Safe Church: Elevating Women's Voices and Exposing Abuse in the Church - With Dr. Andrew Bauman

In this powerful episode of Hey Tabi, host Tabitha Westbrook, licensed trauma therapist and abuse expert, sits down with Dr. Andrew Bauman, founder and director of the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma.

Dr. Bauman shares insights from his latest book, Safe Church, tackling the intersection of mental health, faith, and sexism in church culture. He opens up about his personal transformation—from battling his own sexist biases and pornography use as a pastor to becoming a leading advocate against church-based abuse.

Together, they explore:
✅ How Jesus' treatment of women should shape modern church practices
✅ The deep impact of church-based sexism and abuse on women
✅ Practical steps church leaders can take to create a safer, more inclusive environment
✅ Why men must do their own healing work to truly support women

🎙️ Don’t miss this insightful conversation on dismantling toxic church dynamics and building spaces where women’s voices are heard and honored.

🔔 Subscribe for more real, unfiltered conversations on faith, trauma, and healing.

#SafeChurch #ChurchAbuse #WomenInTheChurch #DrAndrewBauman #FaithAndTrauma #HeyTabiPodcast

📖 Resources & More from Dr. Bauman:
🔗 Website & Books
🔗 Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma

📖 Grab Safe Church Here

🎧 Subscribe to Hey Tabi for more expert conversations on trauma, faith, and healing.

Order Body & Soul, Healed & Whole: An Invitational Guide to Healthy Sexuality After Trauma, Abuse, and Coercive Control

