Christian Nationalism and Feminism
Christian Nationalism and Feminism
Christian nationalism and feminism intersect within a much larger historical debate over religion, gender, family authority, sexuality, women's political participation, and the meaning of American national identity. Research gathered on this subject shows that attitudes toward women and gender are not merely secondary issues within Christian-nationalist politics. Ideas about the organization of the family, the responsibilities of men and women, reproduction, sexuality, and social authority frequently appear alongside ideas about Christianity's proper relationship to the nation.
A substantial body of sociological research finds an association between Christian nationalism and support for traditional gender arrangements. Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, for example, found that Christian-nationalist beliefs were associated with traditionalist gender ideology even after accounting for other religious, demographic, and political characteristics. Subsequent scholarship has examined related attitudes toward male household leadership, masculinity and femininity, women's employment and education, sexuality, family authority, and control over children.
At the same time, the relationship between Christian nationalism and women is more complicated than a simple conflict between male Christian nationalists and female feminists. Women have played important roles in conservative Christianity and the Christian Right, sometimes organizing politically in defense of traditional gender roles while exercising substantial political authority themselves. Other Christian women have developed explicitly feminist or egalitarian interpretations of Christianity. The resulting history contains competing Christian understandings of womanhood, equality, authority, family, and political participation.
Christian Nationalism, Patriarchy, and Gender Order
One of the most consistent themes in the research is the relationship between Christian nationalism and hierarchical ideas about social order. Studies of Christian nationalism frequently include attitudes concerning male headship, heterosexual marriage, motherhood, masculinity, femininity, parental authority, and differentiated roles for men and women.
This understanding of gender often places the heterosexual family at the center of social stability. Men may be understood as providers, protectors, spiritual leaders, or heads of households, while women may be associated more strongly with motherhood, caregiving, domestic responsibility, and support for family and religious life. Scholarship on Christian nationalism connects these ideas about family hierarchy to broader conceptions of authority and national order.
Research nevertheless shows considerable variation. Christian nationalism is not supported exclusively by men, nor do all people who hold Christian-nationalist beliefs understand gender in precisely the same way. Public Religion Research Institute surveys, for example, find Christian-nationalist beliefs among both men and women. Other research shows that relationships among Christian nationalism, race, gender, equality, and political attitudes vary across demographic groups.
This variation is important because Christian nationalism is not a single church doctrine or denominational statement. It functions as a collection of beliefs connecting Christianity, national identity, political authority, cultural tradition, and social order. Gender hierarchy is prominent within much of the scholarship, but its expression varies among individuals and communities.
Feminism and the Rise of the Christian Right
Modern conflicts between conservative Christianity and feminism developed long before the contemporary term Christian nationalism became widely used.
Second-wave feminism challenged established expectations concerning women's employment, marriage, divorce, sexuality, reproduction, education, and political participation. Feminists advocated reforms including the Equal Rights Amendment, expanded reproductive autonomy, greater access to professional careers, and changes in laws and social practices that distinguished between men and women.
Conservative Christian activists frequently interpreted parts of this agenda as challenges to the family and to traditional religious teachings about gender. Battles over feminism consequently became part of the political development of the modern Christian Right.
The Equal Rights Amendment became one of the most important arenas for this conflict. Conservative activists argued that the amendment could undermine traditional distinctions between men and women and alter established understandings of marriage and family. Feminist organizations generally viewed the amendment as an essential guarantee of equal legal treatment.
Religion played an important role in these debates. Evangelical Protestants, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Catholics, and other religious communities participated in arguments over the amendment, although none of these communities was internally unanimous.
Opposition to the ERA also helped develop political networks that subsequently became involved in abortion, education, sexuality, religious liberty, and family policy. In this way, conflicts over feminism contributed to the organizational development of the Religious Right.
Conservative Women as Political Leaders
One of the apparent paradoxes examined by historians is that movements defending traditional gender roles have often depended heavily on female political organizers.
Women were important participants in postwar American conservatism before the emergence of the modern Religious Right. They organized neighborhood networks, political clubs, educational campaigns, religious organizations, mailing lists, and grassroots movements. Domestic identities such as wife and mother could become sources of political legitimacy rather than barriers to participation.
This pattern continued within the Christian Right. Figures including Beverly LaHaye and Anita Bryant became prominent political activists, while organizations such as Concerned Women for America mobilized large numbers of conservative Christian women.
These activists often rejected the premise that feminism uniquely represented women's interests. Some instead presented conservative Christian activism as an alternative vision of women's empowerment centered on religion, marriage, motherhood, family, and community involvement.
Historians therefore caution against portraying conservative religious women simply as passive participants in male-dominated movements. Women have exercised substantial organizational and political agency while simultaneously supporting theological or social systems that distinguish between male and female roles.
Research on women's religious agency offers a similar caution. Women may interpret religious discipline, family commitments, motherhood, or traditional gender practices as meaningful expressions of faith rather than simply as externally imposed restrictions. Understanding these movements therefore requires examining both institutional structures and the ways participants themselves understand their choices.
Evangelical Feminism and Competing Christian Views
Christian opposition to feminism has never represented the entirety of Christian thought concerning women.
Beginning especially during the twentieth century, evangelical feminists and Christian egalitarians argued that biblical authority could be reconciled with equality between women and men. They challenged interpretations of scripture used to exclude women from ministry, leadership, or equal authority within marriage.
These debates produced two broadly recognizable positions within conservative Protestantism.
Complementarianism generally maintains that women and men possess equal spiritual worth while having different God-given responsibilities, particularly within marriage and church leadership. Complementarian organizations and theologians have frequently defended male leadership in the family and certain church offices.
Egalitarianism argues that biblical teaching does not require permanent gender-based hierarchies and that women may exercise authority and leadership alongside men in the church, family, and society.
