The One Thing You Can’t Do
D.L. chats with Devi Abraham about the wildly popular novel (and now movie) Redeeming Love.
We delve into some of the troubling elements of the story, discuss why it holds such an appeal for evangelical women, and touch on some related aspects of purity culture (Devi’s speciality!) as well.
Devi Abraham is a writer and co-host of the podcast Where Do We Go from Here?, tackling sex and purity culture. Follow her on twitter @devi_writes and check out her website.
You can find more information about our Faith and Justice Network cohort here! We’d love to have you join us this fall to untangle white evangelism together.
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Cover art by Zech Bard.
TRANSCRIPT
Danielle: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody to today's episode. Don't remember what number it is, but we're here to talk about Christian romance and we're back on our BS about Redeeming Love today. Now don't click away because this is going to be some new stuff and some really good stuff. Cause I interview Devi Abraham who
Krispin: You're going to all love.
Danielle: Everybody's going to love listening to her. She's amazing. And can I say something really quick, Krispin? Yeah. So one of the reasons why I didn't actually [00:01:00] want to do a season on Christian romance is, cause I knew we'd have to touch on purity culture. Like I can't just reread the romance books I read it in my youth and then talk about it. Like it has to be more than that. And I just felt so insecure because I'm like, there are people doing this work and doing a really good job, you know what I mean? Part of that is cause people like Devi, like Devi has this amazing podcast that she's been doing for a long time, um, about purity culture. And it's, it's called, Where Do We Go from Here? So, it's literally about deconstructing and reconstructing some of this stuff. So here's how we're dealing with it. We are just interviewing the smart people that have been doing this work.
Krispin: I think that's been the MO of our podcast anyway. Right? It's like, let's find out who we should be talking to about this.
Danielle: I was like, man, I just, I don't want to do that. Uh, people have been doing this work and we just appreciate that. So yeah, here we go.
Krispin: And Devi is so lovely.
Danielle: And Devi is amazing.
Krispin: Uh, later this summer, actually, I'm going to, co-host one of [00:02:00] her episodes with her. She asked me to do that.
Danielle: Crossover episode.
Krispin: I'll let y'all know when that goes up.
Danielle: I'm not offended at all that she asked you and not me to cohost. That's totally cool with me.
Krispin: Coming from the person that just said, I do not want to talk about purity culture.
Danielle: Exactly, I know. Okay. So we're talking about Redeeming Love again today I recorded this interview with Devi a few months ago. This was right before the Redeeming Love, actually right when the Redeeming Love movie came out.
Krispin: Uh-huh. She's located in Australia, so I think it hadn't come out there yet.
Danielle: Yeah, cause Australia is like all they have, there is Bluey and a few really cool Christian activists. That's like what Australia is in my mind also. I mean, they do have Lego masters Australia. That's cool. Um, should we move to Australia?
Krispin: Uh, you always talk about, I thought we were moving to Ireland or Canada.
Danielle: We can do any of it. I'm really sick of guns. So, any who, um, but I suggest for the listeners, I thought I would [00:03:00] really quickly read a very short synopsis of Redeeming Love the novel and the movie, I guess, cause it's all kind of like conflated now in the cultural imagination, but the book has sold millions and millions of copies. It's extremely important because it kicked off a very specific genre of Christian fiction, which involves like biblical re-telling of stories that then gets people kind of enmeshed with, you know, how they interpret the Bible. So anyways, here's the synopsis. Um, So Redeeming Love is a powerful and contemporary retelling of the biblical book of Hosea set against the romantic backdrop of the California gold rush of 1850. Angel expects only pain from those around her. Sold into prostitution as a child, Angel survives with hatred towards herself and the men that use her. She meets Michael Hosea, a farmer who believes God wants Angel to be his wife. Dire circumstances force Angel to accept his proposal. Which actually means she was unconscious. Um, but when Michael defies her better expectations, her [00:04:00] frozen heart begins to thaw. As Angel encounters a love unlike anything she ever experienced, feelings of unworthiness and shame caused her to run from a life she doesn't think she deserves as Michael sets out to find her. Angel discovers there is no brokenness that love can't heal.
Krispin: For a minute there. I was like, oh my gosh, they're going to say there was no brokenness in the first place
Danielle: They did. So Krispin, I tried to read the book for this podcast. And I, I had to tap out, but I tapped out like 300 pages in, so like a good two thirds of it I read.
Krispin: I knew you had to, like, it was messing you
Danielle: It was messing me up. Kristen can attest to that. And then you saw the movie. And when you came back from watching the movie, you were like, this is so bad. Like it's not, I don't really know why it's a romantic movie though, because it's really a movie about childhood trauma. And I was like, Krispin, I love you. But that is literally not how anybody reads it. You know what I mean? You were just like fascinated by it as a, a movie showing what childhood trauma can do to you. Right?[00:05:00]
Krispin: Yeah, exactly.
Danielle: So can you get back in that head space? How were you when you went and saw the movie?
Krispin: It is really funny because yeah, I saw like some Christian influencers saying, like, this is a great date night movie. And I was like, I can't imagine anything like less romantic than, you know,
Danielle: Okay, trigger warnings! But Redeeming Love has like, basically so many trigger warnings.
Krispin: Let's just say trigger warnings for sexual abuse, assault, incest, infertility.
Danielle: Yeah. Rape and then the conflation of rape as like being a mutual sin.
