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The Politicization of Family Life: How Headship Became Essential to Evangelical Identity in the Late Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Anneke Stasson
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Abstract

This article describes the fluidity of evangelical gender ideology during the 1970s and posits that belief in male headship became one of the distinct marks of evangelical identity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, the Christian Right led a campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, arguing that the ERA was the means by which feminists were seeking to destroy the family. It became politically expedient for evangelicals to assert their support for male headship over and against a feminist paradigm of the family. In the 1990s and 2000s, as evangelicals had begun to feel less animosity towards feminism and had actually absorbed many feminist assumptions, the Christian Right's campaign against gay marriage gave evangelicals a new reason to cling to the ideology of male headship. The campaigns against the ERA and gay marriage have made evangelicals aware of the very real presence of different models of family in American society. This awareness has enhanced commitment to the headship model of marriage.

Historians Betty DeBerg and Margaret Bendroth have done much to point historians to the way in which gender ideology has been important to evangelical identity over the last century. By analyzing anti-ERA and anti-gay marriage evangelical literature, this article argues that gender ideology was integral to the formation of evangelical identity during the last third of the twentieth century. Thus, the article seeks to extend the argument of DeBerg and Bendroth into the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s and to present gender ideology as a key feature in defining twentieth-century American evangelicalism.

Keywords

evangelicalgenderheadshippolitics
Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , Winter 2014 , pp. 100 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2014

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References

Notes

1. Mark and Grace Driscoll's responses to this question can be viewed on YouTube, accessed May 17, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WPVxndUcHQ.

2. Collin Hansen, “Pastor Provocateur,” Christianity Today, September 2007, 48–49.

3. Driscoll, Mark and Driscoll, Grace, Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship, and Life Together (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012).Google Scholar For criticism, see David Sessions, “Mark Driscoll's Sex Manual ‘Real Marriage’ Scandalizes Evangelicals,” Daily Beast, January 13, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/13/mark-driscoll-ssex-manual-real-marriage-scandalizes-evangelicals.html.

4. The 14,000 people meet “weekly across 14 locations in four states, Washington, Oregon, California, and New Mexico.” “About Mark,” Mars Hill Church, accessed May 17, 2012, http://marshill.com/pastors/mark-driscoll.

5. “Mars Hill has been recognized as the 54th largest, 30th fastestgrowing, and second most-innovative church in the country by Outreach magazine. Pastor Mark is the co-founder of the Acts 29 church-planting network, which has planted over 400 churches in the U.S., in addition to 13 other nations. He founded the Resurgence, which services Christian leaders through books, blog posts, conferences, and classes, with theResurgence.com receiving close to 7 million visits annually.” In addition, Driscoll is “regularly #1 on iTunes for Religion & Spirituality” and “in the Top 50 of all podcasts, with about 10 million sermons listened to and watched each year.” Mars Hill Church, “About Mark,” accessed May 17, 2012, http://marshill.com/pastors/mark-driscoll.

6. Gallagher, Sally K., “The Marginalization of Evangelical Feminism,” Sociology of Religion 65, no. 3 (2004): 217, 229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Although the Religious Identity and Influence Survey was conducted in the late 1990s, there is good reason to believe that evangelical belief in headship is still alive and well. For example, Driscoll's marriage book, which affirms male headship, “just cracked Amazon's top 50” in January 2012 (Sessions, “Mark Driscoll's Sex Manual ‘Real Marriage’ Scandalizes Evangelicals”). The large Acts 29 church-planting network, which has planted some 400 churches, includes male headship on its doctrinal statement (“We are not egalitarians and do believe that men should head their homes and male elders/pastors should lead their churches with masculine love like Jesus Christ.” Acts 29 Network, “Doctrine: What do Acts 29 churches not believe?” accessed May 17, 2012, http://www.acts29network.org/about/doctrine/). It appears that churches such as Driscoll’s Mars Hill grow because of, not in spite of, their position on gender (Hansen, “Pastor Provocateur”). Books by prominent evangelicals continue to assert male headship: Driscoll and Driscoll, Real Marriage; Keller, Timothy and Keller, Kathy, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (New York: Dutton, 2011);Google Scholar Venker, Suzanne and Schlafly, Phyllis, Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know—and Men Can't Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011);Google Scholar Carlson, Allan C. and Mero, Paul T., The Natural Family: A Manifesto (Dallas: Spence Publishing, 2007);Google Scholar MacArthur, John, Divine Design: God's Complementary Roles for Men and Women (Colorado Springs: Cook Communication Ministries, 2006);Google Scholar Kassian, Mary A., The Feminist Mistake: The Radical Impact of Feminism on Church and Culture (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2005);Google Scholar and Grudem, Wayne A., ed., Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2002).Google Scholar

