Beattie (on codependency & responsibility for our own healing)
https://www.melodybeattie.com/codependentnomore

📖 Renovation of the Heart – Dallas Willard (on spiritual formation & the charac

Transcript

Jen (00:00)
what I would say to young women and girls who sense that their gift, that their work in this world exceeds the limits that have been placed on them, leave, leave.

Here's the good news. There are so many vibrant spiritual environments in which women are honored and respected and valued and equal. So it's not a unicorn anymore. There are incredible. mean, you're in an Episcopalian church right now. The Episcopalians have long had women out front. So have the Methodists, like there's of traditions.

Alexis Rice (00:27)
Yes.

Yep.

Jen (00:40)
And it's not to say they're all perfect. No organized religion is. But there are places a woman was not a disqualifier. Leave, leave, go find a place where you can flourish and you can thrive.

Alexis Rice (00:43)

Yes.

Alexis Rice (01:00)
Welcome to the Sacred Slope, I'm Alexis Rice, and today we have Jen Hatmaker with us. If you've been around the Sacred Slope for a while, this is a sacred place where we explore the Christian faith, from all kinds of traditions around the world, giving ourselves a much bigger, holistic, inclusive picture of what the body of Christ looks like.

the body of Christ is not just one thing believing one way. You can pick almost any topic and you're going to find Christians that have a spectrum of beliefs on that particular topic. No one political party, person, country holds the corner on what it means to be a Christian.

We learn that there are thousands of traditions and denominations around the world. There are people who are queer, who are straight. all colors, of all countries, celebrating our Christian faith. So far, the Sacred Slope has been heard in over 40 countries and over 700 cities.

and we're just getting started. The Sacred Slope's only been around for six months, but I am so encouraged and excited about how people are starting to think a little bit more critically about version of their Christian faith they might've inherited, they're pulling it apart piece by piece to find out what are the parts that are healthy and most like Jesus, and what are the parts

that they might've inherited that are toxic. And that is a perfectly faithful thing to do. Some people call that a slippery slope, but those of us who have been down that journey know that it's sacred. One of those people is Jen Hatmaker. most of you already know Jen Hatmaker. She has the number one memoir in America today, according to Amazon.

when I was thinking about Jen, why have I held Jen in such high regard? she is so powerful. She is resilient. She's unapologetic. She is fierce, free, and full of fire. And if you haven't read that book yet,

I highly recommend you grab that And now with her new memoir, Awake, she is wide awake to her own story, to doing the really difficult work of being vulnerable, not just with herself, but with the world so many of us are still trying to untangle the things that Jen names, the heartbreak of divorce.

betrayal that you never saw coming, feeling pushed out of church spaces that were once home, or being judged and attacked by fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who seem to be yelling the loudest about Jesus. Somehow Jen finds a way to that really painful stuff.

and say it out loud in a way that makes people feel understood

So here's what I'm going to do right now. I'm going to read a couple of snapshots that give us the window into that journey that really sets the stage for how incredibly beautiful and powerful this book is, And then and I are going to dive into this book together. I hope you enjoy this incredibly special episode. I hope it brings healing. I hope it brings challenge.

the first thing I'm going to read is on page 223. It's from Dream Again. Jen says, I recently heard the sentence, the trauma someone else created is not your fault, but dealing with it is your responsibility. We're going to skip down to say, there is a time to be fully and completely undone because we are human.

But at some point, those responses are no longer what someone else did that I am stuck with. I am making those choices and they are my responsibility. What I do with my pain belongs to me alone. Note to Melody Beattie, I can be taught. So I am dreaming a little again. Me Camp gave me back something important. I am a powerful co-creator in my own

Life. I always have been. And my life is right now. I am not waiting on anyone or anything to happen to me. I am not waiting on justice. I am not waiting on a relationship. I am not waiting on some future thing I'm only guessing at. It is up to me to start filling my big table with people and laughter and delicious food and beautiful new memories. I want to gather family and friends under the stars and toast

The good life. Because the good life is right now. I've always had it. I didn't lose it. I decided not to wait for an apology or affirmation or some nebulous future stage. I can't wait for better timing or better circumstances. I won't wait for power. I won't wait for anything that depends on something, on someone. I won't wait for anything that depends on someone else because that is neutralizing my power. I'm done sleepwalking through my own story.

The good life is now and I'm its co-creator, so I will create it. I hope that you can take that through this holiday season, that you pick something out of that and try a little bit of that when things feel pretty bleak this year. The last thing I've wanted to read to you is something incredibly beautiful and profound about her relationship with Jesus currently.

and it's called A Little Tidier on 271. I can speak a little bit more securely on this. What is my deal with Jesus? Outside the structures, I've discovered Jesus is way less fragile than I was told. He isn't rattled by geography or denominations or the F word. He's not easily bruised. He doesn't scare. He isn't American or Baptist or Catholic or Republican. He's not mad or mean. Dr. Dallas Willard.

beloved biblical scholar and professor answered the question, if you could describe Jesus with only one word, what would it be with this? Relaxed, stunning. The Jesus I grew up with was 0 % relaxed, but the Jesus I know now carries an ease I've wished for my whole life. It's hard to explain this knowing except it lives in my bones and breath. Having lost the institutions I thought he favored, I've been shocked.

to experience his identical affection outside of marriage and outside of church. This is a far cry from the deal I brokered most of my life where I secured spiritual teaching. I secured spiritual approval by working my ass off. Look at me, working, leading, teaching, organizing, serving, giving, behaving. I'm doing it, Jesus. Love me, be pleased with me. See how hard I'm trying. Tell me it is enough.

