Kathryn House: Learning and Unlearning in Community

In this episode, Dr. Kathryn House joins Dr. Reyes to talk about her childhood in the foothills of North Carolina, where her deep love for the church led to a call to ministry as a young person. She credits the faithful voices of friends and mentors who challenged and affirmed her to recognize her gifts in ministry and teaching. 

Kathryn is a theologian and Baptist pastor who calls Louisville, KY home, by way of Boston, MA, and Morganton, NC. Her research interests include white evangelical purity culture, anti-racist theology, trauma and theology, theologies of vocation, religious leadership, and Baptist theology. Kathryn works to join in the creation of communities committed to deeper liberation and greater flourishing for all.

Rate, review, and subscribe to Sound of the Genuine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Patrick:  Today on the show, we have Dr. Kathryn House who takes us on a journey from her childhood in the foothills of North Carolina where her deep love for the church led to a call in ministry as a young person. She tells us about the mentors, friends, colleagues who affirmed her and recognized her gifts for ministry and teaching. I'm so glad you get to hear from my friend Dr. Kathryn House. 

All right, Dr. House, it is good to have you on the Sound of the Genuine. How are you doing today?

Kathryn House: I'm doing well. Thank you so much, Dr. Reyes. It is good to be here with you all today. 

Patrick: Okay. So we have a lot of friends in common, we met in Boston. I know some things about you, but I don't know where you grew up, who your people are, what was your neighborhood like, where your energy came from? Tell me about yourself. Take them back to the beginning.

Kathryn House: Yeah. So I was born in the Eastern part of North Carolina, a really tiny town called Bethel, North Carolina. My dad's family was from Bethel. When I was young, we moved to Morganton, North Carolina, which is in the Western part - and we moved to be close to my mom's family. I grew up in Morganton in what we call the foothills of North Carolina. I grew up there with lots of aunts and uncles and cousins and sort of that's our hub. My mom is still there. Her brother and sisters are still there.

And so we are so fortunate to have a little bit of a home base to be able to come back to. We're all in lots of different places but Western North Carolina is home. So I was, there from seven until I went through high school and went to college at Duke - so still was in North Carolina.

So I grew up in a Southern Baptist church and I had felt a call to ministry when I was in, I guess middle school, so late middle school. And it was at a church camp kind of thing. And I felt a call to Christian ministry under the sort of umbrella of mission work. As a Southern Baptist woman, mission work is a place where women had leadership roles that did not require ordination because you know, this was mid to late nineties.

So by then things had really changed in the Southern Baptist convention. And, that really wasn't on my radar at that time - all of those politics of Southern Baptist life. You know, later it would be this question of ordination or seminary. So I just had always really been interested in church. I loved church. I loved the Bible. I loved going. I love learning. I loved reading. I loved my friends. I loved just studying Christianity. 

Patrick: Where did that come from? Is that like a family thing? Like, did you go with family? I mean, you said you have this in the foothills of North Carolina, was it like your whole family was really interested in church? Were you just like a church nerd, like where did that come from? Or who did that come from? Maybe that's a better way to ask that.

Kathryn: Oh no, I'm [an] unabashed church nerd. We were really involved in church. I have a younger brother and my brother and I grew up with two cousins, super close - who were really close in age to us. So my brother, he is a Presbyterian pastor. My cousin is a Southern Baptist pastor. Out of the four of us, three are ministers and I, you know, I have a PhD in theology. We were in church all the time the doors were open. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. GA's and act teens and camp. Really a lot of the fabric of my life is in those rhythms.

Even now those rhythms are so ingrained. You know, now I have a lot of fancy frameworks for thinking about them. I think a lot about habitus. I think about the habitus of the south. You know, no ball games on Wednesday nights because that was church. Like you're not going to go to practice. Like the ethos, the schedule of a place was so intertwined with its religious landscape, which was deeply Protestant, although not only Protestant and a lot of different expressions of evangelicalism. Not solely that but at least those were strong in the place where I'm from. It was always very much a part of what I did and who I was. 

