Bookwild - When Faith, Femininity & Capitalism Collide: Kristin Kobes Du Mez's Live, Laugh, Love

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

This week, I talk with Kristin Kobes Du Mez about her new book Live, Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Womenand the World They Made.  Listen to hear all about:How Live Laugh Love grew out of Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne, shifting the focus from evangelical masculinity to the history and culture surrounding white Christian women. The surprising roots of “biblical womanhood” and hyper-femininity—and how ideas presented as timeless Christian gender roles have actually changed dramatically over time. How Christian romance novels, music, bookstores, mommy blogs, influencers, Hallmark movies, and other seemingly harmless pop culture helped create an entire ecosystem of Christian values and messaging. The fascinating overlap between evangelicalism, MLMs, capitalism, and positive-thinking culture—including why Kristin sees striking similarities between MLM structures and high-control religious systems. Why “I’m not political” can itself mask deeply political beliefs—and how ideas about faith and family quietly shape views on everything from education and immigration to welfare and economic policy.    All the Bookwild Links:Check Out the Bookwild SubstackSubscribe to Bookwild on YouTubeGet Bookwild MerchFollow @imbookwild on InstagramCheck Out Author Social Media Packages Follow Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrianMacKenzie Green @missusa2mbaErin Ashley @bellametaphor

This week I got to talk with Kristen Kobes-Dumay about her new nonfiction Live, Laugh, Love, the secret history of white Christian women in the world they made. To know me is to know how much I loved reading Jesus and John Wayne by her a couple years ago. And when I saw that this one was coming out, I was very excited to read it. And I was even more excited when she agreed to come on the podcast. We did record this about two months ago. so any references that seem a little out of date, that's why. But here is what it's about.

Opening in the late 19th century, Live, Laugh, Love traces how new thought, a movement that championed the power of the mind to shape reality, combined with holiness evangelicalism to create the world inhabited by millions of Christian women. Dumae introduces us to religious innovators who taught that positivity was the secret to spiritual and material success and reveals how they worked through consumer culture, mommy blogs and romance novels, Hobby Lobby Isles, and pastel scripted wall art. Marketed as empowerment, these products and slogans elevate vulnerability and domesticity,

and in the process, draw women into systems prone to manipulation and abuse. As you can imagine, this was all up my alley. Reading some parts of this book was truly like rereading parts of my childhood. and Kristen and I kind of both talk about that. We definitely were at least adjacent to some of these thought processes that had worked their way into, especially white evangelical Christianity. It was so fun to discuss this with Kristen, and I can't wait for you guys to hear. So with Jesus and John Wayne, that really focused on how, like, a very rugged masculinity was adopted by evangelical Christians.

And it helped me understand a lot of things, even if, even if it wasn't like, oh, yes, I would have felt that way too. It at least helped me understand kind of how we got to this point. And I know in your forward or if it's, I don't know if it's an author's note at the beginning. You kind of mentioned this is a little bit an extension of that. And also kind of a mixture of like new stuff that you were starting to confront. So can you kind of talk about like, what kind of transitioned you from Jesus and John Wayne to live laugh, love? Yeah. At first, I'll start it innocently enough with my publisher just saying, you know, what's your next book? And I said, well, I want this one to be about women. And Jesus and John Wayne really has one chapter or two chapters really on women, one early in the book and then one on abuse at the end of the book. and but there's just so much more to that story. And so that had kind of been bothering me that I couldn't include more because Jesus and John Wayne was primarily about evangelical masculinity and militancy. So,

so I knew I wanted to do something about women. And they said, great, do it. And that was about as, as much as I got in the proposal stage. And I gave them the name, Live, Laugh, Love. And they loved to that. And that was it. Like, so it really started with a concept and a, uh, concept and a title and that was it. Yeah. And so what the book became was really the result of five years of research. Wow. Because I knew with live laugh love, and I say this in the intro as well, like if you hear that title, most women are going to know exactly what's in the book. Yes. So I started off knowing, of course, I'm going to write about Christian romance novels and multi-level marketing and Christian music and bookstores and mommy blogs and influencers and, right, you know, like Hallmark movies.

That was all pretty clear to me. But what I didn't foresee was where those topics would lead me in terms of the historical research that I needed to do to understand where this culture of positivity came from and what it was doing historically and today. Right. Yeah. And you really do, you did have to go way back. Yes. I was kind of blame my editor because the one thing that he said to me, when I started this project after we agreed to do it together, and it's the same, entirely the same team as Jesus and John Wayne, right? So we've been together for almost a decade now.

Wow. And so he said, don't be afraid to lean into the history, Kristen. I mean, say no more, right? I'm a historian. And so what I actually sent him my first draft of the early chapters, which was a couple of years later because I kept adding chapters on the front end. I was really nervous that he would just say, whoa, you took this too far. But he didn't.

