(RNS) — When Tia Levings married at 19 years old, she achieved what her Baptist church had endorsed as her life’s highest calling: becoming a Christian wife.
But as her husband embraced the teachings of the Christian patriarchy movement, she became governed by a list of rules she hadn’t bargained for. Her husband controlled her clothing, censored her reading list, demanded to be called “my lord” and subjected her to “physical discipline” — all in the name of Christ.
Levings insists the Christian teachings that enabled this abuse weren’t fringe. Rather, she writes in her forthcoming memoir, these beliefs have been normalized in a host of evangelical circles — and now, more pressingly, they are infecting the nation’s political landscape.
“You can just look at the family model and what those rules and regulations are, and then apply them to the wider scale, because that is exactly what they’re doing,” Levings told Religion News Service. “They use that same model in their churches, they use them in their small governments, and they’ll use them in the national government.”
RNS spoke to Levings about the story behind “A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape From Christian Patriarchy,” out from St. Martin’s Press on Aug. 6. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did the lessons from your Southern Baptist church set you up for life in Christian patriarchy?
I think the overarching theme is that all power and authority comes through men. There was a deadening of our own instinct and intuition, teachings about dying to yourself, the idea that we sought purity in our ideology and lifestyle. The lack of permission to access outside resources, and have civic involvement, really isolated me and taught me to mistrust the resources there for my protection. I was not brought up as a person capable of knowing my own mind and my own beliefs.
Can you talk about your dating and engagement experience, and how much agency you had in the decision to marry?
In the church I grew up in, both our pastors had had two-week engagements, and preached that a short engagement would protect your virginity. Differences could be worked out later, as long as you had your families’ blessing and were in God’s will. My dating and engagement were more like a job audition. I wanted to prove I could be a good wife and mother, and I was looking for somebody who could be a good husband and father. There wasn’t a lot of romance or “get to know you” involved. In my case, there was also violence and control emerging. But I didn’t have any vocabulary for that, and I assumed it was my fault.
What is Christian patriarchy?
It’s a Protestant movement that is puritanical in nature, and very complementarian, with a very rigid family model formed to achieve dominion. And dominionism is the belief that Christians have a mandate from God to take over the country, but really the globe, for Christ, in order to trigger the second coming of Christ. It takes the verses in Genesis where man has dominion over creation, and the Great Commission, which is about spreading the gospel throughout the world, and combines them for political gain and power.
Your family attended a variety of churches. Were some Christian frameworks better or worse than others, in terms of your safety and empowerment?
In general, visibility is safety. So as we got into denominations that increased isolation, and adopted the “family church movement,” where we were home alone all the time, there was less visibility, which resulted in less safety.
What happened when your family found Eastern Orthodox Christianity?
I found Orthodoxy through a book called “At the Corner of East and Now” by Frederica Mathewes-Green after a desperate visit to the library to find some way to God that involves female visibility. I knew I needed a radical change in my life, but I needed it to be within a familiar framework. Frederica’s book answered my prayer. You can have female saints, and they venerate the mother of God. We attended a church with St. Anne as the patron saint, and it quickly showed me that men who respect other women for their faith are different kinds of men. They weren’t threatened by equality. They had a harder line against abuse. I had a priest tell me, “Your Christian walk is loving God and loving people. And it will not get harder or easier than that. Everything else is extra.” That was a balm coming from rigid catechisms.
Can you talk about the moment you decided to leave Christian patriarchy?
I stayed too long. And the impetus was truly, it was a life-or-death situation. I was realizing that, best case scenario, if we survive this situation, I’m raising the next generation of abusive patriarchs and the women who will stay in it, because I’ve taught them that this is acceptable. Worst case scenario was we were about to die. And I wasn’t willing to accept either option.
What led you to create social media content about Christian patriarchy years later?
The Duggar trial was in the news, and the Duggars are interwoven into my story because they’re the public face of what I endured privately. There was abuse and neglect in their home as well. It’s just the TV cameras didn’t catch it until Josh was busted. When he went on trial, and the parallels were happening in our government, I knew I had a perspective that very few people have, coupled with the ability to tell it without retraumatizing myself, because I had been doing therapy for 10 years. That was in 2021. And it became an energetic force that is greater than I am. The survivor community from high control religion is much bigger than anybody understood.
If you’re open to sharing, where do you encounter God or the divine these days?
I’m spiritually private, because I wasn’t granted autonomy as a young child and allowed to determine for myself what my spirituality should be. So I put boundaries around my personal experience, because faith is fluid. But a very big part of my spiritual practice is having space and time to hear myself think, to get in touch with nature, to ground every day. And I find that connection with creation encourages my belief in a creator.
What lessons might your story have for readers in this political moment?
Patriarchy cannot continue without the support of women. We have much more power than we realize. It’s important to notice that the conversations we’re having around candidate Vice President Kamala Harris involve her fertility, her motherhood, her childbearing. They’re also attacking the sound of her laugh, which relates to the “fundy-baby voice” and vocal modulation in fundamentalism. They are attacking her race and her career. These elements point to patriarchy. I think in Republican politics, it’s important to remember that the depth of the strategy is 50 years long. The organizations behind Project 2025 have a strategy they have been building in evangelical patriarchy for generations. So it’s not just about former President Donald Trump.
Who did you write this for, and what do you hope readers take away with them?
I wrote this for the woman who has to sneak my book into her cart at Target, because she doesn’t get to go to a bookstore, and she is looking for an example of what it’s like to get out. And I wrote it for the person who is touched by high control religion, and doesn’t understand why they’ve lost their family member or why this evangelical influence seems to be so prevalent. I want people to make more informed voting decisions and interactions with their family members and communities.
Lastly, I want people to avoid the belief that change is all or nothing. You don’t have to throw away the parts of your faith that are precious to you. It is perfectly fine to retain the parts that are life-giving, and get rid of the abuse. You don’t want to be as extreme in recovery as you were in high control religion.
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