Jennifer Heller, University of Kansas
[In the early years,] the days were sunny, the nights were star-studded.
Indeed, married life was strawberries for breakfast and lovin' all
the time.... As the months passed, however, our lives became more
complicated, and we gradually changed.... If I were to have any meaningful
conversations, I decided, they would have to be with my girlfriends....
As the years wore on, things got worse.... I was helpless and unhappy.
I didn't want anything to come between us, especially this nameless,
intangible enemy that I could not define or fight.
-Marabel Morgan,
The Total Woman (1973)[1]
If a woman had a problem..., she knew that something must be
wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied
with their lives, she thought.... If she tried to tell her husband,
he didn't understand what she was talking about. She did not really
understand it herself. But [one morning], I heard a mother...say in
a tone of quiet desperation, "the problem." And others knew,
without words, that she was not talking about a problem with her husband,
or her children, or her home. Suddenly they realized they all shared
the same problem, the problem that has no name.
-Betty Friedan,
The Feminine Mystique (1964)[2]
[1] The excerpts above come from two American authors of the 1970s.
Although most often viewed in terms of their ideological differences,
Marabel Morgan and Betty Friedan here use similar language when describing
middle-class suburban ennui. During a time when white women's "liberal
feminism" collided in the national media with a burgeoning form
of conservative Christianity, these authors use popular literature as
a site for addressing what they see as the concerns of married women
in "middle America."[3] Both Morgan and Friedan mention
women's camaraderie, particularly when it comes to interpersonal communication:
Morgan bemoans the fact that her girlfriends are better conversation
partners than her husband; Friedan portrays a group of women who can,
in silence, indicate agreement and express sympathy. Both mention feelings
of indescribable depression: Morgan says she felt "helpless and
unhappy"; Friedan describes women's growing sense of "quiet
desperation." And what Marabel Morgan calls a "nameless, intangible
enemy" is for Betty Friedan the "problem that has no name."
Their arguments will, of course, diverge: Where Friedan concluded women
would be saved through education and employment, Morgan became convinced
that the key to revitalizing her marriage lay in a purposeful recommitment
to the attitudes and behaviors she had embraced during courtship. "A
great marriage is not so much finding the right person," Morgan
writes, "as being the right person." As has been true
for many other women who have written on the subject of marital submission
during the last several decades, Morgan's journey towards surrender
- to both God and her husband - resulted from a personal sense of dissatisfaction
during her early married years.[4] When she faced disappointment, Morgan turned
her irrepressible, "can-do" personality into an asset and
set to work improving her marriage by improving herself. Though this
attitude readjustment required some work, she confesses, "the results
that come your way are more than worth the effort."[5] By surrendering their stubborn wills, she argues,
women not only circumvent marital conflict and domestic tension, they
also empower both their husbands and themselves.
[2] The idea that women can achieve power through their apparent powerlessness
has been a continuing theme throughout the history of American women's
writings on marriage. Susanna Rowson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan Warner,
and other early writers of "domestic" fiction illustrated
this phenomenon through the heroines of their best-selling novels. But
this literary tradition is centuries older. Early martyrologies recount
the deeds of suffering Christians whose power, though not evident to
outside observers, draws on the eternal source of inspiration and recalls
the passion of Jesus. That suffering and submission should be so inextricably
linked is good cause for inner anguish and despair, yet witnesses who
recount the stories of brutal deaths marvel over the presence of an
unworldly calm on martyrs' faces and in their final words. Using similar
rhetoric but under a vastly different set of circumstances, scores of
contemporary authors have embraced the liberation they believe results
from a woman's willing submission to God and to the ordained head of
the family, her husband. During the 1970s, American evangelical authors
used their popular writings to explore what R. Marie Griffith has called
the "power of submission."[6]
[3] This essay will examine the ways in which the best-selling female
evangelical authors from the 1970s negotiated the challenges of marriage
in the "real world," where Biblical injunction meets practical
life experience and women must sometimes confront confusion, disappointment,
and pain. We will focus on the non-fiction titles from the Christian
News Service's "National Religious Bestsellers" (NRB) lists
that directly address issues of femininity, marriage and family life.