He just said, this is amazing. Keep going. And so I blame him for kind of bringing me that far back. But what I needed to do really was find this source of a much more common. complex story. So as you said, Jesus and John Wayne is about white evangelical masculinity and militarism. That's the book I set out to write and that that's what the book was. I knew with with a title like Live Laugh, Love and knowing kind of this cultural space and inhabiting it myself to a certain extent, I knew it was not just a story about evangelicals. Right. And so the subtitle of this one is very

deliberately white Christian women. And frankly, it's about secular. women as well. Yes. It's, so what I do is I tease out three central strands. One is evangelicalism, particularly holiness evangelicalism and charismatic Christianity. One is Mormonism. And one is the secular philosophy of positive thinking or new thought, as it's called in the 19th century.

Right. So that's, those are the three strands that I'm weaving together. And that is why this book is longer than Jesus and John Wayne. But again, if you kind of start where I started with the contemporary women's culture, right away you know it has to include those three strands. Totally. Yeah. With when you were discussing like you are historian.

And so then obviously like extensive history research goes into both of them. What drew you to that as well? Like obviously you are very drawn to history. I know you teach history. as well. What was your path to history? It was kind of indirect. I was indecisive. I think if I go back far enough, I can identify. I spent a year in Germany as an exchange student in high school. And it was on a congressional scholarship that was very kind of history and politics oriented. And so it was a kind of intensive immersion experience, but also learning experience. And then I later worked in

Germany and taught German history. But what that year did to me, it was my senior year in high school, it made me extremely curious about American history and culture. Right? Because if you take somebody out of their natural habitat and plop them in an entirely different cultural space, things become you know the things you grew up with the things you take for granted are they suddenly look strange or they need an explanation so I think that that's where my curiosity first really started and then I mean that now that I think of it I was also always a national history day student in high school and stuff too so I just had that interest but then in college I was undecided I was actually pre-med and I majored in German and in history I was like

trying to keep all my options open. Yeah. But then at the end, I decided to go to grad school for history, in part because I loved the openness. I loved the fact that like everything has a history. And so you can spend years of your life writing about one topic and then you can find something else that's very puzzling to you. And you can go and you work on that topic until you, you know, find a new one.

And that just really appealed to me. And so was that kind of indecision? What do I do with my life? And I'm like, well, if I go into history, I'd keep my options open. Yeah. That makes sense. It is, that's actually similar to what then kind of even got me to reading Jesus and John Wayne.

I didn't go abroad. But it was like, I think like when you're growing up, you're like, oh, history. Like some people like history. Like, it like seems like something. Or you think of like old white men like reading really like big biographies on like men who are like hundreds of years gone essentially. So I think that's kind of what I would always think of when I thought of history. And then like in the last three to five years, I've just been like way more interested in like, oh, like you can study anything kind of to your point. And also like there's like anything that you could get hyper fixated on and really learn about.

That's my like new joke about nonfiction. And I was like, I'm like, oh, I love this because it's like someone got so hyper fixated that they were like, I'm going to write a whole book about this really specific subject. Exactly. It's great. And so I really started enjoying history in the sense that like I understand or I enjoy understanding like the true why behind things or the how behind things. And it's it's fascinating, even reading Live, Laugh, Love, how often, because it sounds like you and I probably grew up in very similar environments too. I was also like grew up in an evangelical Christian family. My dad was a pastor. So so many of the things that you were talking about, I was like, oh boy, this is exactly what I grew up with. And then now it like really helped me like have a deeper understanding of how that was interacting with everything essentially. So yeah, that makes so much sense. I mean, I'll also say that when I decided to go to graduate school. So as I was wrapping up my undergrad years, I looking back, I can see, I initially went

to Notre Dame to study religious and intellectual history, not gender, not politics, like religious and intellectual history because I was convinced that that was the history that matter most. I never studied women's history in undergrad. I think I read one book written by a woman in my four years and I did not have a female professor during my four years. I went to a small Christian college. And I didn't really know what I was missing. And it wasn't until my first semester in graduate school that I read my first book in women's history, gender history. And my mind was blown. Yeah. It was just so much more interesting than I ever knew. And like you said, Like once you understand how things happened, you know, the present, you can just see the present

with so much more clarity. And so like literally that that first semester in graduate school, I shifted my focus to the study of religion and gender. Wow. Yeah. Well, boy, did you end up diving into those topics. I feel like I see so much more even from Live, Laugh, Love, where I'm like, oh okay um specifically which this isn't very linear to say it at this point but i was like i've i've always been so confused by the obsession with gender like why why are they so upset about like transgender people or women who don't present as traditionally feminine i remember being like why why does it even matter to you so much and i feel like maybe this is a good segue question i feel like I feel like Live, Laugh, Love really helped me understand or see that, in my opinion, my interpretation of what you wrote, that the complementarianism, the idea of like men and women having very specific roles is so embedded in both the religious and then kind of led into pop psychology too.