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Hey Tabi
• 0:37 Special Guest: Dr. Andrew Bauman
• 1:31 Dr. Bauman's Journey and Safe Church
• 4:56 Sexism and Abuse in the Church
• 6:29 Jesus' Relationship with Women
• 8:19 Reinterpreting Scripture on Women
• 13:21 Creating a Safe Church Environment
• 20:51 Men's Role in Advocating for Women
• 31:34 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Welcome to Hey Tabi, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here, and we are not take two verses and call me in the morning.
I'm Tabitha Westbrook, and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control, and how complex trauma impacts our health and well being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope.
Now, let's get going.
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I am super excited to have a special guest on Hey Tabi today. We have Dr. Andrew Bauman here, and he is the founder and director of the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma, and he has served as a mental health counselor and he's also formerly a pastor. he now works with men and women to bring healing and wholeness to their sexual and spiritual lives.His mission overall is to use his unique position to elevate women's voices and expose a disease that desperately needs to be removed from the church's body. And we love that here on Hey Tabi for sure. And you are the author of a very new book that's just come out pretty recently. I forget the release date, but Safe Church, which if you're are able to see the cover of, and I have read and enjoyed.
So I want to talk about your book and then whatever else comes up for us to chat about.Sounds great. 
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.Awesome. 
Super glad. So tell me a little bit about how did this book get started?  what made you go, man, we need this.Yeah. I mean, I was a pastor, right out of college, a, youth and college pastor.
And I also was a recovering sexist and 13 years, of pornography user. And so I realized that my pornography use had slowly begin to seep into my theology. and I was in the Southern Baptist Church, not necessarily picking on them, but realizing that mixing kind of a degrading view of women with oppressive theology against women.
And it was kind of this perfect storm.  worked well in a sense for me as a pastor and all my buddies that were pastors, all of us men, you know, it was a boys club and we had a great time,  but realizing like, wait a minute, there might be something wrong here.  and as I began to deconstruct my faith,  and build a healthier faith,  also my sexuality.
And what do I want to do to honor women? And so that was a big part of it. And then even before that, my father was a pastor,  and also was a secret sex addict and cheated on my mom for 20 something years.  and then my mom  went numb to recover from her abuse. And that's where I  felt orphaned in many ways and numb.And that was my origin story. I dedicated this book to my mom just because she was on the front lines of being spiritually gas lit. of being told, you know, your kids need a father. And yet my mom also wanting to protect my dad's reputation because he was a big time evangelical, you know, they wanted him to run for political office.
 he was a vice president of a Christian college and a lawyer and a pastor, you know, all the things.  and yet he was an insecure, scared little boy.  and so bad things happen.  when you have secrets and,  it blew up my family when I was eight years old. And so that led to my own addiction,  20 years ago, landed me in the psychiatric ward, nearly taking my own life.
And that was the beginning of my redemptive suffering, where I began to try to tell the truth of my story.  engage my deepest shame and my fear and slowly in that and having integrity with my story discovering my purpose and finally becoming an advocate for women rather than an abuser of women.Mm hmm.
 I like the concept there of redemptive suffering, because I think that getting, I mean, you and I are both Allender educated, we have done work at the Seattle School, I know that that's where you got a lot of your psychotherapy training. I've done the narrative focused trauma care training there.
 getting into the story really  teaches us so much about where we are and what we believe. And,  it's courageous and terrifying work because you are looking at some hard stuff, but it sounds like for you, it was really the game changer that made you go like, "Hey, I'm in a pretty rough, dark place here, and I maybe need to engage some things differently."Yeah, exactly. And,  but in that, that set me on that path to justice, learning advocacy, learning that violence against women  developing what does it mean to honor women rather than devour them and no longer being a bystander to sexism.
 and actually becoming a listener of women and it was particularly in 2018, I was reading a study called the elephant in the valley, and it was about sexism in Silicon Valley.  what is it like in another male dominated space, 87%. Of male,  lead churches.
I was like, I wonder what that is. So that was the kind of began  idea. And so I began to study the impact of sexism in the church. And we had over 2,800 women surveyed. And 82 percent said that they believed sexism was a part of their church, which is just wild.  women in the kitchen, women,  all just stuff that I grew up hearing all the time that was normalized.35 percent said they reported some sort of sexual harassment or they answered it was complicated. Right. I mean, that's, there's no, that's like no different, even worse than a secular space. Right. It's just wild. One out of three women. and especially men have tons to learn from this data.Absolutely. And I think it's interesting. I heard Jen Wilkin recently say that Paul,  a third of the people in one of his letters are female. And if you look at a church's website. And look at their leadership that is not represented in that way.
