Been looking forward to this interview and it did not disappoint.
The book really clarified for me so much of what I intuitively knew but had trouble articulating. I grew up in a church that relatively speaking didn't fall prey to much of this bullshit but even so it still filtered down to me through youth group retreats with other churches, camp, and going to a conservative Christian College. I tend to be on the more cynical side of thinking there is truly no point in trying to "fix" the system from within but rather to cut your losses and start over somewhere else.
Sarah Bessey (a deconstructing blogger/author who came out of Evangelicalism) calls it making your own table in the wilderness when you are rejected from or just can't stand to sit at the table they have made. I did that about 5 years ago and haven't looked back since. To me, the foundation is rotten to the core (as this book so elegantly points out this has been present in white American Evangelicalism from the beginning) so what exactly are we trying to preserve?
It really comes down to how much men hate women and that's depressing to me. They can't serve the Jesus from the Bible because that's too feminine...as if the divine doesn't exist in both male, female, and non binary people.
this line: To me, the foundation is rotten to the core (as this book so elegantly points out this has been present in white American Evangelicalism from the beginning) so what exactly are we trying to preserve?
Is just really so perfect! What is it, exactly, that people want to keep? Why is there such dedication to that?
For someone who honestly believes in the four boxes mentioned at the beginning of the article, it makes sense that they would want to fix the system from within, because they probably believe that these values are fundamental to the system and the white racial identity parts and misogyny are surface level. (And I believe that with regards to misogyny, a number of women who have left a particular church but are trying to recreate something almost identical to Evangelicalism, just minus this or that rule about women, still have deeply ingrained beliefs about the role of men and women that are more traditionalist than progressive. They just think it's unfair that they don't get to preach.)
I'm a Canadian who grew up in a rural SK community where I participated in a LOT of Full Gospel youth events and retreats, etc, even though I was Catholic because they had the largest youth group in town. And, tbh, I think straddling that line between both churches allowed me to cast a more critical eye on what was going on than if I had just been in one or the other.
I grew up on Adventures in Odyssey (and, for the most part, maintain that they're actually...not awful?? They truly instilled in me a lot of imagination and good values, so I can't say *everything* about Focus on the Family was awful.) and VeggieTales, but also read the Bible on my own because I figured if I was going to be a good Catholic, I should intimately know what it was I was a part of. And even as a teen, I was just always...confused? by the disconnect between what was happening at youth retreats and in Mass vs what was in the Bible. Like I didn't understand why we were supposed to love one another but then there was this derision about poor people or queer people or single, teen mothers. It also felt very cliquey and much like a popularity contest with rules I didn't understand because, again, they weren't based on the text I was told we were following, but rather outside rules that I didn't always understand.
It's still something, as an adult, I'm trying to navigate, both within myself and within familial relationships. And there's a lot of trying to reconcile a feeling of spirituality that feels wholesome and I did access with understanding that the institutions I found it in aren't actually what they say they are on the package. And how absolutely insidious so much of that toxicity is if you're vulnerable in any way.
I grew up in the Mark Driscoll atmosphere where the church became ~cool~ (skinny jeans and sneakers on pastors, "modern" music), and it wasn't until my teen years that I began to see how insidious it felt. When you're in a traditional church, it's easier to see the erasure of women, people of color, the LGTBQ+ community, the working class and impoverished (not as talked about but definitely a thing), and so on. In a ~cool~ church, the misogyny and racism and intolerance are hidden behind a bunch of dad jokes, pop culture references (soooo much Braveheart lmao, fuck that movie), and tossed-off standup bits about your wife, like, taking a little too much time to lose the baby weight -- shoutout to Sharon in the front row, she likes her Starbucks, love you anyway honey, etc. etc. for all eternity.
This was a great interview, and it's making me think about my Southern church past. I'm looking for ways to make my own religious path and live in a true community-minded, pay-it-forward kind of way instead of the exclusionary prosperity gospel mindset I and too many others grew up with.