These books, which combine practical advice with personal narrative,
emphasize what authors consider to be the particular experiences of
womanhood. Although they address different phases or situations of a
woman's life, they focus primarily on the role of the Christian wife.
After an extended analysis of the most successful of these works, Marabel
Morgan's The Total Woman, we will consider the books that responded
to Morgan and to her many critics by defending her approach to prescribed
gender roles. Next, we will document evangelical women's concerns about
contemporaneous feminist movements and the potential ratification of
the Equal Rights Amendment. Finally, we will look at the books whose
authors, while affirming a woman's obligations to her husband and children,
emphasize instead the relationship between a woman and her God. In this
last section, we will survey the changes on the horizon in late 1979
as the NRB lists became the property of the Christian Booksellers Association
and, in response to the Christian publishing industry's rapid growth,
the selection process for list entries grew more regulated and complex.
[4] Most women on the bestseller lists, during the 1970s and today,
began their writing careers by running small ecumenical Bible-studies
or women's discipleship groups and were later encouraged by their peers
to write as their ministries grew in popularity; therefore, they often
write about their search for a meaningful experience that will transcend
denominational doctrinal differences. At the same time, the Christian
women described here share a worldview that links them together under
the umbrella of American evangelical Christianity.[7] Partly in response to "second wave"
feminist critics, evangelical women have emphasized that their choice
to accept inscribed gender roles signals a different kind of liberation;
and they affirm their lifestyle decisions in informal prayer and study
groups, at lectures and conferences, and in popular literature.[8]
During the nineteenth century, writers like Sarah J. Hale and evangelical
activists like the Beecher sisters made no apology for using the "public
sphere" as a forum in which to advocate their domestic concerns.[9]
In the same way, contemporary evangelical women have asserted their
beliefs in popular literature, particularly since the days of the embattled
Equal Rights Amendment. In the last two decades, books on marriage that
have dominated bestseller lists underscore the difficulties associated
with the "counter-cultural" lifestyle of the evangelical Christian
and provide concrete suggestions for negotiating difficulties overlooked
by many authors of the previous generation; however, authors of the
1970s were certainly not afraid to write frankly about issues like abuse,
living with an non-believer, working inside and outside the home, depression,
divorce, or menopause. Their advice is at times subversive and might
surprise non-evangelical readers. The women featured in this study have
achieved remarkable success in an industry overseen by male-headed publishing
houses, all while seeking to fulfill the inscribed gender expectations
which they both participate in and define.
"The Total Woman": Appreciating God's Design
[5] Addressed to wives looking to improve their marriages, The Total
Woman, which spent 25 months on the National Religious Bestsellers
lists and sold over ten million copies, features a mixture of Biblical
instruction, practical application, and humorous self-confession.[10] As a result of the book's popularity, Marabel Morgan was propelled
into the media spotlight. She was listed as one of People magazine's
"25 Most Influential People in America" for 1975 and the World
Almanac's "10 Most Influential Women in America" in that
same year. She was profiled in Time, on 60 Minutes, and
in an NBC documentary, and was a fifteen-time guest on Donahue,
often sharing a panel with outraged feminists. Morgan instantly became
the straw man for feminist authors on gender and relationships. In her
1983 Right Wing Women, for example, feminist author Andrea Dworkin
unfairly labeled Morgan's approach to marriage as manipulative and pessimistic.[11] She was mocked by Erma Bombeck
and parodied on Saturday Night Live.[12]
Attractive and self-assured, Morgan handled such attacks with poise
and was for a time a popular spokesperson for women who shared her views.