And  there is a section in your book where you talk about Jesus's attitude and relationship toward women. So tell me a little bit about that and what stands out to you the way that Jesus modeled relationship with women.and yet what so many women have experienced as well as a slowly, Wait, my presence doesn't matter. Or I'm supposed to go,  cook clean and go have a lot more sex with my husband or something.  it rather than actually a God honoring posture that no, we are all image bearers of God.Right.And then silence half the image of God. We silence God,And  I think about Genesis that you know, I think we start oftentimes thinking about relationship from Genesis three instead of, the true beginning. And if you look at the Aramaic for how Eve is termed,  helper has been redefined unfortunately, as a one down and that is not the original language at all. It's basically mirror image complimentary. It is teammate of Adam is what it really means.Ah. Wow, that's very different.  the context of the early Roman patriarchal culture and the Jewish culture, women weren't allowed to go back to their husbands and discuss theology. They weren't even allowed to have that mutuality. And so they're saying, no, go in dialogue about theology, go talk about it, discuss it as an equal.
 Priscilla. Romans 16 7, right, was outstanding among the apostles. Exactly. I mean, you have all these, you know, Philip had four daughters who prophesied in Acts 21 9. Phoebe, in Romans 16 1, there's just tons. And so when we begin to, interpret scripture, we have to do it consistently.
We have to do it with integrity, We can't say, Oh, well, first Timothy means this, and it means women should be silent at all time. But then  Luke 24, nine or John four, 30, 39 judges, five, seven, like you have to, when you interpret biblical texts, you have to do it consistently.And sadly we haven't,  and it's been interpreted wrong. There's no hierarchy in Christ, It's the nothing new under the sun.
 they say in Ecclesiastes that new things kind of cycle back around for sure.  there's a lot to be said for the flourishing of both. And I think the church flourishes when both men and women flourish in the church and we've missed that. And I think when I hear, and deconstruction can be like a four letter word with more than four letters to some people.
I tend to personally use disentangle because a lot of folks aren't necessarily walking away from their faith. They're questioning. Is this really true? You know, is what I was taught accurate. And And so many of the women that I met with and interviewed,  they no longer went to church.
And they loved Jesus and they love God and they feel closer to God than ever before, right? It's like, what are they doing? Well, they're actually walking away from an oppressive system that subjugated them and harmed them. And so they're having boundaries. And I like, Oh, wait, does this mean you're,  a heretic who hates Jesus?
 like, no, it's because they're healing.What do you think as a someone who has been a pastor and has led in that way, what do you think the church, church could do regardless of denominational proclivities? What do you think that they could do to be a safer and more welcoming environment for women in general?Yes. Yes.  there's so many things that the church can do. I mean, I encourage. People just let's just start the conversation.  sermons have you heard on domestic violence? Okay. One out of four, one out of four women, you know, yeah, maybe you have more than others, like normally the right, the common is not like one out of four women experienced domestic violence.
What about sexual abuse? One out of three? women will experience some form of sexual abuse, right? Let's just start the conversation,  Let's women trust your gut, trust your intuition, your bodies. You know, so many men have told you that your bodies are bad. Oh no. God lives in your body.  trust your intuition, trust your body.
And  as far as for church leaders, like you got to do your own healing work first, you can't lead people further than you've gone yourself. And so will you dive in?  and deal with what you need to deal with. If you have a history of pornography use, you've got to untangle that. You've got to realize what that has done to your view of women, to your pornified mind, to your pornified style of relating.You have to do this work and then we can begin to develop, implement church policies, safeguards that encourage,  safety for all. I think as far as us. What women were asking for is so many of them just said, Hey, I just wanted somebody to represent me. I just wanted another woman at the table.
I just want some representation, right? So a bunch of,  dudes calling all the shots just didn't necessarily feel good to them. And this came out. I remember in one story We'll call her Rebecca, but she talked about She was abused by a leader in the church, and he was also,  I guess it was a Christian school situation as well, and he was a teacher, and she basically, I mean,  she was raped by him, he was married, and the pastor immediately blamed her for being a seductress and ruining this guy's marriage, and she was 18.
I think so.  he was in his forties and this continued to go on as she was going through kind of church discipline. And at some point, I guess  the pastor's wife was in the room and he kept referring to it as,  sex. And the pastor's wife spoke up and said, I believe that's called rape. And she just felt like completely like, Oh, like somebody gets it.And here's this,  the pastor's wife's in one meeting one time and kind of corrects it. And it's just like, Oh yes. Like, wait, there's a power differential here. There is spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, physical, all the above abuses happening. And you're blaming the victim for her own assault. It's insane to me.
And yet that's so normative. Unfortunately, so policy safeguards, obviously criminal background checks, reporting procedures, also just open dialogue sessions with congregants, I would agree with all of those. I'd also add to the belief that yes, it could happen to me and it could happen here. And I think that there are wonderful men who lead. I know wonderful men who are pastors who would not be the exploitative type, but they also have this overall underlying, I will be careful because there but for the grace of God go I.
Right. And they know that it could be a problem. And so they do things so that it won't be, and I'm not talking about the Billy Graham rule.  that is a whole other conversation that we probably don't have enough time for, to be honest, because I think you and I both have pretty strong opinions about it.
Um, but you know, but the real of I want to be submitted to the Lord because. If I treat women the way that Jesus treated women, I'm going to always be on the right side of that, you know, and, and as a woman myself, I look at it is I want to treat men the way that Jesus treated men, you know, which means I'm always going to be on the right side of that as well.And that doesn't mean that we wouldn't be boundaried or wise or mindful, but we're going to see them as an image bearer, not a potential conquest. And that is a big deal. And I don't know that all pastors really get real with themselves about that and say, what do I believe? Is there any piece of this where if I were in closed doors with just men, I might say something that I wouldn't say in front of my wife.
