People are wondering how, in my recent piece in The Atlantic, I could be critical of Beth Allison Barr’s book The Making of Biblical Womanhood after I wrote a blurb endorsing it when it first appeared in print. That’s a fair question. Kristin Kobes Du Mez asks it here.
Here is the blurb:
“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.”
I stand by every word of this blurb.
The Making of Biblical Womanhood poses a major challenge to patriarchy and complementarianism in the church. I am an egalitarian Christian who helped raise two strong and fairly progressive Christian daughters. I also hope people will read The Atlantic piece in the light of my larger body of work.
Nothing has changed about Barr’s book since I wrote this blurb. On the other hand, everything has changed about Barr’s book since I wrote this blurb.
As I argued in The Atlantic, Barr’s book and other books, including Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne, have become part of a larger evangelical narrative that does not explain my father’s experience with James Dobson and American evangelicalism. Barr and Du Mez can say over and over again that their books are not meant to be full histories of modern American evangelicalism, but let’s not kid ourselves–readers view them this way. Just examine any random review of their books. A narrative about evangelicalism has emerged from these books, and the books of others, that is not wrong per se, just flat.
Now some might say that Barr and Du Mez can’t control how readers use their books to create such narratives. Others might say that Barr and Du Mez have everything to do with the way that this anti-evangelical narrative has been constructed. Read their social media feeds and decide for yourself.
My Atlantic piece pushed back against this narrative. I wrote with a historical sensibility about the way we should interpret evangelicalism in my Dad’s era. Imagine a future historian reading letters to James Dobson written by people like my Dad–men and women raised in a rough working-class culture who learned to be better parents and spouses from reading Dobson. I am sure there are thousands of these letters–a historian’s dream. But how will these historians interpret these letters? Based on some of the responses to my Atlantic piece, I am led to believe that they might claim that all these letter-writers had something akin to Stockholm syndrome!
In the end, future historians who write the history of American evangelicalism in the 1970s will need to account for systemic patriarchy, racism, Christian nationalism, Trumpism, and the stuff I wrote about in my Atlantic piece. I hope Kristen and Beth would at least agree with that.
UPDATE (February 11, 2024 at 2:47): Just saw this tweet.
My answer to this tweet is the same as my comments above on the Barr blurb. I see no contradiction between this review of Wilsey’s review and my piece in The Atlantic: “As I tell my students, it is often the historian’s job to make people uncomfortable. We make the smooth places rough.” The anti-evangelical narrative I describe above seems to be the dominate narrative these days and my Atlantic piece was an effort to do something about the flatness–to make the smooth place rough.
I haven’t read Barr’s book, but I have read Jesus and John Wayne…I’m an egalitarian, my Trumpist friends who still speak with me would call me progressive. I will update your point about Dobson and say that John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart made me a better father.
Every author runs the risk of an uncontrollable response and corresponding extremism. I hope future historians look beyond the haze of social media to interpret the culture.
Dr. Fea, suck it up and admit you are wrong. What you are saying is, “he can’t be a molester, he never bothered me!” You are elevating personal experience over the body of evidence. This is not good historian behavior.
“Nothing has changed about Barr’s book since I wrote this blurb. On the other hand, everything has changed about Barr’s book since I wrote this blurb. … some might say that Barr and Du Mez can’t control how readers use their books to create such narratives. Others might say that Barr and Du Mez have everything to do with the way that this anti-evangelical narrative has been constructed. Read their social media feeds and decide for yourself.”
I should say I’m not up on all the conversations and interactions on social media and elsewhere that John F. is alluding to.
As a general matter, however, I wonder how legitimate it is to put much weight on “social media feeds” when we have a scholar’s considered text behaving (as it were) in a more balanced manner? If the two diverge, does that mean the scholar’s views have changed, or that the media posts are in any way their “real view”?
For myself, eg, my social media posts often depart in significant ways from my actual take on many issues. Social media posts are conversational and of the moment: deeply shaped by headlines, events, the specific interlocutor I’m addressing or the audience I assume is listening, even feelings, and I often stress certain aspects of my views on a matter that I think an interlocutor or audience is neglecting and needs to consider.
When I’m writing more formally, most of that drops away (I hope), and I try to give as full and well-rounded a take on the topic as I can, thinking not only of the moment, but of what, say, a scholar or antiquarian who discovers the piece a hundred years on needs to hear, or what someone today but living in Iran and utterly unfamiliar with current controversies are roiling my immediate environment.
My social media posts aren’t “dishonest,” per se, but they’re often both more and less than what I want to say on a given matter if someone is asking for an academic discourse.
Shawn: What am I wrong about? I have no interest in carrying water for James Dobson and have been very critical of him. But the last time I checked he has never been accused of being a molester.
Thanks for this DF. I appreciate it. Kristin’s and Beth’s book are important. I’ve said it over and over again.
Don’t talk about Eldredge or Dobson in a positive way too loud. 🙂
There are thousands and thousands of people who would say the same thing you did about the influence of Eldredge and Dobson. This is not to say that these authors did not have negative effects, and I have never downplayed that in my work (go back and look at my blog posts about the SBC sexual abuse scandal, Paige Patterson, my defense of critical race theory, or my posts at the time of the George Floyd murder). But if you want to talk about how Dobson and Eldredge ruined lives, you also need to talk about people like you and like my Dad. I haven’t seen a historical or academic treatment of evangelicalism that deals with such stories. Again, I am a historian. I try to tell accurate and complex stories about the past. This is why I have been critical of the activist historian–it blinds them from fully understand the past in all its fullness.
The response to my piece has been overwhelming. There are a lot people–in the hundreds now– who have told me that I am articulating what they have been thinking for a long time.
Nice article in the Atlantic, John. This criticism of you, from both sides, just shows that people have become polarized, and refuse to see nuance and complexity. They want you to pick a side, defend at all costs and never give credit to the other side, a reflection of our politics. Please remain unpredictable, call it like it is, and avoid becoming a hack for either the right or the left, as many writers seem to have become.
I’m super late catching up on this, but wonder, Dr. Fea: you would address the meat of Dr. Du Mez’s response where she offers specific passages from her book that actually do appear to account for the story of your dad?
If I’m understanding this response, it seems like you are asserting that while nothing has changed with the Dr. Barr’s the social moment has flattened the impact of the work, though you found (and find) the work strong when you reviewed it? Would it be fair to think that revising your sentence to read “Yet for all their value, books such as Du Mez’s and Barr’s, as works of evangelical history,” *fall* “woefully flat” would more precisely represent the argument you are making here?