This is the third part of Scot McKnight's review of Kristin Kobes Du Mez's Live Laugh Love. He finishes summarizing the book's last chapters, covering the ideal 'smokin' hot' wife, performed femininity as a political act, and abuse cover-ups. He then defends the book against critics, argues that it tells a credible but partial story, and notes what it leaves out, such as complementarianism and ordinary evangelical women. He concludes that it has tapped a neglected Wesleyan-holiness stream of evangelicalism and exposed a deep segment of evangelical women.
Reviewed
Its text teaches none of the positions Doxa lists.
Pastors and speakers who call their wives 'smokin' hot' sexualize them and build a fantasized vision of the Christian woman.
- Endorses a source· Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Live Laugh Love
Du Mez's history of how evangelicalism arrived at the Ideal Christian Wife, and of the fruits of 'fascinating womanhood', is worth reading.
- Adopts· Kristin Kobes Du Mez
For conservative Christian women, performing femininity became a political act: be a devoted wife and mother, be sexy, support the system, and ideological purity outranked moral purity.
Evangelical culture knew how to protect its guardians who were accused of abuse, even as Trump was let loose.
Beth Moore showed courage and conviction in standing against evangelicalism's turn toward Trump.
Critics of Du Mez's book should describe it accurately before they evaluate it, and may lack the expertise and research to dispute her academically informed theses.
- Adopts· Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Evangelical women have been sold a bill of goods: promises of happiness for surrendering all to God, tied to an ideal of beauty and sexiness, oversell and leave many women defeated, depressed, and deconstructing, though some do find the victorious life.
The Christian women's culture of books, conferences, and products is big business, generating billions of dollars, and some people get obscenely rich from it, in part through Ponzi-like schemes.
Any history is only a slice of the whole story, and a historian should be judged by the slice presented, not by the slices omitted.
Many ordinary evangelical women, who attend church, study the Bible, care about the homeless and are troubled by Trump-era immigration policies, do not fit the demographic Du Mez describes, and they sit alongside it.
Complementarianism has been the most significant feature of women's place in evangelicalism over recent decades, and it grew from the Reformed side of evangelicalism rather than the holiness movement, yet complementarian women may not fully escape Du Mez's descriptions.
Evangelicalism is not only the Calvinist or Reformed stream; it also includes Wesleyan-holiness, charismatic-Pentecostal, Pietist, and Restorationist streams, and Du Mez has tapped a neglected one.
- Endorses a source· Donald Dayton; Molly Worthen, Apostles of Reason
Donald Dayton and Molly Worthen have shown that evangelicalism is broader than the Reformed tradition.
The book's wide resonance with Christian women deserves respect and concern, since it has exposed a deep segment of evangelical women.
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