Episode 17: Ally Henny – Finding Your Voice in the Face of Injustice

Jared  

You’re listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet.

Pete  

I’m Pete Enns.

Jared  

And I’m Jared Byas.

Intro  

Jared  

Hey, folks, just a little housekeeping announcement as we inch closer and closer to the glorious days of summer.

Pete  

Yay!

Jared  

We’re going to be releasing our episodes bi-weekly, as we’ve done in the past, between June and September.

Pete  

Right. And what’s great, though, is that now we have both shows: Bible for Normal People and Faith for Normal People, so you actually will get weekly episodes, if you can do the math.

Jared  

Exactly.

Pete  

Yeah. 

Jared  

So you know, put the puzzle pieces together in your mind. We have so many great topics and guests this summer, we can’t wait for you to hear them. But we wanted you to know, the expectations changed. We always want to give you a heads up.

Pete  

Yep, and we love you. 

Jared  

It’s going to be weekly. So it is a change. I’m already confused.

Pete  

That’s what’s happening, folks, we’re really excited to have an episode every week during the summer.

Jared  

Today on Faith for Normal People, it’s just me. I’m talking about finding your voice with Ally Henny. Ally is the author of the new book, “I Won’t Shut Up: Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to Silence You,” which is coming out June 20th. She’s a writer, a speaker, and an advocate minister, Vice President of the Witness: A Black Christian Collective, which is an organization committed to encouraging, engaging, and empowering black Christians toward liberation from racism. And don’t forget to stay tuned at the end of the episode for Quiet Time where Pete will jump back in and will reflect on the episode.

Intro  

Ally  

Intro  

Jared  

Well, Ally, welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited to have you here and have this conversation.

Ally  

Thank you for having me!

Jared  

So this may be a weird first question, but I wanted to ask it this way: What’s the history of your voice? And what I mean by that is, if your voice could share, what would be the main events that shaped its story, as you think about your voice and what it’s been through over the years?

Ally  

That is a very unique question. But yes, my voice does, in fact, have a history. And that’s actually something that I cover a bit in my book, “I Won’t Shut Up: Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to Silence You.” And so of course, you know, I think that we all have those moments in our lives that sort of shape us and of course, you know, using—The first time that I use my voice was when I was born and came out of my mother’s womb and was crying and of course, that’s the voice or whatever, but I don’t go that far back. 

But for me the history of my voice, maybe it’s in some ways, kind of fraught as a person that’s relatively shy and introverted. I was the youngest girl in my family and I was raised in an extended family, which means that I had my parents and then I have a sister who’s several years older than I am. But I was also raised with aunties, uncles, big cousins, that sort of thing, that were responsible for me and responsible for my life. And so for the first several years of my life, I was the youngest girl in my family. And so kind of being one of the babies in the family, there’s always this thing, this notion of not being taken seriously whenever you have people who are older than you, who are peers, but are several years older than you. So I kind of started out with that. 

And then as I grew, my grandmother—and I talk about this—she had an illness, she was diagnosed with cancer whenever I was in late elementary school and so from that sort of sprang all these—just different things that happen whenever you’re dealing with a person who is a close family member that is terminally ill, and sort of within that I’ve really honed the sense of what injustice was. Mostly just because of how my family, you know, they’re great people, but you’re just dealing with this horrible tragedy, right? You’re just dealing with your mom, your grandma, your mother in-law, somebody who’s just the solid, stable rock of your family, them being ill, and their life coming to an end and that sort of makes everybody’s emotions and stuff very raw. And so there were times whenever stuff would just get blown out of proportion. And so sort of within that with my voice, I realized that whenever you know I would try to talk, try to talk back to some of the things that I felt like that were happening that were unfair, sometimes even more unfair stuff happened, and just that those kinds of general feelings of again, not feeling taken seriously, not feeling heard. 

So then I also think about a time whenever I was in fifth grade, I made a bet—or rather, a bet was made with me—that I couldn’t go the whole week without talking. Some boys in my grade made that bet with me. And you can read about the results of that bet and how that went. It doesn’t go the way you think it might have gone. But there was an element of feeling silenced and peers—you know, same-aged peers—not really like wanting to engage with me because of being perceived as being too loud, being too much, doing too much. And so that was an aspect that was really kind of a moment that I pinpoint in my life, where I felt like I was being silenced because I was a loud Black girl. 