7. Gallagher, Sally K., Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 84.Google Scholar

8. When questioned about his commitment to male headship, Driscoll points to passages such as Titus 2, 1 Timothy 5:8, and Ephesians 5:23, which says the husband is “the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.” Evangelicals like Driscoll, who hold tenaciously to a belief in the inerrant Bible, say these Pauline passages are why they continue to assert male headship. However, as Christian Smith has shown, there are several inconsistencies with the evangelical belief in biblical inerrancy. First, evangelicals do not always do everything the Bible commands (The Bible Made Impossible [Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011], 68). Why have evangelicals latched onto headship instead of the command to greet each other with a holy kiss, which is mentioned in several New Testament texts (Rom. 16:16, 1 Cor. 16:20, 2 Cor. 13:12, 1 Thess. 5:26; 1 Pet. 5:14)? A second and, according to Smith, more fundamental problem with the claim about inerrancy is that “the very same Bible—which biblicists insist is perspicuous and harmonious—gives rise to divergent understandings among intelligent, sincere, committed readers about what it says about most topics of interest” (The Bible Made Impossible, 17). When it comes to the passages on gender, some evangelicals, since at least the 1830s, have developed “feminist” interpretations of the text. In 1836, Angelina Grimk´e published her Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, and, in 1838, Sarah Grimk´e published Letters on the Equality of the Sexes. For “hints of a more egalitarian perspective” throughout the two thousand years of church history, see Gallagher, “The Marginalization of Evangelical Feminism,” 219ff.

9. Chaves, Mark, Ordaining Women: Culture and Conflict in Religious Organizations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997);Google Scholar Gallagher, “The Marginalization of Evangelical Feminism”; Gallagher, Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life; Gallagher, Sally K. and Smith, Christian, “Symbolic Traditionalism and Pragmatic Egalitarianism: Contemporary Evangelicals, Families, and Gender,” Gender and Society 13, no. 2 (1999);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Wilcox, W. Bradford, Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).Google Scholar

10. Ammerman and Brusco have argued that women embrace a headship model of family in order to improve their marriages. Bendroth, DeBerg, and Gallagher have argued that headship gives evangelicals a sense of order in the midst of chaotic cultural change. Smith and Gallagher have given many explanations for evangelical belief in headship, but one of the most interesting is the argument that headship “blunts some of the harsher effects of living in a materially rich, but time poor culture, by defusing an area of potential conflict.” See Ammerman, Nancy Tatom, Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 229;Google Scholar Brusco, Elizabeth E., The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995);Google Scholar Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts, Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993);Google Scholar DeBerg, Betty A., Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990);Google Scholar Gallagher, Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life; and Gallagher and Smith, “Symbolic Traditionalism and Pragmatic Egalitarianism.”

11. DeBerg, Ungodly Women, 126–27.

12. Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender, 98–100.

13. Ibid., 98–99.

14. Ibid., 112.

15. Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men, 10, chap. 2.

