Mark Labberton: What a joy it is today to welcome you to Conversing and to a replay of an episode that I did earlier with Beth Moore. We’re at a time in the American church when once again debates are raging about women in leadership, using their full gifts in the full service of the church. As a person whose whole ministry has been marked by a commitment to the place of women and women’s voices, among other things, I couldn’t be happier to have had this conversation with Beth and to eagerly share it with you again as an opportunity to hear a journey that she has taken, that she now still currently faces in her own ways—and at a time when understanding the importance of hearing women’s voices, of letting them become our teachers and instructors out of the Scriptures and for the sake of building up the church. Enjoy this episode and be blessed by the faithfulness of God to one woman’s story, trying simply to be heard.
Today is my great joy to welcome Beth Moore as our guest on Conversing. Beth, to many of you who are listening to this, you will know, is an evangelist and an author and a Bible teacher. She’s actually the founder of Living Proof Ministries, which is a Bible-based organization for women that’s based in Houston, Texas. Beth, thank you so much for being part of Conversing today and for this call.
Beth Moore: It is my pleasure, Mark. Thank you so much for having me on.
Mark Labberton: You know, it’s a great thing, I think, in getting launched, that some people who are listening to this are going to be very familiar with you and with your ministry and all the work that you’re doing, and others may be less so. So take us back in your story and kind of tell us a little bit about your spiritual formation as a child or a young adult. And then how is this ministry that has now become such a phenomenon, really—I don’t think it’s inappropriate to call it that—as emerged as it has. We’ll come to that later part of the story. Spiritually formed as you were, I think, as a child born into a Christian home. Is that right?
Beth Moore: Yes, I was born very much into a church-going home. And the reason why I say that is because we had a lot of instability in our home and a lot of brokenness. I was raised in a three-generational household, which I absolutely treasure. My grandmother lived with us, and so I, in effect, had three parents.
Mark Labberton: That was true for me, too.
Beth Moore: Was it really? A grandparent—grandfather or grandmother? I love that. Well, it was a tremendous advantage to us, and all the way through our young lives. She passed away at eighty-seven. Literally, she moved in with my parents after their marriage, and she moved out of their home into her casket. So that’s how long she was with them.
But I’ve had a family of eight. And what I am so grateful for is that we truly did go to church every single time the doors open. And in this big movement of so many people crying out to empty the pew, I could not be more anti-establishment where that is concerned, because I very much am a big believer in the harbour of the church—that when it functions well, it is such a safe place for me. It was safer than my home, Mark. So it was very dear to me. And there, even with all the things that were going on in my upbringing that seemed opposed to what I was learning about authority in regard to Jesus at church, I still fell for him. I still knew it was the truth, even if I wasn’t seeing it lived out before my eyes in my own home environment. And I have no other way to explain it except that for whatever reason, even in my childhood, I was mesmerized by him.
Mark Labberton: And you can make that distinction.
Beth Moore: Yes. And I don’t know how—that truly could only be a work of the Spirit. So I grew up in that church-going environment where it was an extremely happy, happy place for me.
And we moved to Houston when I was in the middle of high school, during very, very unstable times during my family’s life. And then everybody quit going in the family—the part of us that moved—except me. I was old enough to drive by then, and I drove myself and began to take some ownership over my own relationship. And there, being out of church was short-lived. Soon they were back in too, but I was in college.
And it was in college that I received what I would just call that calling, where there was just a sense of the Holy Spirit in a moment that I went from seeking my own future, which I would have wanted to do as a very dedicated believer. But I didn’t have a thought of going into ministry before then, and wouldn’t have even known, Mark—listen, I’m sixty-one. I was eighteen years old. I would not have even known what a woman could do. I supposed the mission field. I didn’t know what it was. I just knew that my future belonged to him. And so I was on a political science track so that I could get everything for pre-law and go on to law school. And so all of that changed. You know, what does this mean? What will I do?