And that was something that I carried with me for a long time. And as I’ve grown and grown up, and even as a young adult, as someone in my teens, and 20s, and late 20s and now—I’ll be 38 this year—but really, you know, through a lot of my 20s even, I felt like that whenever I saw or experienced injustice, that I did not have a voice. And that sort of juxtaposed with the fact that I was in ministry for a long time. And I guess I still am in ministry, but talking about and being in my 20s and stuff, I was a youth pastor, I was a preacher, all these other things that sort of require you to use your voice and all these contexts that require one to use one’s voice, and doing that, but then also the double edged sword of being in a profession, in a vocation, where you use your voice but at the same time your voice is being silenced by various different types of oppressions. 

And there’s more that I can say about that and that’s maybe a bit of a meandering answer to your question there. But I guess that maybe the top line thing to say is that the history of my voice is one of using my voice, of being a person that is vocal, but also within that being vocal there being tension and there being moments in my life, certain areas of my life where I felt silenced.

Jared  

One of the reasons I’m so interested in this topic is that, you know, I’m also a family business advisor and I work in a lot of family systems where women in particular feel like they don’t often have a voice, that they’re just not listened to, they’re dismissed. But one of the things in those systems that actually comes up quite a bit as well as something that you said earlier, and I thought maybe you could talk more about it from your personal experience, as you said, “Sometimes when we speak up more trouble can come.” Whether it’s speaking about injustices, or again in the case of family systems, it’s often like “I don’t want to cause trouble. I don’t want to be a troublemaker.” And sometimes speaking up is seen as being a troublemaker. And so it’s better to just let things go than to try to speak up because we learn through the years when we speak up more trouble can come. So can you say more about that in your experience? Because I think that’s a real fear for people. And sometimes it’s legitimate because more trouble does come. But maybe sometimes it’s worth it. What’s your experience been with that?

Ally  

So I think that something that we should acknowledge here is just the very real function of sexism. We can talk about in family systems—and I think that that’s often where those things are reinforced—

Jared  

Ally  

—where those things are taught and then those things from the family system go out into the broader society. But there is a very real function of sexism, of misogyny, and then whenever you start talking about race, so for me as a Black woman, there’s another added layer of that. Where first of all, you know, there’s these myths and stereotypes about women talking too much. So that’s something that I think is really interesting, that the “too much” aspect of it. So it’s like women talk a lot. And supposedly, like compared to men—as if men are the default—and a lot of that is myth and is whatever. 

Something that I just was, I recently was reading something talking about how the perception of women talking is more than like the reality. So for example, if you have a meeting, if you create a situation where you have men and women together, and they’re talking and sharing ideas, women will be perceived to be talking, I want to say it’s like three times more than what they were actually talking. So that’s just kind of an interesting thing to think of. So bringing that back to what you said, I think that people are often socialized to think about—I think that, again, that very real function of sexism, of misogyny, of patriarchy is to define people by whatever the norms are of the dominant group. And then whenever people don’t measure up to those things, then they’re cast off as “Well, this isn’t right, if we think that you talk more than you should, then there’s something wrong with you.” And so I think it then becomes very difficult, at least in my life, it became very difficult for me at times, because there was this perception that I was taking up more space than I should. 

And as a person that, you know, I’m an introvert, I’m rather shy, but in circumstances, you know, I can definitely come alive and can be very vocal, and can be very passionate, and all those sorts of things. And so what I found was that people didn’t like that. And over the course of my life, there were times where there were people, sometimes they felt intimidated by it, sometimes they felt threatened by it, sometimes they felt frustrated by it, sometimes they thought going into a situation, they thought, “Oh, there’s this black woman, well, she must not know anything, she must not whatever.” And then whenever I was the person in the room who had my stuff together the most, I often would experience just consequences from that. So people being irrationally angry at me for simply just existing in the space and sharing my opinion, and all those sorts of things. 

And I think that it’s very early that we become socialized, then, to be quiet or to try to tamp ourselves down and to make ourselves smaller. Because whenever we speak up, there are consequences. And so like I said, you know, a moment ago that I have learned in my life, that people are going to see me as too much. So if I come in and if I, right off the bat, seem like I have my stuff together too much, then that could actually anger someone who is intimidated by that. And so I learned that well, you know, I need to kind of sit back and need to let other people—and I don’t mean this in like a way, because we, of course, we all have to make adjustments in order to be like a compassionate and ethical person, right? So there’s like adjustments that we make, that are just like, I think just kind of normal adjustments of, “I’m not going to sit here and talk for the meeting is scheduled to be 50 minutes and I’m going to sit in the meeting and talk for 45 minutes, and then not let anybody else talk.” Like that’s not what I’m saying. 

