Faith and Feminism

Hosted by Meghan Tschanz, “Faith and Feminism” begins from a conflict many listeners have been told cannot be resolved: commitment to Christian faith and commitment to gender justice. Through interviews with writers, scholars, advocates, survivors, and friends, the show examines how churches form ideas about authority, marriage, sexuality, leadership, mission, and women’s spiritual worth. Tschanz’s own movement from missionary culture toward feminist critique gives the conversations a perspective shaped by both attachment and disillusionment.

The podcast is especially valuable when it treats theology as a lived institution rather than a set of abstract beliefs. Purity culture, spiritual abuse, complementarian gender roles, racism, colonial mission practices, and the silencing of survivors affect bodies, relationships, livelihoods, and the ability to trust one’s own judgment. At its best, the show does more than ask whether women may enter existing positions of power; it asks how interpretations of scripture and habits of pastoral authority can make domination appear sacred. Healing therefore involves community accountability and new forms of spiritual imagination, not simply individual confidence.

Its framework remains recognizably Christian and will not represent every feminist, queer, post-religious, or non-Christian account of liberation. Guest interviews also vary in depth, and personal reconstruction cannot substitute for institutional reform. Those boundaries are part of what makes the archive useful: it documents feminism working inside a tradition rather than speaking from nowhere. For readers studying religious patriarchy, the podcast offers language for distinguishing faith from coercive authority and for understanding why leaving, staying, doubting, and rebuilding can all be politically meaningful responses.