She routinely stunned critics with statements such as, "It is only
when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships
him, and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful
to him. She becomes a priceless jewel, the glory of femininity, his
queen!"[13] However, Morgan's supporters
claim that such unsettling rhetoric was precisely what motivated them
to take action in their own troubled marriages. In a chapter of her
best-selling Bless This House entitled "Lord, Teach Me to
Submit," singer and pro-family activist Anita Bryant (herself a
Total Woman seminar graduate) teases Morgan for her "sunny"
optimism but acknowledges the merits of the Total Woman approach. One
year before the publication of Morgan's book, Bryant wrote of her teacher,
"prayer buddy," and friend: "Her enthusiasm is so contagious,
so upbeat and optimistic, I just knew all that womanliness was bound
to rub off on me."[14]
[6] The Total Woman encourages women, among other things, to
rise above their sexual inhibitions and experiment with costumes, bubble
baths, and provocative phone calls to their husbands at work. Wives
looking for a quick or easy fix for their troubled marriages, however,
would be disappointed. Although she devotes an entire section of her
book to bedroom adventures, Marabel Morgan argues that successful marriage
depends upon a woman's "graciously choosing to adapt to her husband's
way."[15] Through her own experiences and the testimonials
of others, she illustrates her conviction that men and women were designed
for specific purposes and that any tensions between the sexes (which
were underscored during women's movements of the 1970s) stemmed from
disobedience of God's commandments. The divine order, established and
then immediately violated in the Garden of Eden, is the backdrop against
which Morgan and her successors have framed their advice to other women.
[7] Using a metaphor developed in her wildly successful Total Woman
Seminars at which several attendees were wives of Miami Dolphins, Morgan
likens her own self-improvement project to preparation for the Big Game.
Self improvement, she says, requires serious reflection, a plan of action,
and an honest assessment of one's own strengths and weaknesses. The
book's first "assignment" (she envisions herself as a teacher
or coach) is to make a list of priorities - immediate and long-term
- and to develop and write a "philosophy of life." The assignment
continues: "Make a list of all your strengths and then a list of
all your weaknesses. Be realistic and honest. Then, by an act of your
will, accept your weaknesses. Determine to maximize your strengths by
taking specific action."[16]
Finally, readers should set goals, both big and small, and incorporate
those goals into a "master plan" for the coming weeks and
months. Morgan thus envisions the journey towards self-improvement as
primarily a mental process based upon the correct adjustment of the
rebellious will. In this way, she is an heir to the American literary
tradition of self-improvement begun by Benjamin Franklin and continued
by Mary Baker Eddy, Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, and countless
other popular writers.[17]
[8] The centerpiece of Marabel Morgan's teaching is her four-step action
plan for wives. In Step 1, "Accept Him," she enjoins readers
to learn from the mistakes of her early married days. "Your man
needs to feel important, loved, and accepted...," she writes. "A
Total Woman caters to her man's special quirks, whether it be in salads,
sex, or sports. She makes his home his haven, a place to which he can
run...."[18] Everyone wants acceptance, she
reminds readers; and men, who must live and work in a world of high-stakes
pressures where their authority is often undermined and always uncertain,
deserve a comfortable domestic atmosphere and a loving, accepting wife.
Noting the distinctions she views as natural, Morgan observes in her
plan's second step ("Admire Him"): "As a woman, you yearn
to be loved by that man, right? He, being a man, yearns to be admired
by you. And he needs it first."[19]
The interplay between a woman's action and her husband's response is
a concern to many writers in this genre. Thus Morgan shows how even
a reluctant "total woman" can change her marriage. The fact
that the wife must often act first "irritates some women,"
Morgan acknowledges, "until they see that they have certain strengths
that a man doesn't have. It's a great strength, not a weakness, to give
for the sheer sake of giving. It is in your nature to give...."[20] Marabel Morgan's suggestions highlight teleological
assumptions shared by most authors on the NRB lists both in her generation
and today.[21] Evangelical Christians' reading of the Genesis
creation story notes the wisdom behind God's design for the universe:
Although men and women were both made in God's image, they were created
for different purposes and with different, and complementary, roles
in mind.
[9] Respecting these differences is one thing; embracing and cultivating
them is something else. Therein lies the secret of the Total Woman.