So I think that sometimes, we can carry things to extremes. That’s not what I’m saying—What I’m saying is that sometimes there can be consequences just for being the first person to speak up or taking up more space than people think that you should have. And so you learn to kind of make adjustments to yourself so that way, you’re hopefully not doing too much for the people who would tell you that you’re doing too much. But then in essence, you’re not able to bring your full self, you’re not able to bring the fullness of your talents, to bring the fullness of your ability. And so I think that there’s a very real function of sexism, of racism, of everything else there. But I think pulling that out more broadly, I think that people in general—but sometimes with using our voice whenever it comes to issues, like you bring up like within the family system, “Oh, well, you know, I don’t want to cause trouble. Well, I don’t want to hurt relationships, I don’t want to make any type of stink that would upset the status quo.” We learn that somewhere. And I think that sometimes we learn, whether the intended lesson was there or not, that whenever we speak up that sometimes that there’s always the risk of someone wanting us to hush, because we said or did too much.

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Jared  

You have this great concept in your book of the “Holy Hell No.” Can you talk more about what that is? Because in some ways, we’re talking about taking up too much space, but there’s also this other side of being able to say no in that as well. So how do those relate? What’s this “Holy Hell No” about?

Ally  

Yeah, so your “Holy Hell No” is a boundary that, essentially, that you assert. So it’s where whenever you’re experiencing injustice, where you’re experiencing wrong, or whatever, that you take a moment and you’re just like, “No, this isn’t it.” Not just no, but hell no, like, “I don’t want any more of this injustice, I don’t want to be silenced anymore.” And that’s the moment where one can find their voice in the midst of injustice. And so I think that’s an important concept that sometimes we experience injustice, we experience harm, we experience all these different things in our lives and there’s a point when we sort of can sit back and just think, “Well, if I just take this, if I just keep putting myself into boxes, if I just sort of keep being quiet, if I just keep taking the mistreatment, or keep lumping everything that’s happening, it’ll eventually get better.” 

But sometimes stuff doesn’t get better. And sometimes you can sit and you can be quiet in your own harm, where people are doing things that are upsetting to you, that are harming you, that are diminishing you as a person, that are taking away from your dignity and your right to exist. And we have a choice to make in those moments. We can either shut up, we can either say, “Well, I’m just going to be quiet about it and I’m just going to kind of let this blow” or we can say no, and we can push back. And so your Holy Hell No is whenever you assert that boundary, and you decide, “Nope, I’m gonna push back. There’s no more to this.”

Jared  

And it seems like those moments can be scary because it could go either way. In the sense again, coming back to that phrase, “When we speak up, more trouble can come,” that sometimes the systems we’re in—whether that’s cultural, society, church, other institutions, or families—they really don’t want you to speak up, they don’t want you to take up more room and so when you do speak up, more trouble would come. But sometimes when we speak up, it’s also in a space where people want us to be ourselves and to take up that space. And that can be just a scary moment of, you know, the idea that if I just get smaller and smaller, it’ll get better. But the alternative is, there’s a risk in speaking up, that it could go well, and it could be acceptable, and it can be freeing and liberating. Or it could be kind of the worst fear of like, “No, they really don’t want me to speak up and don’t want me to take up any space.” Have you had any experiences for you? Do you have any stories of where you were able to verbalize that “Holy Hell No,” not to yourself, but within a system or a group? And how did that go for you?

Ally  

Yeah, absolutely. There was a point where I was part of a church that was one of the most diverse churches in our city, there had been a racist incident that had happened that had triggered a group of Black women to sit down with the pastor and to discuss what had happened. The person who had done the thing was a longtime, prominent member within the church. And so a group of us sat down with the pastor, and we really wanted to talk to him about that incident in particular. But then as we were talking about that incident in particular, of course, all of the years of racism and stuff that people had experienced within the church, those types of things started to come out. 

And so some things about the church culture that, even though this was the most diverse church in our city, and it prided, the pastor and the church, you know, prided itself on being the most diverse church and on having, particularly, a lot of Black people at the church. What came out was that, yes, Black people are here, we’re part of the church, but we’re also having some experiences that are not great. 

And so things went on, we ended up having a couple of different meetings with the pastor. And in one of those meetings, the meeting sort of took a turn that I didn’t expect, that I don’t really think anybody else in the room expected. And so as this was happening, and then there was some fallout and aftermath to the meeting, to how the meeting had turned out, I realized that I could no longer remain in that. I could no longer remain in that church, I could no longer remain in that space. And so for me, that was a moment where that was just—that was a “Hell No” moment, that there were some things that had happened. 