Documents such as the Danvers Statement became influential expressions of complementarian theology, while organizations such as Christians for Biblical Equality promoted egalitarian interpretations.
These theological disputes matter to discussions of Christian nationalism because political disagreements over feminism often draw upon older disagreements within Christianity itself about authority, scripture, marriage, and women's roles.
Abortion, Reproductive Rights, and Pronatalism
Reproduction has become another major point of conflict between feminism, conservative Christianity, and Christian nationalism.
The anti-abortion movement predates the contemporary Christian-nationalist movement, and historical scholarship cautions against treating the two as identical. Nevertheless, abortion became increasingly important to conservative Christian political mobilization during the late twentieth century.
Contemporary studies find relationships between Christian nationalism and restrictive abortion attitudes. Some research in the uploaded material reports associations between Christian nationalism and support for criminal penalties for women obtaining abortions.
Research also connects Christian nationalism with pronatalism — the belief that society should encourage higher birth rates. Scholarship distinguishes between general pronatalism, which favors larger families or higher fertility broadly, and selective pronatalism concerned with the reproduction of particular cultural, religious, racial, or national groups.
Complementarian beliefs about motherhood and family authority can intersect with pronatalist ideas. In these contexts, childbearing may be presented not only as a personal or religious responsibility but also as part of preserving a religious community, cultural tradition, or nation.
These issues place reproductive autonomy at the center of disagreement between many feminist perspectives and Christian-nationalist conceptions of family and social order.
Purity Culture and Biblical Womanhood
Research on evangelical purity culture provides another perspective on the relationship between religion and gender.
Purity movements generally emphasize sexual abstinence before marriage, modesty, heterosexual marriage, and restrictions on sexual behavior. Women and girls have often received particularly detailed expectations concerning dress, sexual behavior, femininity, and responsibility for maintaining sexual boundaries.
Critics of purity culture argue that such teachings can reinforce gender hierarchy, sexual shame, and unequal expectations between men and women. Research included in the collected material examines relationships between purity teachings, sexism, racial ideals, sexual experiences, bodily autonomy, and attitudes toward female submission.
Other conservative Christian traditions promote concepts of biblical womanhood. These may emphasize marriage, motherhood, homemaking, modesty, submission to husbands, or distinct male and female responsibilities.
The Quiverfull movement represents a particularly pronounced form of Christian patriarchy and pronatalism, combining large-family ideals, homeschooling, male household authority, and opposition to feminism.
These movements are not synonymous with Christian nationalism, but scholarship uses them to illuminate the religious and cultural environment in which ideas about gender hierarchy, reproduction, family authority, and national restoration can overlap.
Tradwives and Digital Antifeminism
Social media has created new platforms for older debates about feminism and traditional womanhood.
The tradwife, or traditional-wife, phenomenon presents an idealized form of domestic femininity emphasizing homemaking, motherhood, marriage, traditional gender roles, and often nostalgic imagery of earlier family life. Not every tradwife identifies with Christian nationalism or even with organized religion, but researchers have documented intersections among evangelicalism, antifeminism, nationalism, conservative politics, and online tradwife culture.
Influencers can present domestic labor and traditional femininity not as restrictions but as alternatives to contemporary feminist expectations. Social media allows these ideas to reach audiences through lifestyle content rather than conventional political organizations.
Similar dynamics appear among evangelical online personalities who promote biblical womanhood, purity, heterosexual marriage, and opposition to feminism. Research on ministries such as GirlDefined illustrates how religious instruction, femininity, nationalism, and contemporary influencer culture can intersect.
Digital media therefore represents an important new setting for the continuing debate over women's roles. Ideas once communicated primarily through churches, books, political organizations, and conferences can now circulate through Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, and other social platforms.
Race, Gender, and National Identity
The research also emphasizes that gender cannot be separated completely from race and national identity.
Studies of white Christian nationalism have examined the historical connections among Protestant identity, racial hierarchy, heterosexual family structures, and understandings of the United States as a Christian nation. Scholarship on white nationalism and the Religious Right finds that both movements have sometimes idealized patriarchal heterosexual families as foundations for cultural continuity.
However, Christian nationalism is not held exclusively by white Americans. Research examining Black Christians and other racial groups demonstrates that similar Christian-nationalist statements may operate differently depending on racial, religious, gender, and political context.
Researchers therefore caution against assuming that Christian nationalism produces identical attitudes among white men, white women, Black men, Black women, or other demographic populations.
Comparative studies outside the United States further show that conflicts involving conservative religion, feminism, abortion, sexuality, family, and nationalism appear in different forms in countries including Brazil and the United Kingdom.
Women's Political Rights
Some contemporary discussions extend the conflict over gender hierarchy into questions of women's political independence.
Sources in the research collection examine arguments for household voting, male political authority, voter-documentation policies affecting married women, and broader debates over whether traditional family hierarchy should have political consequences.
Such positions should not be treated as representative of every Christian nationalist or conservative Christian. The research instead documents their existence within parts of the broader ideological environment.
Historically, this debate resembles an older tension within conservative women's activism: women may participate vigorously in politics while defending social arrangements that emphasize male authority within the household.
The history of conservative women therefore demonstrates that traditional gender ideology does not necessarily produce women's political inactivity. In many cases it has instead generated distinctive forms of female political mobilization.
Feminism as a Symbolic Opponent
Across several generations of conservative Christian politics, feminism has often functioned as more than a description of a particular political movement.
It can become a symbolic term representing broader social changes involving sexuality, abortion, divorce, employment, family authority, homosexuality, gender identity, and secularization. Opposition to feminism can consequently serve as a way of connecting otherwise separate political and cultural concerns.
At the same time, feminism itself encompasses many different movements and viewpoints, just as conservative Christianity does. Christian feminists, secular feminists, liberal feminists, radical feminists, and other traditions have disagreed substantially with one another.