So I finished out college, and I just thought, well, whatever you do, this is how you do it. You do it as forthrightly as you know, in the name of Jesus. And so that sort of began the opportunities. I mean, they came one right after another. And I look back even in college—I was chaplain of my sorority, and then I was president—that he had placed me up front over and over again, in a position where I had to communicate, where I had to speak. And so by the time I was early into my twenties, I was already beginning to speak a little bit at luncheons and things of that nature. And then later, a couple of years later, I began to teach. And that was it. That was when I fell totally in love with Jesus on the pages of his Word. And so all I’ve ever known to do all along is just whatever was the next thing. It has been so little about planning and so much about just what was he putting in front of me. And I couldn’t have planned it if I’d tried.
Mark Labberton: Right, right. So as that’s emerging, where along the line do you start becoming aware—and I think my sense is that you accepted these things—but where along the way did you start becoming more conscious of the fact that in the tradition that you were in, there were plenty and growing numbers of opportunities to teach women and not for men? When did that come onto the radar of your awareness? And when it first did, how did it strike you?
Beth Moore: It was so understood, Mark. I knew no other world.
Mark Labberton: Yes. Right.
Beth Moore: So, none. It’s so different now, because we’re very, very much in touch with the broader Christian community. I think that is a wonderful side of social media and of the world connecting. But in those days, in a small town growing up as I did, I had no other paradigm. I had zero other expectations. There was nothing even ever crossed my mind about it. It would be—what I knew was that this is the system that we work within, and this is what we do.
And the good part for me was that what were my most obvious limitations were within the desires of my heart, which is that this has been a very convenient thing for me, because I really did feel called to serve women. And so I’ve been asked through the years, you know, how has it been that that limitation was placed on you? Well, it went along with my desires, because that truly was driving me all along. But what was more of a shock was to find out later that there were a lot of people that really did spend time in the Word, that loved Scripture, that were orthodox in their beliefs, that had a different way of seeing women’s ministry, Mark. That came as a surprise—not that my audience would only be women. That was not—
Mark Labberton: Yeah, that makes total sense. So let’s stay on that thing, because I think that’s what’s so remarkable, really, about your ministry. It’s clear that in the way that God has used you, that your ministry has—the imagination, the hunger, the appetite, the desire of people ready for the ministry that you have to offer. And it’s a ministry that’s honest. This is how I would at least describe it. It’s a ministry that’s personally honest. It’s a ministry that’s bold and confident in both naming vulnerabilities and weakness, while also being able to name and affirm and trust the reality of God whose presence and power is far greater than anyone else’s. Confidence in the authority of the Bible itself, and an ability to speak into people’s lives with that voice in a way that just seems to land in a place of huge hunger, thirst, appetite, whatever you might want to call it. First of all, does that description resonate with how you would describe what you see happening?
Beth Moore: What I have been able to see is a connection that, for whatever reason, a lot of us women on the other side of our Bibles from one another, with our Bibles between us. I always pictured every single curriculum I ever wrote—still to this day, I picture that person sitting on the other side of it. And every new person I meet, I try to picture that face as well. There was a connection.
And what we know, of course, Mark, is only the Spirit can do that. So I don’t know why. I don’t know what precisely, except that just God intends to work in certain ways, and often through ragamuffins, because they’re probably not going to be as prone to take a lot of credit for it. I mean, there was no credit taking for me. What I gave was what I had. And I knew I didn’t have a lot, but I knew that I would gladly give that class what I had.
What I do think is that you cannot share a love for Scripture that you don’t possess. You can’t fake it. That class is on to you. If you’re dry of the Spirit, you’re not fooling anybody. People know after a while if the Holy Spirit is really in it. So I pray that it was something that was of the Spirit to them and they could sense it, and that I really did and really do love it.
But the other thing that I think—because I’ve been asked this enough times to try to analyze some things. And I’ll tell you one of the things that drove me. You know, we get so much of our passion from our pain. And I grew up with so much desire, but with such a tendency towards self-destruction, Mark, that I was this Christian girl that was trying her hardest to be good, who had suffered early childhood molestation and was so messed up with boundaries that she hardly knew her right side from her left. And so all of this coming together in this conglomeration, trying to live out this life.
