Donald Trump

I first started exploring evangelical masculinity and militarism nearly a decade ago, not knowing that the presidency of Donald Trump would be its culminating chapter. I spoke on the topic at the National Women’s Studies Association and at the Paul Henry Institute, but then I set the project aside for a time. I needed to finish my first book on Christian feminism, and, related to that project, I had begun to investigate Hillary Clinton’s religious formation as well.

It was only in October of 2016 that things clicked. Even after the Access Hollywood tapes, white evangelicals continued to support Trump. How could they embrace a man who made a mockery of their deeply held “family values”? But then I realized that popular evangelical literature on masculinity had prepared evangelicals for a man like Trump. Trump didn’t represent the betrayal of American evangelicalism as much as he was its fulfillment. Or so I argued at Religion & Politics. The book will be published with Norton’s Liveright Publishing, with an early 2020 release date.