Then I lost all my gold stars and learned I was enough the day I was born. Jesus loves us and we're all in. The two of us now, we're relaxed.

Alexis Rice (08:42)
Welcome back to the Sacred Slope, friends. Today, I am so thrilled to welcome Jen Hatmaker. Hi, Jen.

Jen (08:50)
So happy to see you. Thanks for having me.

Alexis Rice (08:52)
Thanks for being here. So, you know, I grew up believing Christianity only counted if it looked like the version I inherited. And so when I found you and your work, I felt like I was being seen by someone who felt very similar. me, that was conservative Orange County megachurch culture. That was Awana, VBS, apologetics, purity culture, church camp, left behind.

Jen (09:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

course.

Alexis Rice (09:21)
eternal conscious torment, right?

Jen (09:22)
Yep. Yeah, that's

that's the that's the real of my childhood.

Alexis Rice (09:28)
so for me, faith was certainty, it wasn't curiosity. and when that certainty cracked, my oxygen did too. And Jen, you were right there when I needed you most. I remember sitting in my car in the grocery store parking lot during a full faith spiral meltdown on the phone with a friend. And my friend said, get off the phone right now.

and read this book called Fierce Free and Full of Fire by a woman named Jen Hatmaker. And so I did, I downloaded the audio book so I got to hear you for the first time speak into my world. And that changed my faith forever. And so I'm so thankful. that was my gateway into your work, podcast, your social media, this healing book awake, your courage standing with your daughter, standing up

Jen (09:57)
Wow. Hmm.

Wow.

Wow.

Alexis Rice (10:20)
for LGBTQ plus families refusing to betray love when that cost you so much. But it gave so many of us permission to believe that Jesus is still good, even when that version of Christianity that we inherited isn't always.

Jen (10:27)
Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with me. What a like amazing, you know, as a writer, you just don't always know you do the work to the best of your ability and you try to be honest and true and you try to write the best version of that particular story or book that you can, but you just don't always know when somebody is having a spiral and then

their friend tells them to download it that day and thus begins kind of a new chapter in their life. That's kind of, I'll just never get over that. Never. That doesn't, when people tell me things like that, sometimes they'll say something like, you probably hear this all the time or something like that. Or, you know, I don't, I don't, I I'm sure you get this a lot, so I'm sorry to repeat it. And I'm like, no, no, that caveat's not necessary. I never ever.

ever gets old to hear that our work and our lives have intersected in a meaningful way, ever. If that ever gets boring to me, I need to quit my job. And that's literally why I do what I do. the whole lift. And so thank you for sharing that with me. I'm glad I met you that day via audiobook.

Alexis Rice (11:42)
Mm.

Thank you. yeah, it's not just reaching me or a handful of people. What is so cool is that your work is touching millions. So I'm going to brag on you a little bit I had said right before we started, even if you it sold only 10 copies of your books, I would be just as excited to talk to you because of your work. But what is so cool is how you have found a way to

Jen (12:13)
Yeah. Hmm.

Alexis Rice (12:21)
reach into the souls of humans right for you who haven't been keeping Jen's written now over 14 books, multiple New York Times bestsellers. You host a wildly successful podcast and now Awake is having its own moment. It is named the number one memoir of 2025 by Amazon Books and number seven across all genres was selected by Oprah Daily as a book that held us through the storm this year.

and has been featured in USA Today and on CBS Mornings. This book is clearly meeting people right where they're waking up and you've brought faith conversations. What I find also so interesting into mainstream culture, which is very hard to cross. you've been talking about your faith and your life so honestly and vulnerably places like HGTV and the Today Show and GMA and CBS Mornings.

Jen (13:02)
Yeah. it is.

Alexis Rice (13:14)
Kelly Clarkson and Brene Brown and armchair expert and we can do hard things and more. today though, we're gonna go a little bit deeper than those headlines and the characters and the canceled Christian narrative. We are gonna be here for the soul work of waking up.

before we dive into the passages in Awake, I want to ask, you're getting such a powerful reception to this book. So yes, people love it, but why do you think that is? What's resonating?