Like if you can't say it in front of the women's leadership or your wife or a woman in a congregation, it probably shouldn't exit your lips.Yes. Yes. Well said. Yes. Well said. There's so much work to have to do. And that's why we started running a  workshops, co ed groups in groups of, six to eight people, women who've been abused and men who've abused and doing that work together, staring in each other's eyes, saying  we've got to do this work.
We've got to face the, our terror and our gender wounds because we've harmed each other so deeply. And normally so many churches say, well, men, you go over here. And do your work. Women, you go over here. It's like, wait a minute. Healing as actually happens in the in between. But sadly, we in the church have become so adolescent in our engagement with each other because we're so scared.
Everybody's going to have sex with each other. And it's just like, Oh my gosh, are we 12?Yeah. I mean, if you're seeing someone as an image bearer. And you're honoring them in that way. That is not going to necessarily be your first thought. It's going to be like, wow, man, I really like, I'm grateful for my brother and I'm grateful for my sister.
 I do think I know that people in the church, especially if you have been harmed in a spiritual location, like for sure. Just harmed because it is still good language. It was weaponized. And that's my personal definition of spiritual abuse is taking someone's good and right devotion to God and weaponizing it against them.
And so when you use that family language and misuse it, it really hurts people, but there is goodness. In that brother sister paradigm, right? How am I going to treat my brother? I am going to be good and gracious to him. And if you called me up and said, Tabitha, I have a flat tire and I was anywhere near you, I'd be like, dude, I'm coming.Yes, no doubt. And that's from,  And really that is the essence of adultery,  Cause Jesus says, if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, then you've committed adultery. And we really look at the term lust. It is consumptive.
It's consuming is I want you for my pleasure. I don't want to know you as an image bearer. And again, that goes both ways. Women can be in that space as well. And when we really look at that and go, man,  then we are going to look at people as a conquest and not as someone who's a partner. And I think it's Sam Jolman book.
The sex talk you never got, which is a fantastic book where he talks about the poetics for men versus the practice.  every man that I work with, like everyone that comes in as a client, either gets it recommended or gets it or whatever. But that is the heart of it, right?
Is the poetics of it. And both men and women were made for that poetic, that heart intimacy. That is so much more than just physical intercourse. And when we distill it down to that, we've missed so much and the church itself with purity culture and things that I think may have been well intended at some point became not very helpful.And so we have these ideas and I do grieve for my brothers who,  and it's such a minimization of the heart of a man  and yes, the spirit of a man and how God created us.Exactly. And men are capable of such deep intimacy,  such deep emotional awareness. And yet  with a little bit of practice, men can become very good at intimacy and connection, even though we're terrified of it. It's what we most long for.Absolutely.  the hookup culture falls so short.
There's actually a ton of research on that,  for young people, one of the studies I read fairly recently,  is that they have to be inebriated, drunk, high, something in order to make hookup culture work. And I will air quote that  it's because it's been distilled down, but then all of the parties are like, man, this wasn't satisfying.
This didn't do what I hoped it would. And I think when churches, because honestly, churches can be such goodness to their communities, to their people. And really evidence Christ, which is what we're supposed to be doing by having these open conversations and saying, like, man, this is so much more than maybe what you were taught or what you were led to believe, or what society says to you, you know, for both men and women that, you know, we can do this so differently.
 what do you think men need to do to advocate for women?Yeah. Yeah. I would say the number one thing is to do your own work. I hear so many almost fake advocates that are like, And once you actually get close, you realize, Ooh, like you're doing this out of some shadow within yourself and you haven't actually Dove deep, you're working something out on women rather than actually doing your own work and making peace with yourself. Then you can come and actually help advocate for women.  my biggest goal. You know, my biggest thing, we do tons of men's workshops, folks from all over the world
 and love to have you come check out our program. If you are a man listening to this in need of of deeper healing work because we sexualize, we eroticize our wounds and you've got to deal with those deeper wounds. So you stop living out of them. So you stop hurting the people you say you love.Absolutely. I think it was Jay Stringer in Unwanted where he was talking about fantasies and what they tell people and how they really lead you into a deeper understanding of like, how'd we get here in the first place? You know, they're almost your roadmap. And I think that's true for men and women truly.
But I think it's especially important in the church, because I think like words like fantasy get real vilified. And I mean, it's not a bad thing to think through, to talk through, to explore and talk about and say, man, what is this telling me about me? You know, one of my favorite questions for people is, well, what makes this make sense?
You know, like. How'd we get here? And for so many guys, And for so many of them that I work with it's sitting on such deep wounding. And you said that in your own story, that there was some sort of harm. And when we engage in pornographic viewing or activities or whatever it is, there is a dopamine hit.In fact, it's higher than heroin, that dopamine hit. It's pretty dang high. You know, gives you that comfort, right? It's an illusion of relationship. Also, it's an illusion of power and control. It's all of those things in that moment that can be really addictive for people. And when we go, I'm not really getting what I need out of that.
