The transformation of the godly family : negotiations between gender essentialist ideals and egalitarian practices among evangelicals

Drawing from the extensive research that has been performed recently within the sociology of religion on gender and conservative American Protestants, I examine gender ideology among American evangelicals as well as gendered family practice to determine if traditional gender essentialist perspectives remain plausible among evangelicals and whether they serve as normative scripts for their gender practice in everyday life. Through descriptions of evangelical family experiences, it becomes clear that while many aspects of traditional gender essentialist views were found to remain within the language about family life, evangelicals have shifted toward more egalitarian interpretations and gender practices performed within the family--including parenting and the distribution of household labor--demonstrating that evangelicals are far more egalitarian and more closely resemble their liberal Protestant and non-religious counterparts in family practice than might be expected. Utilizing subcultural identity theories as presented by Christian Smith et al. (1998), and ethnographic studies of conservative Protestant women, I assert that gender essentialist language and traditional gender symbolism persist in evangelical dialogue on the family because they remain central to evangelical identity as a means by which they can maintain group boundaries that separate them from mainstream American culture, thus fulfilling the evangelical precept to remain in the world, but not of it