Kristin Kobes Du Mez: “Live, Laugh, Love”
New book from the author of Jesus and John Wayne
Kristin Kobes Du Mez is best known for her book Jesus and John Wayne, which looked at masculinity in American evangelicalism. Her new book, out now, does the same for femininity and positivity. Women today are often told to “live, laugh, love” and focus on the positive. They are to put mind over matter, even though that concept is not explicitly stated in the Bible. This attitude can make women susceptible to abusive relationships, scams, and multi-level marketing schemes.
Kristin Kobes du Mez investigates the negative aspects of positivity
The book covers a wide swath of history, from Love Comes Softly to The Total Woman and the Little House books. Kristin and I had a lot of fun geeking out over history. I’m excited for you to hear it!
Discussion Questions:
- What are some of the messages that women get in your type of Christianity?
- How do they differ from what men hear?
- What is Keswick Holiness? How did it inform the Pentecostal movement?
- What is New Thought?
- How do these ideas push people toward free-market capitalism? What about multi-level marketing?
TRANSCRIPT (note: this was AI-generated from the video version and may not be 100% accurate)
Chris: Welcome to The Truce Podcast. My name is Chris Staron, I’m the host, and this is a show that uses journalistic tools to look inside the Christian Church. We press pause on the culture wars in order to explore how we got here and how we can do better. Now, normally, this is an audio-only show, and you can find audio versions on YouTube or whatever.
But for this episode, because I’m taking a departure from my normal format of adding in music and recreating different historic events, and I’m just interviewing an author, I thought I would play the video for you and make that available online. So today, I’m interviewing Kristin Kobes Du Mez, and she’s most famous for her book, Jesus and John Wayne, and she has a new one that’s just coming out called Live, Laugh, Love.
And, um, the subtitle is The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. And it gets into a lot of really big topics, uh, like how women are marketed to to be positive and to serve men, and how that gets into things like libertarianism or even multi-level marketing. It’s a very interesting book, and I hope that you enjoy my interview with Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
Chris: could you introduce yourself for the audience, please? You’ve done so many different things. I don’t even really know where to start.
Kristin: Yeah, so I’m Kristin Kobes Du Mez. I’m a professor of history at Calvin University and senior democracy fellow at PRRI. Um, I’ve written now three books, but most people know me by, uh, Jesus and John Wayne. uh, yeah, I’ve, I’m a historian who’s trying to figure out the connection between, uh, religion and politics and gender
Chris: Okay. Well, let’s dive right in. You wrote Jesus and John Wayne and now this book, both of which cover heavy topics, and I, I imagine make you the target of a lot of harassment. First of all, are you okay?
Kristin: You’re gonna make me cry.
Chris: Oh, sorry.
Kristin: morning for this. No, I, uh, I, um, I’m a little tired, I’ll
Chris: Yeah
Kristin: Um, uh, y- yeah, I’ve been the target of a certain level of harassment. Much of that has gone down, uh, in public on social media, so if you followed me back in the day on Twitter, um, you probably watched some of that.
There, there have been a couple of campaigns to try to get me fired, um, from my, uh, university, Christian university. Uh, those failed, so I’m, I’m fine. Um, what people don’t realize is that, uh, the amount of, uh, kind of feedback I get, the messages, the letters, it’s, like, 99.9% incredibly positive, and only a tiny fraction is that kind of trolling.
Really, just a tiny fraction. So I actually get so much encouragement from readers every single day.
Chris: Oh, that’s great. I’m so glad to hear that because,
Kristin: Yeah.
Chris: say, what is it? It takes 10 compliments to undo one negative comment, and
Kristin: We’re, we’re, we’re okay. We’re,
Chris: Okay
Kristin: yeah, the ratio is working for me right now.
Chris: Okay. ‘Cause I know your book is partially about, uh, how women are expected to be positive all the time, and, and then here you get a, you get a, like, a bunch of negative feedback, uh, from your books and things because you are trying to push people to think a little deeper.
And,
Kristin: Yeah,
Chris: I imagine
Kristin: that memo. Yes.
Chris: I imagine it’s just hard because, uh, y- you know, you, you don’t wanna also live in a world where you feel under attack all the time. Um, but okay, I just wanted to check and make sure you’re okay, and I, um, I imagine the listeners and watchers will, uh, the viewers will be
Kristin: I
Chris: excited.
Kristin: point though,
Chris: Okay
Kristin: I, I didn’t realize when I published Jesus and John Wayne how many rules I was breaking. Because I, I’m coming from kind of outside the evangelical space, maybe like one foot in, but one foot always firmly out of that, that culture. And so I, I was a little bit naive publishing Jesus and John Wayne.
I was writing as a historian, determined to figure out, like, what’s really going on here, and I didn’t know that there were rules about how much you could criticize evangelicals, how you needed to say lots of positive things about them, how, um, y- you know, you were trying to protect the witness of the church.
All of these things, I, um, as a historian, I just wasn’t thinking in those terms. And so it’s been a learning experience for me, being out insi- i- inside those spaces really now, as a, as a historical critic as well as still a practicing Christian
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I, I kind of, I, I don’t have as, nearly as much negative feedback as you do, but I am an evangelical, and so so- some of what I’m covering on the show ends up being talking about my people and the things that we are wrestling with as a people, especially our, our public images. What, what gets reported is generally the negative, including unfortunately on my own show, right?
