Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Stephanie 0:00
One of the things I always have say up front is a lot of people don't realize that churches are exempt from the ADA. Yeah, churches and Christian Schools lobbied really aggressively when the ADA was going through the process to become a law to be exempted from it. And the basic argument was that it was such a cost burden that essentially it was going to shut down freedom of religion, if you will, it was sort of a their first amendment rights against, you know, my right to exist in public spaces. And so they successfully got an exemption that basically says, you can't file an ADA complaint against a church or Christian Schools that operate on church campuses.
Seth Price 0:55
Hello there everyone how are you? Welcome back to the show, March coming to a close, I'm on spring break with my family, which was cancelled due to COVID-19. And I really hope that each and every single one of you are staying safe doing what you need to do. Just a quick reminder before we get into this. So this show is 197,000,000% supported by the patrons of the show. I absolutely love that. I've been approached a few times to do advertisements on the show. And I always get to say “no”, because to be honest, this is not a money earning venture, nor do I really want to turn it into one. But the show continues to support itself. I actually had to up the hosting charges…I guess that's what you call it…hosting charges to be able to actually post this episode. I don't know why, but the episode bandwidth was eaten up this month, somehow or another I probably did it wrong; I don't know. To the 54-57, the number changes every other day or so (patrons) I really I'm so thankful that you support the show and I would encourage a few more of you. Consider supporting the show, you all make this thing happen. And I am aware how valuable your time and your money is. And thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting this show.
So today I chatted with Stephanie Tait. So I read Stephanie's book, The View from Rock Bottom, quite a bit of time ago. And actually, I didn't really think about reaching out to her just because I didn't know how to do it. Didn't know what to say. And eventually though, I overcame that and reached out to her and I really loved the conversation we had, I laughed a lot, and those are my favorite. So in this we cover ableism we cover the Americans with Disability Act, we cover the prosperity gospel, I mean, we cover a lot, and I was really challenged by it, and her book as well.
So I really hope that you enjoy this conversation that I had with Stephanie. Let's get it rocking and rolling.
Seth Price 3:05
Stephanie Tate, welcome to the Can I Say This At Church podcast? See, we turned it on it's like a different tone altogether (radio voice)
Stephanie 3:12
We all do it. We have a speaker voice. As soon as we start, we get very professional.
Seth Price 3:17
Although I have friends that tell me I'm a monotone voice for the most part and I lack inflection and they say it's either calming or very off putting. I don't know which it is.
Stephanie 3:26
I'm the opposite. I'm like, a very over the top rambler. And then I brought a friend to the last speaking engagement that I did, who had never heard me speak live. And she was like, it was bizarre. You started talking and I was like, who's the crap is that? What is coming out of your mouth right now You sound so like, compose. I didn't know if that was a compliment or not.
Seth Price 3:50
Well, I guess they're used to maybe being allowed to interrupt you and in that place, they weren't allowed to or they couldn't because you had the microphone. I suppose. So, who knows?
I'm going to ask you a different question. Because to be fair, I usually do ask the question that you don't want me to ask you. But I slightly do it differently, which causes people to have to pause, but I'm not gonna ask you that question at all. So I'm just gonna ask you the same question. I asked everybody last week, because why not? I talked about interviewing eight 8000 people for a job, actually multiple jobs at my bank, and you liked the question. And so I'll ask you (laughter from both). So when people sit down to the desk across to me the first Well, the first thing I say is, here's what I am. Here's what I do. I do this differently. Here's this HR manual that we have to talk about, and I'll tick those boxes so we don't get sued. However, because this is a multimillion dollar company I need to hire adults. And so when I say, Stephanie, when I say the word adult what does that mean to you? What does that mean to you?
Stephanie 4:54
Who that's a loaded question.
I have a hard time answering this, I think because I live in the world, in a disabled body. I think a lot of people. You know, when we introduce ourselves to new people, the most common question you get first, right is what do you do? Yeah, everybody wants to talk about what they do and what they're responsible for. And #adulting looks very different for me as a disabled person, right? Like my husband does a majority of the dishes, and the laundry, and the keeping up around this house. And so it's really hard to answer that question because sometimes for me, “adulting” doesn't even involve getting out of bed at all that day. So I'm trying to figure out what that means. I think in the context of living as a disabled person now, because I can't always define it off what I do ability wise, I am responsible for two tiny humans. I'm pretty sure that puts me in adult status, because neither of them are dead yet. So that's good.
Seth Price 5:58
You did it, success! One in the win column!
Stephanie 6:00
One in the win column for me, um, I don't know, I think a lot of it for me has just been learning to take responsibility for myself and my choices and my actions. Yes. But I think United States just has a lot less to do with, can you, you know, take out the trash and pay your bills and dress yourself every day because some days the answer for me is no, I can't do those things. And yet, I'm still an adult. I know it's a complicated question. But I guess yeah, it's just personal responsibility at this point.
Seth Price 6:27
To be fair, that is the correct answer. Because when I say I need to hire…so it's um, now you might want it although I don't know that I'm fun or not fun to work for my people seem to enjoy me because I sing a lot at the bank when I'm in a good mood. And then when I'm not singing people are like, Oh, crap!
Stephanie 6:52
Get out of the way, run..
Seth Price 6:54
Yeah, but I don't hold grudges or get angry all that all that often. But usually, that's what I mean is I'm not going to track you down and ask you to do a job. Just do the dang job. That would be great. And don't make me ask you again because you're gonna know I pay you to be here. Well, I pay you. The company pays you. Yeah, nothing bothers me more when people like oh, that's not my job. Like, stop it. It is definitely your job because it needs to be you just finished the Evolving Faith conference. Correct?
Stephanie 7:26
I wasn't speaking or anything just attending.
Seth Price 7:30
What is that? Because that's in Denver right now?
Stephanie 7:35
Well it was last year (but) it moves around. So this year it's going to be in Houston.
Seth Price 7:41
So what is it?
Stephanie 7:43
So Evolving Faith is probably the biggest most well known Christian conference for progressive Christians. So it was started originally by Rachel Held Evans no Sarah Bessie, together. And then they brought in Jeff Chu, who's been an amazing companion on that. And then unfortunately, Rachel passed away last year. So now Sarah and Jeff are sort of shepherding this whole community that's built up around Evolving Faith. And so in some ways, it looks a lot like other conferences, you know, there are speakers that have keynotes and there are breakout sessions and in other ways, it looks like absolutely no other conference I've ever been to.
