In this fifth installment of our series, we compare 1985 to 2025 through themes of hope and despair, or what I call hope/lessness. For some, the year’s worst news was learning, “Those of us born before 1985 are now officially older than Mr. Belding,” and for others the best thing about 1985 was the premiere of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes.
Hope is found in our past, present, and future.
For those like film critic Sarah Welch-Larson, it was “a dark year in a dark decade in history.” Or, in the words of my writer friend Kristin Saatzer, good times can quickly devolve into “years like this one. Perhaps it left your heart tender and soul tired. You walked through valleys you didn’t choose and carried questions with seemingly no answers.”
Even while writing last year’s 1984 vs. 2024, I was dreading 2025. Sure enough, between political news, the fact that I still can’t afford to buy a house, and a host of other garbage, it was pretty bad. Nevertheless, in addition to finding hopecore videos, I also found hope.
In a sermon titled “Christmas Hope,” (my) Pastor Dale Garland explained how hope is found in our past, present, and future.1 As we’ll see, those themes are entwined with fun artifacts like The Golden Girls, Stranger Things, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’s “Die with a Smile,” and Tina Turner’s “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome),” alongside serious issues like dystopian democracies, women in church leadership, and the Satanic Panic.
Hope in the Past: Dystopian Democracies
Chronicling Zohran Mamdani’s epic election to the office of New York City Mayor, journalist Sam Sifton quotes, “‘Hope is alive,’ Mamdani said in his speech. Voters, he said, chose ‘hope over tyranny’ and ‘hope over despair.’” Mamdani intuitively knew to use words like “despair” and “hope.” In one sense, these are universal themes that can be used almost any time, any place. In another sense, the degree with which we feel their applicability was greatly intensified in 2025.
Events like Elon Musk’s bang and burn with DOGE, Epstein’s files, tariffs, and (with limited relief from inflation) a seemingly hopeless economy, plagued public consciousness. I remember reading about ’80s inflation in history books but didn’t realize the impact until I lived it. All things being equal, a family could sink below the poverty line simply because of grocery inflation. Reversal was one of Trump’s campaign promises, but inflation was at its highest since 2022, partly because of his tariffs.
For many, especially the underprivileged, the year felt dystopian due to uncertainty in a variety of arenas. In an article on Trump bombing Iran, syndicated columnist and son of Ronald Reagan—Michael Reagan—immediately compared 2025 to his father’s 1980 campaign.
Admitting President Reagan was “a more dignified…prequel to Donald Trump,” Michael explains how his father never detailed what he would do to Iran and how it “paid off.”2 Michael believes Trump’s “dogged public uncertainty” is an “art of the deal tactic” and concludes: “Let’s hope and pray that Trump’s infamous unpredictability ends this crisis so Iran becomes nuke free.”
People were conditioned to avoid 1984 scenarios (because of communism’s easy comparison to Big Brother) but missed our culture actually becoming Huxleyan.
The same day I read Michael Reagan’s column, someone sent me Mike Brock’s article “The Moral Imperative Of Clear Language,” explaining how crucial it is to be honest and straightforward. Brock quoted George Orwell, but in my opinion, his fears align more with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In 1985, Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (which I never found very funny) contrasted Orwell and Huxley in light of current events.
Postman’s son believes people were conditioned to avoid Nineteen Eighty-Four scenarios (because of communism’s easy comparison to Big Brother) but missed our culture actually becoming Huxleyan. Apparently, seeds were planted in the ’80s because (1) our president was an actor and polished communicator and (2) information wasn’t digested from printed newspapers (where words can be reviewed and discussed) but via screens (information disseminates quickly, is less nuanced, and is entertainingly image-based).
Postman’s analysis matches the plot of Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. As one of the best things I watched from 1985, Headroom tells the futuristic story of an investigative journalist’s consciousness uploaded into an AI hologram talking head. The TV movie illustrated Huxleyan entertainment-based “news,” as the elder Postman decried, seeing facts “drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” With predictions like virtual assistants, AI talking heads, video surveillance, and greedy corporate networks, my wife asked if art imitated 2025 or 2025 imitated 1985.