Patrick: And so what was this communities hope for you? You said you went off to Duke, but I imagine there were some conversations, like if you're a church nerd, was ministry already in there? What was the community calling for you especially as you enter into kind of adulthood?

Kathryn:  You know, I was a religion major in college but I really had to sort of carve out that path. I had a hard time in college. College was tough for me. It was a whole new world in so many ways. A whole new world of class, of race, of coming into an awareness of my own whiteness, of new lenses for understanding religion, understanding the history of religion in the United States, of beginning to make connections to justice and my faith in really new ways that I hadn't known about before. I'll say being a very confessional person in a committed religion program that asks you, invites you to study your tradition in a really different way, was tough for me. I don't think I quite knew all those parts and how to do it but I had really good friends in college. You know, those friends who challenged me to think more deeply about my faith. Who said, are you sure, like that's all what you want to do? Like have you studied the history of mission? Do you know this? And I hadn't. I had a lot of learning and a lot of unlearning that I did in that time.

My faith was challenged, it was reformed, it was transformed, in that time. The last two years of college, I ended up auditing classes at Duke's divinity school. And that was a really powerful time for me too. I got to audit Stanley Hauerwas ethics course. I got to audit a course with Bishop Peter Story on his work to end apartheid in South Africa and his role as a faith leader there. Those deeply faithful voices were really important to helping to re-shape and re-form some of the thinking that I had. I started visiting Episcopal churches. I fell in love with the liturgy of Episcopal churches. But a lot of challenge to a faith that had sort of, I felt like I had all the answers for, and it got a lot of what I think is important challenge and important reshaping along the way.

And then I had a year of vocational discernment actually. Sort of took a little bit of a circuitous route after college. My first job out of college was driving a tractor at an apple orchard. I did not have what you might call a tight plan for my post-college life and I learned to drive a tractor in a few days, and then I led school tours in an apple orchard there in Morganton. I taught kids about apples and I drove them in this giant wagon and I loved it. I worked in a coffee shop. I taught high school English. And kind of in that year of discernment, this opportunity opened up for some of us to live in intentional community together in Raleigh. It was through Duke chapel, you know, it was an opportunity for recent graduates to live together in intentional community, work with nonprofits in the Raleigh Durham area, have mentors and spend time discerning what was next for them. And really I discerned a call to seminary.

Patrick: Okay. So you leave school, you take this opportunity, you’re driving a tractor, you're doing a coffee shop, coming back and living in an intentional community, thinking about ministry. When is it that the light bulb goes off, like, okay, I need to figure this out? I want to go be a pastor. I want to go to the mission field. Like what was the conversation? Who were you having it with? 

Kathryn: Even through college that idea had stayed with me. I think I just kind of didn't know what to do with it anymore. I didn't know that next step to take and I had gotten encouragement. You know, Patrick, I'm really grateful for the folks in my life who have intentionally spoken to me and recognize gifts and named call. My youth pastor Reverend Eddy Bunton did that for me when I was growing up, encouraged me, put opportunities in my path for leadership and really for the development of my own capacities as a leader.

And I would say in this discernment program after college, I got to work with with Reverend Laura Evans Mon, a brilliant pastor whose work on social justice and community advocacy really meant a lot to me and opened my eyes to what it could mean to be a pastor. She was the first person who was a minister and a woman that I had ever worked with. And really before that time I wasn't sure that women could be ministers. It wasn't something I had been exposed to. So during college and right after, began sort of reaching out and also just going to services or getting to know women who were pastors. Reverend Anne Hodges- Coppel, who's an Episcopal priest in Durham and was connected with Duke at the time. And I got to know Anne and her ministry. And so there were ministers who were women who I guess whose lives and ministry sparked for me that this could even be on the table for me.

It wasn't as a Southern Baptist - that was not going to be a path that was available to me. It wasn't an option. And so my exposure to different religious traditions, to women in leadership was really that spark for me that helped me say, oh, could this be a possibility for me? I've always wanted to be in Christian ministry. I love teaching. I love working with kids. I love talking about literature and books and, working in camps. That's always been a part of my life, but I didn't know that it could be expressed. Like I had no idea about the academic world. I did not know that you went from A to B to C to E. 

