About that Atlantic piece

How game-changing works of scholarship became "woefully flat"

Just this week, I was telling someone how I’d only recently stopped carrying a copy of Jesus and John Wayne with me whenever I traveled. There was a fairly long stretch when critical reviews were coming out almost daily that misrepresented my book in serious ways. I kept a copy on me at all times so I could grab a quick screenshot and tweet out the correction.

Sitting in the Raleigh-Durham airport about to catch a flight, I was kicking myself for giving up the habit as I scrolled through John Fea’s latest piece in the Atlantic.

Here’s a taste:

It started with a poignant story about his father, “a functional agnostic” who occasionally beat his sons, who became a born-again Christian, cut back on swearing, and became a better husband and dad.

He then reflects that a number of critical books about evangelicalism have come out, including his own Believe Me (see my review in Christianity Today here), and decides that “the story of American evangelicalism isn’t all negative, neither in my dad’s era nor in ours.” OK, that’s fair. “For all the bad that’s come out of this movement, there are still countless stories of personal transformation leading people to become better parents, better spouses, and better members of their communities.” Seeing this good is key to understanding its appeal, he adds.

True enough.

Then, he turns to James Dobson. And, to Beth Allison Barr and to me.

As valuable as Dobson’s message of compassion was for my dad, his emphasis on male authority in the home has come under significant criticism in recent years. The Calvin University history professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez, in her book Jesus and John Wayne, paints Dobson as one of the evangelical patriarchs who “corrupted a faith and fractured a nation.” The Baylor University historian Beth Allison Barr has tied Dobson to unbiblical views that have “subjugated women.” They have identified a serious dark spot in the history of American evangelicalism.

He notes that he has “offered praise for the work of Du Mez and Barr.” That he has. Significantly, he also notes that when it came to raising his own kids, he abandoned Dobson’s approach; “There were no purity balls or regular spankings to protect their salvation. Nor did we listen to much of his marriage advice, especially as it related to male headship and female submission.”

So, Dobson did good things, but came under “significant criticism” from Barr and Du Mez. The Feas apparently made similar assessments, deciding not to follow his teachings. So where is this all going?

Yet for all their value, books such as Du Mez’s and Barr’s, as works of evangelical history, are woefully flat and do not explain historically the story of my father and, I imagine, millions of other men and women who learned from Dobson how to love their families as Jesus loves his church.

My father did not need James Dobson to teach him how to be a patriarch. He was a patriarch years before he picked up a copy of Dobson’s Dare to Discipline or tuned in to Focus on the Family on WFME radio broadcasting out of New York City. Dobson had a different influence on him. My father took to heart Dobson’s lessons that as the male head of the household, he had the responsibility to lead the family with love and compassion. Such an approach to family life was countercultural to the working-class, patriarchal, immigrant culture in which he was raised. His life, and our family, took a 180-degree turn for the better….

I’m waiting to see my father’s story, and the story of others like him, in books about American evangelicalism in the 1970s and ’80s. I’m not holding my breath.

Fea considers “some of” the works that have constructed this critical narrative to be “unfair or disproportionate.” There’s just enough hedging here to allow for plausible deniability that of course he didn’t mean ours, but the implication is clear that he does. (It may be worth noting that in his own book on MAGA evangelicals, he points to Dobson as one of Trump’s “court evangelicals.”)

There is more to the essay. Some of his points I agree with. His personal reflection I find illuminating. Some of his arguments I find unconvincing.

What puzzled me, however, was his decision not just to reflect on the critical literature of evangelicalism generally, but to single out my book and Beth’s, specifically, as “woefully flat” works of evangelical history.

Fea is making a scholarly claim here, so let’s use some scholarly tools of assessment. Let’s take a look at the evidence.

Does Jesus and John Wayne in fact fail to “explain historically the story of [Fea’s] father? Given that the book is not a history of evangelicalism generally, but rather a history of white evangelical masculinity & militarism, it might not be expected to fully capture his dad’s experience. Yet in fact in a number of places, it does just that. Rather than merely flattening Dobson into just another figure who “corrupted a faith and fractured a nation,” here are a few ways I analyze Dobson and his influence:

I situate Dobson’s work in the context of his own family history, how he tried not to repeat the mistakes of his own absentee dad, how he spoke to parents thrown off by the upheaval of the 1960s, and how he helped build the “strict father” metaphor that George Lakoff locates at the center of a conservative worldview.

I describe how Dobson promoted the Promise Keepers, but I show how Promise Keepers involved patriarchal and egalitarian aspects, how PK came under attack from the Left but also from the Right, and I describe how “soft patriarchy” genuinely did soften the patriarchy many men had inherited. Here’s how I put it: “In this way, men could find within Promise Keepers both a justification for traditional masculine authority and a defense of an emotive, egalitarian, reconstructed manhood.”

I describe how many women found “the patriarchal bargain” attractive, how they found “the harsh critique leveled by feminists…alienating and confusing. Here was a group of men confessing their shortcomings, promising to be better husbands, to be more attentive to their families, more respectful of women,” I note. I cite studies that show that “conservative Protestant men did less household labor” than other men but that they were more likely to express affection for their wives and spend more time with their kids than other men, even if they tended to adminsiter harsher discipline.

And then this: “Depending on where any given man was coming from, ‘soft patriarchy’ and ‘servant leadership’ might be a significant improvement over harsher authoritarian tendencies, whether religious or secular in origin. In some families, these concepts functioned in a way that could ‘reform machismo’ by reattaching men to their families.”

This sounds like it could have been written to describe Fea’s father.

Now, one could still argue, and rightly, that the weight of my thesis lands elsewhere. That it does. But I do not know how one can read these pages and then make the claims Fea makes about my analysis. As I said on Twitter/X, I urge anyone to read Chapters 4 & 9 of Jesus and John Wayne, and then read Fea’s characterization of the book, and decide which analysis comes across as “woefully flat.”

Barr, of course, was also not writing a general history of evangelicalism. She was contrasting medieval models of Christian womanhood with the modern construction of “biblical womanhood,” one that Fea also presumably rejected when raising his own children. What is especially curious about Fea’s critical take on Barr’s book, however, is the fact that he was so effusive about it when it first released. He had said many good things about mine as well, but he endorsed Beth’s book not even three years ago:

“The Making of Biblical Womanhood will send shock waves through conservative evangelical Christianity. Powerful personal testimony, a solid handle on the theology and biblical issues at stake in the debate over the role of women in the church, and a historian’s understanding of how the past can speak to the present inform Barr’s convincing challenge to patriarchy and complementarianism. This book is a game changer.”

So, what changed?

Our books haven’t. If anything, in light of the details we now know about Paul Pressler’s sexual abuse of young men and the complicity of so many members of his inner circle in enabling and covering up that abuse, about Paige Patterson and the broader sex abuse scandal in the SBC, the harrowing stories from the IBLP, IHOPKC, disturbing accounts from the ACNA and the PCA, not to mention the ever-resilient support for Trump among white evangelicals, our books are arguably even more relevant (and validated) now than when they published.

Beth Allison Barr and I at Baylor, talking about our experiences as female scholars and Christians in the world of academia

Yet between then and now, Fea has pushed the narrative that Beth and I (and Jemar Tisby) are “illiberal,” that we hold to “a hardened vision of identity politics; think Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ advocacy, and radical feminism,” only to walk that back when pressed for evidence. At the time, it was not lost on many observers that although the three of us have not in fact demonstrated illiberalism, we do happen to be three of the most prominent Christian historians surfacing issues of race and gender in the study of evangelicalism. (Fea has also recently called me “smug” over at RNS, but I’ll allow that this allegation is open to interpretation.)

Our books are indeed popular, as far as academic books go. But in crafting the argument that coverage of evangelicalism is “too negative” and that “the whole story” isn’t being told, Fea neglects to mention the scores of books evangelicals write about themselves for themselves. Don’t be fooled. These books outsell all the “negative” takes by an order of magnitude. Tune into Christian radio, and you’ll here nothing but glowing reports of evangelicals “doing the Lord’s work,” wherever they go.

Jesus and John Wayne and The Making of Biblical Womanhood became bestsellers not because a secular public couldn’t get enough of “evangelicals behaving badly.” They became bestsellers because evangelical readers themselves found them and said, “this is true.” After decades of being fed only one narrative—all of the positive stories and celebrations of how they, more than anyone else, were “doing the Lord’s work,” tens of thousands of evangelical readers found in our books accounts that resonated with their own experiences. Fea’s dad’s story might not take center stage in my book, but other people’s stories do.

I continue to hear every single day from evangelicals and former evangelicals who find their stories in my book. I know Beth does too. The most poignant of these are from women, especially from survivors. Early on, a survivor reached out to me: “Thank you for making our stories part of the historical record. You have no idea what that means to us.” Take a look at the historiography of evangelicalism, a vibrant field stretching back several decades. How many histories give even a passing mention to sexual abuse, abuse of power, and to the misogyny that too often rears its ugly head? Beth and I do. How many fail to even mention women at all? How many advance the “colorblind” myth, rather than interrogate the racial dynamics clear to evangelicals who are not white, but largely invisible to those who are?

Fea knows this, and knows that there are consequences to focusing only on the good things, as one defines “good.” He has written about it eloquently himself.

Here’s how I summarized one aspect of his book Believe Me in my review:

Fea demonstrates how an accurate historical understanding reveals that “racism, xenophobia, imperialism, violence, materialism,” and other ethical shortcomings have indelibly shaped America’s past. When white evangelicals ignore these darker chapters, they leave themselves susceptible to a Christian nationalism that amounts to nothing less than idolatry. Fea takes pains to explain how the phrase “Make American Great Again” might conjure images of slavery, burning crosses, segregated schools, and “colored-only” water fountains for African Americans.

No single book tells “the whole story.” One person’s story shouldn’t cancel another’s. Some stories have been kept hidden for a very long time, by design.

Let’s tell Fea’s dad’s story. John could tell it himself—I’m sure plenty of publishers would be lining up for something like that. And let’s also tell the stories of survivors. Let’s tell stories of exemplary leaders and corrupt leaders, of good intentions and unintended consequences, of blind spots and power grabs, gatekeeping and cowardice, of those in charge and of those kicked out, paying attention to power dynamics and tensions, to resistance and complicity. And let’s grapple with how all of these stories exist within the movement side-by-side, within communities and within churches, and sometimes within families.

And let’s do so with integrity.