Grrrrrr, just reading those misogynist wife comments grinds my teeth. No, just no. Have always been grateful that my evangelical relatives live in another country, thus limiting exposure. When I did visit and was expected to attend Sunday morning church, my uncle would whisper translations in my ear. One line was "Jesus carried his own cross." I almost burst out laughing because my partner had just dressed as Jesus for Halloween in a bedsheet toga carrying a wooden cross he made himself.
Mentions of the Mars Hill podcast have popped up several times on my Facebook feed. I imagine I might be surprised by specifics of the church itself, but not of the larger issues at play, so I haven't listened yet. It sounds like it's a *start,* and I hope it's treated as such. But ... whew, those just starting this path are decades behind the curve, not just from the larger culture but from more progressive Christian churches and circles. There's a great chasm within Christianity that doesn't get talked about enough. I'm glad to see pieces like this broaching the topic. (Also, I'd love to see more people talking about the damage inflicted by John Eldredge's "Wild at Heart," as well as "Captivating" by Stasi Eldredge. The former was *everywhere* when I was in college from '02-'06.)
I grew up attending a Church of Christ, which isn't really evangelical (and technically not a denomination at all). For all its faults, it at least was formed with the goal of going back to the New Testament roots, studying what the Bible says, and going from there. But the larger culture bled into things, so I'm familiar with a lot of what is mentioned. I attended a CofC university and later worked for at for five years. It was not an easy place to be progressive and to speak out. LGBTQ+ rights is still one of the big issues, and it took me years to realize why: We (in that culture) never talked about and tried to understand *gender* first. (Most CofCs were structured around women not being allowed to participate in worship. Many have changed, as CofCs are autonomous, but many have not. The scars run deep. I have too much to say about it than can fit here.) How can some people even begin to think of accepting same-sex marriage, for example, if they were conditioned to think that gender roles are strict and defined by men? We started pushing for equality for LGBTQ+ people without addressing the larger issues first, which meant the conservatives dug their heels in. We were and still are talking past each other, and I don't know how to fix it.
So many progressives have chosen to leave churches and church settings because the battle is so disheartening. It beats you down. I deeply feel the author's conflict at being asked to end her book with some words of hope. It's hard to feel there's any to be had.
I grew up with Young Life in my high school in Florida. Since I was a Buddhist Vietnamese immigrant, I was never allowed to go to Young Life events, and it always felt like I was missing most of the social life of my high school because of it. From what I could tell, it was light on Bible, heavy on drinking.
If this book had been titled Jesus and Mel Gibson’s William Wallace from the Movie Braveheart, I would have fallen all over myself to be first in line to buy it! "Braveheart is bad, actually" was my most strongly held unpopular opinion around the time that movie came out. I was 16 so most of my strongly held opinions didn't hold up. I am always gratified that this one did!
It was interesting to read the part about Christian pop culture--to me, it seems like that was a huge part of '90s and '00s culture, probably peaking somewhere in between Left Behind and Fireproof, and then starting to decline around God's Not Dead. The boundaries between evangelical pop culture and regular pop culture seemed thinner back then--every non-Christian music festival had some quasi-Christian band at it (Switchfoot, Relient K, Sufjan), plenty of non-evangelicals read those Left Behind books, and even people who weren't even a little religious were still at least aware of those Kirk Cameron movies, if only to make fun of them. But that seems to be really on the decline now, and I'm not sure where it went. I feel like the only piece of Christian pop culture in the last that seems to have registered even a little bit outside of evangelical spheres is Lauren Daigle. (And the most interesting intersection of Christianity and secular pop culture of the last five years or so--Kanye--is moving in the reverse direction, although probably not terribly effectively. I don't know how many actual evangelicals streamed Jesus Is King.)
