What the Church Needs to Know About the History of White Evangelical Women | Kristin Du Mez
IVP
How have you been shaped by the influence of White evangelical women through history, maybe without even realizing it? And what has it cost these women to live such influential lives?
In this episode of Hear Women, Nijay Gupta welcomes Kristin Du Mez, Professor of History at Calvin University. As the bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne and her newest release, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, Du Mez brings her expertise in history, gender, and evangelical culture to a conversation about the complex and often hidden world of Christian women in America.
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Together, they follow Du Mez’s Midwest upbringing, her transformative time studying in Germany, and then to her discovery of overlooked women such as Katharine Bushnell and evangelical icons such as Elisabeth Elliot and Amy Grant. She uncovers how women shaped and survived American evangelicalism—through music, fiction, celebrity, and community—and how the pressures and expectations they experienced bolstered their ministries or capsized them. Gupta and Du Mez reflect on power, nostalgia, control, suffering, and hope, while considering the lives of influential evangelical women of the past and present.
You'll discover ways that White Christian women had profound influence on American evangelicalism, both positively and negatively, and emerge with a three-dimensional understanding of women's impact on American Christianity.
This episode highlights the following themes:
✅ How White Christian women’s experiences are shaped by both subtle and public forces
✅ Why nostalgia can hide pain, and why history matters for making sense of evangelical culture
✅ What happened to women who break silence and refuse conformity, such as Jen Hatmaker and Rachel Held Evans
Links from this episode:
✅ Learn more about Kristin Kobes Du Mez (https://kristindumez.com/) and read Live Laugh Love (https://kristindumez.com/books/live-laugh-love/)
✅ Learn about Katharine Bushnell and