Michael Reagan’s hope was in Trump’s unpredictability, which is one way to handle foreign policies, but how does domestic chaos and disinformation help U.S. taxpaying citizens plan their lives? Making progress towards a freer society while removing unnecessary uncertainty was on the heart of one powerful Russian forty years ago.
Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, actively sketching out two reforms: Glasnost (openness for free expression) and Perestroika (economic restructuring). Two podcasts, “The Redefector” and “Wind of Change,” released five years apart, discuss a young Putin’s displeasure at Gorbachev’s handling of the USSR in the ’80s.
According to Wind of Change, ex-CIA agent John Sipher says, “[Putin has] been very, very successful about creating the same cynicism in the West that he thrives on there in Russia.” The hosts emphasize this by explaining there was “a hope, even an expectation” by Russians who grew up as the Cold War ended that democracy would permeate Russia. Instead they’ve seen Russian “authoritarian rule, corruption, and propaganda” pervade the U.S.
Like Putin, it’s easy to view the past nostalgically, trying to force people and situations back to how they were (some of which never existed since our memories are fickle). And while recapturing a “golden age” is impossible, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy good memories. Pastor Garland’s first point on the hope of our past, used scriptures like Psalms 103:11-12, Romans 8:1-2, Ephesians 1:7 to focus on our forgiven sin. Salvation from sin’s enslavement and death might be a Christian’s greatest restoration.
Upon viewing a gravestone inscribed “In Hope,” the protagonist of The Handmaid’s Tale ponders, “Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?” Only a resurrected believer could entertain the audacious thought that a corpse had hope. What if it was both? Could a corpse who had died to sin provide hope for survivors still struggling through life in the present?
Hope in the Present: Can There Be Biblical “Feminism”?
God of Hate or Hope: Pursuit of a Golden (Girls) Age
One dystopian tome not mentioned by Postman (probably because it also came out in 1985) is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The story tells of a United States where women lose all independence and are mostly used for breeding, like the protagonist “handmaid” Offred. Hulu’s adaptation was incredibly popular when it premiered in 2017 (as were book sales3) primarily because of viewers’ concerns around Trump’s first term. It should be no surprise then that the 2025 series finale had some of the highest viewing numbers in Nielsen’s history!
Golden Girls was sympathetic toward found family, independently-dependent people, and was approachably feminist. And people love(d) it.
Sadly, some of women’s rights won over forty (and more) years are being jeopardized (as in the SAVE Act). Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2025 novel Atmosphere is a retrospective on women at NASA in the mid-eighties. Hero Joan Goodwin’s arduous journey of becoming an astronaut is compelling, especially considering readers must painfully wait through half the book knowing what Joan can’t fathom: she’s a lesbian. After Joan acts on her feelings, the author does a phenomenal job of showing the closeted side of gay culture. It leads to conversations about the existence of a God who hates gay people (spoiler: they land on pantheism), harassment, and AIDS.
Golden Girls, a beloved sitcom that innovated TV by portraying empowered women, bravely advocated for other marginalized groups like the LGBTQ+ community, addressed the AIDS crisis, and confronted ageism. Remarkably, the show “reflected the progress made by society toward accepting women as equals to men,” filled the gap in the lull after the feminist movement’s second wave, and seems to have been instrumental in galvanizing the movement’s third wave. How could a show about elderly women be widely watched in 1985 and continue to be popular in 2025?
Humor and empathy. Golden Girls makes us laugh while demonstrating how to care for others. The serious subjects add gravitas but the humor relieves the tension so the audience feels good about learning how to love others.
Golden Girls was sympathetic toward found family, independently-dependent people, and was approachably feminist. And people love(d) it. In other words, many women found their strength in more than power suits.
Evangelicalism’s Heretics: Becoming the Pastor’s Wife
Beth Allison Barr’s 2025 book Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry is a balanced history on women in church leadership and how they were outlawed. Barr quotes historian Elizabeth Flowers: “To fully understand American evangelicalism in the post-war period…it is essential to cast our gaze on Southern Baptists [SBC].” (Although I am an SBC member and a centrist conservative Christian, I hope by reviewing the following history we can make better, God-inspired decisions for the future.)