Actually, they brought me on this year as a disability consultant. So what that means is last year, the heart and the intent was in all the right places, but the execution didn't always match that in terms of accessibility for disabled attendees. And so recognizing that gap instead of trying to figure out a fix that themselves and assuming that they is abled, people could just sort of Go, oh, well, we'll know what you need. And we'll fix it. And we'll plan for it. They hired me, because this is one of the things I do to be a disability consultant. So I come in and from day one, and they're planning, they said before we figure out anything like, give us your input, what worked last year, what didn't? What would you do differently?
And then as they plan different things, I consult with them on how to make sure that there aren't any accessibility barriers, but also how to make sure that they're overtly and intentionally welcoming of disabled attendees from the get go right from day one of advertising. They want to make it clear, we want you here, you're a valued part of the body. Please come and we're going to make sure that this is a positive experience for you where you're not excluded in any way.
Seth Price 9:48
Well, I'm going to come back to that. So I'll be real honest with you for a minute. So I've read what you write for many, many, many months. I don't know if it's been yours or not, doesn't matter. Like many people, some of the best people that I know people that I've met on the internet, and actually some of my best friends, quote unquote “friends” or have been people that I've met, like, develop massive relationships with that I speak to as often as I do my family from healthier places on the internet. Which will not be tonight, because I think I read there's a Democratic primary debate and so tonight's not a good night to be on the internet. So I'm glad that I'm doing this instead. I'll watch the highlights tomorrow.
But you had said something well, something that you wrote months ago, reminded me of something that Richard Beck. I don't know if you're familiar with Richard Beck or not he's a professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University. He's one of the first people that I talked to…yeah, I actually think I was talking to him while I was putting together a Christmas present for my kids like back in 2017, or something like that. But he said something to the effect of disgust and contempt and how churches and humans just are really put off by disgust and contempt and what we find is that we draw these barriers and boundaries and circles around it. And so he was talking about it in church. And the fact that on the stage, we don't allow, usually the elderly, because it reminds us like, we just don't want that. And as well as disabled, and so he has larger ministries to that. And so you wrote something to the effect of and I am not going to look on Facebook and try to find it, but you said something to the effect of…I'm going to say it wrong, you probably can remember it. You know, if you're if you say you value our voice, but you don't give us a way on the stage. You don't actually value it…I'm saying it wrong.
Stephanie 11:32
Essentially your church is not accessible unless the pulpit is accessible. Like it's not enough to have a wheelchair ramp where I can get in the door. I'm not personally a wheelchair user. But that was sort of the point right…it's not enough to make sure I can get in as an attendee, if you've made it really clear that there's no way to get up on the stage.
Seth Price 11:50
Yes. So what would that look like because churches don't do that? Ever since reading that I've been in probably 20 different churches. One of my favorite things to do not at my current bank, but at my past when I was in a historic downtown part of Central Virginia, and so I could walk to like 100 year old Episcopalian church, I could walk to a massive Catholics, I could walk to all these beautiful churches. And everywhere I go, now I look and I'm like, yeah, that wouldn't work. That wouldn't work. He has a cane that's not going to work. They have whatever I'm going to work like, you'll you'll even watch like the youth come up after they get hurt. Because they're going to talk about the mission trip they did, and they can't get up there either. And those are just crutches; temporary. So what would that look like besides just installing a ramp to the pulpit or maybe just bringing the pulpit down to the ground level? What would that actually look like for a church to enable voices from the disabled? Like, what would that actually look like?
Stephanie 12:44
So one of the things that was upset front is a lot of people don't realize that churches are exempt from the ADA.
Seth Price 12:51
Really?
Stephanie 12:52
Yeah. Churches and Christian Schools lobbied really aggressively when the ad when the ADA was going through the process to become a law firm. To be exempted from it, and they the basic argument was that it was such a cost burden that essentially it was going to shut down freedom of religion, if you will, it was sort of a, their first amendment rights against, you know, my right to exist in public spaces. And so they successfully got an exemption that basically says, You can't file an ad a complaint against a church or Christian Schools that operate on church campuses. Now, sometimes local building codes will have certain requirements about you know, you need a handicap accessible stall, in the bathroom or that sort of thing. Um, but those vary wildly, and enforcement works differently there.
Right, like once you've passed inspection for your construction of your new church that’s it like you're done, right? Like you could, you could basically take the accessible stall and you could use it for storage, which I've actually seen doesn't have all kinds of stuff. And there's no one to stop you. The ADA has teeth, right? Like, it's theoretically an enforcement method. It's not great. It's not like a phone number that you can call. But there's a way to enforce it. So churches and Christian Schools are exempt from that. And so unfortunately, churches tend to be some of the least accessible places for people with disabilities because they don't have to be and what you described, right? Like there's sort of this reverence and attachment to old churches that have these sort of sacred architecture, if you will, and the feel and the look of that, but the reality is, the more traditional the architecture, the more likely it is that it's just horrifically inaccessible. Yeah. And so that's a constant struggle. I think if churches would even just start like, I'd love to give you a vision of like, fully inclusive, wholly welcoming spaces. But it's hard to do when some of them, you just can't even literally get in the front door. Like they're not even doing the bare minimum yet. If I could see more churches, hiring disability consultants to come in and say, Hey, here's some barriers that you probably don't even recognize you have. Can you address them?
And for the record, like, it's important that that's paid labor, right? Like you don't just tap your local disabled parishioner and expect them to come in and do that labor for free. Like, Hey, tell us a whole list of what we can. That's no, like, that's not their job. Yeah, there are people you can pay to do that. I think that would be a great start, right? But more than that, I also just think accessibility, like physically is is important. But what we see on the platform, and who we hear quoted in sermons, right, and who we hear taught in our Bible study and in our book groups and in our data speaks volumes to me as a disabled person too.
If you never, ever choose a book written by a disabled author, or teach a sermon where you have quotes from a disabled theologian or invite a disabled person to come guest preach, no amount of making sure that I can get in the front door to the pew is going to be quiet enough, right? It's gonna be very clear that you can come and be ministered to, you can receive our love and our charity and our teaching. You're just not seen as someone who has anything to contribute.