It feels like the intersection of at least two or three separate trends ... The first being the Hillsongization of evangelical culture. Fifteen years ago, there was a huge emphasis on Christians developing their own pop culture so that they wouldn't be corrupted by more worldly influences in regular music or movies ... The idea of a pastor rubbing elbows with Kim Kardashian or Donald Trump would have been highly controversial. Now, of course, there are plenty of evangelical pastors happily openly clout-chasing. The second trend is just things shifting from old-school media to social media--it seems like that has kind of opened up a whole world for people to become faith-based influencers without having to be pastors or pop culture figures. (Which has also opened up the sort of faith-adjacent political grifters like Tomi Lahren to audiences that wouldn't have necessarily paid attention to them before.) And third, I'm sure the fracturing of pop culture makes it easier for Christian artists to find their audience more directly, without necessarily spilling over into secular view. After all, the Kendrick brothers are still out there making movies, and War Room made twice as much money as Fireproof ... it just had nowhere near the same cultural impact.
This was difficult for me to read. I always feel torn between wanting to stay updated on Evangelical culture and its influence on the general culture that I inescapably live in, and feeling that I already gave 25 years of my life to being suffocated in Evangelicalism (and Fundamentalism) and that I don't need to spend one more second of my life engaging with it.
However, after reading this interview, I wonder if I should read the book in order to be able to ask my Evangelical father to read it too (I wouldn't ask him to read something I hadn't read). I don't expect that to affect anything but the two of us. He's 80, and even if something in it reaches him, he's not in a position to change anything but himself. I am not in a position to be a reformer within Christianity because I don't identify as any sort of Christian - not a progressive Christian, not a universalist Christian, not spiritual but not religious. It would only be a request for one person to understand something about the other a little better.
Something I used to see a lot from the "outside" before I mostly disengaged, in atheist or post-Christian spaces, is how many people, especially men, want to hold onto Evangelical-style misogyny at the same time as denouncing Christianity. An attitude like "Christians are dumb sheeple but boy were they right about women". It's been very disappointing to see, and although I believe in fighting the good fight, it has made it hard to find a non-Evangelical space that doesn't involve Thinking About Gender Roles All The Time.
Wow. I've been avoiding reading this book because it really feels too close to home. I had a front row seat to all of it in high school and college in the South in the late 80s and 90s, and I became a pastor in a relatively progressive denomination. I agree that it is hard to find hope in any of it, even the progressive places, because they are just so far from the historical Jesus and early Christianity. I experienced an overwhelming amount of misogyny and am still processing it after leaving, and so much of it was this toxic cultural "Christianity." So exhausting, and so wrong. I will read it one of these days when I have the spoons, and Live Laugh Love is all the people I know from high school, so that will be a must. Thanks for your good work, Kristin (and Anne Helen of course!).
Thank you for this interview. I bought the book and it's sitting on my shelf and I just completed a [summer!] semester-long research methods class in which I assembled a giant research proposal on the connection between evangelical white women's gender ideology and support for Trump. But still, I haven't been able to get myself to pick the book up off the shelf. I think a part of me has been skeptical that Du Mez would turn out to be still "a part" of it all, and your interview lets me see her cards; she is not. I have not listened to any of the Mars Hill podcast because of similar distrust. Plus deep wounds from the yucky culty disgusting non-denominational hell of a place I attended from age 19-29. At that place (can't call it a church) they worshipped Mel Gibson and Braveheart. Just reading about the possibility of that being the title was weirdly refreshing. I may get that book off the shelf before the end of the year after all.
I have this book on hold at my public library and I was so excited to read this interview. There are a lot of people in my church who grew up in white evangelical spaces and they came to our church after leaving that world behind (including my husband). I'm eager to learn more about that world.
For anyone out there looking for a different kind of church than the white evangelical ones, I recommend seeing if there is a church that is part of the Christian Church Disciples of Christ (CCDC) denomination in your area.
My church is LGTBQIA+ affirming, anti-racist, and really into critical thinking and questioning. We're also deeply rigorous about the Bible and traditions. I truly don't know if all CCDC churches are like mine, but I love my church home and am grateful I found something like this.