Kristin: Right,
Chris: always trying to figure out what is the, the, the best way to cover this without being biased in one direction or the other. Um, so you f- you wrote “Jesus and John Wayne,” uh, about men, and so why write a book about women?
Kristin: Jesus and John Wayne, uh, actually, i- in that book was prompted by m- my students at Calvin, male students who were telling me back in the early 2000s already about this whole culture of masculinity, and so I, I decided to figure out where it came from, what it was doing. In Jesus and John Wayne, there are a couple of chapters that do center women. Uh, e- early in the book, I talk about, uh, women like, um, Elizabeth Elliot, Marabel Morgan, just a little bit Phyllis Schlafly, and then the last chapter is on abuse in evangelical churches and covering up abuse. But it really bothered me that I had to leave it at that, because I knew that there was just so much more, particularly kind of dropping the focus, um, y- or jumping from 1970s and then up to the contemporary, because I knew it was so much more complicated.
And so when Jesus and John Wayne, after it published, and my publisher said, “You know, okay, what’s next?” I, I, I kinda knew I wanted to do something on women, and then very quickly I knew it needed to be called Live, Laugh, Love, and we just kind of went with it, and then I figured out what the book was really about.
Chris: Okay. Okay, good. Yeah. Because you, you, there’s a, a quote in the introduction, um, you, you, you write that women are at the center of American Christianity, and what do you mean by that?
Kristin: Yeah. in, in the simplest form, if you just look at demographics, right? More Christians in this country are female than male. So uh, so if, uh, it… And as a historian of women and of American religion, uh, any grad school student, uh, grad student knows this, that, uh, if you’re, if you’re doing kind of anything that’s not, um, at, at the centers of power, which in evangelicalism and in most, most American religious communities, most topics generally, that’s gonna be kind of powerful white men. then you have to kind of make the case for why your work matters, because the assumption is it doesn’t. It’s not the center of the story. Uh, so it’s fine for people who like to read that kind of stuff. So women, go ahead. If you wanna know what your people are doing, read a, uh, work in women’s history, but it doesn’t often shape the main narrative. And, um, what I realized, uh, and I share this story, is that, uh, about a decade ago now, I was at a seminar with experts on American evangelicalism, and they were talking about the current state of evangelicalism, and I started talking about things like Rachel Held Evans, and the, the blogging community, and, and Hobby Lobby.
And I realized, like I, I… All of a sudden I stopped because I, I looked around the room and I saw all of like, these blank stares looking back at me. They literally… It’s not that they had considered these things and didn’t think that they were relevant. They didn’t even know what I was talking about, and these are experts in American evangelicalism. And, and that’s when I told them, like, “Hey,” you know, like, “who are you studying here? Um, and h- i- if, you know, maybe it’s time to start reading Christian romance novels to figure out who evangelicals are and what they believe, and not just focus on what the, um, elite seminary professors and theologians are saying.”
Chris: Absolutely. So I’m guessing you’ve read some Christian romance novels. I, I, I used to tr- I was trying to be a, um, Christian fiction writer years and years and years ago, and so if something like 80% of all things that are sold in the Christian market are purchased by women, and so, uh, the publishers were really pushing me, like, “You need to write and fit this box, uh, and you need to reach out to women.”
And so I was reading Ch- uh, Christian women’s fiction books, and I was, I was surprised by how different they are than things that are geared to men. Um, so what, what did you read, and what, what stood out to you in those, those romance novels?
Kristin: Oh, I, I initially when I started this project, I just was trying to read all the things, and so I was reading, um, uh, Karen Kingsbury, and I, I was reading just, like, kind of a smattering. I went back to some of the things that I had read, uh, growing up. Um, um, uh, the, um, Vienna Prelude, uh, by, um, Bodie, uh, is it Tahney I think?
I always get the pronunciation off there. Um, I… And then I, I ended up kind of centering around because, um, one of- the hardest thing about Live, Laugh, Love, writing it, was figuring out what not to include. It’s al- it’s already a thick book. And, and the things that are included are, are representative, but they, in no way is this a comprehensive guide.
So you can kind of like fit the, the pieces in, in, into this, uh, framework. Uh, but in the Christian fiction especially, like I initially was, was going to do all these things, and oh, and Amish, Amish romance, right? Um, I was reading all of those, and, um, still have them on a shelf behind me, and, and then I ended up thinking I c- I can’t do it all or nobody’s…
Uh, it’s just gonna be so superficial. So I leaned into, um, Janet Oke and her Love Comes Softly b- because that’s the book that really, um, ignites this, um, modern era of Christian fiction, published in 1979, and it was such a… When I reread it, because I, I loved that book when I was growing up, and when I reread it, I, um, I read it as a kind of, uh, economic and political document, not just as a story, and that was really fun to kind of go back to that and see all of these values that were embedded in that narrative that had so shaped my imagination as a young teenager.
Chris: And I, I would want to, uh, hear all about those, but I’m realizing we’re gonna go out of order if we do that, so we probably should go at a little bit of a historic timeline, which is on me. Uh, I just get so excited ’cause we’ve covered so many similar things. I… There’s a lot I want to talk about.
Kristin: Yes.