Seth Price 16:35
I did not know that about the adea is that only? You might not know is that only Christian churches or does that also account for Jewish mosques, Buddhist temples I don't even know what are called…
Stephanie 16:47
I believe it applies to houses of worship across the board, but I'm not 100% Sure. It was specifically Christian. It was the it was the head of the Association of Christian Schools that did Like the majority of the lobbying to say, this is putting undue burden on us, and we need to be exempted from this.
And I will just say like, if you go read some of what they actually said, It's gross. There was there was a lot of really nasty homophobic and ablest stuff all tied in that like they kept saying, Well, you can't do that. Because what if people start saying that alcoholism is a disability, or being gay as a disability or any of these things that we don't agree with? Because back then, you know, there were people that considered like being trans, for example, a disability, right? That it is a psychological affliction, they would have called it back then. And so the Association of Christian Schools guy basically said, Hey, if you make all these rules that say that we can't discriminate against people with disabilities, what if you know that makes us have to hire drug addicts and trans people and all these, you know, people that we don't agree with that is violating our freedom of religion to say, you know, we want to be able to discriminate as much as we want against people we think are sinful.
And the law basically didn't want to have to get embroiled in the possible controversy of them fighting that all the way up to the Supreme Court. So they said, okay, and they wrote in an exemption.
Seth Price 18:24
That is insane and even just the way you….we would like to discriminate against these people. If you would allow us to do that and keep our nonprofit status. That would be great.
Stephanie 18:33
That’s essentially the history right? Like all of it boils down to for me, churches fought for the legal right, to discriminate against people like me. Whatever the reasoning, whatever the logic, whatever the First Amendment argument, bottom line for most disabled people is Churches fought, like actively fought and put lobbying and money into the right to discriminate against disabled people. That’s gross. Like, wow, that's a fantastic witness right there. Wow, that's definitely what Jesus would do. (sarcasm)
Seth Price 19:09
No, no, I've read the Gospels. I've got a couple copies here. I don't. I hear the sarcasm, but but also No. But also very much no. What is ableism? So that is a word that honestly, I hadn't heard until I read, read, whatever, until I saw you begin to speak about it so much. And I picked up a copy of your book. So what is for those listening because I'm sure I'm not in the minority there. What is ableism?
Stephanie 19:40
So ableism is essentially any kind of discrimination, whether it's active or more unconscious bias against people with disabilities against disabled bodies. So that can come in the form of accessibility barriers that people refuse to address. And that can also just come In pervasive attitudes about disabled bodies and disabled people, so it's really just any kind of discrimination; and again, intent doesn't matter here. It's impact entirely against disabled people and disabled bodies.
Seth Price 20:17
Okay. Can I so…I like to talk about religion and theology is are you good if we pivot to that?
Stephanie 20:25
Yep.
Seth Price 20:27
Perfect. So, what is I always like to ask kind of a bit of what is the difference between your faith now, I have no idea how old you are. Although Facebook told me you had a birthday last week and I don't tell people happy birthday on Facebook because it's not genuine. But since I can see you-happy belated birthday. I hope it was great, but I don't actually know how old you turn.
Stephanie 20:45
I turned 35.
Seth Price 20:46
That's a great age. I can remember 35.
Stephanie 20:48
I think I'm an actual adult now. Like this is feels like official adult age. (laughter)
Seth Price 20:52
So getting back to that first question and then I'll ask you my question. So my wife and I recently so when we got married a while back her bedroom suite from her like seventh grade like yeah, you're in middle school. Let's get you a real a real dresser and a real mirror that came with the marriage because I shopped it like below if there's whatever's below Goodwill, there was a place in Lynchburg called the DAV, which is actually for dislike, like a place that raised money for disabled veterans. But people would offload the stuff that goodwill wouldn't accept to there. And then I would go buy it and refinish it and do whatever.
So that stuff was apparently not cutting the snuff. So we brought her stuff over from when she was in seventh grade, and we like just in December, finally upgraded to a bigger mattress, a new mattress, that didn't hurt our backs. And then you know, we've been in our careers for 15 years now. Let's actually get a bedroom suite that's ours. And when it got there, like I really feel like an adult now, like, we bought two houses. We have three human beings that we support. We’ve bought multiple cars, we sold one of the other houses, and she told me she's like and now you You feel like an adult because we bought this bedroom suite. But I don't know. I think it was like a holdover of something that wasn't ours. I don't know something about it made me feel like an adult. But um, what…I don't even know why I brought that up, what is some of the differences between the faith that you grew up in, and the faith that you call “faith” now?
Stephanie 22:22
Hmmm, It looks like there's different there's, there's so many things there. I grew up in a wing of the Baptist Church. Everybody talks about the Southern Baptist Church. I did not grow up Southern Baptist. I grew up in what was called the CBA. The Conservative Baptist Association, we split off from the FBI the SBC because they were not conservative enough for us. Yeah. When you hear about people like boycotting Disney, and you know, Harry Potter was absolutely no go because it was totally gonna convert your kids to witchcraft and Satanism like that kind of stuff. It was a very conservative way to grow up? I do not relate with that tradition anymore. And to be in that tradition and do well, you need to be Republican. First of all, like 110%. That's not optional
Seth Price 23:12
Jesus was republican as well.
Stephanie 23:15
Of course! And to be totally honest, you pretty much need to be white. And you definitely need to be able bodied and without mental illnesses. I think one of the things I heard most in a church in my church growing up was the idea of, we don't air our dirty laundry in public, right, like we testimonies are all past tense stories, like far enough past tense that it's, you know, “oh, yeah, back in the day. I used to be a drug addict, but Jesus”, so now it's all okay.
We never really heard about what people are going through present tense, unless it was in the context of like gossiping about them. bless her heart spray for so and so because here's what I heard. And it was very magical. imaged based, you know, you needed to look like a person to face. And I think the bottom line that we were taught, especially as kids and going into like high school age was this idea of sort of black and white certainty. Like you. There's, there's right and wrong. And apps, believing in absolute truths meant you needed to believe that the truth we taught you was absolutely true. And so if you question anything that we taught you, well, now you're just a moral relativist. And you don't believe there's any truth at all. Like there was no middle ground there, right? Yeah, moral relativism was sort of the greatest specter they had out there for us was, if you question anything before you know it, and you're just gonna slide down that slippery slope of believing nothing. And, you know, college is just out to liberalize your kids and convince them to question everything, so be very careful where you send them. Christian Schools are definitely your best bet. I grew up only in Christian education. I spent all my spare time and things like Awana and programs like that.