The same complexity exists among religious conservatives. Evangelicals have debated women's ordination, marriage, political leadership, employment, sexuality, and biblical interpretation for decades.
The historical relationship between Christian nationalism and feminism is therefore better understood as a continuing struggle over competing conceptions of family, authority, equality, religion, and national identity rather than as a conflict between two completely uniform camps.
Conclusion
The research collected on Christian nationalism and feminism shows that gender is an important component of the larger Christian-nationalist worldview studied by sociologists, historians, political scientists, theologians, and scholars of religion.
Empirical studies repeatedly report associations between stronger Christian-nationalist identification and traditionalist attitudes concerning gender, male household authority, family hierarchy, sexuality, and reproduction. Historical research connects many of these ideas to earlier conflicts over feminism, the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, family values, and the rise of the Christian Right.
Yet the history is more complex than a simple opposition between religious men and feminist women. Conservative women have been central organizers, intellectuals, activists, and public representatives of religious conservatism. Some have defended traditional gender roles while building powerful political organizations. Other Christian women have challenged patriarchal theology and developed explicitly egalitarian or feminist interpretations of Christianity.
Contemporary disputes over abortion, pronatalism, purity culture, women's political independence, and tradwife culture demonstrate that the underlying questions remain active: Who should exercise authority within the family? What obligations accompany gender? How should religion influence public policy? What constitutes equality between women and men? And what relationship, if any, should a particular model of Christian family life have to national identity?
The scholarship does not present Christian nationalism, feminism, evangelicalism, or women's political behavior as uniform categories. Instead, it reveals a long-running contest among competing understandings of Christianity, gender, family, individual autonomy, equality, and the proper organization of American society.
Christian Nationalism, Patriarchy, and Gender Ideology
1. | Brenita Mitchell | Review & Expositor | May 26, 2025
How Does White Christian Nationalism Harm Women in America? Discusses the effects of Christian-nationalist and patriarchal ideologies on women's autonomy, social status, political rights, and expectations of obedience and domesticity.
2. | Paul A. Djupe and Brooklyn Walker | Sociology of Religion | March 8, 2025
Jesus and John Wayne Wannabes: How Christian Nationalism and Femininity Shape Extreme Politics Among Men in the US. Investigates relationships among gender identity, Christian nationalism, sexism, masculinity, extremism, and political behavior.
3. | Samuel L. Perry and colleagues | Social Forces | 2025
Order Begins at Home: Christian Nationalism and Control Over Children. Connects Christian nationalism with hierarchical family structures, control of children, traditional gender roles, and authoritarian understandings of family order.
4. | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | 2025
Christian Nationalism Across All 50 States: Insights from PRRI's 2024 American Values Atlas. Includes measures of attitudes toward femininity, gendered occupations, patriarchy, and Christian-nationalist identification.
5. | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | October 30, 2024
Resistance to Christian Nationalism in All 50 States. Examines Americans who reject or resist Christian-nationalist ideas and provides gender, age, religious, educational, and political breakdowns.
6. | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | September 10, 2024
One Leader Under God: The Connection Between Authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism in America. Explores Christian nationalism, authoritarianism, male-headed households, women's roles as wives and mothers, and perceptions that women's gains harm men.
7. | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | February 28, 2024
Support for Christian Nationalism in All 50 States. Provides state-level and demographic data, including comparisons of Christian-nationalist identification among American men and women.
8. | Samuel L. Perry and colleagues | Ethnic and Racial Studies | 2024
Intersecting Identities, Diverging Visions: Christian Nationalism, Race, Gender, and Prioritizing Equality or Liberty. Shows that the relationship between Christian nationalism and preferences for liberty or equality differs significantly by race and gender.
9. | Authors | Frontiers in Social Psychology | 2024
Not All Christian Nationalists Are White (and Not All White Christians Are Christian Nationalists): Exploring the Predictors of Christian Nationalism. Reviews evidence linking Christian nationalism with traditional gender roles and examines demographic and ideological predictors of the worldview.
10. | Melissa Deckman | Public Religion Research Institute | March 27, 2023
Not Just Proud Boys: Women Espouse Christian Nationalist Views Too. Examines why women can endorse Christian-nationalist beliefs even when those beliefs include male headship and traditional gender hierarchy.
11. | PRRI Staff | Public Religion Research Institute | February 8, 2023
A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture. National survey research includes measures of male headship, women's educational and career opportunities, masculinity, and beliefs that society has become too feminine.
12. | Brookings Institution and PRRI | Brookings Institution | February 8, 2023
Understanding the Threat of White Christian Nationalism to American Democracy Today. Discussion accompanying national survey research on patriarchy, gender hierarchy, racial attitudes, authoritarianism, and Christian-nationalist politics.
13. | Sage Mikkelsen and Sarah Kornfield | Women's Studies in Communication | July 21, 2021
Girls Gone Fundamentalist: Feminine Appeals of White Christian Nationalism. Examines GirlDefined Ministries and argues that its ideal of biblical femininity connects patriarchal gender norms, whiteness, nationalism, and evangelical culture-war activism.
14. | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Oxford University Press | March 19, 2020
Order. A chapter from Taking America Back for God examining Christian nationalism's relationship to patriarchy, heterosexuality, gender identity, divorce, and ideas about the proper organization of family life.
15. | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | Canadian Review of Sociology | April 30, 2019
Is a “Christian America” a More Patriarchal America? Religion, Politics, and Traditionalist Gender Ideology. Using a national sample, the authors find that Christian nationalism is strongly associated with traditionalist gender ideology even after accounting for political, demographic, and religious factors.
Feminism, Evangelicalism, and Antifeminism
16. | Heather Olmez | University of Chicago | August 2023
Women of the Religious Right: Feminine Conservatism and Opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. Studies conservative women's anti-ERA rhetoric concerning motherhood, traditional gender roles, morality, abortion, and the family.