On Christian media, I definitely think that it's helped sneak evangelicalism into non-Evangelical mainline Protestantism. I've been on the way liberal end of the scale and I think there are a few reasons.
1) Most lay people don't actually have a knowledge of more than basic theology. So if things are nominally Christian people think it's good.
2) Evangelical materials dominate the children's education market. They tend to have the flashiest easy to use stuff. And the bad theology usually isn't up front. It seeps in. An it's rarely evident in one sample lesson. It's cumulative.
3) Pastors and other leaders tend not to police theology much. Which is generally good! But that can lead to people picking materials for a book discussion that their evangelical neighbor recommended. And no one is paying enough attention to identify things like prosperity gospel theology and say "hey, we don't generally believe this in this church."
4) There is lots of evangelical bullshit that can sound good if people don't dig in. So for instance lots of people think 14 year olds shouldn't have sex, but don't realize how shame based and bonkers things like "True Love Waits" is.
I don't know this world too well, but I find it fascinating to read some of the posts in the reddit Herman Cain Award pages after having read this interview. The American brand of Evangelicalism puts a lot of the posts in context.
I also do and don't want to read this book. I have been furiously deconstructing the mess that is American Evangelicalism since I escaped the Southern Baptist Church in the mid 1970s. It took a protracted and embattled adolescence to do so: my critical faculties came online around age 15 and slowly made it clear that all I had been taught was hearsay, with authority grounded firmly in nothing else but What My Parents Told Me, What Their Parents Told Them, ad regressum infinitum. I have written some fragmented narratives about it, and I did start warning my friends a good 40 years ago that we could not afford to simply laugh at the religious nuts for much longer.
And maybe that is precisely what my job is in this regard. Still, I wish I could be more incisive, and quickly, because they are getting worse. But the Complex part of the CPTSD that is my most useful (extra-)DSM diagnosis comes mostly from living under the threat of their extremely petty and vengeful god. Once I was old enough to transfer my perception of omnipotence from my mother to a deity whose opinions on everything mirrored hers in an uncanny way--but he had a Lake of Fire as his final backup--my existence in both this world and the next were premised on everlasting torture.
So there are days I can write and days I cannot.
One thing in regard to whether militancy or fear come first for conservative Christianity: my experience with what might be called the end of non-political Evangelicism (mid 1960s - late 70s) tells me that this may be a chicken-and-egg question, closely related to authoritarianism and cycles of abuse and violence. In the people I knew--and some that I still know but rarely speak to (hi mom!)--fear and militancy seem always to be found in feedback loops, mutually reinforcing and amplifying each other, and abusive tactics are both institutional and domestic. One might even say that publicly visible abuse and domestic abuse are not, strictly speaking, separable.
That there are multiple feedback loops of abuse and violence underwriting almost everything that is stamped with colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and its resultant masculinist oppression along multiple axes also seems glaringly obvious to me. What I have been trying to figure out for some years now is how and when Euro-American cultures gave themselves over to a political, economic, and ethical vision that is so at odds with terrestrial life that we may well blot out our own ability to survive, and that of a vast array of other species, quite soon.
Holy shit it's been a stressful year. Hi! I am still kind of new here: old, disabled afab genderqueer ex-academic who wishes they could put more music and words out there than has been recently possible, survivor also of public and private abuse. And as much as I may be projecting my own concerns onto the world at large (every philosophy is the personal confession of the philosopher writing it, after all), I do think that unless and until we (colonial Westerners) confront our disconnect from life and interrogate our love of brutality and domination, the systems of life on earth will shake us off and start over.
Also, I may well read this book soon but it'd probably be best to take it to a forest or beach or something. Or maybe lure the cat onto my lap for hours.
Thanks for the interview - I've been pondering some of these ideas (especially the relationship to supporting trump) and am enjoying the book though I'm still only about halfway through. Excited to read Live Laugh Love too in the future!
Been looking forward to this interview and it did not disappoint.