Seth Price 25:05
I will say that Awana Cubbie song is very addictive. It's a very happy song.
Stephanie 25:10
We actually have like a an offshoot program that doesn't exist anymore that was like, What was it? Oh Boys Brigade and Pioneer Girls. So it's like if Awana was gender segregated, and then they really made it like, Boys Brigade was like, if Boy Scouts and Awana had a baby. And Pioneer Girls was like, you know how to be a good Christian girl.
Seth Price 25:38
Proverbs 31 for under 12.
Stephanie 25:41
Yeah, it was different. Um, but then in high school, I started to get sick. And we didn't know what was going on with me. And I went from really bright and doing well in school and very serious ballet dancer, very in control of my body, to struggling to retain any information in school and sleeping 13/14/15 hours a day and always exhausted and physically my body was just falling apart, and we had no explanations for it. And that was the start of a 15 year journey for me without a diagnosis for those 15 years of my body getting worse and worse and worse.
So sort of that certainty I had been raised with, right, this black and white, this is how it is. It just didn't make sense for me anymore. My life was falling apart around me and I felt like I had two options. I either needed to, like God was either going to come in and miraculously heal me and show everybody his power. And I just had to have a really positive attitude until then, or He was going to do some new thing into my life, right? That would show everyone “Oh, this was the reason that had to happen to you”.
I waited and waited and waited and it never came. And so all of these people that have been around me my whole life, I felt like very few of them knew how to deal with that, like they had patience for initially being sick. And then when it went on for years and years and years, they all sort of hit their limit of like, we don't mentally know how to cope with this. So we're just not gonna be there for you at all. We're just gonna kind of ignore it. Like, you just need to have a good attitude, and stop talking about it all the damn time because we're over it.
Seth Price 27:29
Especially when you don't have a diagnosis that they can blame. You know, it's not that it's not that so I don't have to be mad about nothing.
Stephanie 27:39
I'll just kind of didn't I don't know it didn't click with me anymore, but I didn't really know what else to believe. So I think for a long time, I tried, I tried to just be positive encouraging Stephanie 24-7, you know, the physical embodiment of K-Love radio all the time. But that splits you like as a person and I think inside like on a soul level, it's almost like I fragmented into two people. And that's, it's not healthy, right? I'm a person who lives with complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that wasn't diagnosed until much later in life. But I look back and I see the ways that I essentially fragmented myself and disassociated and that the religious faith that I was taught as a child really fed into that fragmentation, really made it so that I just couldn't connect these two sides of myself anymore.
I was putting on one face for everybody and behind all of it—it was almost like I wanted to doubt but didn't know that I was allowed to when I was wrestling with myself to even acknowledge those doubts. It took years for me to finally hit the point where I was like, I'm just sort of, I can't do this anymore. I'm done. I'm just gonna have to be 100% honest about how much this sucks. I did not sign up for this! I did the right things I lived the right Christian life and all of it sucks! So where do we go from here God? Either we're just completely done, or we're gonna have to find some new way to do faith because that isn't working for me anymore!
Seth Price 29:41
Yeah, and that analogy that you just chose is literally the title of your book. I don't know if that's the genesis of the book. But it's been too long since I read your book and I honestly didn't intend to email you until I did email you so I didn't write questions while I read your book. Yeah, those I do with intentionality. But yeah, the title of the book is The View from Rock Bottom. I will also say, I went to Liberty. And so for those parents listening, sending your kids to a conservative Christian school, even in private university or whatever, is not a guarantee that they don't realize that a slippery slope, like it is really exciting. Usually God gets bigger the closer you get to the bottom, at least for me, and, like, a lot bigger, which is amazing. Yeah, I relate to so much, not of not having diagnosis and all that. But yeah, I also grew up in a very strict fundamentalist Baptist Church. Independent Regular Baptist, which is a different thing all altogether. They're fun
Stephanie 30:41
Oh! Your IFB! They split off from CBA because we weren't conservative enough for that.
Seth Price 30:45
So that's my baggage. I won't go into my baggage. We're not talking about my baggae or somebody else can talk about baggage. You touched on a couple things there. You said, and you touched on it in your as well from from what I can remember in the back of this Rolodex in my head that's squeaky and needs WD-40. You talk a lot about the prosperity gospel, but I think a lot of it is that attitude. And then I can tell you from working in a bank, I think, I don't think the prosperity gospel is quote, unquote, the gospel. Because I think people just live their lives at least I see their debit card transactions, attenuate have, I donated money to charity, so I should get the job. I did this to that. So I should get this. I did this for this. So life shouldn't suck. I've been tithing, why does my my kid have cancer?
Can you talk a bit about the prosperity gospel? And I will say, I haven't talked about the prosperity gospel ever on this show, predominantly because I get pissed off. Secondly, because my venue for ammunition is Joel Osteen. And he blocked me years ago, I didn't even know that he did on all the places which really, now I'm sad about it. Oh, but at first, I was like, what did I say?
Stephanie 32:01
If it makes you feel any better Dave Ramsey has blocked me on all the places.
Seth Price 32:06
Yeah, I don't I don't really follow Dave Ramsey, because as a banker, what he teaches is, although relatively I don't want to get into finance, but relatively decently good advice, the way that he treats debt and sets people up to if you don't follow this, it's basically like religion. The religion I grew up in if you don't follow this rigid personification of success, your world will fall apart.
Stephanie 32:29
Oh, Dave is steeped in prosperity gospel reality, right?
Seth Price 32:34
Really?
Stephanie 32:35
Oh, gosh, absolutely. If you didn't pick up on it, there's a chapter towards the end of my book where I talked about being gifted and the beginning of the chapter talk about being gifted a financial guru class who the church like, it's pretty obvious I was talking about Dave Ramsey, but for legal reasons, meaning he loves to sue anybody that uses his name.