So I have been a person who just asked a lot of questions. The system was never clear to me. It was never clear cut. So after college, when working with Laura she said to me, Hey, do you want to go to divinity school? Is this what you want to do? Like, do you want to go get an MDiv? But I think I was also like, well, if I get an MDiv, what am I going to do with it? Like, am I still going to be Baptist? You know, I still felt this sort of identity with my tradition with its polity, you know, that was sort of who I was in a lot of ways.

So honestly the deadline for for applications was rapidly approaching. And I had a really good friend and he just said, Kathryn this is exactly what you're supposed to do. There's no one here to give you permission. I know there's no one here to tell you this is the next right step, but just apply. Turn in the application, ask for the letters, just do it. You're ready. Just do it. So I did it. 

When I was in undergrad, I had met a woman early on who had come to one of the fellowship groups I was a part of. And then she was also a religion major and we'd sort of known each other in passing. And when I thought of places where I only knew one woman personally, other than Laura, who had gone to divinity school, and I knew that she had gone to Boston University School of Theology.

And so I just emailed her and I said, “Hi, do you like it? Like, could I come?” And she was like yes, like please! So I ended up getting to stay with her and her roommate, both of whom like were great friends. And I went and I visited BU and I visited their schools in Cambridge that weekend and honestly just felt this openness at BU to explore.

I did not have all the answers, but I just kept feeling like this was my language. Like this was the stuff I was good at and always had been. Like, it's how I understood the world. It was that texture, those stories, like those metaphors, it was those conversations. Like I went and I visited classes and I think I was like that nerd who was like, I'm the visiting student who's going to contribute to the conversation! You know, like I was like, I've got something to say. It took a long time, but I got into BU and I decided to go. I'm just going to take this leap.

I met some really great friends and have stayed friends for decades. It was this heart connection of like, okay, I know I am showing up and I know no one. I don't know how to go to grad school. I don't know what I'm going to do with this degree. I'm not even a part of a denomination that's going to ordain me with it. I didn't know. I just knew it was the next right step. I always think about the next right step. And so that was it for me and I just loved seminary. I remember those moments of seeing Dr. Shelly Rambo, who would be my advisor, teach. And I had never had a woman professor who was a theologian. I didn't know that existed until I saw Shelly teaching. Dr. Jennifer Knust, who was a Baptist woman and a minister and a New Testament scholar, and who was brilliant. They changed my life. Dr. Walter Fluker, getting to work with him as a postdoc and getting to work with Dr. Knust and Shelly Rambo.

I had a good friend who was in Boston and he said, there's this neighborhood called Jamaica Plain, and I just think you would like it. You should go check it out. And I literally googled “Baptist“ and “Jamaica Plain.” I was like, oh, there's this neighborhood that I might like, let me just see if there's a Baptist church there. And I took the bus to this church and I showed up and there were kids running around. The pastor was a woman who had gone to Wake Forest which is in North Carolina. And when I told her I went to Duke, she gave me total crap about it. And I was like, oh my gosh, could this be real?

She preached, she talked about Frederick Buechner. They were talking about the activism work that they were doing. The church had actually recently burned down and they were meeting in a UU meeting house, and still to extend that welcome to me and the spirit that was in that place, I was like, is this real? Could I have found a Baptist church that speaks to me, that is accepting of who I am as a woman, that has a woman who is a, like she's a pastor, she's here! She's from the same places, she knows these conversations. I ended up doing my field ed there and I've been a member since 2006.

So there were just some connections that I made really in that first year of seminary that grounded me and formed me to be able to see myself as someone to have friends, to have conversations, but honestly to keep getting my mind expanded, right? I am so thankful for the openness and generosity of friends who still had really different theological beliefs than me, you know? Who were Catholic, who were lots of different kinds of Protestant, you know, or Methodists, like lots of Methodists. Right? And I'd actually been baptized a Methodist. I've been baptized three times. I know you're not supposed to be but we Baptists, we'll get you in there more than once. So theologically…that can be theologically assessed in many ways.

