Evangelical Gender Research Articles

Postfeminist, engaged and resistant: Evangelical male clergy attitudes towards gender and women’s ordination in the Church of England

Despite the introduction of female bishops, women do not hold offices on equal terms with men in the Church of England, where conservative evangelical male clergy often reject the validity of women’s ordination. This article explores the gender values of such clergy, investigating how they are expressed and the factors that shape them. Data is drawn from semi-structured interviews and is interpreted with thematic narrative analysis. The themes were analyzed with theories on postfeminism, engaged orthodoxy and group schism. It is argued that participants’ gender values are best understood as postfeminist and that the wider evangelical tradition, as well as a perceived change in Anglican identity with the onset of women’s ordination, shape their postfeminism. Moreover, whilst evangelical gender values possess the potential to foster greater gender equality within the Church of England, gender differentiation limits this possibility, a limitation that could be addressed by increasing participants’ engagement beyond the Church.

“Men” and “Ladies”: An Archaeology of Gendering in the Evangelical Church

The gendered evangelical subject is constituted by a discursive formation with a premodern genealogy refracted through a modern epistemology. To support this claim and demonstrate how the formation determines evangelical discourses on gender, the study applies Foucault’s theory of the discursive formation to deconstruct evangelical gender ideology. The formation’s genealogy is traced to the New Testament “household code” and its epistemology situated in the Enlightenment-inspired doctrine of biblical “inerrancy” by which the code is deemed authoritative. How the formation regulates evangelical responses to modern feminism is reviewed, along with recent movements within evangelicalism toward reordering its “biblical” discourse on gender.

Lee-Barnewall's "Neither complementarian nor egalitarian: A kingdom corrective to the Evangelical gender debate" (Book Review)

Lee-Barnewall's "Neither complementarian nor egalitarian: A kingdom corrective to the Evangelical gender debate" (Book Review)

Gender and homosexuality attitudes across religious groups from the 1970s to 2014: Similarity, distinction, and adaptation

This study uses General Social Survey data to compare gender and homosexuality across American religious groups from the 1970s to 2014, examining three possible patterns for how evangelical attitudes relate to those of other groups: (1) they are similar; (2) they are different, but move together over time; (3) they are different and converge or diverge over time. Evangelical gender attitudes regarding work and family issues are more conservative than those of all other groups, but are adaptive to broad trends, changing at a rate similar to those of other groups. Evangelical attitudes toward the morality of homosexuality and same-sex marriage are more conservative than those of all other religious groups, and their rate of change is slower over time. Separate trends on the two issues suggest that gender and sexuality attitude change is decoupled, especially among evangelicals who are adapting more on gender while increasingly distinguishing themselves on same-sex relationships. A three-stage process of religious tension appears to characterize evangelical identity-building: (1) similarity, (2) distinction, and (3) adaptation.

Taking on power: Women leaders in evangelical mission organizations

Women leaders are scarce in evangelical mission organizations. Part of the reason may be gender-role stereotypes, which function very strongly in much of evangelicalism. This article presents the stories of two women who worked at executive-level leadership positions in evangelical mission organizations. Using narrative analysis and a critical feminist lens, I examine their stories to understand how these women describe their leadership and how they portray their use of power. The strength of gender-role stereotypes and evangelical gender roles appeared to define and limit the power they were able to use. As long as they stayed within prescribed norms, they experienced some success. Deviations from the gender-role stereotypes led to sanctions from their organizations. Conclusions and implications are that the stereotypes may limit women’s leadership and that both women and organizations need to become aware of how these unspoken assumptions may be functioning. Recommendations for women leaders and for organizations seeking to incorporate women into leadership are offered.

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

AbstractThis 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.

“Cooking with Gordon”: Food, Health, and the Elasticity of Evangelical Gender Roles (and Belt Sizes) on The 700 Club

This article examines evangelical gender paradigms as expressed through a 700 Club cooking segment facilitated by Gordon Robertson, the son of Pat Robertson—founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), The 700 Club , Christian Coalition, and one-time presidential candidate. Several themes converge within this cooking show, including health and nutrition, family ritual, and gender roles. Using the cooking segment as data, I draw on scholarship on body, gender, family and ritual to argue that evangelical discourses are labile in their responses to recent socio-cultural shifts and suggest that “Sunday Dinners: Cooking with Gordon” defies caricatures of evangelical gender formation and signals a possible shift to soft-patriarchy and quasi-egalitarianism, at least within public, visual discourse. “Sunday Dinners” underscores the centrality of the family in evangelical discourse—even as conceptions of gender are in flux—as it seeks to facilitate everyday rituals via cooking and eating together.

‘Cooking with Gordon’: Food, Health, and the Elasticity of Evangelical Gender Roles (and Belt Sizes) on The 700 Club

This article examines evangelical gender paradigms as expressed through a 700 Club cooking segment facilitated by Gordon Robertson, the son of Pat Robertson – founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), The 700 Club, Christian Coalition, and one-time presidential candidate. Several themes converge within this cooking show, including health and nutrition, family ritual, and gender roles. Using the cooking segment as data, I draw on scholarship on body, gender, family and ritual to argue that evangelical discourses are labile in their responses to recent socio-cultural shifts and suggest that ‘Sunday Dinners: Cooking with Gordon’ defies caricatures of evangelical gender formation and signals a shift to soft-patriarchy and quasi-egalitarianism, at least within public, visual discourse. ‘Sunday Dinners’ underscores the centrality of the family in evangelical discourse – even as conceptions of gender are in flux – as it seeks to facilitate everyday rituals via cooking and eating together.