Barr, who has a PhD in medieval history, finds it difficult to stomach the lie that “women in church leadership was a product of the 1960s feminist movement.”
By 1984, the SBC had ordained 200 women, which was on the same trajectory as “mainline, liberal denominations.” But suddenly the SBC reversed course, saying “the Bible excludes women from pastoral leadership because”4 woman was created second and was first to sin. That’s it!
Certainly, this reasoning ignores Scriptures like Romans 5 where Saint Paul frames the Fall as squarely Adam’s fault, but I would have expected the SBC to include a few New Testament references (although, as Barr shows, any of Saint Paul’s questioned verbiage doesn’t fit complementarianism very well either). Barr, who has a PhD in medieval history, finds it difficult to stomach the lie that “women in church leadership was a product of the 1960s feminist movement.”
Her book is chock-full of examples from every century including the early church (Priscilla, Junia, etc.), medieval times (Milburga, Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, etc.), and…well, the 1980s (Nancy Bartley Gatlan, Sarah Wood Lee, Kathy Hoppe, the SBC’s 1,600 women in seminaries and aforementioned 200+ ordained women). Barr explains, “Modern Protestantism owes much to these brave women who chose to become heretics…in the eyes of their communities as they simultaneously became grassroots symbols of hope for the spread of evangelicalism.”
Admittedly, I wrestle with how to biblically understand women’s roles in church leadership—a position I’m privileged to have as a white man, but not a luxury many women who were called by God had. If women overcoming struggle (you know, little things like imprisonment and execution) brought hope, we should resolve that as abysmal as times may be now, we can create hope by investing in future generations. And I believe a vast amount of that improvement will come from women.
Interestingly, Barr finds hope for the present in an SBC policy from the past: “Instead of declaring that God calls women primarily to dependent ministry roles as homemakers and pastors’ wives or declaring that God calls women primarily to independent ministry roles as pastors and missionaries, the SBC made room for both.”
Almost in disbelief she excitedly queries, “Can you imagine if, when SBC women expressed a call to ministry, they weren’t told it was probably a call to marry a minister? Can you imagine if women like Joyce Rogers, who loved her role as a pastor’s wife, hadn’t insisted that all women called to ministry do what she felt called to do?” (See Alisa Ruddell’s excellent article “The Making of Biblical Womanhood and the Missing Mother of God (Part 1),” which gives more background on Barr and other authors’ thoughts.)
I am saddened that we seem closer to Atwood’s dystopia, certainly regarding Christian nationalism’s misogynists asserting dominance in deed if not directly calling women “heretics” and troublemakers. And how pathetic that I’m just grateful Barr’s book even got published when women evangelizing should be a normal part of Western Christianity. Can’t theology and evangelism come from college and commoners regardless of gender?
Running Up That Hill Toward Glory (with Grandma)
God’s truths don’t have to come from scholarly minds.
I loved R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God; maybe it was because it mixed pop culture (he wasn’t afraid to say it was okay to go to horror movies—in 1985—to Christians!) with hardcore theology in an accessible manner. Sproul talked about Saint Paul’s conversion and “immediate benefits—fruits of justification,” quoting Romans 5:1-2. It’s no coincidence that these verses were also on Pastor Garland’s list. After all, we currently stand in “undeserved privilege,” while looking toward future glory.
In a recent video, writer and rapper Sho Baraka makes the case that God’s truths don’t have to come from scholarly minds.
I call it colloquial theology: ways in which people articulate a heavy truth with a simple statement…[D]on’t insult the hermeneutics of my grandma or the saints who came before us because their theology didn’t come from the seminary and they didn’t have all the right words, but their theology came from suffering and trust. It’s the negro spirituals, it’s despite the conditions we live in right now, I see greater conditions with my spiritual eyes.
Baraka defends the recently dismissed idea that “God is still on the throne” by asserting, “The throne symbolizes: (1) covenant faithfulness, (2) it communicates hope, and (3) divine presence.” The truth that God reigns is not diminished by coming from Baraka’s grandma; instead, hope is strengthened and proved because it was born out of “suffering and trust.” This hope of liberation can come in a variety of forms.