The book really clarified for me so much of what I intuitively knew but had trouble articulating. I grew up in a church that relatively speaking didn't fall prey to much of this bullshit but even so it still filtered down to me through youth group retreats with other churches, camp, and going to a conservative Christian College. I tend to be on the more cynical side of thinking there is truly no point in trying to "fix" the system from within but rather to cut your losses and start over somewhere else.
Sarah Bessey (a deconstructing blogger/author who came out of Evangelicalism) calls it making your own table in the wilderness when you are rejected from or just can't stand to sit at the table they have made. I did that about 5 years ago and haven't looked back since. To me, the foundation is rotten to the core (as this book so elegantly points out this has been present in white American Evangelicalism from the beginning) so what exactly are we trying to preserve?
It really comes down to how much men hate women and that's depressing to me. They can't serve the Jesus from the Bible because that's too feminine...as if the divine doesn't exist in both male, female, and non binary people.
this line: To me, the foundation is rotten to the core (as this book so elegantly points out this has been present in white American Evangelicalism from the beginning) so what exactly are we trying to preserve?
Is just really so perfect! What is it, exactly, that people want to keep? Why is there such dedication to that?
For someone who honestly believes in the four boxes mentioned at the beginning of the article, it makes sense that they would want to fix the system from within, because they probably believe that these values are fundamental to the system and the white racial identity parts and misogyny are surface level. (And I believe that with regards to misogyny, a number of women who have left a particular church but are trying to recreate something almost identical to Evangelicalism, just minus this or that rule about women, still have deeply ingrained beliefs about the role of men and women that are more traditionalist than progressive. They just think it's unfair that they don't get to preach.)
I'm a Canadian who grew up in a rural SK community where I participated in a LOT of Full Gospel youth events and retreats, etc, even though I was Catholic because they had the largest youth group in town. And, tbh, I think straddling that line between both churches allowed me to cast a more critical eye on what was going on than if I had just been in one or the other.
I grew up on Adventures in Odyssey (and, for the most part, maintain that they're actually...not awful?? They truly instilled in me a lot of imagination and good values, so I can't say *everything* about Focus on the Family was awful.) and VeggieTales, but also read the Bible on my own because I figured if I was going to be a good Catholic, I should intimately know what it was I was a part of. And even as a teen, I was just always...confused? by the disconnect between what was happening at youth retreats and in Mass vs what was in the Bible. Like I didn't understand why we were supposed to love one another but then there was this derision about poor people or queer people or single, teen mothers. It also felt very cliquey and much like a popularity contest with rules I didn't understand because, again, they weren't based on the text I was told we were following, but rather outside rules that I didn't always understand.
It's still something, as an adult, I'm trying to navigate, both within myself and within familial relationships. And there's a lot of trying to reconcile a feeling of spirituality that feels wholesome and I did access with understanding that the institutions I found it in aren't actually what they say they are on the package. And how absolutely insidious so much of that toxicity is if you're vulnerable in any way.
I grew up in the Mark Driscoll atmosphere where the church became ~cool~ (skinny jeans and sneakers on pastors, "modern" music), and it wasn't until my teen years that I began to see how insidious it felt. When you're in a traditional church, it's easier to see the erasure of women, people of color, the LGTBQ+ community, the working class and impoverished (not as talked about but definitely a thing), and so on. In a ~cool~ church, the misogyny and racism and intolerance are hidden behind a bunch of dad jokes, pop culture references (soooo much Braveheart lmao, fuck that movie), and tossed-off standup bits about your wife, like, taking a little too much time to lose the baby weight -- shoutout to Sharon in the front row, she likes her Starbucks, love you anyway honey, etc. etc. for all eternity.
This was a great interview, and it's making me think about my Southern church past. I'm looking for ways to make my own religious path and live in a true community-minded, pay-it-forward kind of way instead of the exclusionary prosperity gospel mindset I and too many others grew up with.
