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Hello, welcome to Straight White American Jesus.

I'm Brad O'Neishie and our shows hosted in partnership with the Cap Center at UCSB.

Last week we had the, I don't know what to call it, debut or something of the new version or the updated version or

whatever you want to call it, of the song Hottest is Modest and there's been a lot of discussion in various corners of social media

about the harmfulness of the song and its message. It's thoroughly rooted in purity culture and for me it just brought up a conversation that I had about a year and a half ago

with Ruth Everhart who wrote a book called The Me Too Reckoning and it's all about how the church has to, the Christian church

writ large has to take account of the way it has fostered abuse and the ways that it has fostered rape culture and so in light of the Hottest is Modest

fall out. I thought it would be a good time to reintroduce this conversation into our feed. I learned a lot from Ruth.

We don't agree on everything but I do think she just has some amazing insight and she's also very vulnerable in this interview about her own experiences with sexual assault and another very difficult thing.

So I turn now to our interview. I hope you all are doing well. Thanks for listening.

And I am joined today by Ruth Everhart who is going to be talking to us about her new book The Me Too Reckoning, facing the church's complicity in sexual abuse and misconduct.

Ruth, where's many hats? She's an author, speaker and pastor, has served in the Presbyterian USA Denomination and it's very and various churches there for more than 20 years.

She graduated from Calvin College and United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities. She travels a lot to speak at churches, conferences and retreats, written for the Christian century, so joiners, Washington Post.

And is the author of three books chasing the divine in the Holy Land and her first book, Ruin, which is a memoir and we're going to talk about that one in a minute.

And then we're really going to focus on her third book, which just came out The Me Too Reckoning, facing the church's complicity in sexual abuse and misconduct.

So Ruth, thanks so much for being here.

Oh, thanks for having me, Brad.

It's great to talk to you and you've written a very timely and very challenging book, I think.

And one of the things that I wanted to start with was just talking about The Me Too Movement and when it gained steam.

And I guess I was thinking about today, I was wondering when you knew that you might have a project that would sort of bring to light the need for a Me Too Reckoning within the church.

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