And I’ve said a number of times, because this was such a thought process—I couldn’t have put it into words like this, but I think that part of my attitude was, are you still a hypocrite if what you are pretending to be is what you want to be? Because that would have been me. I mean, with everything in me, as an adolescent and as a young college student, I was a young woman. I wanted to be this godly, Christ-like woman. And so my frustration continually—because I would go right back to that old pattern. Literally, it was like my dictionary did not have the word no in it. Once I got under pressure, I was going to cave. Every single time I was going to cave.
Now, this does not go well when you really are growing a passion for Jesus. Because this duplicity, this division within you, it’s just absolutely miserable. The Holy Spirit does the job. And so my big frustration was, I knew what I was supposed to be, but I did not know how. I wanted so much for someone to tell me how I was supposed to be able to do it, how I could live it out, how it would stick.
And so I think, Mark, one of the things that drives me constantly in every lesson—so every lesson, not just every event, every lesson—I ask myself, every single time, did you tell them how? I am driven by it. It’s in my bones. For crying out loud, tell them how. Don’t just tell them what. People are trying to make it. Yes, let it be discipleship and doctrine, but let us also teach one another how to live this Jesus life.
Mark Labberton: Did you have a person in your life that taught you how? Or was it a process of self-discovery more than it was of being mentored or helped?
Beth Moore: I cannot say that I had a person in particular. I had a community.
But I will tell you this. I fell in love with the Scriptures upon seeing somebody else love it. I was twenty-seven. I had begun to teach Sunday school. I was terrible. Now, I was exciting. I don’t mean I wasn’t exciting. I don’t mean a lot of people didn’t come. The room was packed, but I was terrible. Do you understand what I’m saying?
So my church offers this place for a Bible doctrine teacher to come and teach a class. It gets put in the church bulletin, if you remember those. And it was like the Holy Spirit went, go. I mean, go, please, go ye therefore. And so I went, you know, expecting to do the right thing. I need to learn how to teach the Scriptures. But what I didn’t expect was that, I mean, it would just be over for me. I was ruined. I was ruined for any other life. I caught such a virus of love for the Scriptures from that man that I have no words for it. Literally, I’d never seen anything like it. I’d known people who loved Jesus. I’d seen that. But I’d never seen anybody really love the Scriptures like he did. And so I really caught it.
So here’s how I want to answer that. I’m going to tell you that so much I did learn from teachers, but I cannot honestly tell you that I learned this. I really did learn this going straight on in the Scriptures with Jesus. And it’s not that people weren’t teaching it, but they weren’t really teaching it in the sphere in which I was influenced, where I could have heard it. I come from a very, very evangelical church, was not as driven with depth of discipleship, and it certainly didn’t—oh, Mark, remember, this is many years ago. This is late twenties, when I would never have heard any teaching whatsoever about being set free from any stronghold, any addiction. I don’t know that I ever heard anyone in those early years even really talk outrightly about having victory over areas of sin as personal and intimate as sexual sin. Like, we would have been told not to. But again, Mark, we would not have been told how not to, what we could do—really vivid ways to battle against that temptation.
So these things were hashed out in the Scriptures. And I don’t think I set out to do that. You know where he says, in the psalmist’s words, he sent forth his word and he healed them?
Mark Labberton: Yes.
Beth Moore: That was me. Because I don’t think I even realized how sick I was until his words started beginning to make me well. And then what happened is that—I tell you, when you’ve been brought back to life, when you know you’re different, Mark, like, there’s no explanation. None. None. When you know yourself, you know how you would have been. You know your cycle. You know the way that you went back and forth into this pattern. And you are set free from it. You cannot keep from telling that to save your life. And so, you know, you naturally want to share that with people. He really did change everything for me. And I just am convinced to the bone, because his Word says it’s true, that he will do that for anyone.
Mark Labberton: Right. Yes, this is how I’m hearing what you’re saying. Yes, you’re surrounded by an encouraging community, an eager group of people that are wanting to be touched by the same work of the Holy Spirit. Yes, you have some exemplars, but your own carving out of this way of doing Bible teaching, of bringing people to the Scriptures, of hammering out this connection between the raw places of need, like such things as sexual sin and other kinds of addictions and issues and concerns—all of that was work that in large part you were doing because that was how God was meeting you, and you were prepared and willing to make all that exposed and available to the people you were trying to teach. Is that right?