Morgan says women must do more than simply acquiesce and submit: readers
should develop the gifts God has given them and, in turn, to appreciate
the gifts God has given their husbands. Thus, as she presents the third
and fourth steps, "Adapt to Him" and "Appreciate Him,"
she pleads: "Now before you scream and throw this book away, hear
me out. Man and woman, although equal in status, are different in function.
God ordained man to be the head of the family, its president, and his
wife to be the executive vice-president."[22] Sensing readers' concerns over
rising divorce rates, Morgan offers both the source of marital conflict
and the solution to it. In recent years, she argues, the once clear
distinctions between men and women have eroded as women have entered
the workforce, postponed or abandoned childbearing, and tried to become
more "masculine." Morgan claims that when women rededicate
themselves to the domain of home and family, their husbands - fortified
by wives' adoring attitudes - will reassume (or even assume for the
first time) their rightful positions as head of household.
[10] The "equal in status, different in function" argument
used by Marabel Morgan in the above passage has long been at the core
of evangelical women's and men's arguments for a wife's submission to
her husband.[23] After
The Total Woman, other authors would continue to emphasize these
distinct and divinely ordained roles (an approach still utilized today
in books like John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
and Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand). Morgan's willingness
to assert her convictions unapologetically both increased her popularity
and accelerated her relatively early descent into obscurity. When she
faced criticism, she offered clarity. Writes Morgan:
I have been asked if this process of adapting [to her husband's needs]
places a woman on a slave-master basis with her husband. A Total Woman
is not a slave. She graciously chooses to adapt to her husband's way,
even though at times she desperately may not want to. He in turn will
gratefully respond by trying to make it up to her and grant her desires.
He may even want to spoil her with goodies.[24]
Over and over again Morgan met the accusation that the 4-step plan
was designed only to build men's egos for the purpose of reaping benefits
later. To these charges she once responded, "If you're giving to
get, that's manipulation, and it won't work."[25]
[11] Though Morgan's prose is sometimes oversimplified (as even she
has admitted), she wants to describe a complex series of relational
changes that can be initiated by a woman's conscientious decision to
submit to her husband. Morgan believes these changes can result in higher
self-esteem, a closer relationship with God, and a more fulfilling marriage.
What her critics see as "naked manipulation" she views as
the purposeful and active dedication to enacting change, a process in
which people - evangelical and non-evangelical - regularly engage as
they negotiate their relationships with others.
[12] Marabel Morgan published three more books after The Total Woman,
but none received the same level of press attention as had her first
publication.[26] Subsequent writers could not
ignore the intense reaction to Morgan's book and would therefore have
to choose between direct, often hostile engagement with Morgan's detractors
(the route chosen by well-known authors Phyllis Schlafly and Beverly
LaHaye) and a "softer," more nuanced approach to marriage
and femininity, which Morgan herself even employed in her sequel Total
Joy. In this Total Joy, Morgan responds sympathetically to
the letters she received after The Total Woman. She confesses,
"I would like to say that Charlie has become the Total Man, and
that I have become the Total Woman, and that everything has been just
super great every day. But I can't. He hasn't. I haven't. It hasn't.
Life, each day, is a struggle."[27]
In a section entitled "Something Is Missing," she speaks of
the ultimate surrender:
Getting married or raising children doesn't completely fulfill a
woman. [God] is the only One who can make you complete - total....
A beautiful spiritual transaction occurs when a mortal woman tells
an immortal Saviour [sic] what's bothering her.... He whispers
in her mind, "Dare to trust Me." And timidly she assents
yes, and peace comes. Her circumstances may still be the same,
but she isn't.[28]
Morgan's description of submission to Christ draws upon sexual imagery
that has long operated as an important metaphor in women's conversion
narratives and "domestic" fiction.[29] Though she is speaking about the ultimate surrender that accompanies
the born-again experience, she nevertheless strikes a parallel between
submission to God and (spiritual and sexual) surrender to one's husband.