Krispin: Also spiritual abuse within, within sexual abuse.
Danielle: Mh-hm.
Krispin: And so, yeah, I'm like, I don't, I can't think of anything less romantic than watching a movie about childhood sexual abuse.
Right. That just. That. I mean, it's really important, but that does not give me like, oh, I want to just go, like, you know, this feels really happy. Anyway, every time we come back to this book, it really [00:06:00] reminds me that the church is really far, we'll say it's very far behind on being trauma informed. And trauma informed care is this general idea of, um, it can mean a lot of things, um, a lot of social work organizations are using this, which is just the assumption that if you come in the doors, we're going to assume that you have some trauma of some kind, and so we're going to accommodate and try to create safety. But the other way that trauma informed care works is we don't ask what's wrong with you, we ask what happened to you. We say the reason that you're doing this is because this is how you've had to learn how to survive. And it might not look like the right thing to do here in this setting. Um, or in like a middle-class white context. Right? But There's really good reasons that you're doing what you're doing, as opposed to historically what we've done is said, like there's something wrong with this person's character, right?
Danielle: And that's what the book does.
Krispin: Exactly. That's exactly what the book does. Even though the book tells this whole story of all the terrible things that have happened, it [00:07:00] still gets framed as the choices she makes as because she is sinful and broken and, um, it just really breaks my heart. And it really makes me think about in the church, you know, so much focus of sin is put on people that are, that are dealing with trauma. So when I think about the things that the church has tended to focus on and demonize would be things like sexual activity outside of marriage, drunkenness drug use, which isn't actually something that's in scripture. Those are often ways that people are coping with trauma and in the Bible, I'm like, it talks so much about wealth and power and people that misuse power. And how to just, it really struck me that the church focuses so much on these behaviors that are more likely to happen if you have experienced trauma and less likely to focus on calling out the people that hold power.
Danielle: Yeah, I think that's really important. And Devi really points out how Redeeming Love basically is about the worst thing you can do as a woman. And I'll, I'll save [00:08:00] that, you know, for the interview for you to listen to, but it's very chilling in a way to see that's what evangelicalism has focused on, right, is the worst sin is female sexual activity, right? So, woo. I mean, I can't go down this rabbit hole right now, Krispin. I can't go deep.
Krispin: Okay. So then let's switch gears. I am preparing for an upcoming episode about the romantic quote unquote books I read, which is some Joshua Harris. So I'm reading, I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
Danielle: Let's call it like the anti-dating books. Right?
Krispin: Right. Yeah. Um, Boy Meets Girl. Hello to Courtship. Cause you say goodbye to dating, hello to courtship. And then Eric and Leslie Ludy wrote a book called when God Writes Your Love Story.
That I, especially loved.
Danielle: I feel like that book has like a cult following. Like not everybody's heard of it, but if you've read it, you either love it or it's scarred you for life.
Krispin: Exactly Right? Yeah. Right at the beginning, Eric Ludy says, you know, I came to this conviction that [00:09:00] I'm only going to date the person that God has told me I'm going to marry, which feels so much like Redeeming Love. Right? Because that means that you have to discern before you've even dated someone that God is saying, this is the person I have chosen for you.
Danielle: Yeah. All of this is very normalized for me. It's like, yeah, that's how everybody goes through life.
Krispin: Oh, you like discern beforehand.
Danielle: Now I'm like, that's bonkers talk. You know what I mean? Like
Krispin: I mean, let me tell you, I, I had an experience like this.
Danielle: Oh, with me?
Krispin: I got to tell you, it was not you. It was before I even met you, I went on a mission trip. Um, and we went to Montana cause you know, the whole missionaries in Montana, we did that classic mission trip thing where you like plan something. And it's actually like totally the worst outsider thing to do. We planned this special camp out for like kids in the area, but it turns out everybody was like, why are you going camping? [00:10:00] That is like the height of the tick season. And so I spent all night up feeling like ticks were on me. Woke up at like 3:00 AM, went on this two-hour long prayer walk, sleep deprived, and God clearly told me,
Danielle: Of your own volition?
Krispin: Yes, I was just like, I'm up, I'm going, I'm going to watch the sunrise. And God told me that I was going to marry this girl that was on the trip with us.
Danielle: It was like sleep deprived hormones, maybe talking.
Krispin: I'm outside the will of God, cause I married you instead.
Danielle: It's so true.
Krispin: So bringing that back around in Redeeming Love, this is what happens is that Michael Hosea, hears a word from God that says, this is the woman you're going to marry. I was wondering, do you feel like there are people in your life, like past life, that felt like God told them they were going to marry you?
Danielle: Yes. A hundred percent.
Krispin: What's it like to be on the other side of that?
Danielle: Oh, well, for me it was no big deal. I was just like, you [00:11:00] heard wrong, sorry! Like I would have no problem. Because here's the deal, I was in that really weird, like very intense religious group of people who want to be missionaries or whatever. And so if there's any guy that is like into that world and he, he was like, this girl is very cute, very manic, pixie dream girl, which as we all know is just code for autistic. Um, then he would be very into me, and I would be like, you repel me with everything in my body. Like I can’t. They all smelled bad. I've told you this before they smelled like scared sweat. Cause they're all scared by me.
Krispin: They were.