17. | Polina Shvanyukova | Anglistica AION | 2023
“Simply the Way God Made Us”: Religious Language in Phyllis Schlafly's Antifeminist Manifesto. Analyzes Schlafly's use of religious concepts, natural gender differences, family values, and political rhetoric in opposition to the ERA.
18. | Caitlin Lawson | AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research | 2022
A Girl Defined by God: Biblical Womanhood, Anti-Feminism, and White Evangelical Microcelebrities. Analyzes how evangelical social-media influencers present feminism as a threat and promote marriage, motherhood, submission, and biblical womanhood.
19. | Author | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society | June 1, 2019
Contemporary Evangelical Responses to Feminism and the Imagined Secular. Examines evangelical attempts to embrace, modify, or reject feminism and argues that debates about feminism illuminate the gender politics of the modern Religious Right.
20. | Emily Suzanne Johnson | Religion and American Culture | Summer 2018
God, Country, and Anita Bryant: Women's Leadership and the Politics of the New Christian Right. Explores how conservative evangelical women used motherhood and religious identity to claim political authority while advocating traditional gender roles.
21. | Chelsea Griffis | Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies | 2017
In the Beginning Was the Word. Examines evangelical women's competing definitions of womanhood during the ERA fight, including the Evangelical Women's Caucus and Concerned Women for America.
22. | Laura E. Brock | Florida Historical Quarterly | 2015
Religion and Women's Rights in Florida: An Examination of the Equal Rights Amendment Legislative Debates, 1972–1982. Examines religion's role in one of the central state battles over the ERA and its links to abortion, homosexuality, and gender roles.
23. | Megan Pritchett | Scripps College | 2014
“I'm a Jesus Feminist”: Understandings of Faith, Gender, and Feminism Among Christian Women. Explores how Christian women negotiate potentially conflicting religious, gender, and feminist identities.
24. | Anneke Stasson | Religion and American Culture | 2014
The Politicization of Family Life: How Headship Became Essential to Evangelical Identity in the Late Twentieth Century. Shows how male headship became increasingly central to evangelical identity amid battles over feminism, the ERA, and same-sex marriage.
25. | Lisa Miller | The Washington Post | July 28, 2011
Evangelical Women Rise as New ‘Feminists’. Describes attempts by conservative Christian women to redefine feminism around anti-abortion politics, family, motherhood, religious faith, and women's political participation.
26. | Stacie Taranto | University of California eScholarship | 2008
Debating Family Values: Women & Politics in New York and the Nation, 1970–1992. Examines feminist and conservative women's competing definitions of family, abortion, child care, the ERA, heterosexual marriage, and gender roles.
27. | Neil J. Young | American Quarterly | September 2007
“The ERA Is a Moral Issue”: The Mormon Church, LDS Women, and the Defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment. Shows the important role LDS institutions and women activists played in mobilizing religious opposition to the amendment.
28. | Susan E. Marshall | Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science | May 1991
Who Speaks for American Women? The Future of Antifeminism. Surveys American antifeminist activism and the development of organizations such as Eagle Forum and Concerned Women for America.
29. | Clyde Wilcox | Western Political Quarterly | March 1989
Feminism and Anti-Feminism Among Evangelical Women. National survey research demonstrates that evangelical women historically displayed substantial internal disagreement on feminism, abortion, the ERA, and other women's issues.
30. | Sandra K. Gill | Review of Religious Research | October 1985
Attitudes Toward the Equal Rights Amendment: Influence of Class and Status. Analyzes how socioeconomic status, religion, marriage, and political conservatism shaped women's and men's attitudes toward the ERA.
Women and the Rise of the Christian Right
31. | Piper Noyes Thomson | Sociological Theory | May 11, 2026
How to Transform Yourself from Your Kitchen Table: Performance, Citation, and Subject Refashioning in Concerned Women for America. Studies how CWA turned domestic and religious identities into forms of political organization and conservative women's activism.
32. | Author | Church History | 2025
“Is Humanism Molesting Your Child?” Lottie Beth Hobbs, the Death of the ERA, and the Birth of the Religious Right. Traces a fundamentalist woman activist who linked opposition to feminism and the ERA with the developing “pro-family” Religious Right.
33. | Daniel K. Williams | Oxford Handbook of Christian Fundamentalism | November 20, 2023
The Christian Right. Surveys the development of the Religious Right and its reaction to feminism, the sexual revolution, abortion, same-sex marriage, and changing cultural norms.
34. | Authors | International Journal of Anthropology and Ethnology | 2023
American Evangelical Nationalism: History, Status Quo, and Outlook. Reviews the rise of evangelical nationalism, including reactions against women's rights, abortion, gay rights, and the Equal Rights Amendment.
35. | Emily Suzanne Johnson | A Companion to American Religious History | January 22, 2021
Sex, Politics, and the Rise of the New Christian Right. Explores sexuality, feminism, family politics, and conservative Christian mobilization during the formation of the New Christian Right.
36. | Sophie Bjork-James | Transforming Anthropology | March 30, 2020
White Sexual Politics: The Patriarchal Family in White Nationalism and the Religious Right. Compares the Religious Right and white nationalist movements, showing their shared emphasis on heterosexual patriarchal families and opposition to feminism and queer identities.
37. | Emily Suzanne Johnson | Oxford University Press | March 28, 2019
This Is Our Message: Women's Leadership in the New Christian Right. Demonstrates that evangelical women were important national leaders as well as grassroots participants in the rise of the Religious Right.
38. | Emily Suzanne Johnson | Oxford University Press | March 28, 2019
Introduction. Explains how evangelical women's media, religious networks, domestic identities, and leadership helped mobilize the emerging New Christian Right.