Grrrrrr, just reading those misogynist wife comments grinds my teeth. No, just no. Have always been grateful that my evangelical relatives live in another country, thus limiting exposure. When I did visit and was expected to attend Sunday morning church, my uncle would whisper translations in my ear. One line was "Jesus carried his own cross." I almost burst out laughing because my partner had just dressed as Jesus for Halloween in a bedsheet toga carrying a wooden cross he made himself.
Mentions of the Mars Hill podcast have popped up several times on my Facebook feed. I imagine I might be surprised by specifics of the church itself, but not of the larger issues at play, so I haven't listened yet. It sounds like it's a *start,* and I hope it's treated as such. But ... whew, those just starting this path are decades behind the curve, not just from the larger culture but from more progressive Christian churches and circles. There's a great chasm within Christianity that doesn't get talked about enough. I'm glad to see pieces like this broaching the topic. (Also, I'd love to see more people talking about the damage inflicted by John Eldredge's "Wild at Heart," as well as "Captivating" by Stasi Eldredge. The former was *everywhere* when I was in college from '02-'06.)
I grew up attending a Church of Christ, which isn't really evangelical (and technically not a denomination at all). For all its faults, it at least was formed with the goal of going back to the New Testament roots, studying what the Bible says, and going from there. But the larger culture bled into things, so I'm familiar with a lot of what is mentioned. I attended a CofC university and later worked for at for five years. It was not an easy place to be progressive and to speak out. LGBTQ+ rights is still one of the big issues, and it took me years to realize why: We (in that culture) never talked about and tried to understand *gender* first. (Most CofCs were structured around women not being allowed to participate in worship. Many have changed, as CofCs are autonomous, but many have not. The scars run deep. I have too much to say about it than can fit here.) How can some people even begin to think of accepting same-sex marriage, for example, if they were conditioned to think that gender roles are strict and defined by men? We started pushing for equality for LGBTQ+ people without addressing the larger issues first, which meant the conservatives dug their heels in. We were and still are talking past each other, and I don't know how to fix it.
So many progressives have chosen to leave churches and church settings because the battle is so disheartening. It beats you down. I deeply feel the author's conflict at being asked to end her book with some words of hope. It's hard to feel there's any to be had.
I grew up with Young Life in my high school in Florida. Since I was a Buddhist Vietnamese immigrant, I was never allowed to go to Young Life events, and it always felt like I was missing most of the social life of my high school because of it. From what I could tell, it was light on Bible, heavy on drinking.
If this book had been titled Jesus and Mel Gibson’s William Wallace from the Movie Braveheart, I would have fallen all over myself to be first in line to buy it! "Braveheart is bad, actually" was my most strongly held unpopular opinion around the time that movie came out. I was 16 so most of my strongly held opinions didn't hold up. I am always gratified that this one did!
It was interesting to read the part about Christian pop culture--to me, it seems like that was a huge part of '90s and '00s culture, probably peaking somewhere in between Left Behind and Fireproof, and then starting to decline around God's Not Dead. The boundaries between evangelical pop culture and regular pop culture seemed thinner back then--every non-Christian music festival had some quasi-Christian band at it (Switchfoot, Relient K, Sufjan), plenty of non-evangelicals read those Left Behind books, and even people who weren't even a little religious were still at least aware of those Kirk Cameron movies, if only to make fun of them. But that seems to be really on the decline now, and I'm not sure where it went. I feel like the only piece of Christian pop culture in the last that seems to have registered even a little bit outside of evangelical spheres is Lauren Daigle. (And the most interesting intersection of Christianity and secular pop culture of the last five years or so--Kanye--is moving in the reverse direction, although probably not terribly effectively. I don't know how many actual evangelicals streamed Jesus Is King.)