Resurrected in Stranger Things Season 4 and pivotal to this year’s final season, Kate Bush’s “Running up That Hill” is part of a greater work. Toby Manning celebrated Kate Bush’s 1985 Hounds of Love album, saying:
Dreams and imagination, as expressions of liberation and rejections of convention, will always represent a threat to the men in power, who will repress such utopian impulses and reassert the ‘realism’ of the status quo. Bush, with her intimate connection to childhood, to nature and the uncanny, runs gleefully contrary to such constriction and contraction, and she never expressed this more joyfully, more eccentrically or more commercially than on Hounds of Love.
It’s not a coincidence that the Duffer Brothers used Kate Bush’s hit as Max’s strength and compass (Night Rider has one of my favorite covers). Stranger Things has a history of portraying strong women (I love this meme where Erica would give Pennywise a run for his money) and making music an integral part of its storytelling (here’s every song from the series).
Music: Hope in Hallelujah
Heavy Metal Mania: Hardcore Hope
Many of us might relate to music’s importance as Poker Face’s Natasha Lyonne admitted, “[I’d] be dead without it,” so it’s no surprise that visual media relies on it so heavily. Twenty-twenty-five’s Freaky Tales is a perfect representation of the mid-eighties (albeit from an Oakland, California perspective). Portions heavily homage 1981’s Scanners, 1984’s Repo Man, 1985’s The Last Dragon, and 1985’s Krush Groove. Loosely based on Russel Simmons’s life, Krush Groove is notable just for featuring Run-D.M.C. (and their smash hit “King of Rock”), LL Cool J, Kurtis Blow, and the real Russel Simmons.
That punk mentality, one of rebellion and yet a desire to protect, seek justice, and reform society, is a remarkably precise description of Jesus, Christians, and God’s kingdom.
But whereas Krush Groove focuses on rap (specifically in New York), Freaky Tales includes many types of music, including punk (Operation Ivy, MDC, Soup, etc.). And yet, punk is not just music but a mentality, as seen in the way James Gunn’s 2025 Superman has been universally dubbed “punk rock.” Somehow that is an accurate description for the film’s fun and revolutionary spirit (check out Christianity Today’s “Why Superman Matters” review for, among many things, a theme of hope).
That punk mentality, one of rebellion and yet a desire to protect, seek justice, and reform society, is a remarkably precise description of Jesus, Christians, and God’s kingdom. It’s not about adhering to social norms of power, misogyny, and dystopia, but about God’s kingdom of the upside down, where the poor and humble are the victors.
As a metal fan I’m always interested in how harder music influences culture and Christianity. The 2025 podcast “Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” centers around the Satanic Panic (which we’ll get to) and if you want a great summary on the Church’s aversion to rock and roll, listen to Episode 5 (the episode also covers religion’s propensity to cover up real evil, like sexual predators and power-hungry narcissists).
In 1985’s fearful climate of asserting that metalheads worshipped Satan (especially considering conservatives’ grip on, and incessant commentary about, culture), it’s a wonder rock survived. But there were bastions of hope, as Kurt Wolff explains: “When we think of metal on MTV, we think Headbangers Ball…However, that program grew out of another, Heavy Metal Mania, which debuted in 1985 and ran for about a year. It was hosted mostly by Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. The show featured guests like Lemmy of Motorhead and Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden.”5
One of the most fun links between the decades was the sequel to the ’80s masterpiece This is Spinal Tap, released this year as Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. But when it comes to real bands who are actually good, Her Last Sight’s recent album SEASONS // WINTER features an uplifting intro speaking about hope, which segues into the song titled “HOPE.”
And even Parkway Drive, a band I think of as cynical, rang in their new single “Sacred” with hopeful lyrics. Lead singer Winston McCall explained,
Our lives and the way we exist in the world has been pushed further and further through the lenses and frames of negativity and hopelessness…We sell the unique parts of us most precious just to buy back manufactured pieces of self in order that we may feel whole again. ‘Sacred’ is our identity…Never lose sight and never lose hope.