Danielle: I am scary, but like so cute and quirky it’s scary. Um, yeah, so I had no problem doing that and I don't think God ever told me that. I just felt like I knew I was going to marry you, like very early on, because I was like, I've never wanted to be with anybody and I want to be with this person. So that is that. [00:12:00] And it worked out great for me. So When God Writes Your Love Story worked for me. Okay. We're getting into the weeds here Krispin.
Krispin: Ok I’m very excited about the upcoming episode. There's a lot we're going to talk about. Um, but it also, it was like, yeah, okay, so he had this experience of, of saying, God's going to tell you who to marry in 1991. I think.
Danielle: That’s when he wrote the book? Or that's what he met his wife? Okay.
Krispin: That was when he had this experience, which is the same year that Redeeming Love came out.
Danielle: Well, pew, pew, pew.
Krispin: But anyway,
Danielle: Shots fired sound. And before we dive into the interview, me and Krispin, we want to jump in really quick and say, we are going to be co-hosting a fellowship cohort for the Faith and Justice Network, um, that starts in the fall and it's like $900 for an entire like nine months of really intense curriculum, but I will be meeting with a very small group of people twice a month to go through this amazing [00:13:00] curriculum put together by the Faith and Justice Network. We just are bad at sharing about it, but we're very excited that our cohort is specifically about deconstructing white evangelicism. So if you grew up in white evangelicism and you want to be reading these amazing books and hearing from these amazing speakers and then also have a group of people to kind of deconstruct through your lens of your particular background with, we're doing that. And we thought if you listen to this podcast you might be into that. So.
Krispin: Yeah. we're facilitating the, the small group portion of it, but the Faith and Justice Network altogether, we all go through the same curriculum and it is amazing theologians,
Danielle: Oh my gosh, yes.
Krispin: It’s a very diverse group of uh, mostly people of color uh, queer Christians that get to share with us. Um, and then the reading, we do read a handful of books um, that are specially chosen.
Danielle: And these books are like no joke. So you kind of do need a group of people to read it with and that's going to be us. So, yeah.
Krispin: So this is basically, um, [00:14:00] it's, it's sort of like on the ground seminary.
Danielle: Yeah, seminary for the rest of us. Cause $900 is a lot of money, but it's not really a lot when you think about seminary and you can also actually take it for seminary credit for a little bit extra. So anyways, it's legit. It's intense. It's incredible. I like so few things in the world and I love the Faith and Justice Network and I love the people leading it. So yeah, there we go. We'll link all that info in the show notes. Um, we love Devi. Go follow her. Go listen to her podcast. You can stop listening to ours and listen to hers, we don't care. That's how much we love her. It's called Where Do We Go from Here? You can find it anywhere. Yeah, but let's get onto my interview with Devi Abraham.
INTERVIEW
So, I'm so excited. I'm talking to Devi Abraham, and I have been following your work on social media for a while. Uh, you have a pretty incredible [00:15:00] podcast, which is about deconstructing purity culture. But why don't you introduce people to who you are? And I'm, I'm so excited cause I'm actually talking to you and you're in Australia. I'm in Portland, Oregon. This is fun.
Devi: Yeah.
Danielle: We’re like crossing the divide.
Devi: I’m in the future. I'm on a very hot day. Danielle is cold with her glass that looks like a mug of tea. Yeah. And yes. So we're in polar opposite, literally polar opposite life circumstances right now. But yet I am, well, what, what can we say? I'm turning 40 in a couple of weeks. I am Sri Lankan born. I grew up in the Philippines and in Northwest Arkansas as missionary kid, hence the sort of deeply entrenched life in white evangelicism, which is, I think part of the reason for my interest in purity culture was just kind of trying to understand my own upbringing um, myself, as someone who was a foreigner inside that setting. [00:16:00] But yeah, I moved to Australia as an adult, and then I traveled around the world, which is how I met my husband. Um, and so we lived in Switzerland and Sweden and then moved to Australia permanently, as permanently, I guess anyone can be in 2015. So, um, yeah, I'm a writer, uh, studied journalism and history at uni, at a Christian university in Northwest Arkansas. So, you know, did the whole, did all of the Christian yards, evangelical yards I should say. And, uh, yeah. So the podcast is about, um, kind of what comes next after purity culture. But obviously we spend a lot of time talking about purity culture itself and what made it, uh, so toxic, but also hopefully trying to understand things about purity culture that are not as overt as say, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, or True Love Waits, and the promise rings and all of that. There's a lot more going on, I think, than just those things. Um, yeah. I don't know if that's an introduction.
Danielle: I love it [00:17:00] because one of the things, I wonder if other people feel this way too, it's, it's like, it's really hard for me to engage with some of these topics around purity culture because, uh, you know, I obviously grew up in the thick of it as well, but I experienced it a little differently than other people seemed to. And so I've actually, um, struggled a bit with like, a group of gals who grew up in evangelicism get together and you're in your thirties, right? At some point you might start talking about I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Right? And so when everybody tells their horror stories, I'm just like sitting there silent. I was like, I read that book. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to be a missionary and none of these dudes like can measure up. So like I'm not dating any of these jokesters. And I literally never dated, never anything. And it saved me from a lot of creeps. Well, I mean, a lot of creeps were into me, and I was just like, nah, nah.