Beth Moore: Yes, I would absolutely say that. You find something that—you know, I’ll continually say till the day I die, faith really does work. It really has an impact. It’s not just a theory. This impacts our reality. And I don’t mean it works to make us always gleeful and happy, but it certainly does make us functional in our believing lives. We really were promised not only life in Christ, but abundant life in Christ. And so I’m adamant about that.
Mark Labberton: Right, right. So usually in church environments, there’s people who I consider to be sort of—I’ll call them kindly, euphemistically, maybe caretakers—who want to be sure that the good teacher isn’t going too far. And they tend to be full of warnings and admonitions, with little, small and sometimes larger, no signs: don’t go there, avoid this, you shouldn’t have. Was that happening as all this was emerging, or did it just cut such a swath that people were prepared to simply receive it without a lot of pushback?
Beth Moore: You know, it absolutely happened. It happened in the most wonderful way. I just have no words to voice my gratitude appropriately for the environment that God put me in to learn, because it was a gentle environment. All my early upbringing in the Scriptures—so I would mean my young adulthood all the way into, well into my forties and early fifties—were at First Baptist Church in Houston. And just the environment was a very positive one for me. I was called out over mistakes. I mean, yes, I mean, over and over. I was called down. All of those things. I certainly had criticism. But I don’t know, somehow in the midst of it—and isn’t this the way it ought to be—I was always loved and I knew that I was. And you can take a whole lot of criticism in a safe environment where you know this is not a matter of how we love or don’t love you. And Mark, make no mistake, there were certainly people who didn’t. But I’m saying the environment overall was very, very warm toward me.
And it was a safe place to make a ton of mistakes. And I certainly made them. But I was not so harshly dealt with that I couldn’t get back up. And then there’s just the commitment. You know, I know you know this from every single situation that God has placed you in. We blow it. There were times I’ve got in the car so many times where you look in the rearview mirror and go, why did you think you could teach? Who ever told you you were a teacher? But the fact was, then the next Sunday was coming and I was going to have to get up there again. And so I just had to. I just had to keep—I had to keep at it. And it was a safe environment to do that.
And so I’m at where then it really begins to be harsh, where you are not necessarily loved, I was already secure enough that I was not greatly moved—shaken, but not greatly moved.
Mark Labberton: What’s been interesting to watch and try to understand as an appreciative observer is that it seems as though the ministry that you’ve had, especially in the last year or two years or so, has been prepared to move publicly more into this sphere that, in shorthand, I’ll call the Me Too awareness movement that is going on in so many different places gender has been often handled. The vulnerability that you describe in your own life and the vulnerability that so many people, but particularly women, especially experience.
Beth Moore: Yeah, I’d love to speak to that.
Mark Labberton: I’d love to hear how that’s happened, and then how you are experiencing the response to that.
Beth Moore: I can tell you that being in women’s ministry for as long as I have, it is the most natural thing in the world that those are where my concerns would be, and that I feel a great responsibility to somehow represent and somehow bring to the table what I think many women have as concerns.
And I will tell you that along the way, as safe as my environment was for me to grow up and teach, I was aware that things were different for women in regard to opportunity than men, but it was when I really started branching out that I realized it more and more.
And, Mark, let me try to put it this way, too. I kept all of the rules. I tried to. I worried over it. I would stress over it. By the time my class was drawing a little more attention, and then men would start to sit in the back of it, I would just get so undone about it and so worried. And then I can remember the very first time my pastor, Brother John Bisagno, ever asked me to speak on a Sunday night. And I mean, I honestly said, Brother John, I cannot possibly do that. I mean, I just looked at him like—I couldn’t even believe that had come out of his mouth. And he said, why? And I said, because I’m a woman. And I’ll just never forget it, because he called out to his secretary, who was just on the other side of the doorway because the door was wide open. He said, you’re not going to believe what I have to—did you know Beth Moore is a woman? And I mean, they just had such a laugh. And I said, I have to be a woman under authority. And he kind of reared back in this most wonderful way and said, do I not look like an authority figure to you? And I was like, you know, yeah, you do.