39. | Emily Suzanne Johnson | Oxford University Press | March 28, 2019
Beverly LaHaye Defies Feminism. Traces the founder of Concerned Women for America and her efforts to mobilize evangelical women against feminism and the ERA.
40. | M. Eugenia Deerman | Journal of Historical Sociology | June 7, 2016
Spillover Effects: Explaining Narrative Divergences of the Christian Right, 1979–1989. Compares the Moral Majority and Concerned Women for America and examines differing religious narratives used to mobilize conservative Christians.
41. | Leslie Dorrough Smith | Oxford University Press | April 2, 2014
Righteous Rhetoric: Sex, Speech, and the Politics of Concerned Women for America. Analyzes how one of the Christian Right's leading women's organizations uses rhetoric about gender, sexuality, reproduction, morality, and national survival.
42. | Leslie Dorrough Smith | Oxford University Press | April 2, 2014
All Things to All People: CWA as “True” Feminism. Examines how Concerned Women for America portrays conservative Christian womanhood as an alternative or “true” form of feminism.
43. | Leslie Dorrough Smith | Oxford University Press | April 2, 2014
Sex and Cultural Salvation: CWA and Nationalist Rhetoric. Connects the organization's gender and sexual politics to nationalism, family, education, religious liberty, and national sovereignty.
44. | Michelle M. Nickerson | Princeton University Press | April 15, 2012
The “Conservative Sex”: Women and the Building of a Movement. Examines women's crucial organizing role in postwar conservatism and the construction of female political activism around domestic and anticommunist identities.
45. | Michelle M. Nickerson | Princeton University Press | 2012
Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right. Shows how conservative homemakers built grassroots political networks that helped lay foundations for later New Right and Religious Right activism.
Reproductive Politics, Abortion, and Pronatalism
46. | Brooklyn Walker and Paul A. Djupe | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | May 13, 2026
Be Fruitful and Multiply? Complementarianism, Pronatalism, and Suppression of Reproductive Rights. Examines how theological beliefs about complementary male and female roles relate to fertility politics and reproductive restrictions.
47. | Samuel L. Perry | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion | March 14, 2026
The Right Kind of Children: Christian Nationalism, Religiosity, and Support for Selective Versus General Pronatalism. Distinguishes general support for higher fertility from ethnically or culturally selective pronatalism.
48. | Authors | The Sociological Quarterly | December 22, 2025
Deciding for Her: Religio-Political Conservatism, Christian Nationalism, and Public Opposition to Legal Abortion Across Circumstances. Examines how Christian nationalism mediates conservative religious opposition to legal abortion under a range of circumstances.
49. | Darci K. Schmidgall, Samuel L. Perry, and Joshua B. Grubbs | Social Problems | June 28, 2025
Anti-Abortion and Pro-Coercion: White Christian Nationalism and Support for Arresting Women Who Have Abortions. Finds Christian nationalism associated with support for criminal punishment of women who obtain abortions, even when other factors are considered.
50. | Samuel L. Perry and Darci K. Schmidgall | Ethnic and Racial Studies | April 3, 2025
How Christian Nationalism Co-opts Black Americans for Republicans: The Case of Abortion in the 2024 Presidential Election. Examines the complex interaction of race, Christian nationalism, abortion politics, and voting behavior.
51. | Samuel L. Perry | Religion News Service | January 19, 2023
White Christian Nationalism Isn't Pro-Life. It's Pro-Order. Argues that abortion attitudes should be understood alongside Christian-nationalist commitments to gender hierarchy and traditional social order.
52. | Samuel L. Perry | Sociological Forum | September 7, 2022
Fill the Earth and Subdue It: Christian Nationalism, Ethno-Religious Threat, and Nationalist Pronatalism. Finds that Christian nationalism and patriarchal attitudes are strongly connected to support for increasing national birth rates.
53. | Sukhwant Dhaliwal | Feminist Dissent | 2017
Christian Fundamentalists in the UK: Moral Swords of Justice or Moral Crusaders? Examines Christian Right organizing in Britain, including interventions on reproductive rights, gender, family, nationalism, and religious identity.
54. | Daniel K. Williams | Oxford University Press | January 21, 2016
Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade. Historical study of the American anti-abortion movement before Roe, useful for distinguishing its earlier origins from the later Religious Right and Christian-nationalist coalition.
55. | Doris E. Buss | International Feminist Journal of Politics | 2004
Finding the Homosexual in Women's Rights: The Christian Right in International Politics. Studies Christian Right activism at the United Nations against abortion, women's rights, sexual rights, and policies seen as threatening the “natural family.”
Purity Culture, Biblical Womanhood, and Women's Sexuality
56. | Jessica Alessandra Wagner and Anna Kira Hippert | Oxford Academic | June 25, 2026
The Evangelical Tradwife: Nostalgic Femininity, Faith, and Cowboy Culture. Analyzes evangelical “tradwife” imagery at the intersection of religion, gender, nationalism, social media, and idealized domestic femininity.
57. | Tessi Y. Muskrat et al. | The Counseling Psychologist | September 26, 2025
“Being Yourself Is a Sin”: The Impact of Evangelical Purity Culture on Sexual and Gender Minority People Socialized as Women. Studies the experiences of people raised under abstinence-based and gender-essentialist evangelical teachings.
58. | Madison Natarajan et al. | Psychology of Women Quarterly | May 5, 2022
Decolonizing Purity Culture: Gendered Racism and White Idealization in Evangelical Christianity. Examines how evangelical purity culture can combine sexual restrictions, racial ideals, gender hierarchy, shame, and expectations directed particularly toward women.
59. | Kristin Kobes Du Mez | Liveright / W. W. Norton | June 23, 2020
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Traces the development of militant masculinity in white evangelical culture and its connections with nationalism, gender hierarchy, sexuality, and politics.