It feels like the intersection of at least two or three separate trends ... The first being the Hillsongization of evangelical culture. Fifteen years ago, there was a huge emphasis on Christians developing their own pop culture so that they wouldn't be corrupted by more worldly influences in regular music or movies ... The idea of a pastor rubbing elbows with Kim Kardashian or Donald Trump would have been highly controversial. Now, of course, there are plenty of evangelical pastors happily openly clout-chasing. The second trend is just things shifting from old-school media to social media--it seems like that has kind of opened up a whole world for people to become faith-based influencers without having to be pastors or pop culture figures. (Which has also opened up the sort of faith-adjacent political grifters like Tomi Lahren to audiences that wouldn't have necessarily paid attention to them before.) And third, I'm sure the fracturing of pop culture makes it easier for Christian artists to find their audience more directly, without necessarily spilling over into secular view. After all, the Kendrick brothers are still out there making movies, and War Room made twice as much money as Fireproof ... it just had nowhere near the same cultural impact.
This was difficult for me to read. I always feel torn between wanting to stay updated on Evangelical culture and its influence on the general culture that I inescapably live in, and feeling that I already gave 25 years of my life to being suffocated in Evangelicalism (and Fundamentalism) and that I don't need to spend one more second of my life engaging with it.
However, after reading this interview, I wonder if I should read the book in order to be able to ask my Evangelical father to read it too (I wouldn't ask him to read something I hadn't read). I don't expect that to affect anything but the two of us. He's 80, and even if something in it reaches him, he's not in a position to change anything but himself. I am not in a position to be a reformer within Christianity because I don't identify as any sort of Christian - not a progressive Christian, not a universalist Christian, not spiritual but not religious. It would only be a request for one person to understand something about the other a little better.
Something I used to see a lot from the "outside" before I mostly disengaged, in atheist or post-Christian spaces, is how many people, especially men, want to hold onto Evangelical-style misogyny at the same time as denouncing Christianity. An attitude like "Christians are dumb sheeple but boy were they right about women". It's been very disappointing to see, and although I believe in fighting the good fight, it has made it hard to find a non-Evangelical space that doesn't involve Thinking About Gender Roles All The Time.
Wow. I've been avoiding reading this book because it really feels too close to home. I had a front row seat to all of it in high school and college in the South in the late 80s and 90s, and I became a pastor in a relatively progressive denomination. I agree that it is hard to find hope in any of it, even the progressive places, because they are just so far from the historical Jesus and early Christianity. I experienced an overwhelming amount of misogyny and am still processing it after leaving, and so much of it was this toxic cultural "Christianity." So exhausting, and so wrong. I will read it one of these days when I have the spoons, and Live Laugh Love is all the people I know from high school, so that will be a must. Thanks for your good work, Kristin (and Anne Helen of course!).
Thank you for this interview. I bought the book and it's sitting on my shelf and I just completed a [summer!] semester-long research methods class in which I assembled a giant research proposal on the connection between evangelical white women's gender ideology and support for Trump. But still, I haven't been able to get myself to pick the book up off the shelf. I think a part of me has been skeptical that Du Mez would turn out to be still "a part" of it all, and your interview lets me see her cards; she is not. I have not listened to any of the Mars Hill podcast because of similar distrust. Plus deep wounds from the yucky culty disgusting non-denominational hell of a place I attended from age 19-29. At that place (can't call it a church) they worshipped Mel Gibson and Braveheart. Just reading about the possibility of that being the title was weirdly refreshing. I may get that book off the shelf before the end of the year after all.
I have this book on hold at my public library and I was so excited to read this interview. There are a lot of people in my church who grew up in white evangelical spaces and they came to our church after leaving that world behind (including my husband). I'm eager to learn more about that world.
For anyone out there looking for a different kind of church than the white evangelical ones, I recommend seeing if there is a church that is part of the Christian Church Disciples of Christ (CCDC) denomination in your area.
My church is LGTBQIA+ affirming, anti-racist, and really into critical thinking and questioning. We're also deeply rigorous about the Bible and traditions. I truly don't know if all CCDC churches are like mine, but I love my church home and am grateful I found something like this.
Haha, I meant LGBTQIA+. Let me pull these twigs out of my hair now...