Seth Price 32:56
Can this stay in here? Is this one of those things that I have to get rid of?
Stephanie 32:58
Oh, no, you can leave this thing. Because like I said, he’s got me blocked on everything. There's no way we were going to publish his name in the book. That's, that is inviting a whole wealth of lawyers that nobody wants to do that. But I was clearly talking about Dave, everybody knew that. Yeah, I see prosperity gospel thinking all over his classes. And I say that because, you know, the gist of the beginning of the book, and kind of trying to set the tone for what the prosperity gospel is, is understanding that Joel Osteen, right, like, everybody looks at that example, or the Creflo Dollar like, everybody's got private planes and mansions and Paula White, right. If you tithe the $100, you'll get $1000.
And that's obvious, extreme prosperity gospel thinking. But mainstream Christian faith is absolutely rampant with prosperity gospel thinking too. We just don't think that it counts. Because the bottom line is the prosperity gospel is really any sort of transactional view of God, right. So growing up in the kind of background we did, nobody ever told us, you know, we were going to be wealthy if we follow Jesus. But there certainly was a messaging of “if you follow God, and if you teach your kids the right things, and they follow and they don't fall away from it, you may not be wealthy, but you're not going to be living under a bridge somewhere, right"? You're gonna have two kids and a white picket fence and a job and you won't be on drugs and you won't have mental health issues”.
And there was sort of a baseline minimum security you were guaranteed as long as you follow the rules. It's very contingent. It's very, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality.” And that is the basis for all of Dave Ramsey's teachings is this idea of you decide and you control with your behavior, whether or not you are a person of wealth or whether you struggle financially, Dave has never remotely considered what it looks like for someone like me, right.
My mortgage is about comparable right now to my health insurance premium. They're both about the same. I don't care how much money you're making, almost nobody can afford that crap. Like I'm not…I don't need better envelope system! I'm not out here like, well, I guess we should cancel our gym membership. I don't have any of that stuff. And I also am still in the red. And Dave's you know, Dave's answers for that are get a third and fourth job.
Okay, well, how about when you're in a body where I can't really get any kind of 40 hour a week job! Because I've tried, but I end up losing them, three to six months later, because I get sick too often. And that doesn't last and around around that cycle go. He doesn't have any kind of framework for people other than sort of middle class, white, able-bodied, people who aren't experiencing any kind of systemic issues that can cause poverty, right.
That's absolutely prosperity thinking. I have all these good things in my life because I earned them because I followed the rules. And those people over there who are homeless or who are drug addicts or who are living in generational poverty. Well, they have all the same opportunities that I do. They just need to make good choices like me. That's prosperity thinking. Absolutely it is.
Seth Price 36:18
Yeah, I can also tell you on the back end, everyone that I've ever seen in financial struggles, maybe there's one out of 10 that legitimately just makes really bad decisions; impulse buys, and yeah, I wanted I get it I wanted I get it I want it, which is not wise for anyone. Most people though it's a medical emergency. It's family emergency, it's one trip to the emergency room.
But if you're a family like mine, so they recently tweaked our insurance, and we did the best that we could, but I'm not an economist, so I'm not really sure how to read this damn thing on what insurance to get. And so now our prescription deductible per person is $900 for this year. And so, so far, and since my son has quite a bit of prescriptions, so far, we've already spent like $3000 in medical bills, and it's February 25, for those listening. And that's just one person's prescriptions, and then a few of mine, and God forbid we go to the hospital because I think it's like a $6,000 family deductible. Like, it's those things that send people into a spot because I see it every day. It's very rarely somebody that didn't do it.
Stephanie 37:27
Right, like even those impulse buy people. Do you know about the Marshmallow Test that whole thing?
Seth Price 37:33
Is that the thing where you stick them in your mouth until you can't speak
Stephanie 37:35
No, there's this really famous psychological experiment where they bring kids into a room, right? And they give them a marshmallow on a plate and they basically say,
you can have this marshmallow right now. Or if you can wait for 5-10 minutes, whatever the amount of time is, you can have two marshmallows
and then they leave the room.
Seth Price 37:52
And they leave Marshmallow,
Stephanie 37:54
Right. And some of the kids would eat the marshmallow and some of the kids would wait because they wanted the other Marshmallow. And then they basically studied how these kids did in school and all these different things over the years. And for years, they held this up as like see, like, patience and these sort of good decision making and learning how to delay gratification is a really good benchmark for how successful people would be in life. But it took years for them to look back and go, wait a minute! This study was completely flawed on its head, because they didn't remotely look into things like what kids were coming in there hungry. Yeah, yeah, starving, with food insecurity.
Or as someone who grew up in trauma right in the foster system before I was adopted, they didn't remotely consider that it's not really an issue of like, do you know how to be patient and choose not to buy these things right now. For many of us, it's if you grow up in an environment where everything is taken away from you, where you are hurt by people who are supposed to take care of you constantly, your brain learns “Why would I trust this person that they're going to give me a second marshmallow when they come back in the room for all I know, they're going to take this one away and I'm gonna have no marshmallows, I need to freakin eat this marshmallow right now as fast as I can before it gets taken away from me and I get hurt, right”?
And so again, it's that prosperity thinking of “Oh, these are kids that were raised the right way that know how to delay gratification”. No! For many of them the reason that it was an indicator of how they would do in school later on was not because they were somehow, you know, choosing more patients or whatever it was, because for many of those kids that eat that Marshmallow, their brain has been wired from the get go to expect take what you can get while you can get it because everything is gonna get taken away from you. Everything's gonna suck! It is that same prosperity thinking, right? It's easy to look at people who overspend and go, we'll get your crap together.
But for many of them, it's that same trauma wiring of if you don't do this now, you'll probably never get to do it. You'll probably never have another chance again. So go out to dinner right now go on that vacation, buy that thing. Because for all you know, someone's going to lose their job tomorrow, like PTSD does this to your brain I relate to that feeling of if you don't do this now, you may never get to do it, because everything's probably gonna fall apart again, any minute. So just buy the thing, you’ll probably never have a chance again.
Seth Price 40:18
I never considered that actually. Granted, I don't really ask people about that when they're at my desk, either.
Stephanie 40:26
It would be weird if your bank did, like you shouldn't ask people about why they do bad spending.