Such soothing language would also be employed by lesser-known authors
whose works followed Morgan's. These women, who tempered their rhetoric
with more attention to audience skepticism and the daily struggles of
"ordinary" readers, tended to produce more introspective narratives
that have enjoyed much longer periods of more moderate popularity among
evangelical readers. However, women whose approaches were more controversial
received more attention from media and academic critics. These are the
works we will consider next.
A Place Called Eden: The Quest for Biblical Femininity
[13] Like the secular romance readers Janice Radway describes in her
1984 study, evangelical women who write about marriage and womanhood
engage in a "collectively elaborated female ritual through which
women...imagine a more perfect state where all the needs they so intensely
feel and accept as given would be adequately expressed."[30] In their frequent references
to the utopian family situation ordained in the Garden of Eden, evangelical
authors described here provide a meaningful alternative for readers
who rejected the actions of ERA-minded women; however, they also looked
to the Edenic narratives for the hope of something not yet realized.
In teaching women to become better wives, authors suggest that readers'
husbands will ultimately learn to fulfill their God-given roles
as leaders, providers, and primary decision makers, an outcome the women
clearly seek. In this section, we will look at books whose authors promoted
a particular approach to "Biblical family values" that clearly
delineates the responsibilities and privileges God has reserved for
women.
[14] The call for a return to divine order situates evangelical writers
within the longstanding Christian rhetorical tradition of demarcating
clear, obvious, and essential differences between men and women. Biblical
exegetes and church fathers have traditionally connected these distinctions
to the fall of Adam and Eve described in Genesis: God's proclamation
that man should toil for his subsistence and woman should suffer pains
in childbirth resulted from the pair's disobedience of God's only command.
Ejected from their earthly paradise, man and woman were forced to live
and work under the regulations of God's first punishment.[31] The Genesis story is, of course, only one of
many Scriptural models of male-female relations, but it is viewed as
a critical moment in primeval history since it established the consequences
of the first couple's disobedience - not just for the woman and her
mate, but for all of creation and for all time. Beyond simply justifying
men's dominance over women, this story (which evangelicals see as literal
history) also warns men of the dangers women represent: it is precisely
women's assets that can lead to men's downfall. As Michael Lienesch
notes, evangelical expositors of the Adam and Eve story "describe
women in two...ways: on the one hand, they are temptresses, self-assertive
and sexually threatening; on the other hand, they are helpmeets and
mothers, combining self-sacrifice and spiritual virtuousness."[32]
[15] A passage from Beverly LaHaye's The Spirit-Controlled Woman
(on the NRB lists for 17 months from 1976 to 1978) exemplifies the
former. Note that in both anecdotes LaHaye juxtaposes sexually-charged
(and dangerous) situations against the otherwise protective setting
of the Christian worship service:
One charming young lady was walking out of church with her hand in
her date's arm and was very carelessly allowing her breast to rub
against the boy.... On another occasion I saw a darling girl snuggled
next to her date in church; during the sermon she reached over and
placed her hand on his leg. It looked very innocent, but I could almost
hear the fireworks going off in the pew across the aisle.[33]
LaHaye thus acknowledges a woman's role as both a helpmeet and a temptress.
The "young lady" and the "darling girl" were bringing
their dates to church, but they were simultaneously leading them into
the dangerous realm of premarital sexual longing.
[16] In spite of these warnings, Beverly LaHaye embraces frank discussion
of (heterosexual, monogamous, marital) sexual intercourse. Even before
the publication of The Spirit-Controlled Woman, she and husband
Tim LaHaye shocked readers both inside and outside the evangelical community
with their incredibly successful The Act of Marriage: The Beauty
of Sexual Love. Written for couples to read together, this book
broke new ground among evangelical writers.[34] The LaHayes premise this and other writings on the ignorance
under which most men and women operate within relationships. In his
foreword to another best-selling book on marriage, Tim LaHaye writes:
Who can understand a woman? Women are beautiful, alluring, exciting,
exasperating, and confusing all at the same time! They cry when they
are happy, get excited over little expressions of kindness, become
angry at masculine thought patterns. Most men don't understand women!...
Not only are women physically and emotionally different from men,
they are psychically different - they think differently.[35]
As Tim LaHaye does here for men, many authors try to educate female
readers about the differences between the sexes.
