Hi friends,

These days I’ve been spending a fair amount of time reaching out to podcasters to see if they’d like to talk with me about Nice Churchy Patriarchy. 

I’ve been pleasantly surprised, so far, to find that a) people say yes! and b) being a guest on podcasts is a bit more fun than I had imagined. 

I mean, I don’t know if fun is quite the right word, as in, feeling ecstatic the entire time. (The look on my 2 ½ year old niece’s face while bouncing…and bouncing…and bouncing…on a playground trampoline comes to mind; now that was fun!) But I’ve enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

For most of the time that I’ve been writing and editing the book—and then looking for an agent, and then looking for a publisher, and then editing some more—I’ve been thinking to myself, on some level, the part where I have to promote this thing is going to be the least fun part of the process. 

I mean, I would love for people to miraculously become aware of the book and know that they need it in their lives, without my intervention. (That is, if they actually do need it in their lives—or at least would enjoy it, or find it helpful, or experience it as encouraging or healing in some way.)

But that isn’t how things work. It takes work to get a book out there into the world. And, according to my publisher, being a guest on podcasts is a great way to do that work. So here we are.

An author much more established than I am reminded me recently, very wisely, that it’s all about the message(s) I want to communicate. Every opportunity to communicate those messages is a good thing. 

So I’m trying to keep that in mind. I feel like that’s what these podcast conversations, at their best, have been. They’re a chance to give patriarchy—and particularly the nice churchy varieties of it—some air time. Because as much as we might like to think we’ve moved past patriarchy, we have not. It’s still everywhere. And it’s still not okay. 

My hope is that these podcast conversations are a chance to encourage women to speak up. To voice their perspectives. To push for change. And to be willing to leave environments where they are not fully valued and respected, or where their gifts are not welcome. 

The podcasts are also a chance to share some of the things I’ve learned about history, the Bible, and theology that have been game changers for me—in case they’re game changers for someone else, too. 

Plus, I feel like I’m making some awesome new friends—new friends, so far, based in New Zealand (Down to Earth Conversations), North Carolina (Writing for Your Life), Wisconsin (The Lady Preacher), and SoCal (Speaking in Church and the Beached White Male). I likely would have never met these very cool people if I weren’t very intentionally reaching out to podcasters to try to birth a book into the world. So that’s cool.

Plus, I’m not really a podcast person, to be honest—as in, I don’t usually listen to very many podcasts. So this has been an eye-opening experience of researching what’s out there (I’ve been keeping a running spreadsheet of possibilities that now includes 190 podcasts, lol…) and giving a lot of different podcasts a listen. A lot of them are really great.

So, all in all, book publicity via podcast guest-ing has not been the worst. Feel free to give one (or more) of them a listen if you like. (They’re listed two paragraphs up, and also at the bottom of the page here.) 

I also hope to keep getting better at this as time goes on, so…I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to wait and listen to one later on in the journey.

Anyhow. I’m glad I’m trying this. And I’m still very much in the process. So I’d love to know—are there any podcasts you enjoy that have some relation to the content of Nice Churchy Patriarchy (that is, social justice, feminism, faith, social change, theology, church, etc.)?

I’m on a quest. Thanks for being here for it, and for these reflections on it.

Wishing you peace and eye-opening-but-not-not-fun new experiences this week,

Liz

Ps. I feel like I should acknowledge that it’s a bit of a strange time to be trying to get a book out there into the world, as parts of our world explode into brutal violence that’s constantly in the news. I don’t want to ignore the suffering of so many ordinary people caught up in the violent ways of governments and terrorists alike.

And I feel like speaking up for gender justice, for equality, for the dignity of all humans, is one tiny thing I can do here. That’s really what’s at stake in Nice Churchy Patriarchy. The book is not about Gaza, but it’s all connected. Toxic-ly masculine ways of leading are not working. We want to end all violence, end all systems of domination and oppression. We want to find a different way together—a way of peace.