But there were those pessimists such as Dying Wish’s “I Brought You My Soul (Your World Brought Me Despair),” with lyrics such as: “I will die hopeless” and “Pain is a weapon, Pull the trigger to find salvation.” While categorically contrasted, Tina Turner’s “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)” shared the same societal despair.
Like a normal human, I often think about that image of Turner commanding Mad Max’s fictional Thunderdome, while simultaneously crafting a real song about broken societal systems with a post-idealism tone that could actually top pop charts.
ExtraOrdinary and Interpersonal Pop
Generally, pop music is fluff, providing escapism through themes of partying or romantic love, like 2025’s ROSÉ & Bruno Mars’s “APT.,” and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and 1985’s “You Spin me Round (Like a Record)” by Dead or Alive and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” I’ve learned this shallowness doesn’t mean the artists or songs are bad; if anything, it shows society’s search for hope and salvation.
Many 2025 lyricists were focused on the internal: mental health and identity (with little to no public awareness about either of those in 1985). Top performing songwriters in 1985 were more resigned about external concerns (like society and those in power) with songs like Turner’s aforementioned anthem, Wang Chung’s “To Live and Die in L.A.” (from the 1985 film of the same name), and Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” But one common denominator was relationships, and interpersonal dynamics are a sure money-maker.
In 2025, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars rode Beyonce’s 2024 overalls with their countryesque song “Die with a Smile,” which reached Billboard’s number one song of the year. The lyrics take hope as permission to say “I don’t know,” which is dependent upon actively living in the moment.
This was my soul-searching question: In the midst of hopelessness, can I still truthfully offer hallelujah (Hebrew for “praise God”)?
Benson Boone recognized gratitude and peace while begging God not to take away the “Beautiful Things” in his life. I’m not planning on doing backflips to show I appreciate my family, but I could stop ignoring their texts. However, it was early in 2025 when I realized that the theme of this article would be hope/lessness that my fifteen-year-old daughter introduced me to Alex Warren’s “Ordinary.”
Even though I wasn’t listening to it every day as the song topped charts for months, the lyric “hopeless hallelujah” haunted me. This was my soul-searching question: In the midst of hopelessness, can I still truthfully offer hallelujah (Hebrew for “praise God”)? Or is my praise hopeless because God can’t or won’t answer me (as the ladies of Atmosphere concluded)?
I believe the answer, and therefore our hope, is found in glorifying the Holy One. As the L.A. Times says, “Alex Warren’s ‘Ordinary’ might be the most improbable: A stark and brooding ballad full of lurid Christian imagery—‘Shatter me with your touch / Oh Lord, return me to dust,’ goes one line—it’s about a guy seeking the kind of sexual-spiritual fulfillment not typically found on the beach or at a barbecue.” Not exactly what R.C. Sproul was thinking, but he would have agreed with Warren’s theory of finding extraordinary hope in God in the midst of the ordinary.
Interlude: The Satanic Panic—Fanatical Hope & the Militant Minority
To truly understand the ’80s we must acknowledge the Satanic Panic, a conspiracy theory that Satanists were sacrificing children across the United States. As the podcast “Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” describes, the seeds were sown as far back as the ’60s, but were ignited by the 1980 book Michelle Remembers. Late 1983 saw a new wave of panic when employees of a large daycare, the McMartin Preschool, were accused of ritual sexual abuse.
The Moral Majority were “more accurately the Militant Minority…America’s new old-fashioned zealots.”
According to the L.A. Times, “At the height of the highly publicized McMartin case in 1985, authorities said they had identified as many as 1,200 alleged victims of sexual abuse and 56 uncharged suspects. Scores of others were accused by preschoolers and their parents.” Even as some members of the prosecution expressed doubts (September 1985), journalists continued reporting on the case as fact. Naturally, secular media was enthralled, turning to Christian “experts” like Mike Warnke, who, “in 1985…was featured on an episode of ABC’s 20/20 titled ‘The Devil Worshippers.’”
