Sheila Wray Gregoire

Overview

Sheila Wray Gregoire, initially of "To Love, Honor, and Vacuum," and now of "Bare Marriage", focuses on Christian marriage and sexuality. Her primary activity within that domain is critiquing evangelical content.

Here are various articles addressing some of my concerns with Sheila:

• Bad Readers and Their Twitter Swarms
  • A quality assessment of Sheila's attack on Nancy Pearcey.
• Sheila Wray Gregoire, Sex and The Evangelical Girl
  • An assessment of Sheila's research.
• If Satan Took Up Marriage Counseling
  • I don't believe Tim Challies wrote this with Sheila in mind, but it is an excellent assessment of what is going on.
• The Unintended Consequences of Pathologizing Christianity
  • A generalized assessment of the unintended consequences of what Sheila is doing.
• The Shaunti Feldhahn Episode:
  • Shaunti’s Response
  • Sheila’s response
• Sheila and Critical Theory
  • An example of the critical theory influence in Sheila's teachings.
• Sheila endorsing the Enneagram
  • To be clear, Sheila acknowledges that the Enneagram has occult origins, but then tries to compare her following the Enneagram with it's occult-origins to us following Isaac Newton with his occult activities (even though we don't follow his occult activities).
• Bare Marriage for deconstruction
  • Angela Herrington is a leading deconstructionist, hosting the annual Deconstruction Summit, and has specifically included Bare Marriage as a "BEST FAITH DECONSTRUCTION PODCAST".
• A review by a former follower of Sheila:

Sheila preys on women’s vulnerability. I believe most of her followers have experienced real hurt and even abuse at the hands of other Christians and felt like no one would speak for them. They see Sheila as their advocate.

I know this because it happened to me. My marriage was in a bad place and my husband truly was mistreating me (NOT abusing, there is a difference, something Bare Marriage’s followers can’t seem to understand). I got no help from anyone or anywhere. When I discovered Sheila it was like water in a desert. And a lot of her strategies, especially setting boundaries and communicating clearly, really did help!

However, the deeper I got into Sheila’s teachings, the more critically I viewed my husband. I started adopting a selfish attitude toward marriage and believed myself justified because my husband had treated me so badly. I have two friends who follow Sheila, and I notice this behavior in them also. After a couple months of this, God bonked me on the head and showed me this way of thinking was not from Him. I stopped following Bare Marriage.

I think Sheila Gregoire honestly wants to help Christians have better marriages. Her mission statement is “help[ing] Christians find HEALTHY, BIBLICAL, EVIDENCE-BASED advice for their marriages and sex lives.” I can say with certainty she’s not accomplishing the second of those qualifiers and I have doubts about the first and third. While I and two other women hardly constitute a trend, my experience does make me wonder how many other women she’s leading astray.

I believe stories like mine highlight the need to teach solid, God-honoring ACTION for those in bad marriages. No one seemed to know what to say to me beyond “Ephesians 5, honey!” I am not against Ephesians 5! I am for it! But I needed to know what wifely submission looked like in my circumstances, and I really felt hung out to dry. I saw firsthand how easy it is for pseudo-biblical teachers like Sheila to fill that void. She was the first resource I found that told me what I could DO, not just how to pray and what Bible verses to repeat all day long. That’s what I needed. That’s what many of us need, and there’s a dearth of it in the Christian world.

If you'd like to add anything, or have corrections or recommendations, just reach out.