Chris: Uh, but there, there, there are some, some things that get us to, um, women’s fiction, um, some movements, some books, uh, some ideas that wouldn’t, you wouldn’t initially think you would find, like libertarianism or something.
Uh, in the 1800s, you, you write about some, some books like Fascinating Womenhood, Womanhood, um, that are really impactful and kind of start the ball rolling on these. Can you give me a taste of what those books were about?
Kristin: Yeah. so when I came up with the idea, I’m gonna write a book on women and it’s gonna be called Live, Laugh, Love, like that was pretty much all I had going when my publisher was like, “Great, sign here.” You know? Like,
Chris: Wow, I wish it was that simple for everybody.
Kristin: Right, right. Well, and I said, “No, no, no, no, wait. We wanna ma- I wanna make sure we’re, we’re on the same page here.”
But, um, what I do love about that, the title, is that when I say the title in a bo- in a room full of women, they know exactly what’s going to be in the book, right? They know you’re gonna talk about multi-level marketing, you’re gonna talk about Christian romance, obviously Amish romances in there. You’re gonna be talking about mommy bloggers and Hobby Lobby, right?
They know, Joanna Gaines, all the things. It’s gonna be in there, all the way up to trad wives. And, um, w- um, I, what they also know, and what makes perfect sense, um, right out of the gate, is that this is not just a book about evangelicalism, right? If you think about that live, laugh, love culture that I just listed off, all of those things, we’re talking about evangelical women, yes, but we’re also talking about Mormon women.
We’re talking also about, um, positive thinking, a more secular philosophical tradition. We’re talking about charismatic women and mainline women, right? It- it’s a, it’s a much more complex culture, and, and there are reasons for that, that I get into the, in the book, that women are participating in these, in this world primarily as consumers. And nobody’s gonna stop you from tuning into Joyce Meyer, and then also, um, Beth Moore, and, uh, right? Re- just reading across a kind of theological spectrum, and then also, you know, dabbling in secular positive thinking stuff. It’s all, it’s all out there to be consumed, and it all blends together. So what I do in the book then is I go back to the 19th century, and I kind of trace back these three distinct strands that then, like, uh, influence each other.
Evangelicalism, particularly holiness evangelicalism, which I… The, the idea of, like, total submission to God, and then you’re going to be sanctified, you’re gonna become holy, perfect, and you’re going to find happiness in that. And it’s a formulaic faith. You follow these rules, these spiritual laws, and you’re going to find spiritual success and happiness. Right, that’s holiness evangelicalism. It informs 20th century American evangelicalism, like, across the board. It also is the, the strand that evolves into the charismatic movement and ultimately the, the prosperity gospel, right? So that makes sense. Then I trace Mormonism, and then I trace, um, the history of New Thought, which is the origin story of po- the positive thinking movement. Now, I trace that through, uh, well, in a, in a number of ways, but through this, um, the, the book Fascinating Womanhood, which, uh, you mentioned, which, uh, if you, um, have heard that before, Fascinating Womanhood, most people are familiar with it because of a book that was published in 1963 by Helen Andelin, a Mormon woman.
It sold millions of copies, self-published, and it taught women to be, like, frilly, feminine, to submit to men, to be, um, kind of the stereotypical hyper-fe- Femininity is embedded there, and that’s godliness. Helen Andelin, again, a Mormon, even though she didn’t really advertise that she was a Mormon in the book itself. That book directly inspires Marabel Morgan’s Total Woman, published in the 1970s. It’s the answer to The Feminist Mystique, the feminist movement, and it sells 10 million copies, the most popular nonfiction book of any genre in 1974. Um, and so and that sets the template for Christian women’s nonfiction for generations to come.
Also silly, frilly, feminine, submit, all those things, you’re gonna be blessed with happiness. I realized is that Helen Andelin her book on a series of booklets published in the early 1920s by Psychology Press, and they were based on New Thought. So this, quote-unquote, “biblical womanhood,” Christian womanhood, that template comes directly from this secular philosophy of positive thinking, which is change your attitude, change your life, spiritual laws.
It’s gonna work. Once you do this, change your attitude, and please men, like law of attraction, be attractive to a man. He’s gonna give you what you want, and you’re gonna find happiness. So that’s one of the kind of through lines of the book, um, that shows really clearly how these various traditions intersect and actually, like, create each other
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it’s fascinating, uh, the, the– ’cause Keswick ho-holiness, the, the whole– that movement sounds like it’s a really positive thing, but it ends up having all these sort of, uh, byproducts that come out of it. Um, and, uh, D.L. Moody is one of the people who’s really famous for preaching this and, and spreading it.
Um, how does holiness, the holiness movement become New Thought? And what, what are, what are the distinctions between the two concepts?