So I served on Sunday evenings and still just trying my hardest—play by the rules, play by the rules, play by the rules. Do everything right. And then, you know, when I would get treated a certain way, and I did, the lack of esteem being a woman in ministry, especially not academically educated—it was palpable. And I’m fairly hard to offend. I like people really easily. And it takes me a while to figure out that they don’t like me. You know, I just, I’m a happy person. And so it was shocking to me.
Mark Labberton: Yes.
Beth Moore: And, but yet I tell myself over and over again, okay, it’s because of 1 Timothy 2. It’s because of 1 Corinthians 14. I would think all the time, whether or not I like it, whether or not I feel like this is fair treatment, whether or not it seems right to me that Scripture would be used to not even acknowledge that I’m in the room, or if you’re going to acknowledge me, that you’re going to do it with ridicule and expect me to take it as a joke—even though I think all of this is weird, I believed that it was because of Scripture.
And then, you know, the last couple of years, just different evidences. I want to tell you, this hit with such force a couple of years ago: the realization that I had played by rules that some were not keeping. In other words, I thought we were all doing this, that this system was set up because we were all trying to be obedient to Scripture. But you cannot act this way about and toward women and make me believe that all of this was about Scripture.
And I mean, it was full-on depressing to me. When I came to the realization that that was some of what was in play—I don’t mean all of it, but a forceful part of it—when I began to have to face up to that, the sorrow that I felt and the foolishness of having believed that it was because it was best for the church and not best for, in those cases, for the gender, it was tremendously distressing to me.
And so what happened then, I felt like, wow, I have played along without ever questioning this. And not all of this has been pure on my part. And please understand me when I say I have never, ever resented being taught and even raised on 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14. Never, never. What I’m objecting to is only being taught that.
And so what I began to think was, from where I have been part of playing into and adding into what I believed had taken on manifestations of sexism and misogyny—I thought, uh-uh, no. Where I have been part of this and complicit in this, I will repent.
So here is what I’m fighting for. I’m fighting for us, and I don’t just mean—I mean women and men, brothers and sisters. I think it takes both genders to flourish. That’s just wisdom. What I’m asking is not discounting those Scriptures. I’m asking, can we not grapple with the larger New Testament? What do we also do with Luke chapter 8, with the women followers of Jesus? What do we do with the way he elevated—very intentionally. I mean, he could not have been more intentional than to make sure that he established women as credible witnesses of the resurrection. That’s not accidental. And then to grapple with the fact that Paul, who was divinely inspired by God to write those portions of Scripture that are infallible, inarguable to me, but he is also one who served elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder with many women, and consider them to be fellow workers. We look at the end of Romans, for crying out loud, where he names all of those brothers and sisters he served with. And can we not grapple with the tension here? Because we can’t just go, it’s all here or it’s all over here. No, here’s all of it together. Everything in regard to women, let’s lay it out. For the good of the church and for the sake of staying true to the whole counsel, can we not grapple with this tension? What are we to do with this?
For one thing, Mark, I feel like I’m old, and what do I have to lose? I’m just too old to care. There’s a point at which you’re too old to care how popular you are. If I can ask questions on behalf of women that want to ask them, that don’t have the microphone to do it right now, then I want to ask.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Beth Moore: And I just keep thinking over and over again, these young women coming up—shall we not take risks and make sacrifices for them? And, you know, for me, it’s just, that’s an easy answer. It’s not an easy way, but it’s an easy answer.
Mark Labberton: So, Beth, what I hear in what you just said is that part of it is a growing awareness of the fact that men and women sometimes in the church have different operating rules. And you became more and more aware of that, and how uneven and inconsistent that was. But what I’m also hearing is that it was this discovery or reaffirmation of—you’re referring to is the whole counsel of God regarding the way that Jesus responded to women, the way that Paul engaged women, the total witness of women’s gifts and abilities and vocations in and for and by the power of the Holy Spirit for the sake of what the church is to be in the world. And all of that is then getting focused for you biblically, while externally, culture and in the battles that are going on in various contexts socially, there’s a convergence again, like there has been at earlier stages of your life in ministry with other things. But now this particular set of pieces is also converging. At least that’s what I heard you just describe. And it’s how it strikes me that you’ve gone after this because of both, again, the hunger of the culture, but also the authority of what you understand the Word to say that’s much richer than you would have necessarily originally thought.