But Warnke was a fraud, as was often the case with Christian “authorities” during the Satanic Panic.6 It’s worth mentioning that once the Panic was over, the FBI/NCCAN determined none of the 11,000 cases were credible. Although grifters were only one of many costs to society from the Panic, high-profile church leaders became the captains of American Christianity—men like Jerry Falwell Sr., Paige Patterson, and Paul Pressler.
Jerry Falwell Sr., along with Tim LaHaye, Charles Stanley, D. James Kennedy, Greg Dixon, and Paul Weyrich founded the Moral Majority, a powerful political bloc which, in 1985, had just re-elected Reagan and campaigned heavily on anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion platforms. But historian Haynes Johnson felt they were a misnomer, full of fanatical hope and intolerance,7 the Moral Majority were “more accurately the Militant Minority…America’s new old-fashioned zealots.”
Cosper’s thesis is that the Satanic Panic’s obsession with “externalized evil” allowed true evil to prey on Christians and non-Christians.
Mike Cosper, host and producer of “Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” spends significant time unraveling how church leadership affected the Satanic Panic. Cosper explains that “in 1984, [Pressler and Patterson’s SBC takeover] was being framed even by the moderates in the convention as a holy war.” However, Pressler was eventually accused and reached settlements for sexual abuse and assault (including pedophilia and rape), and Patterson was accused of covering up many cases of abuse. Cosper’s thesis is that the Satanic Panic’s obsession with “externalized evil” allowed true evil to prey on Christians and non-Christians.
Barr and Cosper don’t mention each other8 but it is fascinating that both talk about earthshaking movements inside the SBC in 1984. It appears the ramifications felt in 1985 (such as the sudden about-face on women in ministry) happened in part, whether directly or indirectly, because of Pressler and Patterson’s hyper-conservative makeover-takeover.9
Since “clergy trust has dropped steadily…from a high of 67 percent in 1985,”10 it’s no surprise that the biggest factor in low clergy trust is sex abuse scandals. And, in full transparency, this includes more liberal/progressive churches and movements too. Highest clergy trust is found in churches that allow the ordination of women and “at least half of the lay leadership” are women (as opposed to lowest levels of trust where women aren’t allowed ordination and women in lay leadership are a minority). I’d wager Falwell, Patterson, and Pressler began with good intentions, but they allowed fanatical hope and fear and political power to rule their decisions.
Capitalizing on fearmongering (as we saw in 1983 vs. 2023), they became Pharisaical, preaching a Republican Christianity and exchanging the hope of God for building a foundation of Christian Nationalism and conspiracy theorists. But all was (and is) not lost. Many conservative congregations didn’t become far-right racist/homophobic/misogynist crusaders. God’s upside-down kingdom, the one of spiritual power eschewing political control, of disarming arrogance with humility, of compassion rather than hatred, continues to provide hope.
Hope in the Future? We Can Only Hope
What if Christians held onto hope in God with a focus on serving others instead of themselves?
I’ve criticized the Church sharply in this article because self-critique coupled with humility in listening to outside views is a beautiful, distinctive tradition. I’m allowed indignation as long as it’s righteous, right? But, as I learned from Brett McCracken’s Uncomfortable, our common interpretation of authenticity as purely deconstruction, isn’t a complete perspective.
There were Christians in 1985 who didn’t believe a politician or religious leader was their savior. There were those who, despite fears of satanic ritual abuse and nuclear war and culture war, still held onto hope in God (my parents were among them). What if Christians in 2025 (and now 2026) held onto hope in God with a focus on serving others instead of themselves?
Film critic Sarah Welch-Larson confided: “The way that rage gets channeled is what makes me personally hopeful. I see it in direct action, in neighbors helping neighbors, and in art that speaks truth to power.” In a special edition of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood disclosed, “Offred herself has a private version of the Lord’s Prayer and refuses to believe that this regime has been mandated by a just and merciful God. In the real world today, some religious groups are leading movements for the protection of vulnerable groups, including women.”