On Christian media, I definitely think that it's helped sneak evangelicalism into non-Evangelical mainline Protestantism. I've been on the way liberal end of the scale and I think there are a few reasons.
1) Most lay people don't actually have a knowledge of more than basic theology. So if things are nominally Christian people think it's good.
2) Evangelical materials dominate the children's education market. They tend to have the flashiest easy to use stuff. And the bad theology usually isn't up front. It seeps in. An it's rarely evident in one sample lesson. It's cumulative.
3) Pastors and other leaders tend not to police theology much. Which is generally good! But that can lead to people picking materials for a book discussion that their evangelical neighbor recommended. And no one is paying enough attention to identify things like prosperity gospel theology and say "hey, we don't generally believe this in this church."
4) There is lots of evangelical bullshit that can sound good if people don't dig in. So for instance lots of people think 14 year olds shouldn't have sex, but don't realize how shame based and bonkers things like "True Love Waits" is.
I don't know this world too well, but I find it fascinating to read some of the posts in the reddit Herman Cain Award pages after having read this interview. The American brand of Evangelicalism puts a lot of the posts in context.
I also do and don't want to read this book. I have been furiously deconstructing the mess that is American Evangelicalism since I escaped the Southern Baptist Church in the mid 1970s. It took a protracted and embattled adolescence to do so: my critical faculties came online around age 15 and slowly made it clear that all I had been taught was hearsay, with authority grounded firmly in nothing else but What My Parents Told Me, What Their Parents Told Them, ad regressum infinitum. I have written some fragmented narratives about it, and I did start warning my friends a good 40 years ago that we could not afford to simply laugh at the religious nuts for much longer.
And maybe that is precisely what my job is in this regard. Still, I wish I could be more incisive, and quickly, because they are getting worse. But the Complex part of the CPTSD that is my most useful (extra-)DSM diagnosis comes mostly from living under the threat of their extremely petty and vengeful god. Once I was old enough to transfer my perception of omnipotence from my mother to a deity whose opinions on everything mirrored hers in an uncanny way--but he had a Lake of Fire as his final backup--my existence in both this world and the next were premised on everlasting torture.
So there are days I can write and days I cannot.
One thing in regard to whether militancy or fear come first for conservative Christianity: my experience with what might be called the end of non-political Evangelicism (mid 1960s - late 70s) tells me that this may be a chicken-and-egg question, closely related to authoritarianism and cycles of abuse and violence. In the people I knew--and some that I still know but rarely speak to (hi mom!)--fear and militancy seem always to be found in feedback loops, mutually reinforcing and amplifying each other, and abusive tactics are both institutional and domestic. One might even say that publicly visible abuse and domestic abuse are not, strictly speaking, separable.
That there are multiple feedback loops of abuse and violence underwriting almost everything that is stamped with colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and its resultant masculinist oppression along multiple axes also seems glaringly obvious to me. What I have been trying to figure out for some years now is how and when Euro-American cultures gave themselves over to a political, economic, and ethical vision that is so at odds with terrestrial life that we may well blot out our own ability to survive, and that of a vast array of other species, quite soon.
Holy shit it's been a stressful year. Hi! I am still kind of new here: old, disabled afab genderqueer ex-academic who wishes they could put more music and words out there than has been recently possible, survivor also of public and private abuse. And as much as I may be projecting my own concerns onto the world at large (every philosophy is the personal confession of the philosopher writing it, after all), I do think that unless and until we (colonial Westerners) confront our disconnect from life and interrogate our love of brutality and domination, the systems of life on earth will shake us off and start over.
Also, I may well read this book soon but it'd probably be best to take it to a forest or beach or something. Or maybe lure the cat onto my lap for hours.
Thanks for the interview - I've been pondering some of these ideas (especially the relationship to supporting trump) and am enjoying the book though I'm still only about halfway through. Excited to read Live Laugh Love too in the future!
Really struck by the insight that militancy doesn't follow fear. It comes first and fears are found/invented to justify it. Such an a-ha moment!