Beth Moore: Well, yes. And what I think—I hate to show the kind of naivety that I’m about to show, but I’m going to go ahead and be that vulnerable. I just admired the church. And I don’t mean, of course, the church as the bride of Christ without question, but I’m talking about the community of believers, the establishment as I knew it. I had enough respect for it and I had enough reverence for it to not question the motives.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Beth Moore: But then when I felt like that there were some that I not only felt like were misleading toward women, but had misrepresented the Scriptures to women—and that is where I throw up my hand and go, no, explain this, explain this.
And a couple of years ago, what happened for me is, if you saw a tugging on a rope, I felt like the rope got pulled so far into misogyny and sexism—and this is in the church, within evangelical leadership. Now, of course, there were many exceptions, but it was pretty loud and pretty obvious. And that knot got so pulled that direction that I think for some of us in leadership, that the only responsible thing to do was grab the other end of it and jerk as hard as we could and say, no, you have to come back this way and explain these Scriptures. I’ve played nice with you. You’ve been my peers. I’ve served with you guys. And I’ve bowed to you. And no, no, if this is how it is, I will tug this rope hard with all my skinny little mind has. I’m going to pull for the sake of Scripture, because this is what Scripture says. And if you’re going to be the leaders of interpretation, then interpret this to us in a way that grapples between these two extremes.
Mark Labberton: Well, I’ve admired what I’ve taken to be the courage that it’s taken for you to exercise this kind of a vocation, because I think, A, it’s needed, and B, it’s got to have been costly. So when you pull the rope back, I can’t imagine that it was greeted with a neutral response. So how has that played for you?
Beth Moore: Well, it was tremendously painful in the very beginning. I think that I expected—I would have done it anyway, mind you—but I think I expected that I would get a lot of backlash from men. But what I didn’t expect was how much would come from women. And so it was heartbreaking to me and no less than shocking to me, because they were the ones I was taking up for. And it was like, don’t take up for us.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Beth Moore: And this, again, this is some—
Mark Labberton: Yes.
Beth Moore: So that was painful, because there were a number of women who had done the Bible studies that just were like, I will never touch one again. And I couldn’t understand. I thought, based on that, based on questioning misogyny, I could not have done otherwise. I could put myself in this scenario for the last couple of years over and over again, and there is absolutely no world in which I would not have spoken up. I’m going to tell you something. It would have been like expecting a dog not to bark at a burglar. My whole life has been in ministry to women. And for whatever degree, as a big sister and then as a mother figure to a lot of these young women, that protectiveness to go, do them right. Do them right.
Mark Labberton: Yes.
Beth Moore: So I couldn’t have been me and not done it. It just was not—there was no world in which that was going to happen.
Mark Labberton: Well, I really want to say how much I admire that you’ve had that call and exercise that kind of leadership and courage, because undoubtedly there would be plenty of people around you who would have perhaps nodded, but not wanted you to have been as direct and bold as you’ve been.
And, you know, Fuller stands in a context where forty years ago or so, the seminary, after having been founded in the late 1940s, became really quite adamantly supportive of women in any kind of role of leadership. And that’s the part of the evangelical stream that Fuller has been in. And to this day, I think one of the reasons why many women students come here is in part because they find an environment where they’re given full voice.
But the point of raising that right now is not that per se. It’s to say that whether you’re in a position like Fuller, where you have women that are coming here fully affirming, being affirmed in their gifts and their calling, their vocation across the range of the church, or whether you’re in the position of the church that you’re in, or whether it’s a part of the church that’s still further to the more conservative right, that wouldn’t allow women perhaps any voice of teaching—it seems to me that we’re all still facing this fundamental challenge that you’re describing, which has to do with the way that gender can be used abusively, and often is used abusively, not least in the name or voice of the church. And it discredits the gospel in the most profound way. And I think wherever we stand at the moment, we have to enter that set of concerns.
Beth Moore: And where our Christianity departs Christ-likeness, don’t call it Christianity.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Beth Moore: Because the end result of all of our discipleship in Christ, of all of our growing, is to be conformed into his likeness.