I'm so grateful for ecumenical communities that make space for people who are figuring out questions and are in between, and don't even know they're in between because they don't know what's coming next. But they want a place to have deep conversations and be vulnerable and say, Hey, [I] kind of have this thing that I believed for a really long time, and now I'm starting to hear things that make me think of it differently. But this belief is really important to who I am. And not only that, it is how I am able to participate in deeply meaningful communities to me and my family. And if I stop thinking this or I choose this other path, I don't know that I can go home. I don't know what it's going to be like for me to keep having those conversations as a different person with the people who have loved me and who I love deeply. And those are hard conversations to have.  

I've been so fortunate to be able to have found communities where I could be myself - a lot of different stages of myself - and that there are people I can grow with and who I could fight with, you know, but love so deeply that our love for one another, our friendship was worth those conversations. That we were changed together. Like we were changed together and have been. 

One of the most meaningful relationships is my peer group: Reverend Kate Wilkinson, Reverend Cat Dodson and Dr. Xochitl Alviso. We've stayed close. We've gone to one another's installations and spoken at services and ordinations and meaningful moments in each other's lives of transition to new positions and of just that support for one another too.

I feel really lucky to have had important friendships along the way that have also helped me know who I am and trust both that really early calling, but what was to come. I'm so grateful that I got to meet other Baptist scholars who are women like Dr. Eileen Campbell Reed, who's been such an incredible mentor to me. And my pastor in Boston, Reverend Ashlee Wiest-Laird. I am so grateful to have them as part of my story. And as it continues for each.

Patrick: This kind of our last question our kind of wrap up here around…I mean, I'm hearing it in the story - How much of your call and what you do now, is tied to these incredible women that have surrounded you, have inspired you that have been the first, the first person you've seen in this role, or to teach you in this way, how much of that has to do with community of your call? However you're seeing that these days, and how much has to do with hey, you're a church nerd - That kid, that little Kathryn that was like just excited about church?

Kathryn: That's a great question, Patrick. And I would say it's all in there together. I do think that that kind of spark, that drive, that first love of church…I will say there was a moment when I was really young and I had heard about being a philosopher. And I was like, oh, that sounds really cool. And then I think I remember learning for some reason about CS Lewis when I was younger. He was a theologian and that was being a philosopher about God. And I was like, oh, that's what I want to be! Like, I want to be a theologian. I didn't follow it in any particular way, but I remember that connection. I think that call, that spark, that deep knowledge of who I am and of the kind of work I want to do in the world, the kind of conversations I want to be a part of, the kind of thinking I want to do, the kind of relationships I want to build in the world are so deeply informed by my love of God, my love of the Christian Church, my love of the good that it can be but as a theologian, my research/my work was really about the harm that it had caused.

I researched purity culture, white evangelical purity culture. And for me allowing my love of God, my deep commitment as a Christian, being deeply challenged by the stories of woundedness and of deep harm that were coming out in the early 2000s when I started my PhD.

So that was really the thing that was sort of my guiding project. It was saying, you know, there were certain stories that were told about what it meant to be Christian. And I grew up in the nineties, in this conversation around purity culture - there was a particular story told about sex and marriage and gender, that fused that with Christianity in a really tight way that was also always raced and always classed.

And to begin to question the truth of those stories, to question, whether to say, I don't think this was the story that played out and also that it was good to really take seriously, to take as my starting point, the harm of a theological idea of a theological culture, of theological messaging.

And to say, actually, I'm going to start with believing these women. I'm going to start with the narratives of harm. I'm going to start with the fact that this has happened, and I'm going to let that norm what I know to be true about Christianity. I'm a person who has, has loved Christian faith and been Christian for as long as I can remember, but it was the harm that I had seen it do. My own work was to go deeper into the racialized history of purity culture and of whiteness and of white womanhood in the United States and to trace that history and to say, this is also a part of purity culture when we examine the harm and the wounds of purity culture, and what does that mean for a conversation that is really moving in other ways now? 