Jen (13:40)
I knew before I started writing it that I wasn't interested in just writing a book about a divorce. That's just not very

didn't feel like a good use of my time or my readers time. I knew that I wanted the examination to go deeper than that. That for someone who on paper had every tool and resource and metric and scaffolding at her disposal to build an impenetrable marriage, to build the thing that lasts, to

hit all these right marks as prescribed my entire life. through this, this and this. This is how you are as a wife. This is what you need to be as a couple. This is, you know, I had the whole thing, the whole prescription and to still have it unravel at your 26 in such just stereotypical fashion. it didn't prevent, it didn't inoculate us, it didn't.

deliver the guaranteed outcome that it promised to, I knew that I wanted to look at what built that house. so that was way more than that, just the dynamics of any given marriage. It was the building blocks of evangelicalism, of purity culture, of gender limitations, of the patriarchy, of sort of

body shame and distrust. There were a lot of real crumbly bricks in that house. And so I think those are the things that are resonant. That's why it's not such a narrow story that people read it and go, well, I read a story about her marriage, but rather people are reading it going, I feel like I just read the story of my own childhood.

I feel like I just read the story of my own adolescence, of my own sort of sexual dysfunctions, of my own like gender limitations and fears. And so I think that's it. I think because I included the broader story that people went, I know this.

I grew up Southern Baptist. Like that was my limb of the tree. But anybody who has come up through evangelical or even like a high control religious environment will find plenty in here that feels familiar. My editor is Jewish and she's like, like, I don't know what a lot of those words are that you use, but I certainly know those feelings. I know those rigid rules. I know that shame. like, right.

Alexis Rice (15:59)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Interesting.

Jen (16:22)
and there isn't a woman our age in the middle of life who does not understand the narratives that we have been handed since we were in kindergarten. So there's a lot here that's actually universal.

Alexis Rice (16:35)
Oh, yeah, that's just like you me, reading was visceral. gonna go into some of these passages picked I had a visceral reaction. And I would just love to talk about those to you, I'm having that reaction and you wrote it, that means a lot of people are having that feeling.

Jen (16:46)
Hmm.

Yeah, that's right. Exactly.

Alexis Rice (16:54)
that's why it's just so exciting to feel like, wow, I'm seen, I'm heard, and I resonate with you. ⁓ Also being the child of ⁓ a really ugly divorce, ⁓ also in evangelical culture, a lot of what you wrote, ⁓ the primal screams, I've been through all that from the kid's point of view as a teenager. And so I understand your pain of what that

Jen (16:59)
Hmm. Yeah.

Hmm.

Alexis Rice (17:17)
feels like going through the thing that you just never thought would happen. ⁓ So thank you for taking that pain and helping turn that into some healing balm for yourself and for us.

Jen (17:21)
Yeah.

Alexis Rice (17:28)
let's go ahead. I'm gonna start with page 12. And then I'm gonna ask you about this. I am at recess when a group of cute girls walked towards me in tandem. Jennifer, you'll never believe what Mrs. Landerson just said to us. I'm a brain for a sharp witticism. A teacher, deep cut always plays well.

Jen (17:29)
Okay.

Alexis Rice (17:52)
She pulls us all together in the hallway and asked why we even wanted to be friends with you. She said you were, what was the word she used you guys? Domineering. She kept going on and on. She really was mean about it. I am paralyzed. I stand there mute. My system is overloaded with shock. Mrs. Landerson thinks badly of me. She finds me domineering. She doesn't know why anyone likes me. She is talking ugly about me to my new friends. I cannot get any of this to make sense.

In eight seconds, I am handed a new story about myself, a thought I had never considered once. I am too much. She has to call my parents. I am 11.

What does this mean to you?

Jen (18:37)
Hmm. Well, it's so interesting when an adult speaks something into your psyche, how long lasting that can be. I mean, I was 11. I'm 51 years old right now. So 40 years later, we're still talking about it. and ⁓

I had never considered that something was deeply wrong with me until she said that. trusted authority in my life. And so I'm not, a stranger to the preference that our culture has for its girls. First of all, who then later become its women to stay pleasant, to stay quiet.

to stay gentle, to make sure that we are always serving the alpha energy in the room, not becoming the alpha energy in the room. that was sixth grade for me. That was the first year that I had found my own voice. The very first year. it's always strange for people to hear this, but up until that, year of my life, I was really shy and just very, very quiet and

just kind of studious and awkward, very awkward, highly awkward. ⁓ and so that was my first year to have some sort of sense of my own humor, like my own capacity to have like social relationships and so to have used my voice for the first time really in my life and immediately.

be cut down for it by my teacher had an impact. And I'm so committed to being a tiny little piece of this story to reverse this trend ⁓ that our daughters and certainly our granddaughters are going to hear something different.

Alexis Rice (20:41)
Yes.

Jen (20:45)
that this is that it's not the limitation we put on them when they're 11 years old. ⁓ And so, you know, again, going back to the metaphor, as I was looking at the bricks that built this house that tumbled down.

was one of them. This idea of what it means to be a good girl, a ⁓ liked girl, a respectable girl, a girl that doesn't ruffle feathers or speak too loud or too often. got that message really, really early and I can still sometimes feel its residual effects in my body.