So embedded into it that like they lose a lot of their white men would lose a lot of their control if we didn't adhere to really strict. genders and then thus the gender roles. So I feel like this helps me really understand that like the obsession with gender roles has to do with power. And so then if someone is challenging a gender role, even if they're not in your life, then you're going to kind of overreact to it. So yeah. Yeah. And that gender kind of gender difference is seen as the fundamental building block of a God ordained social order. And that order is. always perceived in hierarchical terms as well, right? So we're talking about, yes, power and control. Now, you know, the way we're talking about it is absolutely not the way that conservative evangelicals

themselves would talk about it. For them, it is purely biblical. Right. And so one of the things that I try to show in this book, too, is how that conception of what is biblical, what is true, changes dramatically over time and that these constructions are actually like new understandings of what quote unquote traditional gender roles actually look like yeah and it did it kind of the thing that was interesting to me we have like the the rugged somewhat toxic masculinity and jesus and john way and then so it almost made sense that we would then like need a book next about like almost like hyper femininity or biblical femininity or biblical femininity humanity and all of that was there. Did any of it like so in some ways this book helped me

understand and then at the same time it's hard for me to say I was too surprised by any of it. Was that kind of your feeling as you were doing the research too? Yeah. You know the most frequent comment I get about Jesus and John Wayne from readers and I've received thousands of messages over the past six years from readers is it but it's remarkable almost all of the messages are some version of, this is the story of my life, but I never understood how all these pieces fit together. And I think that that also is going to apply to live, laugh, love, even more so. There's more pieces and it's going to surprise you even more, even though you probably, you know, many readers are going to be familiar with many of the pieces, but not all of them. So,

yes, I would say there were a couple of big surprises in the book for me, or, in my research. And one of those was I kind of trace the genealogy of this particular version of Christian womanhood, which is about submission, but it's about so much more than that. So submission to men, but it's also about dressing frilly and feminine and being silly and being silly and that hyperfemininity, right? And the pink and the ruffles and the kind of, childishness that is being sold and marketed as, you know, how to be a good Christian wife and and also serving a husband sexually in all the, you know, kind of ridiculous ways. I traced that back through, like, one of the key works in evangelicalism that helped kind of set the

stage for this version of frilly femininity was Maribel Morgan's book, The Total Woman. And that's a book that a lot of people have kind of heard of. I encountered it in graduate school first, but it was kind of a punchline. You know, you'd get an eye roll. Oh, yeah, it wasn't that silly and then move on. But in fact, that book sold more than 10 million copies. It was the bestselling nonfiction book of 1974 of any book, not just religious books, right? So let's take this seriously. And then it provides the template for what's to come. What I didn't realize is that that book borrowed heavily from a Mormon book, a book written by a Mormon woman. And borrowed heavily is being generous there. And then I discovered that that book written by a Mormon woman borrowed extensively

from a publication from the 1920s that was published by Psychology Press, which was a new thought publisher. New thought, meaning the secular philosophy of positive thinking, which all of them agreed that the attitude is, and the will, is critical. And it's not your circumstances that matter. It is your attitude. So be cheerful. don't complain, and you will be blessed with prosperity, with success, with happiness. And you see that work its way through from this positive thinking, through Mormonism, and then through evangelicalism. So that by the 1970s, this is what passes for quote unquote biblical womanhood. Right. And it's not really rooted in the Bible, although you can add some Bible verses as these authors do. Right. Yeah. It, that was

fascinating to me because it's, I think you mentioned three, there might have even been a fourth woman where like, uh, these books that have been written for centuries even or like almost a century ago, some of them are so similar still. Like it's not, you don't even just have to go to like the 1970s to see where a lot of the common ideologies came from. Like it goes back so far, which makes sense because even obviously outside of Christianity or even outside of any religion, it's like there's still always been patriarchal like power imbalances. So like of course it probably existed for so long. But it was fascinating seeing those publications, especially as someone who is like reading a lot of nonfiction now to try to understand stuff.

And then even the nonfiction. So even the like like Christy when you like mentioned that book, I was like oh like I could immediately see multiple like book covers. Yes. Same. It was around. It was in my life for so, so, so, so, so long. I had so much fun.