Mark Labberton: Right.
Beth Moore: So if it is not like him, it is not of him. And I’ve got to tell you, Mark, I think this will make you smile. I did not look up where your institution stands, specifically on women.
Mark Labberton: Sure, sure.
Beth Moore: Don’t you do it. Don’t you do it, because you’re going to stand where you stand, whether you know if it’s congruent with them or not. Be true or don’t do it.
Mark Labberton: Right, right, right, right. And I think, you know, likewise, I don’t think the point is to get ourselves, each other, pegged and say, you’re here and I’m there. It’s actually not to do that, which is what I was trying to say—that wherever we are at this moment, this same challenge exists. And every part of the church has to grapple with those implications. And some of us have a, you know—the burden can shift in various ways of how we might think we perceive these things. But it’s still another thing, as always: are we actually living what we profess or not?
And I think that Fuller, for example, has affirmed and set many, many women free to find and live and express their gifts in tremendous ways. But would I say that Fuller has come far enough in addressing all the issues of bias and misogyny that is sort of embedded in implicit practices and structures? No, I mean, clearly that’s not the case. So it feels to me like we are all on this journey of conformity to Christ with none of us having yet arrived.
And what I love at this moment in particular about your ministry in this regard is that it seems like, for a lot of people, because of the wider social moment that we are living in, some people are drawn to the faith and some people are specifically repelled by the faith because of believing that it discredits women. And what I love is that you stand in this intensely orthodox, conservative context, and you are this voice for women. And that combination is a surprise to many. And I think it’s a life-giving surprise. So I just want to say thank you for what you’re doing and for fanning the flame of many women and men thinking again about the relationship between how their faith is either a smokescreen or really an unveiling of the reality of God’s love and mercy. So I’m very, very encouraged.
Beth Moore: Those are such gracious words, Mark. I can tell you, he’s been my dignity. You know, he truly has. As a woman, like the woman in John chapter 4, I would have been one of those that would have been able to run away from that place, that well, and say, come meet a man who told me everything I ever did. And yet, I have my dignity, that I’d want them to know him. He is a Saviour who gives us dignity, and man and woman alike. And anything less than that is not—it’s not the gospel.
Mark Labberton: Yes, yes.
Beth Moore: And I may not get it right, Mark. I may not get it right, but I can no longer lay down to what I know is wrong. Sometimes the way is cloudy to me. I was on a walk the other day and I looked straight up at the heavens and said to Jesus out loud, I hope you know where we’re going. I don’t know where we’re going. I hope you know where we’re going. But someone said the other day to me, you know, clarity is really overrated. It is really obedience. And I thought that was a wonderful thing. I just want so badly to go with Jesus on this thing. And, you know, I’m a ragamuffin, and I don’t always get it right. But I just want to fight for the church.
Mark Labberton: Right. You know, I’ve always found it amazing that Paul, the most adamant voice in the whole New Testament, is the one who at the end of 1 Corinthians 13 says, we see—but we see through a glass darkly. In that text, he’s holding on to two themes, isn’t he? On the one hand, this confident assertion that there’s really something to be seen and that we can see it. But then this humility that says, but we see through a glass darkly. It’s back to the clarity is overrated.
And so people would look at even Paul and say, well, Paul is absolutely clear. Yes and no. Paul was absolutely clear—I mean, there were times when he was utterly clear, I think—and there was other times when he teaches in ways that suggest he’s holding on to a more complicated picture where it’s not yet fully clear. And I think in that text, in 1 Corinthians 13, he’s saying a life of faith, like the one that you’re describing, doesn’t have to have clarity, as though everything is made transparent. No, it’s sufficient vision to be able to take us into the future.
And that’s what I think you’re following. And I just really want to encourage you and fan that hope, because I think it’s bringing hope to many, many people, including many women who are feeling that you are naming for them something that their faith or their church or their experience has not given them space to be able to name. And I am just really grateful for that. And I have counted it an honour to have had this conversation. Thank you so much for letting us have a little window into your history and your ministry.
Beth Moore: Well, it was a pleasure, Mark. Thank you so much for having me.
Mark Labberton: Beth, it’s a great gift. God bless you in all you’re doing.