60. | Esther Chan | Review of Religious Research | 2015
Complementarianism as Doctrine and Governance: Narratives on Women's Leadership Among Second-Generation Asian Americans. Explores theological arguments for differentiated gender roles and restrictions on women's church leadership.
61. | Kathryn Joyce | Beacon Press | 2009
Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. Investigates a Christian patriarchal subculture that promotes female submission, homeschooling, large families, male authority, and opposition to feminism.
62. | Betty A. DeBerg | Fortress Press / JSTOR | 1990
Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism. Historical scholarship on fundamentalist reactions to changing gender norms and women's public roles.
Gender, Race, Nationalism, and Family
63. | Authors | Latin American Research Review | 2026
“When Will We Be the Ones to Decide?” The Struggle for Abortion Rights During Brazil's Democratic Transition. Examines feminist abortion activism in the face of growing Christian Right political influence.
The Christian Nationalism at the Heart of Jim Crow America. Historical analysis discussing women reformers, Protestant nationalism, racial hierarchy, morality legislation, and the relationship between gender and white Christian political power.
65. | Anthea Butler | University of North Carolina Press | 2021
White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. Examines the racial and political history of white evangelicalism, including the intertwining of morality, gender, race, nationalism, and political power.
66. | Daliany Jerónimo Kersh | Bulletin of Latin American Research | September 4, 2020
“Fighting for the Right”: A Functionalist Oral-History Analysis of Conservative Brazilian Women from the Military Dictatorship to Jair Bolsonaro's Presidency. Comparative research on conservative women, religion, family, feminism, Marxism, and right-wing politics.
67. | Anthea Butler | University of North Carolina Press | 2020
Saving the Nation: Fervor, Fear, and Challenges to Jim Crow. Places evangelical ideas about American identity in their racial and historical context.
68. | Anthea Butler | University of North Carolina Press | 2020
How Firm a Foundation: A Twenty-First-Century Precipice Appears. Examines contemporary evangelical politics, national identity, morality, and social hierarchy.
Christian Nationalism, Political Power, and Feminist Issues
69. | Religion News Service | Religion News Service | March 24, 2026
For Doug Wilson's Neighbors, CNN Documentary a Reminder Moscow Is Christian Nationalism's Ground Zero. Reports competing perspectives from current and former members of communities emphasizing submission, motherhood, gender hierarchy, and Christian political rule.
70. | Marissa Franks Burt | Religion News Service | August 13, 2025
How Doug Wilson's Child-Rearing Tips Baptize Parents into Christian Nationalism. Examines a contemporary Christian-nationalist movement that openly promotes male authority, female domesticity, and patriarchal child-rearing.
71. | Authors | Politics and Religion | June 2025
The Varieties of American Christian Nationalism. Examines differing strands of Christian nationalism and cautions against assuming a single uniform ideology or constituency.
72. | Miles Armaly and colleagues | American Journal of Political Science | 2025
An Ecclesiastical Court: Christian Nationalism and Perceptions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Places Christian-nationalist attitudes toward the Court in a historical context that includes abortion, the ERA, and the rise of the Religious Right.
73. | Authors | Brookings Institution | August 2024
Project 2025 and Education: A Lot of Bad Ideas, Some More Actionable Than Others. Discusses policy proposals involving gender identity, parental authority, civil rights, and white Christian nationalism.
74. | Andrew L. Whitehead | Religion News Service | August 18, 2023
Why Christian Nationalism Makes American Christians Less Christlike. Discusses how feminism, sexuality, divorce, non-Christian religions, and secularism became perceived threats in some conservative Christian communities.
75. | Author | TIME | November 2022
The Christian Nationalist Forces That Terrorized Me as a Child Have Grown Only More Powerful. A personal account of rigid gender, sexuality, religious authority, and nationalist teachings within a conservative Christian environment.
76. | Author | TIME | July 2022
Faith Is Powerful. That's Why Christian Nationalism Is So Dangerous. Discusses Christian-nationalist political networks and their involvement in abortion, conservative politics, and church-state issues.
77. | Center for American Progress | Center for American Progress | April 2022
Christian Nationalism Is ‘Single Biggest Threat’ to America's Religious Freedom. Discusses how Christian-nationalist religious-liberty arguments intersect with nondiscrimination laws affecting women and LGBTQ people.
Make America Christian Again: Christian Nationalism and Voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election. Finds Christian nationalism independently associated with voting behavior after accounting for sexism, racial attitudes, xenophobia, religion, and political ideology.
Women's Political Rights and Christian Nationalism
79. | Sarah Stankorb | The New Republic | February 21, 2025
The Christian Nationalist Plot to Disenfranchise Women Voters. Discusses proposals affecting voter documentation and situates them within broader debates about patriarchal Christian nationalism and women's political independence.
80. | Bonnie J. Morris / interview with Katherine Stewart | Ms. Magazine | February 14, 2025
Money, Lies, and God: The Rise of Christian Nationalism and the Battle for American Democracy. Discusses women's participation in the movement, patriarchal ideology, birth control, divorce, gender segregation, and household voting.
81. | Emma Cieslik | Ms. Magazine | November 29, 2024
Christian Nationalism's First Item on the Agenda: Repeal Women's Right to Vote. Examines contemporary Christian-nationalist arguments for household or male voting and connects them to historical anti-suffrage ideas.
82. | Chloe Nazra Lee | Ms. Magazine | February 28, 2024
A Thousand Little Moments: The Insidious Loss of Women's Freedom to Christian Nationalism. Commentary connecting reproductive rights, IVF, women's autonomy, and Christian-nationalist conceptions of gender.
Historical Foundations and Conservative Women's Mobilization
83. | Emily Suzanne Johnson | Religion and American Culture | 2018
God, Country, and Anita Bryant. Demonstrates how conservative women could expand women's public political roles while simultaneously defending traditional domestic ideals and criticizing feminism.