It was upsetting. It was devastating, because I had been a part of that church for a long time, had been connected to that church for a long time. And so it definitely, there definitely was not just risk, but there was loss that happened because of that decision to speak up and to say, “I don’t think that what is happening here is right and so I’m going to say something about it. And I am going to adjust my life accordingly, because I don’t think that, it’s clear that things are not going to change and that people are not willing to change.” And maybe that’s even the better way to say it, is that it was clear that the feedback about all the different things that we were giving, that it wasn’t really being taken to heart, even though that was what the lip service that was being paid to it. 

And so yeah, so the asserting that boundary and just saying, “Nope, no more.” But something else that I want to add to that, is that asserting your Holy Hell No, it’s not just about the situation. It’s not just about the thing that you’re experiencing. It’s for yourself. And so I think that, you know, even if it does stir up trouble, even if it does cause a problem, even if it does lead to issues further down the line, I think that it’s more important that we say to ourselves, and that we speak up for ourselves, that we draw a line in the sand essentially and say, you know, “Thus far and no more of this issue that’s gone on. That’s enough, I’ve experienced enough injustice, I’ve seen enough oppression, I’ve been harmed enough and so I am not going to allow this to continue.” 

And so whether that means exiting a space like I did with the church or whether it simply means that you are no longer going to remain in certain relationships or remain affiliated with a certain group or whatever that looks like to you, I think that it’s more than—so being able to speak up, using your voice is more than just trying to change the situation. Of course, we hope that the situations that we’re in will change, right? You know, we hope that whenever we speak up, that people will hear us, they will hear our pain, they will see our sorrows, or even our tears, and they will make an adjustment. That’s the best case scenario. But sometimes this scenario doesn’t come out in the best case. 

And so, sometimes, I think that for people who are speaking up and using their voice, sometimes you just have to… It’s the principle of the thing, right? It’s the principle of: someone has to say, at some point, that something is wrong. For me, in my situation, there have been things that I had seen that even had dated back even more than a decade, some issues that I had seen and had experienced in this space and I was just like, “You know what? Nope, I cannot continue on here. God bless you. But like, I can’t remain here.” And so for me, just the act of using my voice and saying, “No. No, thank you. Can’t be here.” That was freeing. Was it sad? Was it difficult? Did it kind of, you know, trigger some things, some circumstances that were difficult for me to walk through in the end? Absolutely. But I was able to walk away from that situation feeling 100% assured that I had done the right thing, and that I had spoken up for myself, that I had spoken up even in the situation for some other things that weren’t necessarily done directly toward me. 

And actually, there wasn’t really anything that was done directly toward me, it was more of witnessing somebody else being mistreated, where I just said, “No, sorry, I can’t do this. This isn’t okay. And the fact that you’re also trying to hide this and not want to talk about it or whatever. I’m also not okay with that.” And so sometimes, it’s just for you, it’s not for anybody else, but for you to say, I’ve had these experiences, and I’m just going to pick up my bag, I’m gonna pick up my purse, I’m going to whatever, and leave the situation.

Jared  

I think that’s a really important point to make on a number of levels. But one of the things I was thinking about is how often it can feel—these issues and challenges we face as a society can feel overwhelming, like what difference can I make? And so to see it as it makes a big difference, internally, for us, when we can focus on that process, not just the result. That it may not change the situation, but it would change you. Like it creates that voice by speaking up again and again. It’s like practice, it builds this voice where we feel like we matter, even if we can’t change the overall situation. And then there’s also the sense of integrity of saying, “Well, when I look back, I feel like I did what I was supposed to do in that situation,” again, regardless of whether or not it changed this macro or institutional injustice. But it seems like what changes those big things is a whole lot of individuals having a voice in those little ways.

Ally  

Exactly. I think that that’s exactly what it is, is that, you know, we have these big movements that happen. Like if we think about the racial reckoning that people call it that happened in 2020, where we sort of reached this critical mass of there had been enough police brutality, we had been in the house enough because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was sort of this perfect storm of things where a lot of people were upset all at one moment. And so that affected some change. 

