Love & Respect – and Abuse?

Guest Bios Show Transcript Love & Respect is a huge best-selling book. But instead of producing happy marriages, popular author and marriage blogger, Sheila Wray Gregoire, says it can lead to abuse. On this episode of The Roys Report, Sheila joins Julie to explain why she’s been warning couples about this book for years—and how a comprehensive study she commissioned gives hard evidence that Love & Respect is harmful. Sheila also tells her personal story of standing up to the evangelical industrial complex, namely Focus on the Family, and the consequences she suffered. This is an eye-opening podcast and definitely for adult audiences only. (Sheila speaks very openly about sex and marriage.) But it’s extremely helpful for helping Christians discern whether the messages they’ve received about sex and marriage are biblical. It also provides another example of how the evangelical industrial complex works. This Weeks Guests Sheila Wray Gregoire Sheila Wray Gregoire is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex! A popular speaker, marriage blogger, and award-winning author of nine books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, she wants to challenge Christians to go beyond pat answers on marriage to reach real intimacy. Sheila believes in authenticity, and gives real solutions to the very real and messy problems women, and couples, can face. She and her husband Keith spend a lot of their time touring North America in an RV, speaking at marriage conferences, hiking, and birdwatching. The parents to two adult daughters, you can usually find her in Belleville, Ontario, where she’s either knitting, blogging, or taking her grandson out for a walk. Show Transcript SPEAKERSSHEILA GREGOIRE, JULIE ROYS JULIE ROYS 00:04Love and Respect is a huge best selling book, but instead of producing happy marriages, my guest today says it can lead to abuse. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and today I’m going to be speaking with Sheila Ray Gregoire, a popular author and marriage blogger. She’s also someone who, for the past few years, has been warning the church that the popular book Love and Respect is harmful, and in some cases can lead to abuse. The author of Love and Respect, Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, denies the claim. And he instead says that his book, which has sold more than 2 million copies, has helped scores of Christian couples. Yet Gregoire now says she has documented evidence to support her claim. For her new book The Great Sex Rescue, Gregoire conducted a comprehensive study involving 20,000 women. And she says the study conclusively shows what she suspected all along; that teaching women to unconditionally respect their husbands and give sex as a duty to them, can lead to abuse. Today, I’ll explore the study and Gregoire’s objections to the book. I’ll also explore Gregoire’s claim that Focus On the Family, which promotes Dr. Eggerichs’ book, has turned a blind eye to the harmful messages the book conveys. Gregoire will also explain why she’s been willing to confront Focus publicly and take on what I’ve often referred to as the evangelicals celebrity machine. When you do this, folks, the consequences can be devastating to your career, but Sheila did it anyway. So I can’t wait to have this discussion with her. But before I get into that, I want to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University and Marquardt of Barrington. Judson is a top ranked Christian university providing a caring community where students can thrive and grow. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities and strong financial aid. Judson is located on a beautiful 90 acre campus just 36 miles northwest of Chicago.