Alexis Rice (21:24)
Well, thank you for sharing that. All right, let's go to... see.

how about the very end of on 103, where it says, dad, Southern Baptist,

Jen (21:35)
I wrote awake in vignettes. these are not chapters. didn't write long prescriptive commentary on any of these like really big ideas or themes. I knew that wasn't the kind of book I wanted to write. I wasn't here to tell somebody what to think or how to do it or steps to get there or just that wasn't going to be the energy of this book. And so.

What the reader gets is a collection of scenes, scenes from my life. Some of them were deeply embedded in my divorce and recovery, and some of them span my life. And so one of the scenes that I included had to do with what I had always been taught about the role of women in the church. I was a pastor's daughter. My dad was a pastor, not a normal kind of pastor. He was pretty rogue.

And it will not like a pulpit pastor, but it doesn't matter. He was on church staff my whole life going to seminary and I was just little. were Southern Baptist, as I mentioned earlier. And so in that denomination, particularly, women are simply not allowed to have any authority, any spiritual authority. They can run the nursery. They can run the kitchen. be the support staff.

But if they are listed on the church website, they will be called a director while the men are called pastors. And so I never saw this challenged in my entire life. I did not know, I had no idea that women could be preachers, that they could be teach, that they could teach men, ⁓ that they had spiritual authority, that they could lead a church. That was...

Alexis Rice (23:06)
Mm-hmm.

Jen (23:22)
absolutely outside of my purview. ⁓ And so I told this story about coming home to visit my parents in my upper 20s. And I've got all these little babies, and I'm going home to see them. We had moved to a different state at that point. And my dad, my dad features really prominently in Awake for anybody listening. He really comes through as a hero because I had one of the good ones.

Alexis Rice (23:52)
He does, especially in the audio book. So that's my favorite part is if you've gotten the book already, you guys, please also get the audio book and then read along with it because you get to hear Jen's dad talk I love it.

Jen (23:52)
and he was, yeah.

Yeah.

audio book is really sweet and special, but my dad is a great Bible teacher and he always has been. And ⁓ in the Baptist world, you have these big Sunday school classes. And my dad always taught the young married class. And the problem was you're supposed to graduate from the young married class once you're not young married, but nobody would ever leave my dad's class. so, ⁓

Alexis Rice (24:20)
Mm-hmm.

Jen (24:29)
His class was just enormous. mean, it spanned like the 22 year old, freshly married up to like the 54 year olds who refused to leave. So I'm home visiting and I go downstairs to my dad's class and I sit in the back and my dad is just, he's just a rascal. Like he's as good as gold and he's rascally. And so I sit in the back with some of the wives that I really liked and

They were like, hey, did you hear that your dad got in trouble? And I was like, well, first of all, it's not surprising. My dad's got a saucy mouth. I'm like, did he curse in his lesson? that what happened? Somebody tattled on him. And you know, I'm thinking, that's what I'm thinking. And they're like, no, your dad was out of town. And he asked Jenna Searle, who was the mom of a friend of mine.

to teach his class while he was out of town And somebody in the class went to the senior pastor and said, we have a woman teaching the biggest Sunday school class on campus. And I want to know what you're going to do about it. And so my dad gets called daring to have a woman teach his class.

And the pastor says, well, we've had some complaints. And of course, according to my dad, well, I asked him, I said, dad, what did you say to the pastor? And he said, I said, I didn't give a good hot damn what anyone thought. Jenna is the best Bible teacher I've ever heard. And anyone who doesn't like her teaching my class can kiss my ass. Like that's the kind of dad I have. but I remember, I remember where I was sitting in the room. I remember sitting there going.

Dad had a woman teach the class. I had just never seen this challenged. Maybe I was catching whispers of it as I had moved on from that environment and I'm seeing it out there in environments that aren't mine, but not in my dad's home life. Like I couldn't believe it. I mean, I remember just sitting there going.

Alexis Rice (26:28)
Mm-hmm.

Jen (26:44)
this has something to do with me. I couldn't find it in the moment. I'm like, this is, this is zinging my nervous system in a way that I cannot quite locate. I was probably only 28 at the time, maybe 29. I'm like, I can't locate what this means, but it means something. And not two years later, I wrote my first book as a spiritual leader and

Alexis Rice (27:11)
Hmm.

Jen (27:13)
something about watching my dad defy what I thought were locked and loaded theology, points of theology. Women don't teach men. don't lead. And then watching my dad turn that on its head. It's interesting that sometimes someone's example,

Alexis Rice (27:22)
Yep. I get it. Totally. Yep.

isn't it? Right.

Jen (27:41)
can light a fire in you that nothing else can. Where you see someone defy.

a doctrine that is steeped in the patriarchy and in misogyny and go, I can too. My dad was my ultimate example. And believe me, I have been drug endlessly on the internet from the theology bros on being a woman and being a leader. So this didn't go away. It's not an obsolete paradigm. It's not as if, we're now all

Alexis Rice (27:52)
Yes.

Yes.