Seth Price 40:30
I mean, if they brought it up, I will. Yeah, the most hard convert. I had one of these conversations today of a lady came in two days ago actually asking, you know, I need to make sure stuff is right. I’m mom's power of attorney. It's not looking good. They don't know it could be Friday, it could be three months, but it's probably not going to be three months. And so she came back in today. And just in tears, I was like, it's gonna be okay, here's what you're gonna do. And this is the most…like tell me what happened, and tell me the paperwork you have. And then you're going to go away for 10 days. I don't want to see you for 10 days, I will look at your account every day, I will make sure your mom's power bill and all that stuff got paid, that needs to be paid. Just go do wine, ice cream, chocolate, bath, all of that in the bath. I don't care, go do what you need to do. And come back in 10 days.
And you could just see her going. Oh, God. Thank the Lord. Unfortunately, I play that rodeo a couple of times a month, which is really sad. Yeah, it's a fact of life. Yeah, people that aren't in the business. They're like that sounds morbid, but it is what it is it I mean, it is what it is. Have you ever considered…have you ever gone to Tennessee? And if so I'm pretty sure you can just show up to the Ramsey tower, or whatever it is, and say I'm debt free and I like to come on and scream and then just get up there and say something else all together. Like have you ever actually considered?
Stephanie 41:52
(laughter) I do my best…like I say some stuff about Dave, which is why I'm blocked. I'm in a club full of there are a bunch of women like me.
Seth Price 42:05
Really?
Stephanie 42:06
Oh, yeah. Danielle Mayfield's been blocked. Shannon Martin's been blocked, like anybody that says anything critical with some teeth about Dave gets blocked. The funny part is, none of us had, like, “@” him, right. Like we didn't tag him. Which means I don't know, like he must have somebody going through and like searching his name. And just checking to see if you're saying negative stuff. Because we didn't ask him he just, I don't know, he blocked all of us. He doesn't like anybody saying anything negative about him.
Seth Price 42:35
Well, he's kind of brand-he's got a brand.
Stephanie 42:38
He does. So I probably would not come down there and draw his ire any more than I need to because I was only half joking when I said like, he's, he's a little bit notorious for suing people for defamation. So you have to be careful about what criticism you say about him.
Seth Price 42:58
Yeah, that stinks.
Stephanie 43:00
I wouldn't draw any more attention from him than I have. Fair enough. He's very wealthy and has a lot of lawyers.
Seth Price 43:06
Fair enough. So can you talk a bit about fostering, so I didn't know that you were or I didn't know that you were in the foster system. Can you talk a bit about how long were you in the foster system? If you're comfortable and if you are not tell me no.
Stephanie 43:19
I don't give tons of details about that period of my life because it's very traumatic. Yeah. And talking about some of it in the last, like publicly talking about it in the last year or so. I wasn't in the system in terms of like going around from home to home or anything very long, but it did take some time to get my adoption legalized. So I was technically in the foster system for a lot longer than I experienced it that way, if that makes sense.
But yeah, the short version is, for the first three years of my life. I lived with my birth parents. They had addiction issues, and introduced me to a very unsafe environment, there was a lot of neglect, there was a lot of being an infant left alone for days. And there was a lot of bringing a lot of unsafe people into our home. And then not really supervising them, because everybody was using drugs. So I was exposed to a lot of things in those first three years of my life, and that, you know, that's a pivotal time of your brain being wired for how to experience the world and how to expect the world. And it's taken me years. I mean, it's really only been in the last few years, that I've started to understand that a lot of what makes me tick is from those first three years.
And I had other traumatic things happen throughout the years. And so actually, initially when I got my complex post traumatic stress, diagnosis, and I started trauma therapy, I went in convinced like, Oh, it's, you know, I was sexually assaulted by someone in our church when I was a teenager. And I was like it must really be having to do with that, or the health issues or the years of financial struggles with being disabled and medical bills. Like I had all of these things I wanted to talk about therapists that I wanted to talk about before I was adopted and being adopted. And it was like, I don't I don't care about that. Like, why do we keep bringing this up. And it took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that that was really the root of where a majority of my trauma issues came from.
When you were a child and you're completely dependent on your caregivers. And those caregivers are responsible for both neglect and abuse. Your brain just sort of comes to expect that the world is a really unsafe place. That you are going to be harmed. And then when you ultimately are taken away from those caregivers because it doesn't matter that they were horrible to me, they were still my parents. So as a child, you still experienced that loss, right? That disconnection from your, your family, they're just gone. And I was old enough to be attached to them and know them and understand. So you, you know, you go through that loss too. So it's compounded by the trauma of expecting that everyone's going to leave.
If you love anybody, they're going to get taken away from you, or they're just going to leave you because you're not worth sticking around for essentially. And so when you grow up with that, especially when you then compound it, and I'm able to see that now when you compound it, with a lot of the religious trauma of growing up in a system that said, first of all, you know, purity was the most important thing any woman could have. So if you're a child who's experienced abuse, what are you damaged goods, right? Or, you know, the family is the most important thing ever. And you know, it's a very earning based system all the way around like we may say that salvation is by grace alone. But Lord knows we were raised to think everything else was Works based. Everything else!
So you know, it's this idea of nobody wanted you your damaged goods to come up in that how how can you not be affected by that kind of trauma, whether you want to acknowledge it or not doesn't matter, your body's going to keep responding to those primal wounds.
Seth Price 47:23
Thank you for that. I don't know how to dig in further than that. But I actually don't think that I knew any of that, or so thank you for saying that. And we won't, we won't dwell on that further. At least I'm not I'm not ultimately, I'm not all that comfortable dwelling on that further. Um, so you've been on 9000 podcasts in the last seven weeks? Just from what iTunes tells me cuz I just googled your name and it or I don't know, can you you can't Google in iTunes
Stephanie 47:48
And a bunch that I've recorded actually haven't aired yet. It’s only probably only two thirds of what I've recorded.
Seth Price 47:55
So that is the reason I haven't quoted your book back to you and ask you questions. specifically around the book because that is there and I want to know other things. So one thing, what have you learned about yourself? As you've gone through 9000 podcasts, like what is like if you look back and you're like, oh, man, I didn't know that this, I keep bringing this up and I didn't like what have you learned about yourself through doing that? And I asked that because there's one that does. So I, you'll be the third person I record this week. I've learned so much about myself through the act of intentionally doing this, but I'm curious what that is for you from the other end?