Kristin: Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know that I would say the holiness movement becomes New Thought,
Chris: Okay
Kristin: if you look at their roots, uh, they emerge in the same era. They both emerge as, uh, a rejection of Calvinism. is way too pessimistic. You know, humans have no real agency, sin endures, all those things, and it was just way too dour and way too negative for modern times. Um, the way in which both of them reject Calvinism are remarkably similar, right? It places the power in the, um, individual, the individual mind. The mind controls reality. Trust and obey, there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus or, you know, this is the pow- this is mind power. Um, and, and this is a, in the secular space, it, it, it feeds the kind of get rich quick, um, you know, think and grow rich. It’s the, um, the Norman Vincent Peale version, right? Very popular w- with businessmen. In the holiness spaces, it also fuels prosperity gospel teachings eventually. Um, and um, in both, right, you see this, um, uh, this, the same kind of feminine ideal emerge. They don’t ever become exactly the same thing. Um, but, uh, i- it…
So it’s a, it’s a complicated story, but they operate in similar enough ways that it’s very easy to go back and forth and to borrow a piece here and a piece there. You, so whether you call it, you know, God your higher power, you know, whether it’s the Holy Spirit or, you know, the, um,
Chris: The universe or
Kristin: of the
Chris: yeah.
Kristin: exactly, right? Um, and so again, this borrowing back and forth. Um, but yeah, Keswick is, uh, the version of holiness that, um, really takes center stage in my narrative and also in kind of defining 20th century evangelicalism, mainstream evangelicalism. And it is a variant of this holiness theology that, that kind of find ways to control the excess, to control…
Like, y- when you get into the charismatic movement, faith healing and all that, things can get kind of wild and crazy, and it’s also a way to really empower those on the margins, because everybody can channel the spirit, right? Everybody can, can tap this great power source. So Keswick, um, along with dispensationalism, um, and the new doctrine of inerrancy in the late 19th century, provide mechanisms to control this spiritual power, and that’s kind of the story, and this, this emerges then in the early 20th century, Keswick dispensationalism and inerrancy as modern fundamentalism, right?
So that’s also part of this, this story as well.
Chris: Wow. Yeah. There, there’s so many different things we could cover in all that. Uh, I, I think, um, w- w- it, it, it’s been e- exciting to, to read this book in many ways because as, um, as a podcaster, I feel like I, I’m sometimes going crazy, and then I’m seeking out these topics that I’m like, “Nobody else is talking about this for some reason.”
And I imagine as a writer, especially writing history, that you get that same sense. Are there, are there topics that came up, people that came up, things that you’re like, “Why is nobody else mentioning this thing?”
Kristin: Yeah, and I will say, you know, when, uh, when you invited me to come on this podcast, and I looked at your, uh, previous episodes and topics covered, I just thought, “Uh, so I just wrote the book, um, you know, narrating your podcast
Chris: basically.
Kristin: we are, we are seeing the same things, right? Uh, which is very cool.
Like, we’re not making this up. There’s, there’s something out there, and we’re, we’re trying to figure this out. y- I think w- with Jesus and John Wayne, one of the, um, most responses I got in the thousands and thousands of messages I’ve received and still receive every, every week is, um, “This is the story of my life, but I never understood how all these pieces fit together.” Right? And that’s what this does again but on steroids. There are more pieces here, many more pieces, and I’m trying to show how all of these pieces fit together. So some of the pieces that don’t appear… Well, I mean, frankly all of the women’s stuff just never appears in, um, scholarly works on evangelicalism.
I mean, sure, Elisabeth Elliot might get a, a shout-out. Maribel Morgan is usually not mentioned at all, or if she is, it’s kind of with a, you know, eye roll. Like, “This is silly stuff. Let’s get onto serious business.” Something like, um, you know, uh, Mary Kay, LuLaRoe, they’re not gonna make your histories of evangelicalism. Rachel-Haal Devins, um, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Jen Hatmaker, right? You know, come on, let’s be serious, so all of these topics. But if you go back in, deeper in history, I center, um, a woman from the 19th century, holiness preacher Hannah Whitall Smith, who writes The Christian Secret of a Happy Life. That’s kind of the historical foundation of this, um, holiness evangelicalism I’m trying to talk about, or at least I use it.
She’s not the only one, but she’s a really critical person, uh, in the 19th century. And, um, another figure in this book that usually is omitted from… And Hannah, Hannah will often get, like, a passing mention in an anthology of American religion. Um, but somebody who barely receives mention, if at all, is, uh, Frank Buchman. in the early 20th century, he is deeply shaped by this holiness theology, and especially the Keswick holiness, um, uh, variant, and then he devises a system of evangelism and discipleship- Control to change individual lives so that he could change the world. Because again, it’s all about the mind. Um, if the mind controls reality, whether in the religious, you know, space or in the, the secular new thought, then how do you change reality?
You change people’s minds. You control people’s minds, right? So he devises this elaborate system to draw people in, and then use small groups and confession and shame and the structures of authority, um, and deference to hold people inside this movement that he’s created that is a– has lovely goals, which is to essentially, you know, transform the world and bring it under Christ’s dominion. Um, and, and that’s– I trace that then and his influence throughout 20th century American evangelicalism, and I– a little bit in terms of foreign policy. And he, if you’ve never heard of Frank Buchman, um, he’s associated with what was called the Oxford Group, and then they changed the name to Moral Re-Armament. But a splinter group from that becomes the National Prayer Breakfast. And that connects us then to people like Henrietta Mears, the woman who helped recruit Billy Graham, who trained Bill Bright, um, who, uh, trained Dick Halverson, who ends up, you know, heading up the family, the fellowship. This is National Prayer Breakfast, the family. Right? And so it’s like bringing all these pieces that we thought were separate and putting them in the same narrative, and you see that many of the people that we’ve separated were actually in the same room.