Now it was like, big massive change? No, a lot of it was symbolic change, very little structural change, but change did happen. And it was just sort of this catalytic moment where it started a lot of conversations that are continuing, that persist until this day. And sometimes what it takes is one person grabbing their hat and going, and saying, “You know what? Nope, sorry, can’t deal with this, we’re not going to take this, we’re not going to tolerate this any longer.” And sometimes that can create a chain reaction. And I think that you’re exactly right, that sometimes, it’s not just everybody, all of a sudden is going to get it, all at one time, and stuff is going to change. Sometimes it just takes a bunch of people making the decision that we are not going to engage with this oppressive thing anymore and so we’re gonna get up, we’re gonna walk out of the room, we’re gonna say, “No, thank you,” then more and more people do that.

 And then even at an institutional and structural level, wherever enough people make a stink about something, and enough people are leaving an institution, and enough people are really shaking things up, people start to take notice, the powers that be start to take notice. They might not take notice whenever it’s one person, they might not take notice, you know, whenever it’s a couple of people, but there’s going to be a point when people are going to start to take notice. And I think that even to that point, that people show you who they are in that type of situation, in that type of moment. Because I think that people of conscience, people of integrity, they are going to look at—it’s not just that we upset one person—even though that should be good enough—it’s not that we just upset one person. And that one person said, “Oh, my goodness, people are being racist here, I gotta go” and they leave. 

But whenever you see the pattern, and there’s a pattern of, we aren’t able to retain Black people in this organization. Or Black women are, they’re dropping like flies, they keep, you know, they come in and they go right back out. People, institutions, organizations, individuals of integrity, will look at a situation like that and say, “Hmm, okay, you know, so we’ve had how much…” We’ll just use a church as an example. So you know, “We have Black people in our church, but like, in the last six months, we’ve not retained a single Black family, like it’s just a revolving door of Black people in our church. Maybe there’s something wrong with us.” Or, you know, “We had a group of people that, we had a group of Black leaders leave our church, and they were vocal about why they left and now more people are leaving.” An organization of integrity would say, “Hmm, we really need to examine that, we really need to look at why people are leaving, we need to listen to some of the feedback that we’re getting as people are walking out the door. Because not everybody can not certainly not all of these people are just a bunch of Bitter Bettys who are just sitting around mad because of whatever, maybe we are the problem.” 

And people who have integrity will do that. People who don’t have integrity, people who aren’t operating above board, they will look at that type of movement and they will double down on whatever it is that they’re doing. They will say, you know, like, again, using a church—not the church that I came from, but just the church in general as an example—you have a church that maybe in six months, they see massive turnover of all the Black individuals and families or whatnot in their church. And people are saying as they’re going out, “Yeah, we’re leaving, because, you know, we don’t feel welcome here. You know, we’ve experienced racism, we’ve experienced that.” Like I said, integrity would examine it. People that don’t have integrity are gonna look at that and be like, “Oh, well, you know, we’re not doing anything wrong.” And they’re gonna find fault with people who are leaving, they’re gonna say, “Well, those people, you know, they’re just not quite the caliber of people that we would want here anyway. Well, those people well they just, they’re troublemakers. They wanted to stir the pot they wanted, they were trying to make our church woke,” or whatever it is, and they’ll find fault with the people who are speaking up and the people who are leaving rather than engaging in deep introspection and self-reflection, and making change. 

And so ultimately, we as individuals may or may not have the ability to affect change on a broader, bigger institutional level. So again, you know, using a church as an example, we might not be able to sit with a pastor or an elder board or deacon board or vestry or whatever your church polity looks like. You might not be able to sit down with those people and be like, “Okay, well, these are the issues. These are the problems. Here’s why I’m leaving. Here’s why people are going.” You might not have the ability to do that. But the best amount of power that you might be able to have is to simply vote with your feet and say, “Well, I’m not going to be part of this institution anymore.” And hopefully, you doing that and you walking in your own integrity, that might be a catalyst for other people and for change. 

And like I said, you know, people of conscience are going to take seriously whenever people don’t want to be associated with them anymore and the reasons why they don’t want to be associated have to do with ways that the person is doing harm or the institution or whatever is doing harm to others.

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Jared  

Before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you a question that I wrestle with off and on and for me, it’s a question of wisdom. I haven’t found the silver bullet here. But how have you learned to stay—and I want to be clear about the language I use here—to stay compassionate and kind? And I want to maybe distinguish that from being nice. How have you learned to stay compassionate and kind while also making sure that you’re standing up for yourself and others, making sure that your voice is heard? Because sometimes that’s a pretty…It goes with what we’ve said before, that the standard is subjective. So you’re standing up for yourself and others and having a voice can often be seen as unkind and not compassionate just by the fact that you’re doing it because it, you know, hurt someone’s feelings or something—and that’s not really your responsibility—and yet, there does seem to be a need to, for ourselves, have a standard, where we don’t devolve into dehumanizing or being unkind or not compassionate of where people are coming from, in these situations—how have you learned to navigate that space?

