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No Longer Keeping the Peace
No Longer Keeping the Peace invites readers to explore the intersections of trauma, faith, and healing through the stories of women clergy. Drawing on personal narratives and research, it examines how Christian traditions have reinforced systems of patriarchy, misogyny, and oppression.
The book highlights how these forces marginalize women in leadership while offering a path toward healing. With practical solutions and a call for action, it empowers readers to dismantle harmful norms and envision a more inclusive, just faith community where authenticity, respect, and equality prevail. This is a vision for a transformed church, rooted in empathy and justice.
The book highlights how these forces marginalize women in leadership while offering a path toward healing. With practical solutions and a call for action, it empowers readers to dismantle harmful norms and envision a more inclusive, just faith community where authenticity, respect, and equality prevail. This is a vision for a transformed church, rooted in empathy and justice.
90 pages, Paperback
Published February 5, 2025
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March 30, 2025
I was ten years old when I noticed the disconnect between Catholic church teachings about human worth and dignity for all people, and, dare I say, equality in the eyes of God, and the way that the church was actually set up. The way men were referred to as “father” and deferred to on all faith matters and women were doing all the unpaid work—teaching CCD classes, washing out pots in the kitchen, cleaning the church basement, running the committees, organizing funeral lunches. All the work, none of the power. None of the voice.
I stayed in the church for over thirty years because I loved Jesus and mystery and the sacred. I left because at some point, the church’s failings made it harder and harder to connect with those things. I left because I could never square its teachings on human dignity and being made in the image of God with its teachings that only men were fit to embody Jesus on the altar, or with its teachings that those with same-sex attractions were not meant to find love or companionship or experience sexual fulfillment, or with its teachings that the joy and connection within sexual expression were sinful if they weren’t experienced within the context of procreation.
When I was in my early thirties, an organization creating guidebooks for clergy addressing various “hot button” issues invited me to work with them on a guidebook about ministering to bisexual people. The organization reached out to me because I was known for being outspoken about being bisexual and Catholic. They wanted me there to represent that perspective.
Except that once I arrived, my experience within my own faith tradition was mostly dismissed. They said there was no use even attempting to reach Catholic ministers. Instead, they would focus on “mainline churches” that might “actually be open to change.”
Soon after, I abandoned Catholicism completely. I now belong to a church where the church’s values are much more closely aligned with Jesus’ values, where I don’t feel like I need to leave a part of myself at the door whenever I enter. And yet. It turns out patriarchy can follow you pretty much anywhere.
This is the reality Rev. Houser grapples with in No Longer Keeping the Peace: An Invitation for Reconciliation after Sexual Violence within the Church. That even within progressive spaces, abusive power structures and insidious beliefs about sex and gender can serve to undermine the church’s claims to inclusivity. The book examines experiences of violence against women in ministry that range from pay inequality to microagressions to sexual assault, each chapter beginning with a case study of a female clergy member’s lived experience.
These stories are hard to hear, perhaps moreso for those of us who have left inherently abusive churches seeking something better, something different.
Yet here is where the hope comes.
In the naming of this dysfunction rather than continuing to sweep it under the rug to save face. These truths are not easy to engage with for those who love the church and want it to do better, but that is precisely why churches must engage with them.
Rev. Houser’s book serves as a roadmap to those who care deeply enough about the church to hold it accountable to its highest ideals. The first step is listening, opening our eyes and ears. This book guides the reader through that first step with personal stories and statistics, but it doesn’t end there. It instead is meant to serve as a jumping off point to invite more stories, more truth, and more authenticity to arise. It’s an opportunity for those who have been hurt within the church to acknowledge their own pain and trauma. And just as importantly, it opens the door to accountability for those who may have, intentionally or not, participated in systems of oppression even within progressive spaces.
Houser knows this work is not easy. They write with infinite compassion for those who have been harmed while not alienating those who might have perpetrated harm. And the beauty in this book is that it does not require alliance to any particular denomination or dogma. All it requires are hearts willing to engage with this crucial work. Even an eyes-wide-open Catholic parish could use it. It excludes no one who approaches the work with an open heart.
I’ve learned that there is no such thing as a “perfect church.” All of them are communities of imperfect humans doing the best that they can. But with the guidance in Houser’s much-needed book, those imperfect humans can make doing the best they can even better.
Let the healing begin.
I stayed in the church for over thirty years because I loved Jesus and mystery and the sacred. I left because at some point, the church’s failings made it harder and harder to connect with those things. I left because I could never square its teachings on human dignity and being made in the image of God with its teachings that only men were fit to embody Jesus on the altar, or with its teachings that those with same-sex attractions were not meant to find love or companionship or experience sexual fulfillment, or with its teachings that the joy and connection within sexual expression were sinful if they weren’t experienced within the context of procreation.
When I was in my early thirties, an organization creating guidebooks for clergy addressing various “hot button” issues invited me to work with them on a guidebook about ministering to bisexual people. The organization reached out to me because I was known for being outspoken about being bisexual and Catholic. They wanted me there to represent that perspective.
Except that once I arrived, my experience within my own faith tradition was mostly dismissed. They said there was no use even attempting to reach Catholic ministers. Instead, they would focus on “mainline churches” that might “actually be open to change.”
Soon after, I abandoned Catholicism completely. I now belong to a church where the church’s values are much more closely aligned with Jesus’ values, where I don’t feel like I need to leave a part of myself at the door whenever I enter. And yet. It turns out patriarchy can follow you pretty much anywhere.
This is the reality Rev. Houser grapples with in No Longer Keeping the Peace: An Invitation for Reconciliation after Sexual Violence within the Church. That even within progressive spaces, abusive power structures and insidious beliefs about sex and gender can serve to undermine the church’s claims to inclusivity. The book examines experiences of violence against women in ministry that range from pay inequality to microagressions to sexual assault, each chapter beginning with a case study of a female clergy member’s lived experience.
These stories are hard to hear, perhaps moreso for those of us who have left inherently abusive churches seeking something better, something different.
Yet here is where the hope comes.
In the naming of this dysfunction rather than continuing to sweep it under the rug to save face. These truths are not easy to engage with for those who love the church and want it to do better, but that is precisely why churches must engage with them.
Rev. Houser’s book serves as a roadmap to those who care deeply enough about the church to hold it accountable to its highest ideals. The first step is listening, opening our eyes and ears. This book guides the reader through that first step with personal stories and statistics, but it doesn’t end there. It instead is meant to serve as a jumping off point to invite more stories, more truth, and more authenticity to arise. It’s an opportunity for those who have been hurt within the church to acknowledge their own pain and trauma. And just as importantly, it opens the door to accountability for those who may have, intentionally or not, participated in systems of oppression even within progressive spaces.
Houser knows this work is not easy. They write with infinite compassion for those who have been harmed while not alienating those who might have perpetrated harm. And the beauty in this book is that it does not require alliance to any particular denomination or dogma. All it requires are hearts willing to engage with this crucial work. Even an eyes-wide-open Catholic parish could use it. It excludes no one who approaches the work with an open heart.
I’ve learned that there is no such thing as a “perfect church.” All of them are communities of imperfect humans doing the best that they can. But with the guidance in Houser’s much-needed book, those imperfect humans can make doing the best they can even better.
Let the healing begin.
Displaying 1 of 1 review