Chris: Right. Yeah. Uh, you, you did a really good job of not making it too confusing, ’cause one of the things I struggle with as a podcaster is like, there are so many connections that it’s hard to tell the story in a straight line. Uh, uh, but you just do a much better job than I do. But
Kristin: It, that was the challenge.
Chris: yeah.
Kristin: many names,
Chris: Yeah
Kristin: uh, so my advice to readers is, like, don’t stress about remembering all
Chris: No
Kristin: I’ll remind you later in the narrative, like, “You’ve heard of this guy before, and this is why this is important.”
Chris: yeah. Well, so, uh, going, going back to New Thought, um, how does libertarianism get incorporated? Because that, libertarianism is one of those things on the show that I, when I was thinking about doing an episode about it, I was like, “I’m, I feel like I’m crazy covering this,” because we don’t really talk about the influence of libertarianism on modern evangelicalism, but it’s really, it’s in there.
It’s, it’s really deep.
Kristin: Yes
Chris: how do they inform each other? How does New Thought inform libertarianism?
Kristin: Oh my goodness, yes. Um, and you’re right. And I will say, you know, for all of the many, uh, criticisms that Jesus and John Wayne has received from people who, you know, want to, um, defend the brand, if you will, um, uh, I, I think the main criticism of that book that only one person mentioned, and it was a scholar, and he did so, so gently, um, which is honestly, like my biggest critique of that book, was that it does not engage economics in this libertarian tradition, which is, uh, really key.
And I knew it as I was writing it. I ran out of time. My editor knew it. It, it was this like, this hole that we knew. And so that was the other thing. I knew I wanted to write about… a book about women. I knew I wanted to bring in the charismatic tradition more. That’s an also, a- also something that people don’t realize is, is a hole in, in Jesus and John Wayne. Um, and I knew I wanted to center economics, and particularly libertarianism. So New Thought, this idea, again, that the mind controls reality, and if things are not, if you, if you are impoverished, it’s on you Everybody has within themselves the power to be rich and to be… to have the life that they dream of, that, you know, that they manifest, if you will. And, um, structural inequality, you know, no. No. Everybody has within themself the power to succeed. Um, uh, an abusive employer, right, um, an unfair tax system, nah, you know? Um, none of that is necessary. and, and in fact, if you complain about those things, if you complain about wealth, um, uh, inequality, if you complain about, you know, unfair, um, an unfair playing field in American capitalism, if you complain about, uh, your wages, that- you’re part of the problem.
That’s negative. to succeed in life, you need to be positive, right? You see how this works. So this, this sells a lot of books in the early 20th century, these get rich quick schemes. And again, you know, for, for women, you’ve got a, a slightly different variant, um, which is you have to please a man, and then you will become prosperous, right?
So that’s the… But in the, the, like, straight up, all these books were targeting American businessmen selling millions of copies. in the 1930s with the New Deal, right, American capitalism is very shaky at that time, global depression. Uh, FDR comes in and is trying to harness the power of the government to restructure the economy, and, corporations are nervous, like extremely nervous. Public sentiment is against the business community, and people are desperate. And, um, y- you know, socialism is gaining power globally, and, and you can see why, right? People are desperate. So the American business community decides that they need to act, and they have the tools necessary. They know how to advertise. And so they start advertising, um- Free market capitalism as the American way. And then they realize that one of their, like, huge obstacles in pushing their agenda forward and, um, y- you know, polishing their image in society is Christianity. Christianity, the social gospel tradition, in particular, liberal Protestantism, the idea of social justice, the idea of, you know, helping the poor, all of that got in their way. And so they actually fund Christian pastors to preach sermons and to promote, uh, and to pro- produce content that aligns with their economic vision. They end up funding, uh, Christianity Today. They end up just pouring money into evangelical institutions with this economic goal in mind, to baptize free market capitalism as the only Christian economic system for this country
Chris: Yeah. I, it, it’s, it’s so in there. Uh, and partially one of the marketing techniques they use is fear of communism, that, that, uh, the communists are doing this thing, so we need to go do the exact opposite, which in their opinion is free market capitalism, not acknowledging there’s a lot of other options out there.
Um,
Kristin: Right?
Chris: yeah.
Kristin: Right?
Chris: And in, in some ways, and, uh, I, I don’t wanna get o- outside of the scope of the book, but, uh, it does affect liberal Protestantism as well because of the fear of communism. Um, but,
Kristin: It does
Chris: more outside the scope of the book, but, uh, hint, hint for the Truth Podcast listeners, we may be going there soon.
Uh, so, so stay tuned. But, uh, all of this kind of comes together in the, in the 1950s, the fear of communism, the pushing of libertarianism, that kind of stuff, uh, building in sort of a, a pseudo Christian America. Uh, but in, in that era, um, we, I, I sometimes feel like people wanna go back to the 1950s as far as how prevalent evangelicalism was.
Well, quote, let’s just say how representations of God were everywhere. Um, you write in the book that, uh, and I think you’re quoting somebody by saying that it wasn’t really that they were, it was an era of evangelicalism, it was more an era of faith in faith. Uh, can you kind of expand on that? What, what were the 1950s really like with that explosion of expressions of religion?
