To underscore this distinction, she and others call themselves “orthodox” rather than conservative. Although Prior believes, as most evangelicals do, that the only way to Heaven is through belief in Jesus Christ, she challenges other commonly held positions as cultural rather than Biblical. This includes the Billy Graham rule, a practice followed by male pastors, as well as Mike Pence, which forbids them from being alone with women other than their wives. To Prior, this is encoded sexism. “It would be very amusing if it didn’t represent such potential harm to the church,” she said. She noted that, according to this formulation, men are either powerless over their urges or too weak to fight off alluring women. “I think more of men, and I think the church should, too,” she said. “In Genesis, God’s design was to create human beings as male and female—both reflect God’s image.”

Prior believes that one legacy of the church’s history of sexism is that women tend to receive less formal theological education than men, which forces them to seek answers on their own. “They’re often being discipled by the blogosphere and by the latest, greatest celebrity,” Prior told me. This leaves them vulnerable to people who distort scripture to serve their own ends. Prior was dismayed by the success of “Girl, Wash Your Face,” a Christian mega-best-seller that intersperses self-help advice with Biblical verses, which has sold more than a million copies since February. “There’s a whole genre of Christian self-help books that emphasize a Christianity that’s more informed by the American Dream and therapy than the Bible,” she told me. She didn’t like to see her religion commercialized in this way. The distortion is especially harmful when scripture is distorted for political ends. Some conservative Christian men have gone so far as to argue that, according to the second book of Timothy, which grants men “Biblical headship” over women, female police officers have no authority.