Devi: Yeah. And I think in the, in the same, in a similar vein Danielle, I, [00:18:00] I can't say that a lot of my purity culture, um, related life, things were so much around dating and romance. I think, I followed all the rules. I married the first man I dated, I really can't say I have regrets. Actually. I don't. Where I would say purity culture had a real impact on me, has more to do with my body. And, and just the experience of being female in the evangelical hurch in relation to other men, um, the sort of hypervigilance about like, how long have I been talking to this guy? Is his wife nervous? Am I, you know, it's that kind of thing. Um, but I think there's, and that's what I mean, by there's so much more to purity culture than just the, the drama around dating and sex. There's a lot of other things going on and I think for, for many of us, we intersect with it at different points, you know?
Danielle: Yeah, I'm glad you said that because I just have always felt a little bit like, oh my gosh, did I benefit from this thing? [00:19:00] That's been so toxic to other people. Cause uh, Krispin is the only person I ever dated. You know, the only person who've ever been in a relationship with, and I’m super duper happy about that.
Devi: Yeah.
Danielle: There's so much nuance. And so that's why I love the work that you're doing on your podcast. The conversations you're having. I feel like there's room for more people to just kind of sit and listen and figure some stuff out. And here's the thing, Devi, I really hope that you can give me your thoughts on this when you discuss things like purity culture, or if we're going to talk about Redeeming Love, which we are going to be talking about Redeeming Love, the book by Francine Rivers. And when you're talking about something that like primarily impacts women or is about women, I almost just think like critiquing Francine Rivers kind of leads to this, like, should we critique romance as a genre? How do we even begin to start these conversations? When I just feel like all of this seems like bad news for women, and I [00:20:00] don't want to add any more bad news to the pile.
Devi: To your question, to your point about women and, um, critiquing the things that women love. One thing I've learned in the last two weeks of really thinking about Redeeming Love and asking people what they thought, I would say I've probably had more positive feedback about Redeeming Love than negative. Um, or let's just say it's very, it's a very close split. Um, but by and large, for the women, their response to it when they read it, so not now, but when they first started, it was like, I've never experienced God's love like this before. This is the thing that showed me how much God loves me. This is the, you know, I, I read this book and I felt God's love for me. And it was about that. And, and I think, I mean, look, I have no, no secret, no spoiler here. I am not a fan of the book. I think not only do I think, uh, I think, I don't [00:21:00] just not like it. I think it's deeply problematic on so many different levels, including the spiritual level, but what do you do when somebody tells you this was the avenue to which, uh, they, through which they experienced God's love? I, I can't argue with that. I'm not going to argue with that. And I can't, I'm not going to stomp on it either, you know? And I mean, there are things I have, I have some theories and I, I hope people will be willing to hear them. Absolutely. But, uh, uh, I don't want to just stomp on somebody's experience of this book or even the romance genre. I mean, I think, you know, you have Jane Austen writing romance, essentially, even though I think there's so much more to her stories than that, but the genre itself contains multitudes, you know?
Danielle: Now you are telling me, and I've also seen this across like multiple studies of like, especially Christian women, their reading habits, they like to read for devotional purposes. Right? They like to [00:22:00] get, they like to feel close to God, even in their romance books. Okay. So you're saying that people have told you that's how they've experienced these books. And I also got a few of those stories too, and I wasn't even like trying to get people's stories. I was just posting like uh, you know, the image of the cover of the book Redeeming Love, and stories just poured into my DMs and some of them knocked me on my butt in a really bad way. Just multiple stories of people saying I was in an abusive marriage, and when I told my church, they gave me this book to read, you know, like stuff like that. Right. There were some of those that were like, when I was in my darkest place, addicted to drugs, like I read this book and, you know.
Devi: Well, one of the comments I received from someone was, uh, we were being told by our leaders, moms, grandmas, pastors, even to read this book while at the same time, we're hearing this message in church about our sexuality, which is dress up, cover up, don't think, you know, [00:23:00] it was the generation of like, don't, don't just kiss your boyfriend or have sex or whatever. It's not just that, it's what you're thinking about. It's also the condition of your heart. So if you're fantasizing, you're also sinning. So you're handing people this book and you're saying, you know, so this is, I mean, I don't know how we did it, frankly. I don't. And I did it. I read this in high school, although it was not nearly as impactful for me actually, as some of the other Christian novels.
Danielle: Me to. The conflation in this book of women saying, you know, it really drew me to the love of God, but then they, the unsaid thing is like, and it's a really sexy book. And so I think one thing, obviously a lot of people told me is like, well, it's just such a beautiful allegory of the book of Hosea. I was like, the book of Hosea is not sexy.
Devi: No. In fact, I went through and I counted the verses, so there's 196 verses in Hosea. 10 of them [00:24:00] are the story of Hosea and Gomer. There's no mention of them outside of those 10 verses. And there's no mention of like what kind of husband Hosea is. He could have been a horrible husband, I mean, or just assuming he’s an ordinary husband, like he's just ordinary, but what is it that evangelical women gravitate to? She's done the thing you can't. She's left a good man. She's left a godly man in air quotes. We don't obviously know, um, to go sleep with other men. You can't do that if you're an evangelical woman. And what does he do? He takes her back. Wow, what a hero, right? That's really, that's really the story in the book of Hosea. You can't take anything else out of it, as far as what kind of man he is, how he treats her, what their family life was like. There's nothing else you can take out of it. Um, I think I could go, I could go one of two. It, so there's something interesting about the romance novel [00:25:00] industry. 81% of that of, uh, consumers are white women. They’re white. Yeah. Mm, mm. So that's also, that's another little interesting tidbit for me that there is a, yeah. And I think that is across the board, not specific to Christian, uh, to Christian, sorry, Christian fiction.