Ally  

Well, I think that for me, it’s about being kind to who? Being compassionate toward whom? I’m not saying that, well, because this person is doing something oppressive I don’t have to be kind or compassionate toward them. That’s not necessarily what I’m saying. But what I’m saying is I am prioritizing being kind and compassionate toward people who don’t have a voice, or whose voices are being silenced, being marginalized. Or the people who have always been pushed out, they’ve always been pushed to the margins of society, of organizations, of institutions, of social relationships, whatever it is. And for me, that is where the bulk of my kindness and my compassion goes. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t practice care and kindness and compassion toward people who maybe you know, have more privilege or whose voices are centered the most, because I think Jesus said a little something about that. It’s easy to love your friends, right? It’s easy to love the people who agree with you. It’s harder to love people that you disagree with, or it’s harder to love your enemies. But as far as my compassion and kindness and the energy that I put toward that, I reserve that more for the people who are being harmed by society. 

Now, you know, my unconditional love for people where I try to walk in that sense of like agape love, that sort of unconditional, unfailing love of God toward people even that I would look at as this person has harmed me, this person has harmed people that I care about, this person holds views that are harmful toward the populations that I try to care for. Yes, I have that love for you, as in I love you as an image bearer and I want to see you thrive and do better than what you’re doing. But I wrestle with, I don’t necessarily know if those people are worth the energy of like, I’m going to go out of my way to show you that I am being kind to you. 

Jared  

Ally  

I think that maybe an even better way to say this is that I perceive them as humans that are worthy of dignity and love or whatever. But to me, you know, kindness and compassion, those are acts. Those are postures and mindset. And I would much rather place my energy toward people who need it. And so I say that, but you might also I also think about, like, if it came down to, oh, I’ve got to, like, you know, show the love of God to someone. 

Like, I’m giving you like the million dollar answer to this question. I think of like, my priest, I’m an Episcopalian. So I have a priest. My priest is bi-vocational, and he’s a doctor. And my priest is a Black man. And he talked about how I think it was during his residency, he had to care for a man who was very, very ill who was covered in white supremacist tattoos. And so for him, it was like, oh, my goodness, like, this is awful, this person doesn’t want me to exist, essentially. But like, my duty as a doctor is to take care of this person. And so my priest tells a story about how he cared for that man knowing what this dude stood for. And that actually, you know, in a way, I think, kind of put that man to shame in a way. That, you know, he was receiving care and was receiving, like, you know, the best care from somebody that he hated. And I don’t know if the end of the story really was that this man was changed, changed. But once he was feeling better, and in a position to be able to talk, he was kind to my priest. 

And so that’s a story that I carry with me. And in thinking about this whole compassion thing again, like, I’m thankfully not a doctor and have to be in the position to have to care for somebody in that sort of way. I’m not gonna go out of my way to show care and kindness and compassion to somebody who doesn’t want me to exist or who doesn’t want people that I care about to exist. But also, whenever it comes down to it, and it comes down to showing the love of Christ to somebody, that they are in need, then yes, absolutely, I would do that. But I think that my kindness and compassion in the world is better directed toward people who need that compassion.

Jared  

Well, as we wrap up, I did want to come full circle, because I keep having this phrase, in my head, I’ve heard it so much about—and of course, almost exclusively lobbed at women—of being “too much,” of “taking up too much space.” And so as we wrap up, just getting really practical, what are ways that you’ve worked through—because again, for I would assume for you, with a lot of women, I know that’s not just an external message, but that external message becomes internalized, it becomes the voice in their heads around how they’re supposed to show up and there are feelings of guilt or shame, or they’re sort of internally motivated now to stay small, because that becomes the voice of conscience. So how have you wrestled through that? Are there, do you have practical advice or practical ways that you help to fight those demons and come out with being able to have a voice? And to have that “Holy Hell No,” in your life?

Ally  

Yeah. So you know, I think that the world often gives us these messages that we need to make ourselves smaller, that we need to not take up as much space, that we need to sort of somehow kind of like, moderate and adjust ourselves. And I think that you’re right, that those things can become internalized, and it can really shape, you know, how we look at the world. It can really shape how we interact with the world. 