Jen (28:20)
so evolved that we respect and honor women in spiritual leadership now. some denominations, in some environments, yes, but that is alive and well, as you mentioned before we talked about this, like look no further than Twitter, like today, to find out how people are still responding to the leadership of women.

Alexis Rice (28:35)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, one of the reasons that I started the Sacred Slope is just to find a way to combat some of these voices by just lifting up examples of other Christians all around the world. we have so many women who are priests, who are pastors, who have been on this podcast from all different denominations, all different countries. We've had the Bishop of Iceland, who's the second female bishop.

Jen (28:56)
Yeah,

Alexis Rice (29:11)
It's so incredible and so And so when these Theo bros are online very loud right now, ⁓ my my heart actually goes for...

Jen (29:11)
Amazing.

That's right.

Yeah.

Alexis Rice (29:25)
the you and the me when we were in our teenage years, when we were in our 20s trying to be good Christian girls and hearing these messages online. And so I'm just wondering if you have any messages for these young Christians who are girls who are hearing that leading ⁓ as a woman is not biblical and it's not Christian.

Jen (29:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

⁓ boy.

Yeah, that causes me a lot of grief. And I can only fathom how much genius, how much leadership and integrity and brilliance and innovation that theology continues to snuff out because it silences its girls and women.

I just, I can only imagine what we could have already unleashed for good on this earth. If women and girls had been empowered from the jump. So first of all, I'm mad. I'm mad at how many gifted, powerful, anointed women are muzzled and we're all the lesser for it. We are all the lesser for it. Our churches, our communities, our families, ⁓

So this isn't probably going to ever reach their ears because they're not probably listening yet. They don't know that they can. And I say that as somebody who absolutely lived complicity in that sunken place for a couple of decades after I had the option to opt out and I stayed in, I did not understand the exit ramp. I did not understand the other field over there that I can go flourish in.

Alexis Rice (31:03)
Same. Yep.

Jen (31:16)
And so I have a feeling that most of those people are still trying their very best to be those good girls in those spaces. But what I learned over three decades of being an adult, daughter of a pastor, immediately married a pastor. I've been deep in the mechanism church culture my entire life.

is that and I'm sorry if this sounds cynical but you will not change that system you won't do it it's predicated on power and position and then they use selective theology to back it up and then the control tools are shame and fear

and giving and revoking your belonging, which is a powerful disincentive to speak up, to speak out. So you're not going to change it. It's going to be what it's going to be. Some of those ships just need to burn and sink. And so

what I would say to young women and girls who sense that their gift, that their work in this world exceeds the limits that have been placed on them, leave, leave.

Here's the good news. There are so many vibrant spiritual environments in which women are honored and respected and valued and equal. So it's not a unicorn anymore. There are incredible. mean, you're, you're in an Episcopalian church right now. The Episcopalians have long had women out front. So have the Methodists, like there's of traditions.

Alexis Rice (32:43)
Yes.

Yep.

Jen (32:57)
And it's not to say they're all perfect. No organized religion is. But there are places where you being a woman was not a disqualifier. Leave, leave, go find a place where you can flourish and you can thrive.

Alexis Rice (33:00)
Ciao!

Yes.

Jen (33:11)
One of my mentors, who we all know, she's very, very famous and very, very humongous, came up through the Southern Baptist denomination.

and I watched her for 20 years, defer, make excuses for, defend, put her very powerful self under the headship of much lesser men. imagining that that was being faithful and that those men were trusted to be faithful,

Alexis Rice (33:40)
Yeah.

Jen (33:47)
And I watched her when all the illusion dissolved away, walk away from it. And I went, that's it. That's it. I don't care how powerful, deferential, pleasant, subservient you are. If you are a woman in those environments, that is your limit. So you don't have to like bang your gong on the way out. You don't have to like kick up all the dust and make a big

You can may quietly leave out the back door and go find a spiritual environment that honors you, that respects you, and where you can thrive.

Alexis Rice (34:24)
Amen. Jen, yes, that is right. Yes. Leave. There is a website I found, I don't know if you've ever heard of it, called churchclarity.org. And yeah, and that was something that I found really helpful because one of the things they do is certify churches as clear with women in

Jen (34:27)
Leave.

Yeah, yeah.

That's

Alexis Rice (34:43)
Ugh, it feels good, especially to my daughters right now, just wondering like, what kind of Christian men are they coming across right now and what are they gonna be told? And it would be great if they could share a love of Jesus together, That man better not be stifling my daughter's voice and her spirit and her light. It's not okay.

Jen (34:50)
Exactly.

Yeah.

No, that's

right. Also church clarity is a wonderful tool for LGBTQ believers who are looking for affirming churches. And I find this a very powerful resource because the danger right now, and I'm jumping ship here from the women to the gays, the danger is that a lot of these sort of non-denominational kind of cool, cool churches,

are unclear. And so the messaging that they're putting out on their websites, on their signs, in their sort of language, all are welcome. That's the message. All are welcome. Everyone's welcome here. ⁓ And they're very ambiguous about their theology around LGBTQ believers, people in general. And so what happens is

Alexis Rice (35:30)
Yes.

