‘Wife, Mommy, Pastor and Friend’: The Rise of Female Evangelical Microcelebrities

Katie Christine Gaddini

doi:10.3390/rel12090758

Abstract

The popularity of digital media has spurred what has been called a “crisis of authority”. How do female evangelical microcelebrities figure in this crisis? Many of these women belong to churches led by male pastors, have amassed a large following online, and are sought-after speakers and teachers. This paper analyses how gender, religious authority, and the digital sphere collide through the rise of female evangelical microcelebrities. Bringing together ethnographic data, textual analysis, and social media analysis of six prominent women, I emphasize the power of representation to impact religious practices and religious meaning. This article examines how evangelical women are performing and negotiating their legitimacy as the Internet and fluid geographical boundaries challenge local models of religious authority. Moving away from a binary perspective of “having” or “not having” authority, this paper considers the various spheres of authority that evangelical microcelebrities occupy, including normative womanhood, prosperity theology, and politics. Finally, by examining the social media content put forth by female evangelical microcelebrities, I interrogate the political stakes of evangelical women’s authority.

Highlights

On 5 March 2021, the popular bible teacher Beth Moore announced her disaffiliation from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest evangelical denomination in the United States
Instead of asking if female evangelical microcelebrities have authority, this paper proposes a more exploratory approach by analyzing how religious authority is performed, which spheres it touches, and the relationship of this religious authority to traditional, male-centric structures
This paper analyzed the spheres in which American female evangelical microcelebrities perform religious authority

Summary

Introduction

On 5 March 2021, the popular bible teacher Beth Moore announced her disaffiliation from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest evangelical denomination in the United States. Even though Moore has not full renounced a complementarian perspective on church leadership, which champions male headship and female submission, her move indicated that the contestation over religious authority within evangelicalism is ongoing. The mediatization of religion is one means of challenging traditional forms of religious authority, including the vertical structures of power that proliferate in conservative religious communities, including evangelicalism (Barker 2005; Campbell 2007; Cheong et al 2008; Cheong et al 2011; Clarke 2010). This article brings gendered attention to the ways digital religion challenges, changes, or threatens religious authority structures in evangelical Christianity, where gender is a “central organizing principle and core symbolic system” It questions to what extent this authority threatens or undermines traditional, male-centric “epistemic authority” within evangelicalism (Cheong et al 2008)

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