Some of the practical things that I think are important for people in finding their voice, in being able to sort of stand up against some of those forces, is to really take stock of yourself and recognize what is happening. So many times, you know, people find themselves sort of in like, it’s like almost muscle memory, where you’re just sort of used to “Oh, I’m just not going to talk as much or I’m just going to wait or I just got to kind of let the other person talk” or, “Oh, I’m going to put out an idea and I just know that whenever I put out the idea that 15 minutes later somebody else is going to come with the very same idea that I gave, and they’re going to present it like it was a brand new idea. And so I just have to live with that.” 

And a lot of us learn to accept oppression, we learn to accept those types of things as normative. And so I think that it’s important that we actually examine our lives and look at the ways in which we are essentially just saying, like, you know, it’s okay that I’m being harmed. In what ways do we assent—not consent, we’re not saying, oh, yeah, hey, come be harmful toward me—but we’re sort of assenting, we’re sort of saying, oh, this is happening, okay, it’s happening. And we sort of just kind of go along with it to get along.

So whenever people interrupt you, whenever people tell you that your opinion doesn’t really matter, that your thoughts don’t really matter. What are some of those muscle memory things that you’re doing that you’re like, “wait, other people don’t do this,” particularly for women, you know, hold on, like, men aren’t timing themselves in meetings and making sure that they’re not speaking too much. But I’m like, you know, trying to ration my participation. Like, I think that we have to look and see, like, what are those things that we see other people doing, and they’re completely free to do that we feel like, “oh, my gosh, I would be so ashamed if I did that, I would be so embarrassed.”

And I think that often where we find those things, that’s an area where we are being locked up. Where we’re not as free as we could be. And so once you identify that area where you’re not as free as you could be changing your mindset, changing your attitude. You know, I think that that’s even where our relationship with God comes in. That’s where we look at how our relationship with Christ, where he gives us that ability to discern what the heck is going on in our world, being able to recognize, “I’m not operating in the full measure of freedom that I could be operating here,” and really sort of allowing your mind to be renewed and to be transformed. And to see, you know, hey, I don’t have to be so wrapped up in the way that I’ve always been taught that I should move through the world, or the way that I’ve learned I should move through the world. And so taking those steps to really notice and acknowledge, and then to change how you’re interacting with the world.

Jared  

Well, thank you so much, Ally, for sharing so much of your story, and so much of the lessons that you’ve learned in this process. It was great to have you on. Thank you again!

Ally  

Thank you.

Jared  

And now for Quiet Time. 

Pete  

With Pete and Jared.

Pete  

Alright, so Jared, with your wonderful discussion with Ally, something came to mind here just thinking about maybe your own experience growing up, and I can think about my own as well—but did your church or your family reinforce the idea that women talk too much?

Jared  

No.

Pete  

No?

Jared  

Yes and no.

Pete  

Okay.

Jared  

And this has been an interesting—

Pete  

Yes and no.

Jared  

—reflection on how I grew up, in that I often joke with my mom that she was not a great evangelical. And I appreciate that. So, on the one hand, absolutely. The churches we went to would have said that, but I was inoculated from that. Like, I had a vaccine against that. Because I grew up in a family of very strong women. Most of my influence was my mom, my aunt and my sister, all who—my sister was five years older than me, my aunts were very strong willed. So it was not at all practiced in my family system. 

Pete  

Yeah. 

Jared  

So…

Pete  

So it was a conservative Christian thing, however…[Chuckles]

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

That one part, like it just, they didn’t get that memo.

Jared  

Exactly, they would say it. I mean, it was said, like, “We agree with this theology.”

Pete  

Oh, okay, right.

Jared  

It’s all that was taught and…But it was not practiced. So no, I didn’t, in my family, I don’t remember ever hearing that women talk too much.

Pete  

So you didn’t have that sexist, you didn’t grow up with that.

Jared  

No. Not in the family system I grew up in. Of course, culturally and in the church…

Pete  

That’s what I mean. And just to reiterate, you grew up in Texas.

Jared  

I did grow up in Texas. Yes. So culturally—What about you though?

Pete  

Um, you know, my parents were immigrants. And I definitely did not grow up in a household where, like, my mom had to keep quiet. But I guess it never came up. Like culturally for me, I never really thought that women talked too much. You know, I just, it just never happened and…But you know, I’ve had to grow myself in really thinking in a truly egalitarian way. And I wonder why, you know, it’s probably cultural stuff like you as well, but I wasn’t raised to, you know, find a woman who’s just going to shut up and marry her. Right. I just, that was not any part of my vocab. And I’m grateful for that. It’s one less major hurdle in my life to get over. [Laughing]

Jared  

Right. But I do think—and you can kind of hear it in the episode—for me, I’m very passionate about this, because I think as I’ve gotten older, I realized, like, a lot of women had experiences in the fundamentalist evangelical church, that I think in my 20s I started to wake up to the fact that a lot of women had a very different experience than the family system I grew up in.