And it's not really like. It's no longer the life preserver, because now I'm an adult and my adult self is here. It's a millstone and it's dragging you down. It's harming relationships. It's harming the body of Christ and it can be different and you can be different without getting into that shame spiral, which makes us hide, you know, exactly.No doubt. Yeah. Yes,that's so awesome.  what do you hope if you have a leader that picks up Safe Church and says, I'm going to read it. What do you hope that they come away with?Yeah, I hope that they begin to change their relationship with women, or at least begin to honor women's voices. Sadly, there are so many.
So many women that are hurting and have been hurt by issues of abuse, power dynamics, sexism, I want to begin to at least change that. I want to start that conversation of, hey,   This is not just some random thing out there.
It's in here. I can't tell you how many churches I've been a part of that have had moral failings. It's just like, Oh, It's, it's everywhere. Right. And then we just kind of sweep it under the rug or the church protects itself,  sweeps it under the rug rather than, no, we need to be more honest, more authentic, more open with our darkness, because that's where safety actually is cultivated.Absolutely. And truly when a church says, well, we wouldn't want to defame Christ. I'm like, do you not think it defames Christ to cover up wickedness? Cause I'm fairly certain that would do it as far as it would be so much better to just be authentic I believe it's Chris moles who has said this and I love it so much Hey man.
You don't necessarily need to be in the pulpit. If you've been disqualified, you can still serve Jesus at Best Buy.AndI would rather see that. And I'd rather see elder boards truly say not on our watch that we are not going to have,  this kind of sin in our church. And I feel like we have such good models in like David, you know, I mean, he'd done, did some things, let's be honest.
He was, he had some moments, but he also repented. And I remember from, in the story of, I think it was the census, if I'm remembering correctly, where, you know, God's like, dude, bro.  and he gives him three options. And David says, I will let you pick because I'd rather fall into the hands of the living God.
He never avoided consequences.  he took what he had to, but he threw himself on the mercy of God as a repentant man. And that is what makes it a man after God's own heart, not perfection, not hiding, but truly doing that. And yes, you know what? Owning your sin does sometimes have significant consequences.
And I'm sorry. I hate that for people. I really do. I don't wish pain on anyone.It just, it reminds me of the legendary Diane Langberg's quote in Redeeming Power, where she says, people are sacred, created in the image of God. Systems are not. They are only worth the people in them and the people they serve, and the people are to be treated, whether one or many, the way Christ Jesus treated people.
It's just like, we've got to remember that when you're speaking, in a sense, against the system. That's the system is not an image bearer of God, right? It's like people are sacred and yet we have to speak at truth to power because God is truth and the more we speak truth is the more we experience God.
That's a beautiful thing.And really, the system itself will function more properly when we address the broken pieces.so my background is in quality systems. In some ways, I worked in clinical quality assurance for forever. And so my previous job to being a therapist was to tell people everything they ever did wrong in their whole lives, as it related to their work and when the systems were followed the good systems, things went well.
You know, I ask churches this often and they don't always know what to do with this question, but I think it's a good one. Is there a system in place? Is it being followed? And is it adequate? And when we say adequate for the church, it means, are we Giving space to image bearers so that they can flourish in all that Christ called them to.
And so when we're looking at it that way and going, how are we helping people look more like Jesus? Like what is discipleship really?  then I think that we're going to have a very different space. And that does mean abandoning things that maybe we have held dear or that were traditions. I definitely know that you and I here are speaking against like loyalty structures in a lot of ways.But what are we loyal to? And at the end of the day, if you're a Christian, that better be Jesus. Because the last thing I want to be is a goat, man. I don't want him going, well, you know, you said you did all this stuff in my name, but I don't know who you are. Like that, that's scary.Yes, no doubt. No doubt.Well, I so very much appreciate you hanging out with me today and telling us about Safe Church and talking about this because it is super important. I do hope people go and get your book if they haven't already, like it's available wherever all books live, right? But go get Andrew's book and read it and,  if you are a woman, read it and,  leaders, please be humble enough to hear, then we can have passionate debates as long as we are kind and good to each other.
Right. We should have them for sure.Exactly. Exactly. Women. I mean, women that have read this book, like so many are realizing, They're not alone in their abuse. They're not alone in their experience. You actually have stats now over 2, 800 women who've worked in the church to back up your experience.
Right.And that's sad.  Like we should not have to write more books like this. I would love to say that  this will be the last one because people are going to read it and they're going to repent and things are going to be, I'm all for that. I will dream big.Exactly. Thank you for having me.Yes.
Thank you so much. And we will have your, all of your information will be in the show notes.  We'll have all that information so people can find you if they would like to.Awesome. Thank you.Thank you so much. 
Thanks for joining me for today's episode of Hey Tabi. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to Tabitha Westbrook. com forward slash Hey Tabi. That's H E Y T A B I. And you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.