Yes.

Jen (35:56)
these tender-hearted folks trust these churches to be safe places for them where they will be not just welcomed and received but cherished, included, where their gifts are just as valuable as anybody else's, where they can lead, where they can teach, where they can be on the worship, whatever. they get in so far and they get their hearts entwined with these communities and then their children do.

Alexis Rice (36:09)
Yes. Affirmed.

Jen (36:26)
they get into a place where they think we're safe and whoops turns out as soon as they decide that they would like to lead, or teach or be a part of the church workings, they're told they can't cause they're gay. and so I tell people all the time, I would rather hear a church say, and I've got a gay kid, so I would rather hear church say to my daughter,

We absolutely do not believe in the full affirmation of the queer community. We think it's a sin. You'll never teach here. You can come here, like, you know how it is. We'll take your tithe money, but you can't serve. I would rather them say that to her so that she is clear and goes, great, not my space, not my church. Then say, you are loved. We love you.

You're welcome here. care about you and your relationships. We care about your family. And then have her be there for one year and they tell her she is unfit to teach because she's gay. So churchclarity.com folks will tell you which churches, .org that's right, which churches are genuinely safe and which ones are masquerading.

Alexis Rice (37:32)
dot org dot Yeah.

Absolutely. I interviewed Reverend Joe Graves. He's out of Ohio, United Methodist, open and affirming church, ONA church. And he said, clear as kind. So, yep. Yep.

Jen (37:49)
Claire's kind. Brene already taught us that. It is. It is kind. And even

saying something harsh and punitive is still kinder than pretending to be affirming and not. So I have big feelings on this.

Alexis Rice (38:00)
Yes.

I do too. So deeper into that. Let's go into LGBTQIA plus inclusion and church harm on page 143.

because I really liked what you said. And before I ask you to read about this example of the shaming, and we'll go in there, one of the things that you did help me on is I listened to an episode of your podcast a few years ago where you had your daughter on. And you guys talked about this. You talked about her coming out and how you supported her. And when people don't know about who you are and I talk to them about you, I actually use this example.

say, you know what, she had a thriving career in the evangelical world and her daughter came out and the evangelical world said that you must choose and she chose her daughter out of love. and everyone's like, ⁓ I'm so interested in her. Tell me about her, right? And I think what's so important about you is that you still love Jesus.

This is a really important part of your story, Is that your faith is very what I hear a lot about in my podcast is that Jesus doesn't necessarily live inside church walls, right? need to bring Jesus out into the community and love without even saying his name. That is what a lot of pastors have taught me just do the work of loving your neighbor. And that's what I noticed that you do.

Jen (39:08)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Alexis Rice (39:29)
We have a lot of queer people who listen to this podcast, who have been in the same church spaces, who were hurt. One of the ways I'm trying to help with that is I've had a gay pastor, a lesbian pastor, a trans pastor on who are leaders, have PhDs in queer theology, who are have so much to add to our Christian conversation.

Jen (39:37)
Totally.

Yeah, of course.

Alexis Rice (39:51)
let's talk about how we can help people who are in this community who have been denied a chance at their Christian faith, who would like to have a Christian Oops.

Jen (40:01)
idea

these are binary, that you either are faithful, take your faith seriously. You're smart. You're like theologically engaged. You are biblically seasoned or you're gay or you get to be gay. It's silly. It's silly. Like

the wisdom, not just the wisdom, but the like, the doctrine, the interpretations that I have learned from women, theologians from queer theologians, from theologians of color. ⁓ you know, knowing that our primary source material has been given to us through the lens of white men in power, exclusively.

Alexis Rice (40:39)
Yes.

That's right.

Yep.

Jen (40:49)
almost

exclusively. including revisionist history, including all of it. And so that has expanded my faith more than anything I have ever encountered was saying, I'd like to listen to some different teachers. So not the ones just going burn it all down. I have no use for it. I have no use for faith. I don't believe it anymore. that's fake. There's nothing there for me. I'm going to come over here and live in freedom. That's not the conversation I'm talking about, although I understand why people choose that.

Alexis Rice (41:02)
Yes.

Totally.

Jen (41:16)
I

mean the ones who are saying, let's examine our face together. Let's reason together. Let's look at different ways that original text was written. What was the context? What are some language issues in translation? Like all of that matters. And not surprisingly, every interpretation that I have come across,

up until I was an adult making my own choices favored the men, the straight men, favored the straight men in power. it was really important to me when I started revisiting this particular theology. And to be honest, in my life growing up, we didn't even talk about queer folks. it like our youth pastor was teaching us. I don't even remember ever.