16. Swartz, David R., “Identity Politics and the Fragmenting of the 1970s Evangelical Left,” Religion and American Culture , 21 (Winter 2011): 97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Leitch, Elisabeth Elliot, “Feminism or Femininity?” Cambridge Fish 5 (Winter 1975–76): 6.Google Scholar

18. See, for example, Renich, Jill, To Have and to Hold (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1972);Google Scholar Foster, Timothy, Dare to Lead (Glendale, Calif: G/L Publications, 1977)Google Scholar; and Dobson, James C., What Wives Wish their Husbands Knew about Women (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1975).Google Scholar For an especially conservative evangelical perspective, see Miles, Judith M., The Feminine Principle (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1975).Google Scholar Miles argued that “the most simple principle of the true feminine nature” was to give pleasure. Her book described the duties of “woman as pleasuregiver, primarily to men, but also to other women and to children” (14).

19. Gothard, Bill, Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts (Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts, 1979), 25.Google Scholar

20. Marabel Morgan, Ohio History Central: An Online Encyclopedia of Ohio History, accessed December 6, 2011, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec¼1767.

21. “In the 1920s, the devil was Darwin. From the 1930s to the 1960s, it was communism.” Lindsay, D. Michael, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 52.Google Scholar

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23. Dobson, What Wives Wish their Husbands Knew About Women, 25.

24. Davis, Rebecca L., More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 177–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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26. Roberta W. Francis, “The History behind the Equal Rights Amendment,” accessed May 17, 2012, <http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/era.htm>; Mathews and De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA, chap. 3.

27. Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 78.Google Scholar

28. Ingersoll, Julie, Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 22.Google Scholar

29. See Scanzoni, Letha and Hardesty, Nancy, All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women's Liberation (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1974);Google Scholar and Jewett, Paul K., Man as Male and Female (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1975).Google Scholar

30. Relationship Resource Group, “The History of the Relationship Resource Group,” accessed May 17, 2012, http://www.betterrelationships.com/about/history.html.

31. Continental Congress on the Family Congress Guide, 17, John Petersen residence, Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.

32. “Welcome to the Continental Congress on the Family,” Continental Congress on the Family Congress Guide, 6.

33. Dobson's action seminar was entitled “Self-Image and Family Success,” Continental Congress on the Family Congress Guide, 19.

34. Scanzoni, John and Scanzoni, Letha, “A Christian View of Men's and Women's Roles in a Changing World (St. Louis: Family ‘76, Inc., 1976), 2.Google Scholar

35. Turner, John G., Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 155.Google Scholar

36. Diane Petersen, telephone conversation with author, September 26, 2013.

37. John Peterson, email to author, October 8, 2013, “Affirmation on the Family,” John Petersen residence, Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.

38. Carol Prester McFadden, “Christian Feminists: ‘We're on Our Way, Lord!’” Christianity Today, December 19, 1975, 36–37.

39. Watt, David Harrington, A Transforming Faith: Explorations of Twentieth-Century American Evangelicalism (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 108–9.Google Scholar

40. Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men, 60. However, Sally Gallagher has argued that, “until recently, gender conservatives have occupied more (and more prestigious) faculty positions in major seminaries and institutions across the country.” Gallagher, “The Marginalization of Evangelical Feminism,” 232.

41. Quebedeaux, Richard, The Young Evangelicals: Revolution in Orthodoxy (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 114.Google Scholar

42. Swartz, “Identity Politics and the Fragmenting of the 1970s Evangelical Left,” 83.

43. Martin, William, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1996), 163.Google Scholar

44. Ibid, 165.

45. Ibid, 164.

46. Hunter, James Davison, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991).Google Scholar

47. Jimmy Carter, “Los Angeles, California—Remarks during a Televised Question-and-Answer Session with Area Residents,” May 17, 1977, posted online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid¼7521; Jimmy Carter, “Yatesville, Pennsylvania, Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at a Town Meeting,” October 15, 1980, posted online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid¼45302.

48. Jimmy Carter, “Elk City, Oklahoma, Remarks and a Question-and- Answer Session at a Town Meeting,” March 24, 1979, posted online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid¼32097.