Kristin: Yeah. You know, evangelicals were certainly moving towards the centers of American power, um, compared to where they had been in the, in the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, right after kind of the, um, Scopes trial, and where they, they kind of stepped back. Um, they lost control of major denominations or, you know, whether they had control.
They were trying to seize control, uh, failed to do so, started their own denominations, their own Bible colleges, right? They start building out this, um, fundamentalist, uh, infrastructure essentially, and that’s really what’s going on in the ’30s. By the early ’40s they decide to rebrand, uh, as neo-evangelicals.
The neo gets dropped, and they become evangelicals, right? So, um, th- that’s part of the backstory here. By the 1950s then, um, neo-evangelicals are, are anti-communist, and they have a longer history of that. So when everybody all of a sudden is anti-communist, right, that, that kind of eases their, their path so that you have, you know, by the ’50s, Billy Graham, uh, in, in, in, in the White House and in and out of the White House, the Eisenhower White House.
So all of that is, is going on. Um, but I think one of the most critical chapters of this book is, um, early on in the book, and it’s called Different Sides of the Same Street. And, uh, what that does is it brings together Norman Vincent Peale Billy Graham, and then also, um, to a certain extent, Oral Roberts, right?
So you’ve got mainline Protestantism with, with Peale- And of course, he’s, he’s immersed in this new thought. Um, and then Billy Graham, right? He’s our evangelical guy. And then Oral Roberts, he’s over here, the, the charismatic, independent charismatic. Um, he starts Pentecostal moves, independent charismatic, um, and prosperity gospel. It’s, it’s Norman Vincent Peale, speaking of Graham in particular, then I bring in Roberts says, “We’re working sides of the same street.” They are preaching the same of free market, uh, capitalism, and they’re doing it in the same way. They are absolutely downplaying, even demonizing attention to structural inequality, and they are willingly, gleefully playing into the hands of corporate power. Uh, right? This is, is really key. Anti-communism unites them. Anti-communism provides the enemy, uh, that… A- and Christianity is the antidote. Uh, a- and, and not just any Christianity if you’re evangelical. Um, and this is where the book takes a, a kind of weird turn maybe for some people, because any historian of American evangelicalism knows that they were all about anti-communism in the ’50s and ’60s, and so were a lot of other Americans.
But yes, I mean, you cannot hear a Billy Graham sermon from that time, or read a sermon, and not run up against, you know, the evils of communism, and that’s, that’s really the case across the board. Uh, well, I, I took that a step further then. Uh, when they said evangelical Christianity, belief in God, and our is the antidote to communism, what did they mean by that really? what I discovered is they are actually looking to communism and to communist tactics of spreading the message and of working with, um, communist cells or small groups, if you will, if you will, um, structures of discipline and control. Uh, it was a totalist movement they recognized, and they recognized the power of totalism, of communist totalism.
So they said, “Evangelicalism, and holiness evangelicalism in particular with its, its requirement of total surrender, its use of small groups, all of these things, has the power to draw people in to inoculate them from this alluring ideology of communism.” And, and that’s really one of the central themes of this book.
What does that evangelical totalism look like? How did they build it, and how has it shaped our modern world?
Chris: Yeah. Boy, uh, I feel like I could talk to you all day. I don’t wanna run out of time. Uh, there are a few things that I really wanna make sure that we, we cover. The communism thing was a big one, because it’s everywhere in that era. It’s everywhere now. Um, I mean, President, President Trump recently had somebody, uh, shout something at him, and he said, “You’re a communist.
That guy’s a communist.” It didn’t, probably didn’t know who that person was, but it’s like, that is the cuss word you shout back at somebody now to accuse them.
Kristin: is new again.
Chris: absolutely. Uh, so, uh, one of the things, it’s, uh, this is, is a bit of a tough question, but I, um, I was talking with Darrell Bock on an episode a few months ago, and he mentioned that he feels like we’re still in the modernist/fundamentalist debate, that we are still living in that world.
And, and I f- I feel like you kind of dip into that, maybe, I don’t know, accidentally, on purpose, in your book. Uh, when you’re talking about, uh, female pastors especially, you quote, uh, Nadia Bolz-Weber, and she says, uh, “When people asked Jesus how to be righteous and live in God’s plan, he didn’t say, ‘Don’t be trans, don’t be s- uh, don’t have sex outside of marriage.’
He just said, ‘Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.'” Um, which, uh, w- as an evangelical, I’m like, “Oh, there’s gonna be a lot of people who push back on you, uh, uh, quoting her saying this.” Because Jesus also was, did talk quite a bit about sin, and also, uh, Peter and Paul in the New Testament as well, spent a lot of time talking about sin.
And when we make it so simplified, we overlook things. Uh, but do, do you feel like you stepped into something? Uh, why, why include… Why, why get… Ah, I, I… Why step into the, the modernist/fundamentalist debate? Why is that important that we cover that topic? Um, and I, I’m saying this as I, I’m a person who I like to be pushed back against.
Uh, so I like to read things that, that push me, and, uh, I know that that is not necessarily what the evangelical market encourages people to do. Uh, and, and so I think that this is one of those eras that, uh, areas where the book is going to rub people a little bit, and I’m hoping…
Kristin: Mm-hmm.
Chris: And this is a very long question.
I’m hoping that, that people will come to it with an open mind. But why, why include, why include women like Nadia Bolz-Weber in the book?