Alexis Rice (41:54)
Right, it

Jen (42:02)
talking about this or hearing about it. So it was just this given like this handed over thing like gay equals obviously bad. That's that was about the extent of my like ⁓ exegesis on some on that particular ⁓ issue.

but reading the sort of academic analysis of women and queer folks and people of color when it comes to the scripture has been life altering for me. And so for someone who might have been like me, which was my heart was leading hard already.

simply because I had so much cognitive dissonance around what I had been told versus what I was seeing, what I was watching, what I was witnessing. It just did not match. It did not match up at all. And I just thought something's wrong. We've gotten something wrong. This isn't working. nothing here is right. But because I was such a leader of so many people and so many people listened to me, women particularly, and pay attention to what I say, I take that seriously.

Alexis Rice (42:52)
Yes.

Jen (43:13)
I take leadership seriously. My words matter. They have weight. And so for me, it was really important that my brain and my heart were in alignment around queer theology. That I couldn't just go, I can't sort it out, but this old form feels bad, so I'm just going to abandon it. I needed to sort it out. I needed to sort it out. And the good news is,

You can sort it out. There's so much brilliant work around sexuality in biblical texts and in context and what we've learned and how we've evolved. there's no need to sacrifice your mind for your heart. your theology can follow your convictions around an inclusive sexuality. and so,

that work took me a couple years, probably two in earnest, a year and a half in private. And then that last six months edging out front in a public way, to which course the natural ending of that was the end of my career as it was, as I knew it. Yeah.

Alexis Rice (44:07)
Mm-hmm.

You

and the beginning of the next one, has been of the things I wanted to ask you about with that for those of us who have kids, who some of our kids will come out, and we were raised Christian, we are Christian, but we didn't have examples when we were young about how to respond, that first response when your kid says,

Jen (44:26)
Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Mm.

Alexis Rice (44:45)
I think I'm gay, think I like girls and I'm girl or I think, know, whatever. Do you have any advice, about what would be helpful as a parent when their kid comes out?

Jen (44:55)
First all, if your kid says that to you, they haven't slept a wink in a year and a half. This is the biggest conversation of their life. They are dreading it. They're afraid of you. They're afraid of your response. They're afraid of their own body. This is likely the scariest minute they have ever experienced. this is not about you, parent. When your kid comes to you, this is not, don't make this about you.

Don't center yourself. This is about your kid. And so what every kid would want to hear in that moment is a handful of things. Number one, first of all, thank you so much for telling me. I am so grateful to know this about You're the love of my life. And I want to know everything that is true and real about you. And now I know something really important.

Like thank you for trusting me. Thank you for including me in this really important part of your I told my kid, I am so sorry and sad for every minute you had to hold this by yourself, where you were afraid and you did not know if you could talk to us and you were afraid of our response or the community's response. I am so sorry.

Alexis Rice (45:59)
Mm.

Jen (46:10)
for how lonely this has probably felt to you. And I want you to know you'll never be alone in it another day in your life. Never again. I'm right here with you and next to you the whole And then just to say, so glad to know this because I love you. And so now I know more about you. Now I know more about how you're your heart works.

That makes me feel so grateful to know you in this way. you don't have to have some great big speech. that's not about you. And so I've just learned over all the years, cause now it's been over 10 years since I've, my daughter has been out. Just, there's always a place to say, tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me, tell me when you started feeling this way. Tell me.

You know what you've been thinking, tell me what you've been reading, tell me what you're hearing, tell me what you've been worried about. Let them tell their story. You don't get that moment back. So it is possible to blow it and a lot of parents do and you can come back and say, I wish I could have responded differently. This is what I wish I would have said. is how I'm sorry. you can do that and there can be like really

profound and powerful repair there, but better yet, get it right the first time. I tell people all the time, get prepared for having a gay kid long before you know if you have one. Get ready. cause if it's not one of your kids, it's their friends. If it's not them, it's one of your friends' kids. it's your niece or your nephew. let's start creating safe homes and safe families.

Alexis Rice (47:36)
Yep. Yep.

Yes.

Jen (47:49)
long before we know if we need to become one. Because ultimately this home has been a place of refuge and safety, not just for my kid, but lots of them because of that work. And so you can do this parents, this is probably the most important work you could do for your gay kid.

Alexis Rice (48:10)
All right.

page the one that I don't have an answer for right now.

Jen (48:14)
Hmm.

Alexis Rice (48:15)
Jen Hatmaker. in the holiday season. That means that people that we love who are in very different corners, political spectrums, of ideological spectrums, of faith spectrums gather and this becomes real and painful.

Jen (48:24)
Hmm.

That's right.

Alexis Rice (48:31)
especially

in the light of this last year, that we see the people that we love up close. And ⁓ I still don't know what to do with it. I don't know. I oscillate between, I can't talk to these family members or good friends anymore, or like, I really need to continue. That's the Christian thing to do is continue to try and understand it, to learn. And I don't know what to do when these systems that are being held up are just hurting so many people.

Jen (48:40)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Alexis Rice (48:59)
when I feel like Jesus is crying.

Jen (49:00)
Hmm.

