When they got to the topic of ordination, things grew heated. “What does the word ‘ordain-able’ mean? It literally means, ‘possesses a penis,’” Higgins said. “It does not mean, ‘is currently in seminary, has graduated with an M.Div,” or master’s in divinity, “‘and has gone before a licensure committee.’” The focus on male ordination often blocks women out of other leadership roles, she argued. “No one will hear me unless maybe I design and develop a penis-shaped microphone. … Maybe we should have a line of penis microphones, because it is all that you need to have to pass out communion, to take up the offering.”

Edmondson, Higgins, and Uwan are not alone in their complaints. Within the bounds of conservative Christianity, some women feel increasingly frustrated by what they perceive as artificial limits on their leadership—“the churches where the culture … is what women may not do … rather than what women are gifted to do,” as Kathy Keller, the wife of the prominent pastor Tim Keller, recently put it during her denomination’s annual meeting. That’s created tension in communities where most men—and women—oppose women’s ordination and embrace the idea that men should be the spiritual heads of households.

The result has challenged not only the traditional limits on women’s roles, but also traditional structures of authority. Independent women’s ministries, study curricula, and podcasts have proliferated, and those who lead them are often accused by their detractors of poor teaching or lacking accountability. Even the form of conversation has changed: The most heated debates often happen on social media rather than in denominational meeting halls, where legalistic rules of order can stifle full-throated exchanges.

Truth’s Table situates itself within one corner of a particular neighborhood of Christianity, whose followers would identify as Reformed—loosely meaning they embrace the Calvinist tradition of Protestantism, which teaches in part that salvation is dependent on God’s grace alone. The controversy their podcast ignited is evidence that even theologically settled communities have to contend with the provocations of modern life, including secular culture, changing technology, and especially the racial divisions that have long haunted evangelicalism. And the on-going fall-out from the clash reveals just how fractured even tight denominational communities can become.

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Higgins is a staffer at South City Church in St. Louis, where her dad is the pastor. The congregation is part of the Presbyterian Church in America, or PCA, which firmly opposes women’s ordination. “I believe that it’s important for my church and my denomination to refuse to demonize people who interpret ordination differently than they do,” Higgins told me, but she and the other Truth’s Table hosts weren’t pushing for women to become pastors. “I don’t see in the Bible women in that authoritative role as a pastor,” Uwan said.