Pete  

Jared  

If anything I was intimidated by the women in my life, because they were so strong willed and—not in a bad way, like I respected the hell out of them—So I think I’m passionate about it, because I see the damage that it’s done. And sometimes I’m still, it takes me by surprise, when people tell me their experience. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, like, I didn’t have that experience. That’s horrible.”

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

Like, that’s not okay at all. So I think it is important because, you know, it may not sound like it, given what we’re seeing right now, but it is rampant in the fundamentalist evangelical church. And I think one of the things that makes it so sinister, is it’s actually what you said is like, it’s not explicit. It’s not there- There aren’t a lot of systems in churches that are saying, women need to be quiet, it’s more sinister, because it’s more implied. It’s in the structure of things.

Pete  

Yes, it’s baked in, or-

Jared  

Yeah, it’s in the subtleties of a meeting, when you just get the sense or when men just talk over you because you feel like maybe you’ve taken up too much space, or they feel like you’ve taken up too much space. Your time is done and so now I’m going to just talk over. So.

An important other layer to this is the fact that, you know, Ally’s not just a woman, but a Black woman. So this intersectionality of injustice–And she mentioned the racial reckoning of 2020 and people using their voices to say enough is enough with things like, you know, police brutality. So one of the questions that comes up often is, are we on an equal playing field? Is it we just want to blindly bless everybody to have their voice? Even if it’s a voice of when people are perpetuating injustices? How do we advocate for people to have a voice when sometimes the louder voice are the voices of injustice?

Pete  

It’s sort of like, I mean, the classic should the KKK have a voice? 

Jared  

Yeah, exactly. 

Pete  

And my answer is no. Good luck enforcing it. But yeah, I feel the same way. Like, does everyone have the right to speak at every time, at every moment? Maybe not. But I would like to see wisdom dictate people’s actions, like, “Maybe this isn’t the time to say this, I might think about—” Read the room kind of thing, right?

Jared  

I do think about how we might—and by we, I mean, you know, mostly white men—use our privilege in these spaces to create more space for people of color—and hopefully, we do that some here on the podcast but even in political environments, too. You know, I’ve just seen more and more examples of this in a way that I didn’t fully understand it maybe in 2016-2020. But I’ve seen it more of how more privileged people can use that privilege to create a space and then step back and give a platform for others. 

Pete  

Yeah, see that’s the important part, because I always get really uneasy about “We will now save you.”

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

Right? Here’s— “We are creating space for you.” You don’t need us to create space for you, but maybe to support in some way—

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

—by just affirming, and nobody needs to be defended here. I just, it’s hard for me sometimes to know exactly how to handle that because it can sound like the knight in shining armor coming in and setting everything up straight. 

Jared  

Right, yeah, we don’t want a white savior complex. 

Pete  

But with that, yeah, we don’t want that. Yeah, but so how do we do that? I mean, that’s, I think, maybe things like these conversations and supporting and pointing out the voices that people might be familiar with, and saying, learn from them. Right, there’s wisdom in what they’re saying, learn from them. And sometimes it takes people that look like us to say that that might alert people.

Jared  

And sometimes it has to cost us something. So I think of the idea, for instance, of you know, I work a lot in these boards of directors of organizations and nonprofits and for-profits. And if you’re, as a white man, asked to be on a board, maybe you say, “Let me see the diversity of the board. And yep, I’m happy to serve on the board if you bring along a person of color, or a woman of color with me.”

Pete  

Right, which is using the privilege without making it all about you.

Jared  

Well, and it maybe costs you something because you may have to say no if they’re unwilling to do that.

Pete  

Right, right.

Jared  

And I think that’s an important part as well.

Pete  

Yeah. Certainly. Yeah. 

Jared  

Alright. Well, I’m sure we haven’t had the end of conversations around racial injustice and having a voice.

Pete  

Just touched the surface with this one.

Outro  

Jared  

Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show! If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to www.TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.   

Pete  

And if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to www.TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join.   

Jared  

And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@thebiblefornormalpeople.com.

Outro  

Thanks for listening to Faith for Normal People! Don’t forget, you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, The Bible for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team: Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Natalie Weyand, Steven Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.