49. Ibid.

50. Robert S. Havely to Jean O’Leary, October 4, 1976, Records of the Office of the Assistant for Public Liaison —Margaret Costanza’s Subject Files, “Gay Rights: Jimmy Carter's Views on, 10/76,” Box 4, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

51. “Jimmy Carter Speaks Out on Gay Rights,” Press Release: May 23 (no year), Records of the Office of the Assistant for Public Liaison—Margaret Costanza's Subject Files, “Gay Rights: Jimmy Carter's Views on, 10/76,” Box 4, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

52. Jimmy Carter, “Conversation with the President, Remarks in an Interview with Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Bob Schieffer of CBS News, Robert MacNeil of the Public Broadcasting Service, and Barbara Walters of ABC News,” December 28, 1977, posted online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid¼7072; Jimmy Carter, “The President’s News Conference,” July 12, 1977, posted online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid¼7786.

53. Jimmy Carter, “Proclamation 4590—Women's Equality Day, 1978,” August 25, 1978, posted online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid¼31234

54. Jimmy Carter, “Ad Hoc Coalition for Women, Remarks to Representatives of Women's Groups,” March 10, 1977, posted online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid¼7146.

55. “Jimmy Carter Speaks Out on Gay Rights.”

56. Wacker, Grant, “Searching for Norman Rockwell: Popular Evangelicalism in Contemporary America,” in The Evangelical Tradition in America, ed. Sweet, Leonard I. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984), 298–99.Google Scholar

57. Martin, With God on Our Side, 176.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., 165

60. James Dobson, “Family News from Dr. James Dobson,” August 1995, obtained from Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

61. LaHaye, Beverly, Who but a Woman (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 46.Google Scholar

62. Unnamed participant quoted in Martin, With God on Our Side, 176.

63. Martin, With God on Our Side, 177.

64. Ibid., 181.

65. The definition of family had been an explosive topic at the state conventions, so facilitators at the Baltimore regional conferences decided it would not be necessary for the conference to produce an agreed-upon definition of the family. Ibid., 177–82.

66. Ibid., 182–83.

67. Ibid., 184–85.

68. Falwell described Moral Majority as “pro-life, pro-family, pro-moral, and pro-American” (ibid., 201). For a description of the goals of CWA, see LaHaye, Who but a Woman?

69. Falwell, Jerry, Listen, America! (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 7, 128.Google Scholar

70. Ibid., 128–29.

71. Ibid., 124.

72. LaHaye, Beverly, I Am a Woman by God's Design (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revel, 1980), chap. 3, chap. 9.Google Scholar

73. Ibid., 21–22.

74. Ibid., 22.

75. LaHaye, Tim, The Battle for the Family (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1982), 170.Google Scholar

76. Ibid., 140–45.

77. Ibid., 28.

78. Guth, James L. et al., “Onward Christian Soldiers: Religious Activist Groups in American Politics,” in Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches from the Front, ed. Green, John C. et al. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 80.Google Scholar

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83. Ibid., 82.

84. Ibid.

85. Watt, A Transforming Faith, 91.

86. “An Interview with Beverly LaHaye,” Fundamentalist Journal, April 1984, 41, quoted in Isgro, Kirsten Lynn, “‘Real Women’ and the Struggle against Spiritual Forces of Darkness: A Transnational Feminist Analysis of Concerned Women for America” (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2006), 107.Google Scholar

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91. See DeBerg, Ungodly Women; Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender.

92. Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men, 4.

93. “In the 1970s, 74 percent of conservative Protestants… agreed that it is better if ‘the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and the family.’ Thirty years later, only 49 percent of conservative Protestants … held that view.” Ibid., 82–83.

94. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Women in the Labor Force: A Databook” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 2007), 1.

95. Barna Research Group, Born Again: A Look at Christians in America (Glendale, Calif: The Barna Research Group, 1990), 66.

96. “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 21 (December 1978): 289–96.

97. Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender, 118, 125; Gallagher, “The Marginalization of Evangelical Feminism,” 232.

98. Hansen, Collin, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008).Google Scholar

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107. For example, see Piper, John and Grudem, Wayne, eds., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1991).Google Scholar

108. Smith, Christian, Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 173–74.Google Scholar

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110. Ibid., 175.