[17] One such attempt was Helen Andelin's Fascinating Womanhood.
Originally published in 1964 but released in a slightly modified form
in 1975, the year it first appeared on the NRB list, Fascinating
Womanhood relies heavily upon the notion of complementarity. "The
feminine appearance is acquired by accentuating the difference between
yourself and men, not the similarities...," writes Andelin.
"Men never wear anything fluffy, lacy, gauzy or elaborate...."
Throughout the book, Andelin urges readers to "work for a striking
contrast to masculinity."[36]
In similar language, Beverly LaHaye discourages both the "sexy
look" (short skirts, low-cut blouses), which overemphasizes one's
femininity and the "liberated look" (jeans, no make-up), which
underemphasizes it. In contrast to both of these looks, the style of
the Christian woman should be "more modest [and] Christ-like"
so as to strike a balance between proclaiming and protecting one's femininity.[37] LaHaye demonstrates a certain familiarity with
the literature of her "feminist" counterparts; she playfully
suggests that Christian women wear "modest clothing that is stylish,
attractive, and presents a feminine mystique that ennobles a
man." She concludes, "We are to be modest, attractive, appealing,
and - most of all - feminine as God made us."[38]
[18] Julliard graduate and concert pianist Gini Andrews expresses similar
views on femininity in her bestseller on marriage directed towards single
Christian women. Your Half of the Apple: God & the Single Girl
(a title that suggests a response to Helen Gurley Brown's 1962 Sex
and the Single Girl) reminds readers about the connection between
acting "feminine" and building a man's ego. Andrews advises,
"Your clothes, your hair-do, your walk..., your voice..., your
laugh...all these things have to do with femininity." She asks,
"What about your humor? Is it gentle, clean, clever without a cutting
edge? Male egos are fragile at best; you can damage them with a cutting
tongue."[39] Like many authors, Andrews argues
that the gracious acceptance of one's femininity - and, by extension,
one's assigned role in the universe - is the ultimate act of obedience.
"To be appealing, to be attractive, and, above all, to be feminine
- this is as God made us," she writes, and then issues this challenge:
"Have you ever thought of being feminine - in attire, voice, manner
- for Him?"[40] As Marabel Morgan reminded readers, one can
submit either ruefully or graciously. Evangelical authors assure that
the latter leads to peace at home and to contentedness for both a man
and his wife.
[19] Like Andrews, Helen Andelin emphasizes the "sensitive masculine
pride," which women must carefully protect by allowing their husbands
to "feel needed" as men. Andelin provides her readers with
a list of six masculine characteristics:
1. His need to be accepted at face value;
2. His need for admiration;
3. His sensitive masculine pride;
4. His need for sympathetic understanding;
5. His need to be No. 1;
6. His need to serve as the guide, protector, and provider[;]
to feel needed in this role, and to excel women in doing so.[41]
Andelin is surprisingly candid about the deliberate ways in which readers
can boost their husbands' self-esteem. A common technique calls upon
women to use their feminine gifts (e.g. to praise, to build egos, to
nurture) to bring about a change in their husbands. This is just one
way women exert power through their obedience and apparent passivity.
Helen Andelin urges, "Tell him, 'I am glad I have a strong man
to protect me. I think it would be difficult to go through this life
without you.' If you need him to lift something for you, say something
like, 'Will you please lend me some of your masculine strength?'"[42]
Such encouragement lets a man know he is needed and appreciated and
that his wife dependent on him. In another chapter Andelin asks:
What happens when the average red-blooded man comes in contact with
an obviously able, intellectual and competent woman manifestly independent
of any help a mere man can give and capable of meeting him or defeating
him on his own ground? He simply doesn't feel like a man any longer....
[A man] only delights in protecting or sheltering a woman who needs
his manly care, or at least appears to need it.[43]
Note the use of the word appears. Andelin is cueing her female
readers to make the extra effort and express their gratitude to their
husbands. And if they can't come up with anything, she says, they can
exaggerate a little.
