An Insider’s View into Christian Patriarchy

Interview with Rift author Cait West

When I write, I worry a lot about accuracy and doing right by the sources who trust me with their stories. I also spare space to think about the future reader. Will the article push them to action? Will they find a small mirror to their own lives in words strung together this way or that?

I can’t recall how I first got to know Cait West. It was somewhere online. Maybe it was her incisive social media posts. Perhaps it was a blogged narrative of her life inside Christian patriarchy. But I’ve known her name and snatches of her story for years.

It wasn’t too long ago that I discovered how she learned my name. Years back, I wrote a story for Marie Claire about stay-at-home-daughters, girls raised under the strict authority of their father until passed into the authority of their future husband. They were financially and educationally controlled. It was to protect them, so many evangelical books and films suggested. They could stay chaste and pure — unexposed to the lust of men and dangerous ideas like feminism and socialism. Cait read the Marie Claire story. She recently told me she remembered reading the article and, “I felt so seen by that, and it always stuck with me.”