Kristin: Yeah Yeah, you know, I think that, um, a lot of people, um, both my critics and those who absolutely love my work, um, may, um, uh, be a little confused by parts of this book because in Jesus and John Wayne, it was kind of clear. That was a, a, a much more focused book in a sense. It was on white evangelical masculinity and militarism.
It was, it was not a, a… And a lot of people get this wrong on both sides. It was not a be-all, end-all book on this is evangelicalism.
Chris: Right.
Kristin: No, no,
Chris: How could it be, yeah?
Kristin: Right? It’s, it’s a one thread, where does this particular variant of militant Christian masculinity come from, and what does it do? That’s what that book was. So depending on whether you like or don’t like, you know, this, where it has brought us, right, you kind of know who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, and so on. And, and, um, and if you read that book too, like, I certainly bring a, um, a kind of, um, uh, my voice is there and, and you know kind of where, where I end up.
But you can still, um, you know, the book, it actually has very little commentary, and a lot of evangelical readers noted that. They’re like, “Your voice is, is barely even here. It’s just the facts.” I’m like, “Well, you know, I selected the facts, so there,
Chris: Yeah
Kristin: there’s more of me in there than you realize.”
But, to jump to Live, Laugh, Love, I think that people may come in with ideas of, if I’m quoting a progressive person, those are my views. Or if I’m quoting a conservative person, I think they’re wrong. I- I- y- you’re not gonna understand this book, um, the way it was intended if, if you come in with that confidence. But certainly you’re not gonna figure out where I stand if you quote, you know, random passages from the book and then assume I either like this or don’t like this. In
Chris: Yeah
Kristin: one, what I’m bracing myself for, like I kind of know, um, where the critics are coming from on the right, right? And they, and, and they, they’re, they’re already, you know, taking aim, and they, they, they, you know, we know how that’s gonna play out. What I’m also aware of is that, um, some of these progressive women may, um, not, I think it’s fair to say probably would not have written their own stories in exactly the same way, right? That’s always the case. A historian, it brings you into the narrative. And so when I bring in Nadia Bolz-Weber, um, it is not to say, “Ha ha, this is the right answer.”
is to illuminate the differences, to ill- to, you know, and, and what I try to do is have people in the narrative, in the history themselves who, who are trying to, to explain what’s happening, to push back, to bring to light these tensions. I let them do that work. Um, that doesn’t let you know necessarily where I end up, and it’s not all one or all the other. Um, so it’s, it’s, it’s just a, a much more complicated narrative,
Chris: Ja
Kristin: Uh, I’m, I’m just trying to show, like, honestly, I didn’t start this book with an agenda beyond figure out what’s happening, which doesn’t mean I’m totally objective, doesn’t mean I have, like, all these, you know, that I’m, I, you know, everything’s, quote-unquote, “fair and balanced.”
It just means that I’m really trying to figure out what is going on, and I’m gonna bring in the voices who I think are key to helping us understand the tensions. Um, now, you asked me about the fundamentalist modernism.
Chris: Yeah
Kristin: I do go back to inerrancy, and I, I talk about that. I’m drawing in the early 20th century on works, um, by people like Tim Glug, um, um, who has written on inerrancy in the early 20th century and how it, it functioned as a, as a s- you know, kind of mechanism of theological control, among other things. And then I, I touch on inerrancy and Jesus and John Wayne too, and that made some people really mad, where I said that it was, in part, a proxy battle over gender. Um, and yes, it was. And there’s, there are reams of evidence. There’s, you know, peer-reviewed scholarship. There’s a lot. Read the footnotes there. but really, I, I hope that it, uh, lets people ask questions with fresh eyes, um, questions that you aren’t allowed to ask inside conservative evangelical spaces.
Yes, okay, so inerrancy, biblical literalism, these sorts of things. Well, are the same methods, interpretive methods, applied to passages on, um, a, on lifting up the poor, on Jubilee, on, um, the least of these, on loving your neighbor,
Chris: The dangers of wealth. Yeah. Yeah.
Kristin: of wealth? My goodness, right? How many verses in the Bible,
Chris: A bunch, yeah
Kristin: a whole bunch. Are the same, interpretive m- mechanisms applied to those verses as they are to the verses that they are always applied to, which is women in ministry and sexuality and things like that? And if not, we can ask why not, right? And so that’s what I’m trying to do as, as a scholar is just make visible the choices that people made at every step of the way.
Chris: Absolutely. Yeah. What a, what a great answer because, uh, we, we, we really, whoever we are, whatever we believe, we really need to be able to think deeper about whatever our thing is. And it’s hard to do that if we don’t read things that push us. And, uh, that’s one of the things that I, I, I had to put your book down for a little while and just think, “Okay, what are these emotions I’m feeling, and why do I feel them?
And is this good? Is this bad?” And it was, it was good in that way. And actually, I think it would be a very helpful book in a relationship, especially, um, for men in a relationship to be able to say, “Okay, what i- what is my wife, my girlfriend, my… What are my mo- what is my mom hearing? What are, what are my, what is my grandmother hearing?”