111. Ibid., 175; Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men, 13.

112. Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men, 13.

113. Considering the fact that so many evangelical homes were marked by what Gallagher has called “pragmatic egalitarianism,” it makes sense to ask whether evangelical efforts to adapt to changing gender ideologies during the 1980s and 1990s were really all that different from the efforts of other Americans. The sociological analysis from the period identifies two main ways in which evangelicals were different from other Americans: (1) A greater percentage of evangelicals (49 percent, compared to 37 of Americans in general in the early 1990s) continued to assert a male-breadwinner, female-housewife model of family as their ideal, even if they did not live up to that ideal in practice, and (2) evangelical fathers did less housework than nonevangelical fathers but were more emotionally engaged with their wives and more “active and expressive with their children” than nonevangelical fathers. See Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men, 4, 13, 82–83.

114. Gilgoff, The Jesus Machine, 34.

115. Ibid., 35.

116. Dobson, “Family News from Dr. James Dobson.”

117. Ibid.

118. Ibid.

119. Gilgoff, The Jesus Machine, 147. See also Dobson, James C., Marriage under Fire: Why We Must Win This War (Sisters, Oreg: Multnomah, 2004), 26, 79.Google Scholar

120. Gilgoff, The Jesus Machine, 174.

121. Ibid.

122. “All but two of the thirteen state amendment campaigns were led by Focus on the Family's state-level Family Policy Councils. And the Arlington Group [a Christian Right coalition in Washington, D.C., to which Dobson belonged] … acted as the national coordinating body for the individual state campaigns.” Gilgoff, The Jesus Machine, 174, 11.

123. Dobson, Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, 22–23.

124. Ibid., 156.

125. Ibid., 159.

126. Konny Thompson, “Torn between Two Worlds,” Focus on the Family, May 1983, 13.

127. Ibid.

128. “Motherhood in the ‘90 s,” Focus on the Family, January 1990, 2–5.

129. McDannell, Colleen, “Beyond Dr. Dobson: Women, Girls, and Focus on the Family,” in Women and Twentieth-Century Protestantism, ed. Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts and Brereton, Virginia Lieson (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 126.Google Scholar

130. In a 1991 edition of Straight Talk, Dobson wrote, “The primary responsibility for the provision of authority in the home has been assigned to men. It will not be popular to restate the age-old Biblical concept that God holds men accountable for leadership in their families…. God apparently expects a man to be the ultimate decisionmaker in his family.” James Dobson, Straight Talk: What Men Need to Know, What Women Should Understand, revised and expanded edition (Dallas: Word Books, 1991), 92–93.

131. Dobson, James C. Dr., Dobson Answers Your Questions about Marriage and Sexuality (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1982), 67.Google Scholar

132. Dobson, Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, 156–57; Dobson, Dr. Dobson Answers Your Questions about Marriage and Sexuality, 98–99.

133. Dobson, Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, 159.

134. Dobson, James C., Straight Talk to Men: Timeless Principles for Leading Your Family (Sisters, Oreg.: Multnomah, 2004), 29–30,Google Scholar ellipses in the original.

135. James Dobson, “Family News from Dr. James Dobson,” November 2004, obtained from Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.

136. Dobson, Marriage under Fire, 10.

137. Ibid., 11–12.

138. Ibid., 13–15.

139. Ibid., 16.

140. Ibid., 16–17.

141. Ibid., 84.

142. Ibid., 88–89. Christian Smith has also noted the tendency for evangelicals to look inward at their own families. He found that “the majority of evangelicals think about dealing with family breakdown primarily in terms of individual—not political or institutional—influence and change. They want, first, to make sure that their own families are strong. …When we asked interviewees, ‘What should Christians be doing about concerns such as the breakdown of the family?’ by far the most common responsewas to look to their personal commitments to their own families.” Smith, Christian America?, 166–67.