What if all Christian women were able to serve however God led them, whether that was through leading efforts to protect vulnerable groups or assisting in their households or leading in churches? Barr acknowledges American evangelicalism is a majority-white movement and that it’s time to “learn from its Black sisters and brothers on their terms, in their space.” Believing it so firmly, she actually builds her final chapter around this, saying, “I think the Black pastor’s wife role offers hope for the future.”
From my experience and research, Barr is correct; but, to clarify, simply having white women copy Black women would deliver poor results. Instead, dynamics must shift. Diverse women and men must be welcomed into church leadership with such authority they’re realistically considered “one of the primary decision makers, to the point that they could make some changes you would be uncomfortable with.”11
It’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” There is a powerful powerlessness in giving the past, present, and future over to God.
I know the God of peace is “our source of hope.” This isn’t solely based on a future hope of heaven but is also a tangible hope in positive change now where man’s agenda of makeover-takeover conservatism, under the guise of biblical inerrancy,12 burns away as dross under the flame of unbiased biblical interpretation properly married to church tradition.
And after casting our votes for equitable leadership, how now shall we (plebians) live? Remember Kristin Saatzer’s disillusionment with the year? Her devotional concluded: “Even in the cruelest years, God is faithful. We bow in thanks, not only for the victories but for His steadfast presence in the in-between. God was here. God is here. And God will be faithful still.”
How perfectly Saatzer’s “was, is, will be” gratitude mirrors the three types of hope I’ve covered here, not only because we’re both geniuses, but also because it’s biblical. Maybe our lesson from 1985 and 2025 is to be strengthened in the three hopes of Scripture, and whether we’re interpreting a verse or attempting to plan for the future, it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” There is a powerful powerlessness in giving the past, present, and future over to God.
- Sermon given on 11/30/25. ↩︎
- The pay off, as I mentioned here in 1981 vs. 2021, was that on the day Reagan took office, the Iranians released the American hostages. ↩︎
- Shortly after Trump started his first term, Atwood penned: “In the wake of the recent American election…Basic civil liberties are seen as endangered, along with many of the rights for women won over the past decades.” (Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, Introduction, 2017 Edition, pp. xviii-xix). ↩︎
- H. Leon McBeth, “Role of Women in Southern Baptist History,” 1977; quoted by Barr, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, p. xx. ↩︎
- 1985 was a milestone for Christian metal with the founding of HM Magazine (then called Heaven’s Metal) with the purpose of “honestly and accurately cover[ing] the current state of hard music and alternative culture from a faith-based perspective.” ↩︎
- Like Beatrice Sparks from 1971’s Go Ask Alice and 1978’s Jay’s Journal, Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith from 1980’s Michelle Remembers, Lauren Stratford from 1988’s Satan’s Underground, etc. ↩︎
- Haynes Johnson says, “Without realizing it, Hoffer had described the elements that made up the Moral Majority, or Christian right, thirty years later” and quotes Eric Hoffer from 1951’s The True Believer: “All mass movements… irrespective of the doctrines they teach and the programs they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred, and intolerance…” ↩︎
- I don’t remember Barr mentioning the Satanic Panic, but Cosper mentions women’s ordination in the context of Pressler and Patterson’s takeover of the SBC in Episode 8: “Forgetting What Happened.” ↩︎
- Granted, there were other factors too. In 1983 the IRS challenged clergy tax exemption and in 1984 Congress stepped in, protecting pastors. But the writing was on the wall and the “SBC shifted to a more conservative view…that refused to ordain women, thereby excluding women from the tax exemption” (Barr, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, 2025, p. 141). It was at this exact moment in 1984 that the SBC, who had 200 ordained women working in ministry, restricted women from ministry. ↩︎
- Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church, 2020, IVP, p. 20. ↩︎
- Steve Chang, quoted by Brett McCracken in Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community, Crossway, Wheaten, Illinois, 2017, p. 143. ↩︎
- To be clear, I believe the Bible is inerrant. What infuriates me is that people like Patterson and Pressler used inerrancy to push homophobic, racist, misogynistic, and presidential kingmaking agendas, and yes, also used biblical inerrancy as a guise for pedophilia, child porn, rape, and covering up abuse (as mentioned above, see “Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” especially Episode 5, among other references. ↩︎