Danielle: That is shocking to me, honestly, cause I, I actually never looked up sort of the racial divide of who reads romance novels. Um, I will say for this season than I am doing, um, I would say Christian romance has got to be the whitest subcategory of romance.
Devi: Oh, yeah.
Danielle: There's no way. I mean, that's, the Amish is their whole, you know, this is how they get to be so white supremacist as they just like, we just read about Amish. Sorry.
Devi: Yeah, so it's Nielsen BookScan. So it found in 2015, ao [00:26:00] romance novels make up 29% of all fiction sales. 84% of readers are female. 16% male. Well, over 50% are between 18 and 44 years old. 81% are white. Yeah. So.
Danielle: That's, that's interesting.
Devi: I think so. Well, it says something about the amount of leisure time, certainly. Um, and, and all of that stuff. So I have a few theories about why white women in particular read this book and, uh, and it drew them closer to God. I do think that there's something about the experience of purity culture, but beyond purity culture, the experience of being in church and being told that the greatest mistake you can ever make in your life is sexual sin. And even though we might not have been explicitly told that, that was implied in absolutely everything. Absolutely everything. In fact, I would still say, even today, if you [00:27:00] go to a church, they're going to, people are going to tell you, what's the one thing you can't do. This is the one thing you can't do, You cannot have sex. Um, so all that to say, if that's what you believe happens. I think we internalize that message, even for those of us who didn't have sex. Or who didn't date, or who didn't whatever. And I think a lot of these women who, I definitely got messages from women for whom it was like, this was my experience. I was promiscuous or I was sexually active, and I felt like I could never be forgiven, and I read this book and I realized I could, but a lot of the women I hear from as well were like good Christian girls who just love the story. And, and I think there's something about seeing a woman in a situation that you dread to be in. That you never want to be in ever. And she gets the best guy in the land because it's not just about her, really like the reason why this story was so captivating to [00:28:00] Christian women is because of Michael Hosea. Like he's the reason it's captivating, is they wanted their husbands to talk to him, them like this. So, so I think this is kind of the theory I've built in my head is, my mom never read this book, but my mother's generation of women, Francine Rivers published, the first edition was 1991, um, published in a secular publishing house. I don't know if you knew that she published, she, she wrote it for a non-Christian audience. So, she was a romance writer. She was a romance novelist. Uh, she had sold over 3 million books of kind of the racy erotica type novels. She became a Christian, stops writing for three years. And this is kind of what she says, this is my statement of faith, that's what she says. And she wanted to write it for a secular audience. So she wrote it for her secular audience. No conversion scene, no baptism, little bit of swearing, and it was racier. Um, and then she pulled it from there and then republished it in [00:29:00] 97, Tyndale Multnomah type situation. So when, when Christian, um, women, uh, I think when they read this book. So 97, you have basically The Act of Marriage, maybe the first edition of Love and Respect, but you have all the typical instruction of like, do this for your husband, be this way, uh, all of these different things, and you will have a happy marriage. I have a feeling, there were a lot of unhappy moms reading this. Who got a real thrill out of it and who just read it and went, I wish my husband was like this, but he's not, but Jesus is like this for me. And Jesus is gonna love me like this forever. And here daughter, you should read it too, because Jesus is the perfect husband. That's my theory. And I hope when I say that it's not stomping on anyone's experience, but…
Danielle: Oh, I mean, I need help. I need help understanding it. [00:30:00] And I think the way you explain it makes sense. It's still just a little bit like, you know, stepping one foot out of the culture. It's still so weird. Like there's just no way around how weird it is. And I had the experience of growing up pastor's kid. I'm sure my parents gave this book to people in struggling marriages. I heard all the things sex, you know, as soul ties with people, all this stuff. But I think you're right, like in this book, it's not quite the same as other Christian romance I've read, which is, you know, if a woman has sex with somebody else, pieces of her soul are just gone forever and, and they don't talk like that in Redeeming Love. Um, the thing that is annoying is how they conflate uh, Angel engaging in sex work with her choosing sin, which is so ridiculous to me. Um, so that's what really bothered me, but there's not all of that like she's a horrible person [00:31:00] and she will now die for her sins, which is maybe what you're saying. Evangelical women had to look forward to in these narratives. So that's why this was received as good news.
Devi: Yeah. I don't know. I wonder, so, yeah. I mean, I did hear from one woman who she's, I think in her sixties or seventies now, and she, she was like, I loved it. And then she read Felicia Mason-Hymers post about it and was like, oh, I don't remember any of this stuff. Now it makes me reconsider. And her comment to me was basically something along the lines of, we just didn't think about this stuff. We just thought it was a good book. We thought it was a good book about God’s love.
Danielle: But, but that's what’s confusing. It's confusing to me. Like if you're a Christian, like I was very sheltered. Then I remember I read this book as a teenager and I was like, yeah, it was really long. It was really boring. And there was a lot of sexy stuff, like more sexy stuff that I have ever been exposed to in my young life
And then my mom did work at Multnomah publishing actually [00:32:00] for a while during high school. And they had some kind of racy books too. And I read those, and I was like, and finally, when I was like 15 years old, and I was like, mom, I don't want to read these anymore. Don't, stop bringing them home. Like they're too, too racy for me. So I was that kind of kid, that kind of teenager.