Honestly, going back to to Christy to Janet Oaks, love comes softly. That was my favorite chapter to write. And I knew from the very beginning when I had conceptualized this project that love come softly is absolutely going to be in there and so it was it was kind of a trip down memory lane in some cases for me yeah yeah me too uh also is like an avid reader now it's always interesting seeing it because i also like to talk about how like you can learn from nonfiction and fiction like there's there's a lot of emotional stuff that you can learn from fiction like living in another character's mind but also sometimes it's still making you go out and like research other stuff or

Google other stuff. In this case, though, what really a lot of what stuck with me too is like the family Christian bookstore, like all that there was an entire media ecosystem created for Christians specifically. And I grew up like I did not get to listen to mainstream radio. We did not have cable TV because like that was letting the devil in. And we didn't have any of that. So like something I've brought up multiple times is like once I was 18, 19 and went to college and could start picking what I consumed. I was like, oh, there is a lot more out there that I enjoy. But this book was really like bringing those memories back up.

But then also reminding me that like even before we had algorithms, people were making echo chambers with media. Oh, yes. So what was it like like research? searching all of that after having like lives in it as well. Oh, that's such a good way to put it, right? Even before algorithms. In fact, I was just working on a piece right now, an op-ed, which is essentially saying, you know, yes, trad wives are a thing, right?

But this has been going on far, far longer. Let me introduce you, you know, to what's been going on inside this subculture in the Christian products industry and so on. So, yes, it was very fun for me to go back. into these spaces and learn more about the things that had shaped my life. So with Jesus and John Wayne, I kind of grew up on the edges of evangelicalism. I grew up in a small town in Iowa, a member of a denomination kind of comprised primarily of Dutch immigrants. My mom was an immigrant from the Netherlands, right? So I wasn't really at the center of things. So Jesus and John Wayne, although people sometimes

mistakenly think that that's my experience. It really was, you know, 95% research. Okay. With Live laugh, love, I was much more familiar with this world because to the extent that I did participate in broader evangelical culture, it was through this. It was through the popular culture, the cultural products fashion for women and girls. And so I listened to Amy Grant and Sandy Patty growing up. I, you know, had precious moments figurines. I, um, you mentioned Brillo the, yeah, I say like I really wanted a subscription, but yeah, it was kind of a little pricey. I, that was the other thing where when I compare notes with others who've kind of, you know, grown up in these spaces, not having a lot of disposable income meant that I, I couldn't be as

fully immersed in this, right? I didn't have the same money. to spend on these products. So I was, you know, on the edges, but still I had a lot more familiarity here. So I had a lot of fun looking into the history of precious moments figurines, Thomas Kincaid Prince, right? And then I also had a lot of fun researching stories that I had lived through, particularly the chapter on bloggers and the evolution from blogger to influence. answer. So rereading Anne Voss Camp, Jen Hatmaker, Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessie, Latasha Morrison, right? These women that I had kind of, I had watched this play out firsthand. And then I returned to it as researcher and I was able to interview some of these women as well. And it was just very fun to,

to put those pieces together in a way. And as one of them told me later after she'd read the chapter, like she learns so much just from seeing it all put together and analyzed in this way because sometimes when you're living it, it's not entirely apparent what's actually happening around you. You're just trying to, you know, survive and and write the next blog post. Yeah. Yeah, you don't feel culture happening as you're living it. Not always. There are obviously some moments where you really do it. But most of the time, you're like, just living and not not even thinking of all the different forces at play but the other thing that was so interesting to me which like i am that meme of like i'm no fun to be around because everything

comes back to like capitalism and patriarchy pretty much though i have i have become that the more information i get but it's like if you do just do like it's not even to me opinion i understand it feels like opinions to other people. But like, if you just pay attention, those two forces have shaped so much of America from the beginning. And that was the other thing that stood out to me here is I remember watching Mad Men. You might even reference Mad Men or that might be another book that I was reading as well. But I remember watching Mad Men and there's like a scene where Don Draper is talking about like, but we do have to advertise to the women because they're the one who like go to the store and buy the things. And I remember the time kind of being like, oh, yeah, see women did have power.

And then the longer you're watching, you're like, yeah, but it's kind of like this concession that they're giving to women where they're like, oh, you do the shopping. So we're even going to advertise to you a little bit. But also like we're like through capitalism, through marketing, through all of that, we're still going to be pushing a narrative on to you. That maybe makes you feel like you have power, but you don't totally have power. So the way that capitalism and Christianity have grown together for so long is a little bit scary. And so what was it like kind of like even seeing those ties, like how many of the decisions were born out of that? Yeah, this was this was another thing

that I set out to do in this book from the start because that was one of the things missing from Jesus and John Wayne. And I wanted to bring it in and my editor had wanted to see it in there, more economic analysis. And we are on just such a tight deadline. Right. So it didn't happen. I mean, there's there are a few nods to it. So Jesus and John Wayne, you can kind of, you know, get a fuzzy picture of things. But I sat out when I was going to write this one, I knew, you know, live laugh, lab. This is going to center capitalism and marketing. And, and it surfaces in so many different ways. You know, obviously in spaces like Christian bookstores and the Christian music industry, I learned so much about how things operate there. And yes, women were identified already in the