143. Gilgoff, The Jesus Machine, 29.

144. Quoted in ibid., 31.

145. See Gilgoff, The Jesus Machine.

146. Ibid., 7.

147. Putsata Reang, “Two Thousand Evangelicals Rally against Gay Marriage,” San Jose Mercury News, April 5, 2004, A9; Ulysses Torassa, “Thousands Protest Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage: Asian Americans, Christians Rally in Sunset District,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 2004, B1.

148. Lornet Turnbull and Patrick Coolican, “Two Sides of Gay- Marriage Debate Face Off at Safeco Field Rally: Event Draws 20,000 People,” Seattle Times, May 2, 2004, A1.

149. Gilgoff, The Jesus Machine, 94, 125.

150. Ibid., xii.

151. Dobson, James C. Dr., James Dobson Discusses America’s Choice: Nine Key Issues That Will Shape Our Future (Colorado Springs, Colo: Focus on the Family, 2000), 6.Google Scholar

152. Gilgoff, The Jesus Machine, 147.

153. James Dobson, “Family News from Dr. James Dobson,” April 2004, obtained from Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.

154. Dobson, “Family News from Dr. James Dobson,” November 2004.

155. Dobson, Marriage under Fire, 19–21.

156. Gallagher, Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life, chap. 4, emphasis mine.

157. See, for example, Wells, David F. and Woodbridge, John D., eds., The Evangelicals: What They Believe, Who They Are, Where They Are Changing (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975);Google Scholar Bebbington, David, “Evangelicalism in Its Settings: The British and American Movements since 1940,” in Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles, and Beyond, 1700–1990, ed. Noll, Mark A., Bebbington, David W., and Rawlyk, George A. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994);Google Scholar and Dayton, Donald W. and Johnston, Robert K., eds., The Variety of American Evangelicalism (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1991).Google Scholar An exception is Wacker, “Searching for Norman Rockwell.” One reason for the hesitation to embrace gender ideology may be the desire, expressed by George Marsden in Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), to represent fundamentalism as “considerably more than gut reactions to cultural change” (240).

158. Bebbington, “Evangelicalism in Its Settings,” 367.

159. Balmer, in Blessed Assurance, devotes the fifth chapter (out of six) to gender ideology. The chapter opens: “No issue has caused evangelicals more consternation in the second half of the twentieth century than feminism” (71).

160. For example, see Owen Strachan, “The ‘Dad Mom’ and the ‘Man Fail,’” November 2, 2011, accessed August 18, 2013, http://owenstrachan.com/2011/11/02/the-dad-mom-and-the-man-fail/.

161. “In January 2013 her Web site received 462,069 pageviews.” Rachel Held Evans, accessed August 18, 2013, http://rachelheldevans.com/advertise/.

162. For example, see Katelyn Beaty, “My Calling as a Female Breadwinner,” June 25, 2013, http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2013/june/my-calling-as-female-breadwinner.html?start¼2; Halee Gray Scott, “Where Have All the Women Leaders Gone?” May 9, 2013, http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2013/may/wherehave-all-women-leaders-gone.html">http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2013/may/wherehave-all-women-leaders-gone.html; and Laura Ortberg Turner, “Too Girly to Lead?” http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2013/may/wherehave-all-women-leaders-gone.html. All accessed August 18, 2013.

163. Molly Ball, “The Quiet Gay-Rights Revolution in America’s Churches,” August 14, 2013, accessed August 18, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/the-quiet-gay-rights-revolution-in-americas-churches/278646/.

164. Public Religion Research Institute, “Fact Sheet: Gay and Lesbian Issues,” April 26, 2013, accessed August 18, 2013, http://publicreligion.org/research/2013/04/doma-gay-marriage-march-2013/#. UhErUb-_H4 g.

165. Rachel Held Evans, “How to Win a Culture War and Lose a Generation,” accessed October 19. 2013, http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/win-culture-war-lose-generation-amendment-one-north-carolina.

166. For example, see Jonathan Merritt, “Evangelicals and the Growing Gender Debate,” Religion News Service, June 6, 2013, accessed August 18, 2013, https://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2013/06/06/evangelicals-and-the-growing-gender-debate/.