Live Laugh Love

From the New York Times best-selling author of Jesus and John Wayne, a revelatory history of white Christian womanhood in the United States.

In Jesus and John Wayne, a book that has changed how countless Americans understand their faith, historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez showed how evangelicals made Jesus into an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. Now she unearths the roots of the glittering, Instagram-ready culture of white Christian femininity.

Opening in the late nineteenth 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. Du Mez 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 aisles 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. In this brilliant recasting of modern American Christianity, Du Mez unearths the hidden origins of our reactionary moment.

“Live Love Laugh is full of in-depth research, stories needing to be heard, and excellent writing. With a solid grasp of race and whiteness, Kristin Du Mez takes us through time, offering an understanding of the evangelical culture’s view of women. I am grateful for her scholarship in this critical time.”
― Latasha Morrison, New York Times bestselling author of Be the Bridge

“Kristin Du Mez’s scholarship stuns. She weaves a mesmerizing narrative of how white evangelical women transformed biblical womanhood and made Christian nationalism palatable. They married capitalism with spirituality, harnessed the language of submission to broker their own networks of power, and refashioned right-wing authoritarianism into a romantic mythology of family values. Du Mez stands apart for how she centers the stories of women―those who were complicit and those who weren’t. By honoring the courage, truth-telling, and resilience of women like Christa Brown and Rachel Held Evans, Du Mez shows us the real story of hope. It will captivate you.”
― Beth Allison Barr, New York Times bestselling author of Becoming the Pastor’s Wife

“Kristin Kobes Du Mez isn’t just one of our boldest historians; she’s also one of our finest writers of non-fiction. Live Laugh Love connects so many ‘Christian’ beliefs that have nothing to do with Christ, and that have been used to control women for generations. A brilliant, infuriating, inspiring read for anyone who wants to understand modern Christianity―and how it got that way. I wish that all men would read this book.”
― John Fugelsang, New York Times bestselling author of Separation of Church and Hate

“Charting a path from 19th century New Thought to 21st century tradwives, with stops along the way at Little House on the Prairie and the bedroom of a mythical “Total Woman,” Kristin Kobes Du Mez transforms our understanding of money, sex, power, and gender in U.S. history. You simply cannot grasp the scale of Christian nationalism without this vivid and essential exploration of a distinctly American religion of white womanhood. Startling, heartbreaking and terrifying, Live Laugh Love is a key volume in the new history of how we come to this contested moment.”
― Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Undertow and The Family

“Live Laugh Love is more than a family tree of fundamentalism tracing the lineage of cottage industries fashioned by bored Christian housewives; it exposes the iceberg beneath the placid surface of the sea we now find ourselves in as a nation. Kristin Kobes Du Mez reveals how American evangelicalism has been shaped by savvy, entrepreneurial women coping with their grief and pain, while trying to be ‘good’ and fit within a patriarchal world. This book is often laugh-out-loud funny for those who’ve lived the inside joke, but also horrifying and harrowing as she detangles the web of deceit and manipulation . . . A must-read for religious trauma survivors who want to know the reasoning behind our histories.”
― Tia Levings, New York Times bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

Coming: September 2026