1960s for Christian bookstores as their target demographic and not just women generally, but white suburban small town women who are church attending, right? This is this is not an evangelistic outreach. This is a giving women what they want. want and giving them products that remind them of their faith that disciples them and their family members. But what I also found is that the values embedded in many of these cultural products, including things like Christian romance novels, also explicitly, like overtly, baptize free market capitalism and volunteerism and demonize welfare demonize um like new deal liberalism like

it's that so so often you know when you i think male readers might be tempted to think live laugh love that book's not for me and it's not a serious book like no no it's these these these products that are kitsch that are you know seen as as feminine and fluffy and and shouldn't be considered by serious scholars. No, no, no, no. If you look, there are very serious political and economic values embedded in these products that are reaching millions of women. And that's most clearly the case in multi-level marketing.

Yes. That's where you can see it so very clearly because multi-level marketing companies are not even primarily selling a product. They are selling an ideology. Yes. And they are getting women to pay for their own indoctrination into these economic and political values as well as, you know, these are predatory systems by and large where very few women actually make the profits. But that's okay because the whole ideology is formed around at that if you're negative, that's on you. If you're not making the money, that's on you. Right. And they're they're spending their money, their own money. And they're, to buy the tapes, to buy the, you know, to trips to the, the rallies where they are further indoctrinated. And when I was researching that chapter, I will say at a certain point, I had this like, aha moment where I realized the whole structure of multi-level marketing,

the upline, the downline, the no negativity, the, you know, all the things. That was also evangelicalism. Yes. And it's so, you know, evangelicalism. You know, evangelical paratrochurch organizations, church hierarchy structures, all of that, those rules. And insider versus outsider and how you treat people who question who do not demonstrate sufficient loyalty to the system, you cut them off. That was this really key moment, which again sent me back into the history to figure out what the heck is this? What are we looking at here? Yeah. It was, I read a book last year called Little Bosses Everywhere. I cite it in the book. Yes, so good. Yes, and like so early on because you, I mean, the the pyramid shape shows up even very early in Live Laugh, Love, like even before what we're thinking about like modern day MLMs.

You caught that. Yes. And there's a moment, like, I think in the first 20% where I was like highlighting something and I was like, oh my gosh, this is exactly like pyramid schemes. And then like the next sentence was talking about how it was. But even like the whole idea of like you have to come to church every week and you need to be with the people and you need to be bringing people in because you're and even like the I grew up very much in the like let your Christian light shine so bright that like everyone's going to want what you have. Same thing. I was like just sitting there. I'm like, oh, all of this is the same.

That is it. Right? That's like so many moments through the like this is the same thing. This is all the same thing. And that applies to like when I'm looking at mid-century mainline Protestantism of Norman Vincent Peel and the charismatic prosperity gospel of Oral Roberts and Billy Graham's neo-evangelicalism. It's like I have a whole chapter, which to quote Peel, they're working different sides of the same street. This is the same thing. And those structures of authority, the pyramid structures, the role of small groups.

and accountability and shame and discipline. The confession. Same thing. Yep. Yes. That was the other thing that stood out to me to you. The confession, I have always been aware that that could obviously escalate into negative things pretty quickly.

But I was really noticing that here because we also, I think a lot of American and Christians are able to think that Scientology is odd. And one of the things you hear a lot is like, oh, they make you confess like things. so that they have blackmail on you, like, from the get-go. And they act like that is so removed from, like, Catholic confession or, like, yeah, your small group and having to come to them and be like, I've had sinful thoughts this week and I need help. Like, there's a, there is a version of that can be healthy and where you are with healthy

people. Most of the time, though, like, it's putting you in a weird spot and kind of a surveillance state is like also what it reminds me of yeah exactly you recruit the members to surveil each other yes these accountability groups and um one of the one of the places in the book um i i talk about that okay you know isn't isn't confession of sin just christian right and i say essentially yeah like throughout christian history confession of sin has traditionally been a part of you know, how Christians have enacted their faith. However, there are all different ways to confess, right? And that's something that I try to do throughout the book, because particularly within evangelicalism, there is a