Like, of where, where do these influences come in? Because I’m, I’m sure not only are historians missing these things, but also a lot of men have no idea, myself included, what women are hearing, uh, because it is almost a completely separate subculture, uh
Kristin: Yeah. And, and I will say, too, that, um, you know, not, not to be so quick to assume that some of the things that I write about that do have… that do build this culture and, and, you know, uh, inject kind of libertarian ideals or, y- y- you know, the s- some of… where, where I trace out some of the implications of the values embedded in these products, um, doesn’t mean that the products themselves are necessarily bad or all bad.
I still like Precious Moments figurines, you know? I c- I still really enjoyed rereading some of those novels. And, uh, y- you know, so, uh, again, I, I can see that some readers are gonna approach this book because of what Jesus and John Wayne did and how it was received with a particular kind of preset understanding of what it is that I, I like and what it is that I’m doing. Um, but no, it really is that, to, to help us think more deeply about the, um, the messages that shape our theological convictions. And, um, that shouldn’t be controversial, but this is where I will say, a- and there are certain orthodoxies that will get you in trouble among progressives certainly,
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Kristin: but, uh, as well as, right, conservatives, which is maybe more obvious, um, f- for some folks. But, um, thing I will say is that within progressive circles, there tends to be some more space theologically to understand that everybody brings an interpretive lens, whereas inside conservative evangelicalism, there’s such a strong tradition of, “Oh, no, no, no, there’s a plain reading of the scriptures,” biblical literalism, “We are Bible-believing Christians, but we’ll tell you exactly what that looks like,” right? And to ignore the interpretive lens that, um, conservative evangelicals bring to the scriptures and to ignore the fact that this lens was a product of historical circumstances. It’s not just directly handed down from God, right? And so that’s where I think the… there’s a bit more of a rub in conservative evangelical spaces when I bring this historical, um, framework to theology. Uh, which doesn’t mean I won’t get pushback in some progressive spaces as well.
Chris: Uh, one of the things I feel like, um, uh, people could walk away thinking is, “Well, why, what does she have… Why is she so against positivity?” Um, but, you know, like, “Why does she wanna b- why does she want everybody to be depressed?”
But,
Kristin: I’m a Calvinist,
Chris: yeah, well, part of the thing is, like, so much of the Bible is about grieving. There is literally a book called Lamentations, you know? Uh, the, uh, J- we see Jesus weep for his, uh, friend Lazarus when he’s died, you know. Uh, there, there’s, there’s so much grief and expression of grief and people dealing with…
I mean, Job, these big questions of, “God, why did you do these things?” And, and the answer is not, “Because I want you to be wealthy and, and happy for the rest of your life.” It’s, “No, th-this is, this is… I’m bigger than you are. I understand more than you do.”
Kristin: Yeah.
Chris: and so when we limit it down to, uh, y- uh, “My goal is to be happy all the time,” uh, we, we miss out on a huge part of Scripture, um, and a huge example set, set, set for us in Scripture.
Um, and we miss out on a big part of the human experience. Please, please, yeah.
Kristin: Right, right. Let me just say too, though, like here too, it, it’s complicated because I have to confess, yes, I’m a Calvinist, and I, you know, I tend to s- be pessimistic about all the things. And, and that’s another thing. I just realized, like, in talking with, you know, some evangelical leaders recently, um, about, you know, they’re like, “Can you just not s- can you please say…
You know, why, why can’t you say anything really good about evangelicalism, right? You always have to be this critic.” And, and I realized, okay, first of all, I do have a first book that is about a, a really incredible, like, evangelical anti-trafficking activist in the early 20th century, but nobody pays attention to that.
But,
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Kristin: I do write books, like, you know, that, uh, bring d- different perspectives here. It depends on what topic I’m looking at, right? But also, um, l- I realize that I come from a very critical intellectual and theological tradition. This is what we do in my circles, in this kind of reformed intellectual tradition.
We, we pick things apart all the time. And a- again, and there’s a, a bit of a, a, a, a gap where I didn’t realize that I was breaking rules. I didn’t realize that those rules, um, existed in that way. Um, but I will also say that when I’m reading some of this positive thinking literature, it’s compelling. And all things being equal, yeah, it probably is a good thing if you wake up in the morning and say, “I’m gonna do something powerful today,” instead of like, “Woe is me.”
So I, I don’t think that it is all bunk. But then I just trace out what it can also do, and particularly how it is prone to manipulation. So again, like, sometimes I think this positivity stuff, yeah, yeah, I, I could go for this.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Kristin: um, trust and obey, W- you said you, you had to, like, set the book down sometimes, you know, to think through things.
I did as I was writing. Uh, many times I thought, man, you know, I’m writing a critique here of things that have actually really shaped my own spiritual, my own faith. And I know that these things are in the Bible, um, but that there are other ways of interpreting them. And I also know that when you interpret them in this ways, you’re ignoring these other things that are also in the Bible, right?
And so again, my own engagement with this material was not, you know, heroes, villains, good guys, bad guys, thumbs up, thumbs down. It’s, it’s, it’s much more complicated
And that was my interview with Kristen Kobes DuMez. You can pick up her new book, Live, Laugh, Love, anywhere you get fine books. And for patrons of the show, if you give a little bit each month on Patreon, you can hear even more of our discussion, and that’s at trucepodcast.com/donate. You can find the link there, or just go straight to Patreon and patreon.com/trucepodcast.
And Truce is a production of Truce Media LLC. God willing, we’ll talk again soon