[20] In his foreword to Darien Cooper's bestselling book You Can
Be the Wife of a Happy Husband, Tim LaHaye writes, "Darien
Cooper has a thorough understanding of the male ego. In this book she
discusses the biblical principles every wife needs to know in order
to live with that ego."[44] Cooper could not possibly have
read The Total Woman when she was compiling notes for her soon-to-be
bestseller You Can Be the Wife of a Happy Husband since both
were published in 1974, yet the two works undoubtedly agree on many
elements including premise, argument, and even evidentiary details;
however, where Morgan's writing style was simpler and more secularized,
Cooper's is more firmly rooted in the tradition of Christian family
literature. Morgan's strategy (sympathizing with women's unhappiness,
humorously describing her own rocky journey towards an improved marriage,
then showing readers that her lifelong desire to follow Jesus
had really been at the heart of this transformation) turned out to be
more successful, but it is easy to see how some evangelical readers
could have dismissed her book as "lightweight theology" or
"religious fluff." Not so for Darien Cooper, who references
scripture much more frequently than does Morgan and begins by
reminding readers of the divine plan. Conscious of critiques leveled
at "submissive wives" by outsiders, Cooper says she believes
"the role of the wife in the marital relationship is the choice
role." A wife, she continues,
is to be loved, protected, and cherished by her husband in the same
way that Christ gave Himself for the Church.... The words "be
subject" or "be submissive" describe the way you are
to relate to your husband. Another way of saying it is that you are
to be a responder to your husband's love, protection, and leadership.
Submission never means that your personality, abilities, talents,
or individuality are buried, but that they will be channeled to operate
to the maximum.[45]
Darien Cooper, like most evangelical women of the 1970s, is careful
to spell out what submission is not, a strategy clearly designed
with outside criticism in mind. The idea that a wife should be a "responder"
to her husband's active leadership is a principle around which both
male and female authors organize their arguments. They see two obstacles
to achieving this ideal: the passivity of some men and the aggressiveness
of most women. The first obstacle is left for male authors to treat
in their works; the second is discussed in most evangelical women's
books on marriage. However, as authors point out, both obstacles
can be overcome by a dedicated wife since her domineering attitude may
have propelled a once-authoritative husband into passivity. In a chapter
entitled "Accepting Your Husband As He Is," Cooper urges women:
"Look for opportunities to tell your husband that you are glad
he is the kind of man he is. Tell him you know you have made many mistakes
and are willing to correct them. Explain that you realize you have not
been the loving, understanding, submissive wife you should have been."[46] As Marabel Morgan suggests that wives "adapt
to him," Darien Cooper urges readers to "[d]evelop an interest
in things he likes"; and where Morgan had promised "goodies"
such as presents and vacations, Cooper suggests that dedicated readers
will be rewarded by a changed husband and a closer relationship to Jesus
Christ. This advice recalls Helen Andelin's "Tell him, 'I am glad
I have a strong man to protect me." The apparent "scripting"
of intimate moments between a husband and wife is a common tactic among
authors discussed here and in men's books as well. This reinforces the
evangelical belief in the stark differences between men and women that
render communication particularly difficult.
[21] A recurring theme throughout the book, one suggested in the title
itself, is a woman's ability to transform her husband and her marriage
not by her direct action, but through the acceptance of a more passive
role. Once she submits to the divine order of things, Cooper argues,
a woman will witness the development of her husband's confidence in
leadership. Like Marabel Morgan, she compares the relationship to one
between a corporation's president and his vice-president: Both are influential
executives with a great deal of authority, but one must defer to the
other when the two disagree. "God is not a God of confusion and
disorder," she emphasizes, "but of peace and order."[47] How does a vice-president respond
to a president apparently unwilling to take the lead? This is a pervasive
concern of many books discussed here. Cooper explains:
You will encourage your husband to take the lead by being a good
follower and telling him how much you enjoy his taking charge. As
you display trust in his ability, he will be more eager to continue
as head of the house. Interestingly, as you follow, your husband will
lead; but if you become aggressive, he may regress. You nag, and he
will rebel. If you desire to please him, he will want to please you.[48]
Thus women are taught the power they may wield even in obedience. They
also learn about the ways in which their own happiness and well-being
are connected to their husbands' happiness. As Cooper promises readers
in her concluding paragraph, "You will find fulfillment in your
personal life and marriage. You will have a closer relationship to God,
who ordained marriage. And you will discover that you are a real woman
- the wife of a happy husband."[49]
[22] As one might expect, the 1970s also saw the production of literature
devoted to men and their prescribed roles. The most popular books in
this genre were James Dobson's What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew
About Women and Larry Christenson's The Christian Family.[50]
The only book on the NRB lists that was written by a woman but
(allegedly) for men is Margaret Hardisty's Forever My Love.
