As we anticipate the First Turning, I’ve been warning that the pendulum swing back to the conservative side regarding the roles of men and women in society will overshoot. Pendulums always do.

What I did not anticipate is a story like the Lindsay Clancy trial adding fuel to the fire. And not just fuel. But barrels of gasoline.

If Lindsay Clancy walks, all women will pay the price to varying degrees.

This tweet sums it up well.

I’m just repeating what a few other women already said out loud:

If Lindsay Clancy walks on this, every woman in a high-stakes job just got a new target on her back.

Female pilot? Cool. Now the first thing people will ask is whether she’s hormonal, postpartum, or one bad night from crashing a plane into a mountain.

Female president? You want the nuclear codes in the hands of someone who can snap and then call it “a psychosis”?

That’s the door this verdict opens. And it won’t close.

If she is not found guilty of murdering those three kids, women don’t get compassion.

We get suspicion. Forever.

Prosecute her as a murderer, or watch one “crazy bitch” torch the credibility of every woman who still has to prove she can be trusted with other people’s lives.

But the reality is that even if they find Lindsay Clancy guilty, the damage has been done.

There have already been rumblings about the Nineteenth Amendment in recent years. This just adds fuel to the fire for the men who truly dream of rolling things back in significant ways.

In The Angry Christian Men Who Disdain Women, I wrote:

One of the indicators of the truly godly men led by the Holy Spirit in the days ahead will be this.

Can a Christian man control his righteous anger toward what ungodly women have done in this culture and not allow it to influence how he relates to his sisters in Christ?

I have been doubtful for some time. This legal spectacle has only increased my concern.

In Allie Beth Stuckey Can’t Win, I said this:

But this is why I keep saying that conservative Christian women will be forced to make a choice.

• Those who want to remain in the conservative-leaning institutional churches and denominations will be forced to knuckle under to more and more restrictions regarding what women can and cannot do.
• Those who believe God gives gifts to men and women to use for the edification of the Body of Christ will be forced to probably move to home and organic churches that believe similarly.

There is going to be very little gray area in the coming years.

Will there be biblical churches who manage to navigate this without going off the deep end? Of course. If you are in one that manages to thread the needle in the coming years, count yourself very blessed.

But the angry Christian men want their proverbial pound of flesh and it’s obvious if you are paying attention.

The outrage over this trial is justified.

But let’s be honest about human nature.

Most people won’t say this out loud, but DEI has ruined things. We instinctively now wonder if the person standing in front of us is qualified or not. That’s just the way it is.

Now women get to grapple with the suspicion being directed at them.

I wrote in No Church Home For Some Gifted Christian Women:

You know where this is headed with these men, right? To the point where now women aren’t allowed to pray out loud in Wednesday evening prayer meeting in some churches.

Yes, really. It’s already here.

Intelligent, gifted Christian women will be forced to make a choice. They will either choose to use the gifts God gave them with the disapproval of the men “in charge” or they will have to knuckle under in order to stay in the good graces of the men in charge.

That’s basically the choice Allie Beth Stuckey has been presented.

Please note I am NOT advocating in any way going liberal. I’m not advocating taking the path of so many women who started out in Christian churches and made choices that led to them becoming apostate. I am not advocating going to a denomination that has turned its back on the authority of the Bible.

What I am saying is that we are living in a time when all of our institutions in America are undergoing massive upheaval. This includes the institutional churches which directly impacts all of us in the Body of Christ.

How many gifted Christian women are simply going to walk away from the institutional churches (and their denominations) and move to a home church or organic church gathering where they are free to speak and participate?

How many gifted Christian women will choose to use their gifts in ministry outside of the “oversight” of an institutional church?

The conservative institutional churches are in the process of swinging back hard from the insanity we’ve endured the last few decades. As with all pendulums, they will over-correct. That’s why women are not allowed to pray out loud now in some churches.

I believe the over-correction will get even worse than that.

Many conservative, biblical Christian women will have to make some difficult choices in the years ahead. I hope I’m wrong. I hope the worst of it is kept to the fringes. But looking at the unhealthiness of institutional churches right now, I see very few with wise leadership who can navigate all of this well.

Lindsay Clancy murdered her children. She destroyed her husband’s life.

She may also be the culture’s proverbial last straw in ways we can’t even begin to imagine yet.