sense that this is just default Christianity. This is biblical. This is God's truth. No questions can be asked about it. And so I just like say, well, yes, Christians confess their sins, but how they do it. So in Catholicism, it's in the privacy of a confessional largely. In, liturgical churches, it's often collectively through a kind of prayer that's offered. And in my church growing up, which was more confessional, not evangelical, it was through a period of silence where we would read something together, confessing our sins, and then we would all take some silence and reflect on how we had fallen short. And then the next reading was about grace and forgiveness, which I'm not saying one is necessarily better or more biblical than the other, but what's important to realize is that

these things function in very different ways. And these things, some are more prone to manipulation than others. Yes. Yeah. That's what is so important to keep in mind. And you mentioned the like the doctrine of inerrancy essentially that like nothing in the Bible could be wrong because God ordained it or God blessed it like all of all of that. And I did hear a lot of that growing up. I don't know that I've ever met any Christian who does actually follow everything in the Bible, though. So, like, whether they consciously realize it or not, like, clearly they do believe that some of it doesn't have to, like, either hold into the present or they just don't need that part, essentially. But the unquestioning nature is so, like, it leans so well into totalitarianism and authoritarianism. And it was making me think of like there's a quote, I think it's from the early 2000s.

It might even be the 90s where Donald Trump does say like if I was ever going to run, I would run with Republicans because they'll just the Christians will just believe anything I say if I say I'm Christian. And I'm paraphrasing, but it does exist. It's in a newspaper article that clearly did play out for him. Yeah. Right. So as soon as you like once you see these patterns of a. authority and deference and control and requirements of loyalty inside these religious spaces. And, you know, I spend the early chapters tracing where those came from and how those high control

religious systems were actually built. Yeah. And then by the time you get to the rise of the Christian right and more recent years with, with Trump and the Trump era politics, and the Republican Party that you're just, you know, kind of describing these dynamics, you can see how it is a perfect fit. And you can see how practices cultivated inside faith communities facilitated or made people susceptible to authoritarian politics because they have been raised and disciplined to. to embrace exactly these patterns of hierarchical authority and absolute loyalty to those who have been given power by God over other people, right? But even things like inerrancy, you're right, like who actually believes all the things. And so we all have a hermeneutic.

We all have means of interpreting and of weighing things. but kind of the brilliance of anerrancy is it was able to contain and control the populist impulses that come with, you know, every, the priesthood of all believers and the plain, plain meaning of the scriptures. Things could get really unruly, really fast. And so they came up with not only is the Bible authoritative, but key theologians are going to tell you what is the only appropriate, only acceptable, and in fact only interpretation of any passage of scripture. And that's how this works. Yeah. The other thing that kind of came alongside that is

you mentioned like, why can't I think of your name right now, the total woman with Maribel Morgan. There, so like you said, that book sells them like so many copies like more than secular books as well that year and she kind of goes on like essentially it's not a press tour but it is just like her sharing her thoughts or believes her approach to life um and what was standing out to me even with that example is she's like very much touting like stay at home take care of the home domesticity is the way. submission is the way. And that's not what she was doing. Like she was a professional career woman, like an author who was on tour and was not staying home. Now she might have submitted to her husband in private ways that we won't know about. But that has been one of the most, you actually start out in the intro, most infuriating things for me about like the Erica Kirk's of the world lately. She didn't have children until she was in her 30s.

And she's telling women that have more children than you can afford and do it in your 20s. She's telling them not to go to this college unless they're going to get the MRS degree, which is like what within this, this version of Christianity is the idea of go meet your husband, essentially. But she had a degree. She is a CEO now, like almost everything that she's saying she doesn't actually live. But that's not a new concept. So do you, I kind of, so then I end up wondering, like, why would some women do this? And I assume it sometimes comes down to like, you think being adjacent to the power of men is going to keep you safe. But as we've seen with like Cristino, lots of women, they don't protect you. You're just the fall guy, essentially. So what was it like seeing that pattern, even like stretching back so far? Yeah. You know, I kind of. of grapple with this towards the end of the book, which is it really is this performativity,

like performing this femininity, performing domesticity, paying lip service to it, that mattered more than actually doing it. And you could just see that over and over again, right? We could talk about Helen Andalyn, Maribel Morgan, Elizabeth Elliott. We can see that with Anita Bryant. And then all the way up to people like Sarah Palin. and Christine Nome and Carolyn Levitt, right? It like everywhere. This is, this is just, this is the playbook. And then certainly Erica Kirk.

But you are rewarded. These women are rewarded for doing this essential work of women indoctrinating women. And I think that a more sympathetic view as well. So it's proximity to power. Absolutely. it's being rewarded. These systems of control work primarily through reward and then also through coercion, but usually we're focused on the coercion, but I think we also need to focus on the reward.