Stephanie 48:32
That is a really good question. I'm sitting with that for a second. Um, well, first off, and this is kind of random, but um, part of my neurological issues disability wise involves something called aphasia, which means and imagine you took French for years and years, right, you're like practically near fluent. And then one day you decide to go out to a restaurant with your friends and you want to order in French You know the word for chicken? It's right there, right? You're like, Oh, it's the thing that I'm you know that. And you can't quite connect the word to your mouth. Yeah. Now imagine that happening with your primary language, that's aphasia, and that's something that I experienced pretty regularly as a result of the damage from Lyme disease that went untreated in my body for 15 years.
But I also have ADHD. So I experienced a lot of these interviews, I've had this happen over and over again, where we'll finish recording. And I'll be like, Oh, my gosh, I am so sorry. I made no sense. I was so like, rambling and incoherent. It was terrible. And there's usually a period of silence on the other end, and they're like, I don't know what you're talking about right now. I'm very confused because I didn't experience that way at all. And they'll tell me that I'm articulate and intelligent and I'm going that's not how I experienced things. And that's where ADHD becomes a superpower, right? Because my brain is like 12 sentences ahead of my mouth. And so I may have really bad aphasia, but I have enough time to scramble in there and search for the word or an alternate word or something.
So by the time it comes out of my mouth, I feel very frantic, but people don't receive it that way. And so I've tried to force myself now to go back and listen to some of these interviews after the fact, and I'm always really surprised because enough time passes, usually when it airs, right that you don't remember everything you said. I just remember feeling frantic and like I completely blew it and then I listened to it. And I'm like, well, that's a really good point. Wow, that is really…
Seth Price 50:44
I'm gonna write that down. I said that!
Stephanie 50:48
I’m impressed sometimes with myself as horrible as it sounds. And I'm kind of learning to let go a little bit. I'm not quite there yet. If I'm honest Have some of these fears that that i'm i'm not capable, right? Some of that imposter syndrome that says, Wow, if people only knew, like, you have no business being an author or speaker, any of these things, your brain is a mess. You're an incoherent, rambling nightmare. It's been really interesting when you do so many shows in a row to go back and be like, I am a lot more capable than I give myself credit for but that's hard for me to say even now, like, that's trauma brain, right? There's this part of my brain that's screaming that was really stuck up. Everyone's gonna hear that and they're gonna think, whoa, you think too highly of yourself. It's really hard to de-program that part of my brain that just wants to say you're worthless. You're not enough. Nobody wants you. So this has been an interesting process because I admit it I feel capable when I listen to some of these back. I'm not rambling, incoherent. I am a fairly talented speaker
Seth Price 52:03
I would agree also talented writer as well if because if not, people wouldn't want to talk to you and if people don't believe me then they can just buy your book which they should do anyway. But probably not from Amazon do it from like the Inglewood Review of Books or something so you actually make some real money. So I don't actually I think that's how that works. That's what I've been told that not buying from Amazon buy from a local book place usually yields you more money
Stephanie 52:28
I get the same royalty from my publisher wherever you buy it, it’s based on the price that you pay for it so if you pay full price I make more money than when you buy it on sale, but I get a percentage of each book sold based on how much you paid for it. Well, I theoretically would if I ever earned out the advance which not everybody does. So
Seth Price 52:57
I don't even know what that means.
Stephanie 52:59
You know how writers will talk about getting an advance for their book.
Seth Price 52:59
I had a writer tell me that's like signing an agreement with like, I'm like with the Gestapo or not, like with the mafia, like, write a book by March, we break your legs, like, wow, write me a book.
Stephanie 53:09
That's gonna vary wildly. Like, I had to take two extensions on my book because my health was horrific. And we almost lost our house at one point while writing the book. And I needed to focus on that. Yeah. So it varies wildly. My publisher was really gracious about extending my deadlines a few times, but advance is literally called an advance because it's an advance on your royalties.
Seth Price 53:33
Oh. So they give you money up front, and you got to sell 11,000 books. And then after that, you get whatever the percentages are 11,000 books.
Stephanie 53:39
Well, it's not even a number of books, that'd be great. Because the price shifts constantly it's literally a dollar amount. It's we gave you this much as an advance
Seth Price 53:47
You got earn that back…
Stephanie 53:48
Yeah. And that is the only guaranteed money you will ever get. And because they're assuming a lot of risk to right there assuming more financial risk than I am. And so it's sort of the bare minimum that I can accept for doing all of this work, which I'll let you know a friend it's less than, you know, a year salary. It's much less than a typical year’s salary.
Seth Price 54:09
Most of the authors that I talked to don't write to make money they write because they have something to say.
Stephanie 54:15
So in theory, I'll make money off this book, when people buy it, but only if I ever earn out the advance which, right now I'm not on target to do. To be honest, I just found out in the last few weeks that I'm not on target to earn out the advance at this point. So if that ever happens, I'll make money when people buy the book.
But as of right now, I only want people to buy the book because I spent three years pouring myself out in in the most vulnerable of ways like this book is basically written in my tears. It was quite the labor of love. So when I ask people to buy the book, it's really more that at this point. I've just sort of come to terms with expecting to never see another cent from it. It's not about the money for me anymore. I really just see this as ministry.
Seth Price 55:05
Yeah, they should buy the book.
Stephanie 55:08
So you just buy it wherever it's easiest for you to buy it basically doesn't matter to me either way.
Seth Price 55:13
Um, I know I'm holding you hostage for your family. And so I have one final question and then I will give you back to your husband and kiddos. And please thank them for for sharing you not only with me, but I'm aware of my wife and kids as well are aware of how much time this takes. And you appear to be doing it way more often than I am.
Stephanie 55:33
I mostly do it when they're at school to be honest.
Seth Price 55:34
I try to do it when they're asleep, which is why it really works well that our time zones are so far different because this worked really well. Well, at least for me. I hope it did for you.
Stephanie 55:44
Yeah, my husband and kids are out having dinner somewhere right now. I can't even have them in the house when I’m doing this.