You know, to be a professor who encourages her students to wrestle with the legacies of Christianity, its multiple and complex and complicated legacies. And to say like, that is the truth of Christianity too. These are its true stories. Your lives are also speaking to a truth about what it means to be Christian at this moment in this time. And you are building, if you want to, if that's the path you want to take, if that's a part of who you want to be, that you're constructing new communities and you're telling different stories and you are claiming different truths and you're confronting old ones and you are holding people accountable.

The work that I do is making space for that in the classroom. It's making space for that scholarship. It is encouraging people to just really confront this moment in history and our past to make it different. You know there have been moments in my life, a lot of moments, where that path has not been clear to be able to say, can I be someone who could teach, to claim my own authority as a scholar, as a teacher, as a writer, as a preacher? Each of these moments has taken a long time. It’s taken a lot of struggle. I’m grateful for those moments. 

I'm grateful for the people who heard me to speech as feminist theologian Nell Morton has written. Heard me into speech and heard me into knowing a truth about myself. And I think that that's what I try and encourage folks that I'm in conversation with to do. And it really is also to expose the system. So I try at every step also - as a teaching fellow and now as a professor have been in enough spaces and worked with enough students where I often can tell they're really, really bright students who do amazing work, but they're not a part of a tradition that has affirmed them because of their gender, because of their sexual orientation, because of their educational background.

And they often will come to me and say “I just don't think I'm doing well on this. I don't think I'm getting it.” I try and take every one of those moments to say, “you are doing great,” because not everybody hears that. That system isn't designed to tell all of us that we can do work, that we are the brilliant people that we are waiting on, that we have what we need. And if we don’t have what we need, we can find it - that other people are there to partner with us in it. You know, who do you need in your constellation?, Dr. Reyes. That's something we have worked with in my class, your book. I think about that all the time. I try to be transparent about as much as I can and say, Hey, you probably don't know about this because like no one's told you. No one told you because you didn't grow up in a system that told you you could. And if you had, you would know ABCD and E. And you know what? I'm going to tell you this now. And I want you to know that you are as good as everybody else that you think is amazing here. You're the cutting edge. You are the cutting edge. I need you to trust yourself. I can't do it for you. And it's going to take practice and I'm not offering it in this flip way, but at every stage I try and just like reveal a little bit of that system that prohibits folks from being in the room and do what I can to encourage people to find more of what they need to be able to do the work that is important to them.

Patrick: Well, I mean, I'm just going to hold back my tears on that. Cause your students are lucky. I'm lucky to have you in this network of peers and folks who are changing the world. Let me use your own words, you are great and inspiring and [I’m] just grateful for your work and the way that you lead both in church and the academy. We need more Dr. House’s in the world leading theological education. The church might be all right because of the ways that you lead and teach, both the sides we’re less proud of and the hope of what the church can be. So thank you for everything that you do. I'm grateful.

Kathryn: You have spoken to my classes while I've been here at Louisville Seminary and your teaching, your writing, your scholarship, the stories that you share the challenge that you offer to them, to the church, to theological education - It has connected with them in such a profound way every semester. And so I know I am a better theological educator because I have gotten to be in conversation with you. And I have gotten to see you in conversation with students that I love and have been working with. And you open their eyes to their own story and history and their own why, their own legacy, in a way that has taught me. So thank you. 

Patrick: Thank you for all those words. This has been a gift. 

I want to thank you for listening to the Sound of the Genuine and Dr. Kathryn House's story. I want to thank my team Elsie Barnhart, Heather Wallace, Diva Morgan Hicks, for helping put this story in the world. I also want to thank @siryalibeats for his music. 

It would be a big help for us getting this show into the world if you left us a review. We want to thank you for listening to the Sound of the Genuine. We hope that its provided a little inspiration in your life. And we'll see you next week on the Sound of the Genuine.