What are the benefits that people get from staying inside and serving the system? But a slightly more sympathetic perspective to bring alongside all of those things which are true is that when women are raised in or convert into these very restrictive environments, many of these women are highly gifted women, super smart, talented. And so what is available to them to do? Very little. But this is a path that they can pursue. So women have these gifts, these abilities, this energy.

They can, as long as they stay in their very narrowly prescribed lane, and as long as their work is always supporting the system, they can actually use those gifts and thrive for a time. But yes, in the end, this live, laugh, love is filled with tragic stories of the very women who are propping up this. system and some of them are just heartbreaking. Yeah. Right. The system doesn't just hurt women who can't succeed according to the standards. Yes. It falls short. It also hurts the very women who excel because in the end the promises are lies. Yeah. It was and I think you were even quoted in it actually. I listened to the trouble with white women last year. I think you were, but it was making me think of even those stories. There's a really good one.

And I can't think it's the lean-in, the author of Lean-in. Yes. She's, Amber. Yes. Another really good example of someone who became like such a, like, women just, well, I mean, even the title, you just need to lean in and, like, then it will be easier or then it will work well. And there's some, like, strange stories about, like, Mark Zuckerberg talking about, like,

how beautiful her skin was in like front of all these employees and you're like this is just so weird but I agree and I do think because I think it's important to still be able to have some of the sympathetic understanding it it does feel like and I remember especially at that time like I was I was in college in like 2011 and it was like I even remember feeling like oh I can get into this like male dominated career and and I'll do it my way and that'll that'll just really work. It's like it's like a great idea. And so you kind of like sit with stuff more,

but it doesn't make sense. Like that's the one place where the skills that they want to use, they kind of can use. It's just what are the results of like how they use it is kind of the complicated part still. Yeah. And I'll add to anytime we talk about, you know, what do what motivates women here. Yeah.

For the majority of women inside these spaces, they also firmly believe that these rules are God's rules. True. And they are motivated by a desire to be faithful and obedient. Yeah. And I think the other thing, what you were talking about was some of these women that you highlight, they also, it's kind of like a lot of them later in life had moments where they were like, oh, this isn't, this doesn't function well for me. or like I am experiencing massive grief.

And then when it's so coded in their brains that like if anything happens in life, that's not good, it's because like you're not in God's favor. That's terrifying. And so it would be so heartbreaking exactly what you said to like get to that point where everything you'd based your life's on. You're like, wait a second. This doesn't play out the way I thought it was going to. Right.

And it is. And one of the things that. I do in Live, Laugh, Love that I didn't do in Jesus and John Wayne, is include a number of stories of just ordinary people. Yeah. Not just the leaders, not just the famous ones. And that was in part because the publication of Jesus and John Wayne and its reception and evangelical spaces meant that I was kind of drawn into those spaces.

So I could listen into people and people would write me and people would come up and talk to me when I was, you know, signing books or speaking. And so I have heard, again, thousands of stories now from women, or women inside these spaces. And so I chose some representative ones. But there are so many more that I could put in there. And again, what struck me is that so many of the women who spent their lives inside these spaces. And some are still inside. but more critically so some have left you know there there's no one um kind of mold um that they all fit but they are so smart so um perceptive about what it is that they experienced um you know in their own lives and so it was just a privilege to have access to that insight and and you'll see a

lot um particularly in the towards the end of the book where i'm i'm letting these women speak for themselves because they really do say it better than I could say it. But as I would hear them or read their message as like this, exactly this describes this whole big history that I'm writing right here is what it means in the life of ordinary women. Yeah. And it's so important to include those stories in all kinds of history because it's like it is the person living their kind of what we were talking about living their everyday life that is actually going to be able to articulate the experience even though they're not aware of like or may not be totally aware of like all the cultural things like creating their experience essentially the other thing that

I thought was interesting is when you kind of talked about new thoughts as well and it was also making me think like I'm assuming that's why we call some stuff like new agey like I'm assuming And that's kind of like where all of those kind of intertwine. Yeah. But with both like the MLM culture that's like, oh, you haven't converted enough people or your attitude isn't right. And then within church as well, kind of that same thing like, oh, you're not bringing enough people to Christ and your life would be better.