Seth Price 55:50
You should have them come in it's fine. My dog and kids have interrupted so many episodes is fine. Um, so the question I've been asking everyone for dominance because I'm talking to people about it of other faiths. I want to know when you say the word God or divine or whatever metaphor you want to try to wrap around god What are you actually trying to say? What are you intending to say when you say God is this tiny question so feel free collect your thoughts.
Stephanie 56:16
Geez! Like I’m fading fast and getting ready to go to bed mode I'm like wait a yeah let's send on a light note…
So as much as I've been through a lot of deconstruction and as much as I don't really connect to Evangelicalism anymore, evangelical as a label, and I'm still head over heels in love with the Christian concept of God. I'm how to really love Jesus, I still have what is traditionally considered a quote unquote high view of Scripture. And that's such a weird dichotomy for me sometimes, because I fall into this strange niche. And that's part of why my book sales are what they are, to be honest, is that I'm too liberal for most of my Christian friends and I'm too Christian for a lot of progressive spaces. And so I'm in this interesting tension of I still am head over heels in love with Jesus, and I'm still an almost daily Bible reader. I'd love to say daily but that would be a lie. I’m also pretty nerdy and and obsessed with it and not ready to give it up. And I've had other shows ask like, hey, after some of the years of trauma and church related trauma and things that you experienced, like what kept you like, what was the thing But how do you hold on to Jesus and faith?
And I don't have a good answer for that still, even after like a dozen different shows asking that because I don't know, like everything logically, when I look at it really objectively, there's no logical reason why I would still be in church. Honest to God, there's been a lot of hurt there. There are so many reasons to leave. And there are times that I feel like I almost wished I could leave. I tried out the #exvangelical movement for a while and it just never felt like home. I never fully felt like like, I have a Facebook group and I tried it out. And I don't know, like there was something I just was never quite willing to let it all go.
So for me, God is still very much the traditional god of the Christian Bible. And I'm exploring a lot about Jewish faith right now because I Found out a couple years ago that by birth heritage, I'm Jewish. And if I hadn't been adopted, I would have been raised in the Jewish faith from the get go. And I'm trying to figure out what that looks like as a white for all intensive purposes, white Christian woman, what it means to be culturally Jewish without sort of taking weird elements of faith that don't belong to me. Yeah. But I think that's expanding my view of who God is, in a lot of ways as I try to figure out what I can incorporate without letting go of Jesus entirely. And but for the most part, it's, you know, the God of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles is still what I mean when I say God. I've tried to ditch him Lord knows I've tried but he's still there.
Seth Price 59:53
That works for me. I like it.
Stephanie 59:56
I think it kind of circles back to your your beginning question. I love when that happens when things get bookended like that. I think the biggest change for me in the way I look at God now compared to the way I experienced the God of the Bible growing up, is that growing up there was this idea of like, if there's mystery there, if there's questions like that's a really negative thing, right? That's a scary thing. It means you've lost touch with absolute truth and what we've told you, go back and re memorize all this stuff. You need to know it inside out and backwards. And now, it's been amazing to discover how much doubt and questions and mystery and not having answers to everything. I always thought that that would be the thing that killed my faith in God. It's really only expanded it in ways that I never expected like now, anytime I have questions that I can't answer or things I don't understand about God, this is gonna sound like a cop out, but I feel like that is so much more proof to me that God exists, and that more than He's not something that we just made up in human minds. Because if we made him up our nose we would have made him way more like comprehensible and make way more sense than some of what's in there right?
Now every time I go I don't have an answer for that. That doesn't make sense. I don't understand. I don't know like I just have this profound appreciation for mystery for me is such a huge component in seeing the divine as divine and not this sort of mental black and white easy answers bumper sticker responses have an answer for everyone garbage that I was raised on right? The more I go I don't know. I can't really explain everything about him The more I sit back and go that's that's good. Like I take a lot of comfort in that.
Seth Price 1:01:47
I agree wholeheartedly to me. That's what makes God worth worshiping. Yeah, I'm not like if I could fit them into the if I could make an EULA agreement for God like it like an apple. It agreement and we'll call it that those are the rules god what a crappy god that is. But anyway, so point people to the places Stephanie, where do people go? I'll have links to buy the book in the show notes. But outside of that, where would you send people to to engage with you? I know you have a Patreon and so they should go there, click the button and make that thing happen. Where would you send people to go where are the places?
Stephanie 1:02:23
The main hub where you can find all my social media my patreon links to the book the whole deal is Stephanie Tate Writes, and Tate is Tait. Thats my Canadian husband don't look at me. But Stephanie Tate Writes has really sort of has the connection, jumping off points that will take you to all the other stuff. I will say that I have a lot on Facebook. I don't have like one of those professional pages. I tried that for a bit and I just couldn't maintain two things. I think I'm getting close to the friend limit ceiling on a personal page though, I may have to try that again. They cap you out at 5000 Really want you to get those business pages so they can throttle your engagement ability and then go wow, we'll show you in more people's newsfeeds if you pay for that.
So they're trying to push you in that direction. So anytime you get to 5000 they're like, well, you either need to go get a page so we could start charging you or you just have to accept that this is the limit. But yeah, I have that Facebook, I do accept friend requests, you know, somewhat on my personal page, but there's also the option to just follow me but really all my fiestier opinions are over on Twitter anyway, some rough cuts.
Seth Price 1:03:42
Well, yeah, cuz you've only got a sentence and a half on Facebook. You can give some context, but on Twitter, it's just burn it down or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Well, good. Good. Thank you so much for your time tonight.
Stephanie 1:03:54
Thank you!
Seth Price Outro 1:04:07
So upon editing and going back through and making this sound a little more manageable, I found myself incensed again this week's after recording conversation with Stephanie, about the ability that churches and houses of worship I guess, have to just disregard people that don't fit into the mold by their own definition of what's healthy. It just bothers me. It bothers me so much and I don't even know how to fix it as the problem. And so I don't know what to do with that. I have no idea where to vent that frustration at, but I know it's wrong. So I'm thankful for voices like Stephanie's I think that they're needed. So so much.
Remember to rate and review the show. Very Special thanks to salt to the sound again for the music in this episode. I cannot stress how helpful it has been to have them To fall back on to to, to mix into this show. So I hope every single one of you have a safe and blessed week.
I'll talk with you next time.