Devi: Yeah, no, absolutely. So I read romance novels. I want to say grade eight, grade nine, maybe grade ten. And then I was like, this is causing me to sin and I didn't read a novel from that point until in university, I picked up Poisonwood Bibles. I read, that was the first novel I read that was like, I would consider a real novel. And then, and then I just didn't read at all until really just the last five years. I've been reading novels again, because of this sense of, I don't want to sin.
Danielle: And this, and this, that's so fascinating. I just never, I never experienced it like that, I just was like, oh, this is too, too much for me. But it was, it's exactly the same way I'd feel about watching a movie or something.
Devi: Yeah. Oh yeah.
Danielle: Just that sense of like, oh [00:33:00] my gosh, this is so intimate, but I'm also the kind of person where Pixar movies are a bit much for me, just emotionally. I'm a highly sensitive person all across, all across the board, violence, sex, all of it. So I'm like, uh, yeah, I, I have a hard time with fiction too, cause you can't always know what you're getting into and that kind of, but when I read these posts, like, um, you know, the odd Venn diagram overlap of me and conservative women and Redeeming Love right now is they're saying don't watch it because it's porn.
Devi: Yeah, it’s too sexy.
Danielle: And it will cause you to stumble. And I'm just like, again, I've been out of this world a little bit, but like with everything going on in the world, is this like what we're talking to women about as if it's the most important thing is like, you can't have any sort of sexy thoughts or can't have any sort of like, enjoy watching this. So I feel so confused because I have, so, you know, there's just so much going on there, but I'm like, [00:34:00] that's the thing y'all want to talk about. And I know that you have a better, you know, you're able to see that they're critiquing other things to it. But for me, the thing that comes out the loudest, is this is soft core porn and that's why you shouldn't watch it.
Devi: It is the thing that comes out the loudest. It is, it absolutely is the thing that comes out the loudest. And I think, um, then, you know, it's an easy, it's an easy target because, well, it's Hollywood. Well, it's, you know, we have to put this on a screen. So like we can aim at our typical targets of why this is a problem. Um, but I think, uh, it's, it's, it's fascinating to me that people can't see the abuse issues in the book because it's not just, it's not just the mis- I mean, Francine Rivers does a good job in the one hand that she clearly labels rape as rape for what happens to Angel in her childhood. Um, and I'm, I'm glad she did that. That would have probably been a big deal for Christian publishers back then. Um, but [00:35:00] I think the, the complete mislabeling of her as a prostitute. She's not, she's not a sex worker. Even like to me, sex workers have an ability to go in and out. Like she couldn't leave. She couldn't get out. Every time she tried to escape her life, she got beaten up the, the last time, nearly dead. Like that's not a prostitute. Like that's not a sex worker. Right. That's somebody who can't get out. And I, I, I, I mean, whatever we believe about God, and I'm sure we all believe different things, what kind of God is going to look on a woman who can't get out, and does whatever she has to do to cope within that environment and say, this is sin. That's, there's nothing about that, um, that parallels the Hosea Gomer story. There's nothing about that, that we would today say, I hope we wouldn't say that is anything related to sin, you know? So I, to me that is really like why, why were evangelical women so willing to read [00:36:00] this and ascribe sinfulness to her when she's not? And then, you know, there are so many other problems, I mean, like the, the Paul subplot, I actually almost think that is even worse than everything else. Because when, when she runs away from Michael for the first time she ends up, um, Paul gives her a ride. Paul is Michael's brother-in-law, he knows that she's a prostitute because he worked on the mines as well. Should I be saying prostitute or sex worker? What are we…?
Danielle: We'll see now I'm confused. I think you made an excellent point for like why she wasn't actually a sex worker. Also, the book uses the word prostitute a bunch. And so I'm totally open to getting feedback from other people, but just for the sake of this discussion, like that's what she's called in the movie, the book.
Devi: That’s true. Yeah. So we'll use the word prostitute. Okay. Right. And, um, and Paul just sort of hate, he knows exactly who she is the first time he meets her as Michael's wife. He knows that she's the most high [00:37:00] priced prostitute in, in the town. Um, he was never able to afford to see her when he was a miner, even though I think he wanted to. And he thinks Michael is a perfect man. And he just hates Angel like hates her from the get-go and just sort of digs at her, keeps reminding her of her former life and really wears down her confidence. Like he's abusive, actually, just flat-out abusive toward her. Um, and to he's going into town, and she decides she’s, this is the right time to get away from Michael. I want to go back and get my money from the Duchess, because I want to go buy my own cottage. I want to have my own life. What does she want? The freedom. That's the reason, not because she wants to become a prostitute again, she just wants her money. Like she wants the money that she's owed.
Danielle: She just wants to be alone and not be dependent on a weird man that married her when she was unconscious.
Devi: It seems reasonable when you really think about it, you know?
Danielle: But he refuses to bring her back into town. And so she hitches a ride with his brother-in-law.
