Evangelical Strength and the Representation of Women and Gays By

A woman’s femaleness is by definition the potential for motherhood---the experience and relationship in which a woman normally finds a joyous and unique fulfillment. But she has no capacity within herself alone to realize that possibility. She needs her male companion for that. The male by his very maleness has the potential for becoming a father. In that experience and relationship, a man finds fulfillment like nothing else he will experience. But he, like his companion, has no capacity in himself alone to find that fulfillment. He needs her. Each has the capacity to confer upon the other the fulfillment of his masculinity or of her femininity…The historical significance to all of this must not be ignored. The very future existence of the human race and the fulfillment of the divine purposes for God’s own creation hang on our sexual differentiation. (Kinlaw, 2005). In the two decades since the publication of The Restructuring of American Religion (1988), Robert Wuthnow’s argument that American society is sharply divided with religious traditionalists on one side and progressives (both secular and religious) on the other has been widely debated by academics.1 Within the popular media, the culture war framework has been largely accepted, along with the depiction of a nation spli