Evangelical Feminism and Competing Christian Views of Gender
84. | Ronald W. Pierce and Cynthia Long Westfall, eds. | InterVarsity Press | 2021
Discovering Biblical Equality. Collection of evangelical scholarship arguing that scripture supports equality between women and men in the home, church, and society.
85. | Wayne Grudem | Crossway | November 30, 2012
Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth. A major complementarian response to evangelical feminism defending differentiated roles for men and women in marriage and church leadership.
86. | Wayne Grudem | Multnomah | October 16, 2006
Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism. Presents a conservative evangelical critique of egalitarian interpretations of scripture regarding marriage, leadership, equality, and women's ordination.
87. | Andrew M. Greeley and Michael Hout | University of Chicago Press | 2006
The Conservative Christian Family and the “Feminist Revolution.” Examines whether conservative Christian emphasis on family values represents resistance to transformations in women's employment, marriage, family authority, and gender roles.
88. | Wayne Grudem | Crossway | 2006
Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? Argues from a complementarian perspective that evangelical feminism threatens traditional interpretations of biblical authority.
89. | Pamela D. H. Cochran | NYU Press | 2005
Evangelical Feminism: A History. Traces the emergence of evangelical feminism during the 1970s and examines attempts by Christian women to reconcile biblical authority with women's equality, church leadership, and feminist critiques of patriarchy.
90. | James R. Beck, ed. | Zondervan Academic | 2005
Two Views on Women in Ministry. Contrasts evangelical complementarian and egalitarian interpretations concerning women's authority and leadership.
91. | Robert L. Saucy and Judith K. TenElshof, eds. | InterVarsity Press | 2001
Women and Men in Ministry. Presents differing evangelical perspectives on women's authority and ministry while illustrating continuing disputes over complementarianism and equality.
92. | Gilbert Bilezikian | Christians for Biblical Equality | Various editions
Beyond Sex Roles. Influential evangelical egalitarian argument challenging theological claims that male authority and female subordination are divinely ordained.
Biblical Womanhood, Complementarianism, and Patriarchy
93. | Authors | Oxford Handbook of Baptist Studies | 2026
Gender, Sexuality, and Family Values. Surveys Baptist disputes concerning feminism, women's authority, sexuality, the Christian Right, and changing understandings of gender.
94. | Beth Allison Barr | Brazos Press | April 20, 2021
The Making of Biblical Womanhood. Historical critique arguing that many contemporary evangelical restrictions on women's leadership reflect historical patriarchy as much as biblical teaching.
95. | Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer | Tyndale | 2020
A Church Called Tov. Discusses authoritarian leadership, gender hierarchy, abuse, and institutional cultures within conservative Christianity.
96. | Diane Langberg | Brazos Press | 2020
Redeeming Power. Examines spiritual authority, institutional power, gender hierarchy, and abuse within Christian organizations.
97. | Scot McKnight | Zondervan | 2018
The Blue Parakeet. Challenges restrictive readings of biblical passages about women and argues for reconsideration of women's leadership in evangelical Christianity.
98. | Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood | CBMW | August 2017
The Nashville Statement. Conservative evangelical declaration on gender and sexuality emphasizing biological sex, heterosexual marriage, and traditional Christian sexual ethics.
99. | John Piper and Wayne Grudem, eds. | Crossway | 1991
Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Foundational complementarian collection defending male leadership and differentiated gender roles in the family and church.
100. | Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood | CBMW | December 1987
The Danvers Statement. Influential evangelical statement affirming male headship and opposing feminist interpretations of gender equality.
101. | Authors | Zondervan | Various editions
Evangelical theological discussions of gender and authority. Useful background for understanding the theological environment in which complementarian and egalitarian debates developed.
Family Values and the Development of the Christian Right
102. | R. Marie Griffith | Harvard University Press | 2017
Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics. Traces Christian political battles involving birth control, feminism, abortion, sexuality, and women's roles.
103. | Frances FitzGerald | Simon & Schuster | 2017
The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America. Broad history of evangelicalism and its political transformation, including battles over feminism, women's roles, abortion, and sexuality.
104. | Seth Dowland | University of Pennsylvania Press | 2015
Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right. Demonstrates how abortion, feminism, homosexuality, masculinity, education, and family authority became central political issues for conservative evangelicals.
105. | Daniel K. Williams | Oxford University Press | 2010
God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right. Historical study of conservative Protestant political mobilization and the development of issues later associated with the Religious Right.
106. | Glenn H. Utter and James L. True | ABC-CLIO | 2004
The Religious Right. Reference work covering organizations, leaders, movements, feminism, abortion, family policy, and Christian political activism.
Religion and the Culture Wars. Examines how religious communities mobilized politically around gender, abortion, family, education, and sexuality.
108. | James Davison Hunter | University of Chicago Press | 1991
Culture Wars. Influential account of American conflict over family, sexuality, education, abortion, religion, and moral authority.
109. | Jeffrey K. Hadden and Anson Shupe, eds. | Transaction Books | 1983
The New Christian Right. Early sociological study of conservative Christian political mobilization and the culture-war issues that accompanied it.
Conservative Women as Political Organizers
110. | Emily Suzanne Johnson | Oxford University Press | March 28, 2019
Marabel Morgan Defines “The Total Woman.” Examines evangelical marriage advice that encouraged wives to embrace domestic femininity and submission while becoming influential religious media figures.
111. | Emily Suzanne Johnson | Oxford University Press | March 28, 2019
Anita Bryant Leads a Moral Crusade. Studies Bryant's transition from celebrity and mother to nationally prominent conservative Christian activist.
112. | Michelle M. Nickerson | Princeton University Press | 2012
Mothers of Conservatism. Documents the importance of women activists in building postwar grassroots conservatism before the Religious Right.