Devi: [00:38:00] Paul. Right. And Paul says to her, at some point he gets really angry and then he says, um, you need to pay me for this. And basically his expectation is sex. And what, if you read it, the scene? It is not consensual. She is not willingly prostituting herself in this situation. He's raping her, like that's what's happening, and it is treated throughout the whole book, uh, well, she feels like it's wholly her mistake. Michael makes it clear to her it's both of their mistake that he forgives them. And Paul believes that it's both of their mistake by the end. And he's kind of the agent of redemption at the end that you know where it's like, I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. And he's the one who brings her back home to Michael and, and that is just such an egregious, yeah, it's just, it's horrifying. I, I thought that I found the whole thing, that whole plot [00:39:00] line, and I’d call it the B plot.
Danielle: That’s horrifying. That's kind of where I tapped out. I'm sorry, Devi. I did not, I did not finish this.
Devi: I mean, why should you?
Danielle: But I did read like over, you know, 300 pages of it.
Devi: Yeah, so it's a lot.
Danielle: But the Paul, the sub-plot, I was like screaming at the book. Like this is rape, like, stop it, stop it. And I also wrote several choice F words to Michael because, you know, yeah. Everybody's like, oh, it's such a dreamy romance. I'm like, he is
Devi: Yeah.
Danielle: Not good. He, like, it says he, if he started hitting her, like he wouldn't stop, right. Until she was dead.
Devi: He felt like killing her.
Danielle: Such anger issues.
Devi: Yeah, he felt like killing her, which this is where like, as evangelical women, you'll be reading it and going yeah, of course, because she's done the one thing you're not supposed to do. Right? So this is where the book hits all of our pressure points, I think. And it hits all of [00:40:00] the, yeah. Anyway.
Danielle: But I just think it's sad. Like the romanticized mission of Michael. It's just really, really hard for me. And I didn't read the end of the book, but I'm assuming he's still the hero, but I'd read enough where I was like, well, he could never be a hero. Like, Devi, what do you make of like the, the whole thing? I know it's supposed to be like sexy. It's like, he really wants to have sex with her. And he's like, so sexually attracted to her, but he holds off right, until he doesn't. And then he makes her say his name. Like while they're having sex.
Devi: He makes her.
Danielle: he like demands.
Devi: He makes her.
Danielle: And look, look him in the eyes and say his name. And I'm just like, how is this not sexual assault? Like how is it not?
Devi: Yeah.
Danielle: Like, I don't know what to do with that. Like, I couldn't, I can't come back from that as a reader, but that's like
Devi: Yeah.
Danielle: The first one, one third of the book.
Devi: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, [00:41:00] yeah. Uh, man, I, I, I'm not sure that I read that as an assault situation, but I think I can understand how women in that marital situation absolutely would, and it would be tragic and horrible. Um, because I think in some ways the fact that Michael is looking for a consensual sexual relationship, um, is admirable in particular for that generation, right? Like, so literally for the historical context, it would be, I mean, I don't think the idea of consent doesn't exist in that time period. Right? Like I don't think it does. Um, so I think we can ask, we need to look for it as a reader, but I think if we're looking at like historical accuracy, it's not necessarily supposed to be there. So, it's um, it is on the one hand it's remarkable. And I think this is why Christian women loved it, that he's looking for this kind of thing, but, but it's very [00:42:00] disturbing at the same time, like that’s seen as
Danielle: It’s like he's like trying to, he's trying to demand consent is what you're saying?
Devi: Something. I don't know. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't even know, but I found the fact that he was, he kept asking. So it's kind of, is he demanding it, is he asking nicely? Is he, you know, like this is where we could get into kind of, I don't really know what's happening. I, yeah, but it's, it's a hard, I think it's a hard scene. It's a hard scene to read. Um, uh, for me, what is probably more interesting about the sexual, uh, relationship between Michael and Angel is the way it is a vehicle for redemption in the book. So this is, this is the thing with, with this novel, sex is not just because it's a romance novel for women. Sex is actively part of Angel’s redemption. And her ability to have sex with her husband, willingly, happily, whatever, is seen as an [00:43:00] active sign of redemption. Right. She's softening she's, she's, you're my love.
Danielle: She’s softening? Like ripening. No, I know.
Devi: Like, yeah. So what I mean by that, it's just that, that he, he feels like her walls are coming down. That's one of his big things, right? Like you've got these walls, a woman has a wall and a door. Oh, what does that even mean? I don't. Yeah. Anyway, so she's got all these walls. Her walls are coming down. Um, and that I, I find that so bizarre and yet, and yet, so totally white evangelical that, that sex is going to be like sex is her big sin, sex is her avenue for redemption.
Danielle: I just don't get it. I, how many times am I going to say this? Uh, this it's just so fascinating. I know there's something going on when I'm like, I don't get it, but it like it's sold, but 7 [00:44:00]million copies like this is a lot.
Danielle: People, people, other people got it. And I didn’t. And so I guess I'm just trying to figure that out in a way. Um, but it, it does not, there's so many elements that do not hold up, and I do think it's, it's hard for us to kind of think back, like, yeah, why did we all just I receive it as this is totally normal Christian stuff here just totally normal. Um, it's just depressing.
Devi: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think even, even our affection for the Hosea story says, instead of seeing it as a story about a collective issue with a collective people, the way we individualize it and make it just like, oh my gosh, a man took an adulterous woman back as his wife, what a hero he is that says something about our beliefs about sexuality and marriage alone, that alone, that we see it as this individualistic [00:45:00] story about a husband and wife, when it's really a huge story about collective failing, and collective failing that destroyed an entire society. And God's love reaching out to that and renewing that, right? Like that's. Yeah.
