Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and a Raw. Are you ready for an extra raw episode?

My guest today is Amy Bird, who is an author speaker, troublemaker, semi-empty nester going back to school,

and she's recently become an aspiring bartender. Amy is the author of several books,

including Why Can't We Be Friends, recovering from biblical manhood and womanhood and the recently released

saving face finding myself, God, and one another outside a defaced church. Really enjoyed

this conversation with Amy. We get raw and real about our experience with the church.

And Amy tells a pretty, I guess, brutal story about her experience

with her own church. So I think you will enjoy this challenging episode. Please welcome back to

the show, the one and only, Amy Byrd.

Welcome back to Theology Naraw, I'm E Bird.

You have had a, if I can say, a complex journey with the evangelical church from what I can tell from a distance.

Let's just start.

Why don't you describe your upbringing?

Were you raising a church?

What kind of church was that?

I was.

And I was also like the product of a teenage pregnancy.

My parents were like 17 and 19 when they had me.

My mom was a P.K.

A pastor's kid of a very fundamentalist, independent Baptist church.

You know, she wasn't allowed to wear blue jeans. So my parents landed in a

Southern Baptist Church. I was raised in that Southern Baptist Church. I would say it was a more

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