113. | Authors | Academic scholarship | Various dates
Conservative women's political networks. Provides context for understanding how gender-focused conservative organizations became integrated into broader political movements.
Equal Rights Amendment and Antifeminist Mobilization
114. | Paul A. Anthony | Church History | 2025
Lottie Beth Hobbs, the ERA, and the Religious Right. Demonstrates how antifeminist activism became a pathway into broader conservative Christian political mobilization.
115. | Marjorie J. Spruill | Bloomsbury | 2017
Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics. Traces conflict between feminist and conservative women during the 1970s and its contribution to contemporary political polarization.
116. | Donald G. Mathews and Jane Sherron De Hart | Oxford University Press | 1990
Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA. Examines the political and cultural conflicts surrounding ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
117. | Donald T. Critchlow | Princeton University Press | 2005
Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism. Explores Schlafly's organizing networks and her transformation into a leading opponent of feminism and the ERA.
Purity Culture, Sexuality, and Feminist Criticism
118. | Christabelle Thwaites | University of Leeds | 2025
Habituating Purity. Investigates purity culture and its effects on evangelical young women in Great Britain.
119. | K. Macy Burkett | Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly | November 14, 2024
Purity Culture on YouTube: Selling Heteronormative Patriarchy as God's Design. Examines evangelical influencers promoting heterosexuality, patriarchal submission, and gender hierarchy through social media.
120. | Authors | Sociology of Religion | November 1, 2024
Sanctified Sexism. Links belief in purity-culture gender tropes with women's marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and sexual pain.
121. | Rebecca Wolfe | University of California | 2024
Your Body Is Not Your Own. Dissertation based on interviews examining evangelical purity culture, female submission, sexuality, bodily autonomy, and health.
122. | Linda Kay Klein | Touchstone | 2018
Pure. Investigates women's experiences with evangelical purity teachings concerning sexuality, shame, modesty, and gender roles.
123. | Sara Moslener | Oxford University Press | November 30, 2017
Material World: Gender and the Bible in Evangelical Purity Culture. Examines Bibles and consumer culture used to present female sexual restraint and traditional gender roles as evangelical ideals.
124. | Sara Moslener | Oxford University Press | 2015
Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence. Traces evangelical sexual-purity campaigns and their connections to nationalism, morality, youth, and gender.
Pronatalism, Motherhood, and Demographic Politics
125. | Deana A. Rohlinger | Cambridge University Press | 2015
Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America. Examines competing movements and media strategies surrounding abortion.
126. | Authors | Cambridge University Press | Various dates
Abortion Politics in Comparative Perspective. Provides context for religious and feminist mobilization around reproductive autonomy.
Tradwives, Digital Antifeminism, and Religious Influencers
127. | Oxford Intersections | Oxford University Press | 2026
Social Media in Society and Culture. Includes scholarship on evangelical influencers, gender performance, digital religion, and conservative femininity.
128. | Kateryna Pilyarchuk and Eva-Maria Graf | Discourse, Context & Media | April 2026
From “I've Always Wanted to Be a Homemaker” to “Feminism Is Cancer.” Analyzes tradwife identity on Instagram and the promotion of re-traditionalization and antifeminist gender ideology.
129. | Authors | Social Media + Society | 2023
Online Antifeminism and Gender Politics. Provides comparative background for understanding digitally mediated opposition to feminism.
130. | Authors | Feminist Media Studies | 2022
Tradwives and digital antifeminism. Examines online performances of domestic femininity and opposition to contemporary feminist norms.
131. | Sage Mikkelsen and Sarah Kornfield | Women's Studies in Communication | 2021
Girls Gone Fundamentalist. Analyzes feminine appeals of white Christian nationalism through conservative evangelical women's media.
132. | Various Authors | New Media & Society | Various dates
Digital gender conservatism and influencer culture. Research on online identity formation provides broader context for religiously framed tradwife and antifeminist movements.
133. | Various Authors | Feminist Media Studies | Various dates
Research on Tradwives and Antifeminist Influencers. Studies the visual and rhetorical construction of traditional femininity across digital platforms.
Women, Agency, and Conservative Religion
134. | Sophie Bjork-James | Journal of the American Academy of Religion | March 23, 2020
Review of This Is Our Message and The Preacher's Wife. Discusses how patriarchal religious systems and women's leadership can coexist within conservative evangelical cultures.
135. | Orit Avishai | Gender & Society | August 2008
“Doing Religion” in a Secular World. Develops a framework for understanding women's agency within conservative religious communities rather than treating religious women simply as passive victims.
136. | Orit Avishai | Gender & Society | 2008
Women's Religious Agency. Helps explain how women negotiate conservative gender expectations while remaining active participants in religious communities.
137. | Saba Mahmood | Princeton University Press | 2005
Politics of Piety. Influential study challenging assumptions that women's religious agency must necessarily take liberal or feminist forms.
Christian Nationalism, Gender Order, and Contemporary Politics
138. | Public Religion Research Institute | PRRI | September 10, 2024
One Leader Under God. Examines authoritarianism, male-headed households, traditional gender roles, and Christian nationalism.
139. | Samuel L. Perry and colleagues | Ethnic and Racial Studies | 2024
Intersecting Identities, Diverging Visions. Examines how Christian nationalism interacts differently with gender and race rather than affecting every demographic group identically.
140. | Public Religion Research Institute | PRRI | February 28, 2024
Support for Christian Nationalism in All 50 States. Provides demographic and gender breakdowns of adherence to Christian-nationalist ideas.
141. | Darci K. Schmidgall, Samuel L. Perry, and Joshua B. Grubbs | Social Problems | June 28, 2025
Anti-Abortion and Pro-Coercion. Provides contemporary empirical evidence connecting Christian nationalism with willingness to use state coercion against women who obtain abortions.