The other thing that I thought was it was very illuminating for me because I had a few conversations in 2024 and 2025 with people who I did not expect to say that. like the Civil Rights Act was one of the worst things that happened to America. They don't believe in systemic racism. They don't believe in any systemic issues, really. And it was so confusing for me because I was like, people I didn't expect it from, essentially is all I'm trying to say. But you kind of make a connection in one of the chapters where you mention,

like, if you teach this idea of like it's very capitalism, it's very manner, manifest destiny very pull yourself up by your bootstraps which you can't actually do by the way um it's like there are no systemic issues there are just people who aren't positive enough or who aren't christ-like enough and so that that made that made people think that these people struggling in like the 60 50 60s and then still the 70s just because the civil rights act was passed didn't mean like Jim crow south wasn't Jim crow south anymore um it really helped me at least to like see that there was so much of this that for decades it's been kind of preached this concept of like well someone's life isn't good like this is the basis of

prosperity gospel yeah it's because of things they did not because of anything a system did um so yeah what was what was it like encountering that and like seeing like the implications today oh it just it makes so much sense exactly what you're describing and I write in the book about even in 1930s, how conservative businessmen funded essentially a movement of Christian pastors, mainline and evangelical, to combat the social gospel. They understood that that was a real challenge. The Christian compassion for the poor was a real challenge to their corporate agenda. And so they mobilized a pro-capitalist. movement. Christianity today was funded by some of these capitalists. And if you fast forward then

to the 1970s, you get somebody like Rich DeVos from Amway, who is right at the center of taking his vast resources and disseminating this ideology, disseminating not just, but very much pro-capital. I mean, he is so overt. It was very fun to just quote his own words of businessmen are the good guys here. And, and, you know, handouts to the poor are going to destroy this country. He was against modern psychology because it blamed environment over individual choices. All of this was the individual. Every individual can succeed if they want to. And, and, And if they're poor, well, get out and sell some Amway. Right. That's the, and is there racism? Black people can sell Amway, right? I mean, like it's just so overt.

But he's also, he's not just running his business and he's not just writing in, you know, columns and newspapers around the country. And he took his selling America tour on the road to, to disseminate these ideas. He's also funding the report. Republican Party and funding and planning one of the architects of the Christian right in the 1970s, right? We just have to like take all these pieces of American history and realize that the same guys are behind all of these things.

And then it's not just Rich DeVos, but we have Mary Crowley, who runs her own Christian multi-level marketing company or direct sales. home interiors and the Mary Kay who who takes that model and adds the multi-level marketing to it. And they're also funding conservative evangelicalism and Republican politics. Right. This is all one thing. So fast forward to where we are now, like even like right now, the demonization of, you know, communism that they're all of a sudden discovering everywhere makes perfect sense. demonization of CRT, the kind of invention of for political purposes and then demonization of, that is like, it makes perfect sense. If you know this history, this is exactly what we should expect them to do. Yes. I think what you're talking about too is the intersection of like religion,

pop culture and politics that there, that there, that there. inseparable in any culture, in any country, with any religious denominations happening, you can't pull them apart because of the way that they inform each other and fuel each other so much. And I think that is one of the huge things I got from Live, Laugh, Love as well, is people, there were things that would not make sense to me because they would say, I don't care about politics. And I'm like, yeah, but you do. Like, everything. you just said to me was politics and it was so confusing. I feel like the last like five years has been me learning that like people will even use words and then they can't tell you what they

meant by using that word. So for me, I think kind of overarching this book does such a good job of those three things that I'm very interested in too, like pop culture, religion, politics. But was that like kind of even just like the big takeaway for you like across the board is like all of these things together helped a lot of white Christian women feel like I don't have to care about politics. I don't care about politics. I don't talk politics, but they do. Exactly. Right. That refrain just over and over again of, oh, I'm not political. And I remember kind of seeing that years and years ago, before I wrote Jesus and John Wayne, before I thought I was going to write a book on Christian women. Yeah, I was hearing it growing up in the 90s and 2000s. Exactly.

I remember just like thinking exactly like you did, but you do, though, you do though, but it's just not called politics. Correct. It is truth. It is goodness. It is Christian values. It is just what good Christians do. But it is deeply political. And that's, I make that point right in the introduction that, you know, women themselves will say that they're, you know, they're not political.

They just care about faith and family. But what they believe about their faith and about. family shapes their views on immigration and education and tax policy and welfare and all of these things because there is a correct answer that is being fed to them on every possible issue. And sometimes it's overt, right? Sometimes it's through very clear political messaging. It's bulletin inserts, you know, before any election. But more powerful than that are these deeply embedded values that they get reinforced every time they step into a Christian bookstore, every time they pick up a Christian romance novel. I mean, my favorite thing was reading Prairie

romance for the economic values embedded in there consistently. Yeah. And, you know, so, so yes, it is deeply political, but it is all the more powerful because it doesn't seem to be political at all. And that is, yeah, that is the dangerous part, in my opinion. Well, I really enjoyed our conversation. I really, really, really loved Live, Laugh, Love as the time that it's airing. You guys can go get a copy of it now. And thank you for writing it. Thank you for talking with me about it.

And I will continue to understand the world more because of your historical contributions. Oh, well, thank you so much and thank you for your careful read and thank you for sharing it with your listeners. I really appreciate it.