Danielle: And I, I'm going to, I'm going to be talking to some people who understand like the genre of romance better than I do, but I've always struggled with historical romance in general. Cause it's like life sucked for women. I don't know how we get over that. It just did. And so I don't think you can romanticize the Bible, like the most free, I had the most freeing moment a few years ago, and I was like, there's not a single marriage in the Bible, I wouldn't, I would want to be in. Not a single one.
Devi: Yeah. Or a family as a child.
Danielle: I want to be Martha because Martha never is. I don't know if she has husband or kids, she's just right. That she gets to like, be intense to Jesus, you know, and, and all that. So I'm [00:46:00] like, I could do that, but there's not a single biblical marriage I want. And to be able to be honest and say that, so I feel the same way about this freaking book, that is not a marriage I would want to be in, okay.
Devi: No for me, the question really is why did a generation of evangelical women need to feel like, um, a prostitute who was sexually abused, who had a totally traumatized life? Why did we need to put ourselves in her shoes to feel God's love? Why is that the, that's my question. I would say, if you really, if you were somebody who needs to feel the love of God, that is something worth exploring, like that, that idea is worth exploring, you should buy Krispin Mayfield’s book. I'm not even, like nobody's put me up to say that it was one of the best books I read last year. And I, I swear like that book is going to do a lot more for your relationship with God than Redeeming Love is. I was [00:47:00] listening to a Francine Rivers interview, a podcast interview. And she, one of the things she said is she got tons of letters from women who were abused or coming out of sex work and, um, how they gave her hope. She got tons of emails from therapists who use this book with clients, which was kind of a wow. So yeah.
Danielle: I’m not qualified to talk on that, but that's, that's some heavy stuff because it's not a therapeutic book. It is not the Bible. I do not know if Francine Rivers, she does not seem trauma informed. And, um, the book has also been used to expect women to receive abuse, um, and call it godly. And so I think that's kind of where I still end up landing just because I've seen those messages. And, um, again, it's, if something's been used to harm somebody, like you have to reckon with it. And, and from what I've heard, when Francine Rivers has been told, you know, [00:48:00] about the problematic elements, she's just like, it doesn't make any sense to me. It's so good. And I'm like, that's somebody who's not been listening then, because there's been many, many people who tried to tell her.
Devi: Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I do think like she's a product of her time, like nineties evangelicism. So she, if this was published in 91, so she must've written at 89, 90. So she became a Christian in the years in the eighties. So, I mean, I can only imagine the kind of Christian stuff she ingested. It was all the stuff we're trying to recover from now. So some of us, I'm trying to recover from now, so, yeah.
Danielle: And in 2022,
Devi: Yeah, we're still here.
Danielle: Still has life in it. Well, Devi, thank you so much for talking to me about this. I just wanted an excuse to chat with you and, and now, um, I almost feel like we've survived a war together. We've, we've been in the trenches. I don't actually read a ton of fiction either,so for me to spend my precious brain cells reading [00:49:00] this book, it was nice to know that you were also out there also doing the work.
Devi: Doing the work.
Danielle: You're, you're doing this for your podcast too. You, so tell us really quickly about, um, what you guys are going to be talking about. Are you going to be talking about this on your podcast?
Devi: We are. Yeah, I think, yeah. I think we'll be going into more detail about the problems in the book. And also, I think for me, my interest in it is really how does a book like this even come about? So I'm interested in that I'm interested in the question of why does it resonate with the audience that it resonates with? Cause I think that also points to very much the purity culture stuff. If you're primed to want to resonate with, with this kind of story. I think that's what I would say. So, yeah. And then we've also got a lot of listeners’ stories of variety, variety of stories, including from women who have, were from an abused background or childhood, and we've got both for those, for whom it was harmful and [00:50:00] for those, for whom it was beneficial. And I think, I mean, that's always very interesting when you do, when you have both.
Danielle: Yeah, I do think just some from like a moral, ethical obligation, like, you know, taking the pain seriously matters because we do tend to say, well, there's two sides to this. I'm like, well then listen to the side that it was abusive to. Okay. Like, that's just, that's just sort of where I'm at. Um, I will, I will say that uh, you and your co-hosts are just way farther ahead on talking, you know, about things related to purity culture, deconstructing pretty culture. So I would, I would tell anyone, listen, this podcast, please go check out Devi's podcast. Can you remind me of the name of it?
Devi: Yeah, Where Do We Go from Here?
Danielle: There we go. Okay. Where Do We Go from Here? And your co-host name? I'm sorry.
Devi: Jessica Vander-Wineguard, yeah.
Danielle: There we go. And you'll get a touch of the Aussie accent with her, which I enjoy because my kids are obsessed with Bluey. So I
Devi: The [00:51:00] best show. The best show.
Danielle: We talk about moving to Australia sometimes, but my daughter looked up, um, a lot of poisonous animals that live there so now
Devi: There's a bunch.
Danielle: That's off the table. So that's off the table for now.
Devi: There are, there are a lot. Yeah, there are a lot. And a lot of spiders, even nonpoisonous spiders, but
Danielle: And spiders, it's just like, no, but maybe someday we'll have to go visit all you cool people.
Devi: We would love to have you. We'd love to have you, my gosh. Yeah.
Danielle: Yeah. So thank you so much for this. Go check out her podcast. Where Do We Go from Here and, uh, stay tuned for, for her discussions on Francine Rivers.[00:52:00] [00:53:00]