An Interpretation of Evangelical Gender Ideology: Implications for a Theology of Gender

One of the core findings in the sociology of religion literature regarding evangelicals is the penchant for the adoption of traditional family values. Despite the availability of alternative gender ideology models, evangelicals in general espouse a male headship and female domestic understanding of gender and concomitant domestic division of labor. There has been a "softening" of male headship language as this language is translated into a servant leadership model. This essay asks the question: What is the cost or impact for evangelicals to espouse a traditional model for gender ideology?

Exploring the Communication of Evangelical Families: The Association Between Evangelical Gender Role Ideology and Family Communication Patterns

This study examines the relationship between the Evangelical gender role ideologies termed Complementarianism and Egalitarianism and conversation- and conformity-orientation communication patterns stemming from the general theory of family communication. A nonrandom group (N = 124) of Evangelical parents were surveyed using a cross-sectional, self-report survey design. Specific differences were discovered in the perceptions of communication in families for individuals holding conservative Complementarian and progressive Egalitarian gender role ideologies. Evangelical parents who endorsed a more Egalitarian family gender role ideology reported greater use of conversation-oriented communication patterns in their families whereas respondents holding a more Complementarian family gender role ideology reported more use of conformity-oriented communication patterns in their families.

The Baby Blanket or the Briefcase: The Impact of Evangelical Gender Role Ideologies on Career and Mothering Aspirations of Female Evangelical College Students

This study examines the relationship between the Evangelical gender role ideologies termed Complementarianism and Egalitarianism and mothering and career aspirations among Evangelical female college students. We surveyed 134 women from two colleges in the United States, one in the Midwest and one in the South. Using a cross-sectional, self-report survey design, we examined the interaction between career aspirations and mothering aspirations as well as the impact of Evangelical gender role ideologies on both types of aspirations. Results indicated that career and home aspirations were negatively correlated. Mothering aspirations were shown to be significantly affected by conservative gender role ideology. These findings suggest that aspirations for one’s mothering role may be influenced by ideological positions.

A “Christian Businessman” in the Eastern Townships: The Convergence of Precept and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Gender Construction

In their analysis of the impact of nineteenth-century market forces upon the lives of women, historians have drawn attention to the important evangelical construct of the pious, praying mother with its strong, prescriptive norms for female behaviour. This study examines its largely unexplored counterpart, “the Christian businessman”, through means of a detailed case study of the business and family life of a single individual, Charles C. Colby (1827-1907), a prominent Eastern Townships lawyer, entrepreneur, Methodist layman, and federal politician. Richly documented in a large collection of family and business papers, Colby's life offers a unique opportunity to move beyond the clerically constructed “Christian businessman” to a world where business and religious interests were often in daily competition, and where the much-vaunted tranquility of Victorian domestic life was frequently challenged by the forces of the market-place, even in Colby's case, to the point of bankruptcy. The study tests the extent to which an ideal religious construct both influenced and was in tum influenced by the reality of economic and family concerns even as it sought to maintain moral continuity.

Veiled Submission: Gender, Power, and Identity Among Evangelical and Muslim Women in the United States

The past decade has witnessed a proliferation of studies that illuminate devout women's affiliation with conservative religious communities. Despite the increasingly multicultural character of contemporary social and religious life, few studies to date have compared the experiences of conservative religious women across faith traditions. Guided by insights from cultural theory, this study begins by comparing elite gender discourses within evangelical Protestantism and Islam. Elite evangelical gender debates hinge on biblical references to women's submission. Similarly, Muslims dispute the meaning of the veil to Islamic womanhood. After outlining the contours of these debates, we draw on in-depth interview data with evangelical and Muslim women to demonstrate how these two groups of respondents negotiate gender in light of their distinctive religious commitments. In the end, we reveal that the unique cultural repertoires within these two religious communities enable women to affirm traditional religious values while refashioning such convictions to fit their post-traditional lifestyles.

Conservative Protestantism and the Division of Household Labor among Married Couples

To date, few studies have examined the role of religion, especially conservative (i.e., fundamentalist and evangelical) Protestantism, in shaping the division of housework. The authors begin by reviewing popular writings on gender and family life by contemporary conservative Protestants, focusing on the competing discourses of traditionalist and egalitarian evangelicals. Then, the authors analyze data on a large U.S. sample of married couples from Wave 1 of the National Survey of Families and Households to compare conservative Protestant housework patterns with those among nonevangelical couples. Conservative Protestant wives perform more housework overall and spend more time doing “female-typed” labor than their nonevangelical peers. These differences are then traced to religious variations in spousal and household resources and also to a distinctive evangelical gender ideology. Interestingly, few religious differences in men's housework patterns are observed. Implications of these findings are discussed and several promising directions for future research identified.

The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia

The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia