Description
Book SynopsisThis work studies evangelical Protestants, their views on marriage and gender relations, and how they are lived within individual families. It compares elite evangelical prescriptions for godly family living with the day-to-day practises of conservative Protestant households.
Trade ReviewBartkowski draws from a treasure trove of stories to make evangelists understand able and alive. Like everyone else, they struggle to to create workable ways of being men, women, and families in a changing world. -- Nancy Tatom Ammerman * author of Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World *
Bartkowski very nicely mixes methods - combining an analysis of evangelical advice manuals, an ethnography of an evangelical congregation, and in-depth interviews with married evangelical couples - to produce an important contribution to our growing understanding of the complexity, ambivalence, and diversity within American evangelicalism. -- Christian Smith * University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill *
Using a deft combination of historical material, textual analysis, interviews and ethnographic observation, Bartkowski unpacks the multiple discourses about, and practices within, marriage and families among evangelical Protestants. -- Rhys H. Williams * editor of Promise Keepers and the New Masculinity: Private Lives and Public Morality *
Table of ContentsPART 1 Introduction and background.
1 Evangelical family life and America's culture wars
2 Evangelical families in historical perspective
PART 2 Contemporary conservative Protestant gender discourse : elite evangelical prescriptions for family life
3 Discourses of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality : evangelical debates over gender difference
4 Wifely submission or mutual submission? : evangelical discourses of family power
5 Separate spheres or domestic task sharing? : evangelical debates over financial provision, housework, and child care
PART 3 Tandem gender : negotiation among evangelical spouses
6 Vive la difference? : gender difference in family ministry and domestic life
7 Negotiating patriarchy : submission, subversion, and family power
8 Labor of love? : financial provision, housework, and child care
CONCLUSION Refashioning evangelical families for the twenty-first century : godly marriages in a millennial age