Alexis Rice (49:08)
at the direct cause of many people who are saying his name really loudly, who I love. And as a person grown up in the Christian faith and just like you said, just feeling like, what is going on? I don't get it. I know there are so many people out there like this right now. And do you mind to

page 146,

Jen (49:35)
vignette I included called A Concern. It's a complex endeavor to examine the various systems that encourage teenagers to get married, defer to men, distrust their bodies and diminish their own gifts. What kind of ground allows for such shallow roots? Some combination of patriarchy plus religion, gender roles plus group think.

Power plus the threat of exclusion became the soil in which my marriage ultimately died. Trying to the root of the tree is complicated, important work. But in doing so here, I worry about the one dimensionality. Separating individual people from the systems is tricky pruning. Institutionally, we have men in leadership.

shame-based purity requirements, limited agency for women, a deeply punitive cancel culture. This operates exactly as intended. It is highly functional as long as women don't challenge it or leave. But individually, these systems include some of the best people I know. My own mom and dad were insiders most of my life, if I could choose any parents on God's earth, I'd pick them. Hazel, the church bookkeeper who loved me with limitless attention and candy.

Miss Ruby, the world's most elegant pastor's wife who treasured us. As adults, Steve and Norma, John and Mary, Terry and Rebecca, Gary and Claudia, parents of our students who loved us genuinely, like their own kids. They were family. To say nothing of my own best friends, every last one a derivative of church, Baptist college, or Christian-ish writing. So many people gathered under these problematic umbrellas are

to put it succinctly, my beloveds. How do I reject the systems without disparaging the people I love?

I don't even know if I have an answer. That's why I asked the question. I, ⁓ and then you add in Trumpism and MAGA culture right now, which is so deeply harmful. so painful and terrorizing to so many people and groups that I love care about. And then we all have to gather around the Christmas table. What a mess.

I get this question everywhere I go. What do I do? What do I do? How do I manage this? What am I supposed to do about my parents? Do we just walk away from our families? It's so complex. And so...

To some degree, some of my work around codependency is helpful here because codependency says that I am in charge of other people's behaviors or that I can exert control over it. That I have the power to exert control over other people's words, thoughts, choices, behaviors, any of it. that is just simply not true.

We don't get to pip what news channel our mom watches. We don't get to choose what our uncle thinks about immigrants. we have no control over somebody's perception of queer kids. So if you take that pressure off, cause I think we have a self-imposed pressure. It's my job to fix that.

Or minimum, it's my job to show them the error of their ways. It's my job to pull this family dynamic into something healthier or more unified or more communal or kinder, whatever your thing It's not your job and it won't be your job. And you're not going to change somebody else's mind anymore than they're going to change yours. And so if you can lift that off for a moment and go,

That is not my work. Don't worry. People know what you think. Your family knows what you think. They know what you believe. They know what you care about. They know what you say. They're paying attention to your life. Hopefully your life has some integrity and is in alignment with your convictions. it's not a mystery to my extended family how I feel about anything. Everyone knows. I've made it clear. So it's not like I'm just taking the coward's path of being silent. That is obvious.

So that gathering is not my moment to correct everyone else's ideologies. so I lift that off me, that's off my shoulders, it's not my job. Having said that, I have a small like handful of words, sentences, ideas that I'm not gonna sit by when they're said.

Certainly not in my house. So in my house, I have asked people to go on and head home if they are unable to like show respect and dignity to, you know, fill in the blank. And I have found that when I do that with respect, when I can just say, ⁓ I don't, that's not a punchline. That's not funny to me and it's not funny to my family. And so if I'm going to stay here, like there's just no place.

for that anymore. I have found that nine times out of 10 people go, Oh, okay. I'm in their defensive. was just joking always, but okay. They're not going to say it again. They're not going to say it again or at least not in front of and so I think there is some combination of not feeling responsible for fixing the fracture inside any given family around

Politics or religion or ideology? That's not your job. You can't do it and also Holding some sort of line toward language That you are not gonna sit by and listen to as if it's not offensive and painful That's the best I can tell you outside of that Open bottle of wine like I don't know it's imperfect. It's imperfect

Alexis Rice (55:40)
Yeah, yeah. ⁓ it's very helpful. And I'm going to practice that. thank you. That's incredibly helpful stuff. Jen, I just have one more question for you. As we're entering the holiday season, what is a Christmas Carol or a hymn?

Jen (55:41)
And I'm.

Alexis Rice (55:57)
that gets you, that means a lot to you when you hear it.

Jen (56:00)
Easy,

easy. Longtime favorite my whole entire life. To this living year in 2025, I will still stop what I am doing and get still until the whole song plays. It clutches me by the throat. are so beautiful that I end up writing them out somewhere on social media every single year, but it's Oh Holy Night and some of the most beautiful words.

that had ever been written, much less that just gorgeous song and melody. So it's my favorite song. It's my absolute favorite Christmas hymn. And I find it powerful and meaningful and tender. And it can send me to tears. Even though I've heard it 10,000 times. Anyway, tip top favorite.

Alexis Rice (56:49)
Jen Hatmaker, may this be a holy season thank you for helping us with Awake. Thank you for being on the Sacred Slope.

Jen (56:54)
Yeah.

Yeah,

my pleasure.