In his introduction to the volume, Tim LaHaye writes, "Margaret
Hardisty is a happily married woman who really understands what makes
women 'tick,' and who knows how women need to be treated. And who is
better qualified to tell men how a woman thinks and feels than a woman?"[51] Given evangelicals' historical interpretation of scriptures
like 1 Timothy 2:12, which forbids women's public preaching or teaching,
particularly before men-only audiences, one is immediately suspicious
of the book's purported aim for a male readership. The cover of the
paperback edition features an attractive young woman wearing a delicate
yellow blouse and holding a bouquet of white flowers in her wedding-banded
hand. A man, whose face is barely visible, is reaching around to kiss
her neck, and she is grinning peacefully. The entire photograph is clouded
over in a yellow mist, giving the impression of a dreamy summer afternoon.
This book could easily be mistaken for a romance novel. Given the distinctions
that evangelical authors draw between women's tastes and men's, it seems
unlikely that this book would have been marketed for men.
[23] Although the book is rhetorically addressed to men, its intended
audience is probably female. Margaret Hardisty is actually having, in
front of her female readers, an imaginary conversation with her "male
readers" about what women want in a man. Why? The answer is found
in her "postscripts," small end-of-chapter remarks for women.
The second chapter concludes with a "P.S." for the "fascinating
woman still peeking at her husband's book": "Your husband's
change in behavior will come much faster if you meet him more than halfway,"
writes Hardsity. "Go to work on those sluggish areas now and begin
to reap the benefits."[52]
Hardisty tells her "peeping" female readers to watch for even
the slightest changes in their husbands, and then to respond by meeting
them "more than halfway." As Tim LaHaye writes in the book's
foreword, "Women are responsive creatures by nature." (Recall
Marabel Morgan's "It is in your nature to give.")
[24] Forever My Love adopts a much more sympathetic tone towards
women than other books discussed so far. Imagine frustrated female readers
nodding in understanding as they read the following scene of a husband
just come home from work:
[He] enters the door complaining about someone or something. He eats
dinner with very little comment about its excellence. Then it's TV
and the paper while [his wife] cleans up the dinner mess. Occasionally
he yells at her to come get one of the kids who is bothering him.
By the time she has the three children bathed and in bed, she is exhausted
and wants a little time to herself. She plans a relaxing bath and
hopes to read a little in the book she's been saving. At that point,
he either gets angry or pouts, for he is ready for bed and he always
expects playtime when he goes night-night.[53]
The last line is surely not written for men; it's for their wives'
shared amusement. However, still under her rhetorical pretense, Hardisty
continues the scene by complimenting her "male" readers, "But
you," she praises, "the one who will win your wife as the
knight wins a princess, won't be such a clod. You've already helped
her with the dishes and anything else that needs doing. The children
are tucked into bed, kissed and prayed with. Now is where your genius
can start operating."[54] If men assume their proper roles, most authors
claim, their wives will delight in assuming theirs. Margaret Hardisty
writes, "I am a conquered woman and I exult in it! I adore my conqueror.
My life is patterned to please him and to incur even his slight displeasure
is a crisis for me."[55] Most authors work hard at maintaining strict
mental discipline and domestic order to avoid "incurring even his
slight displeasure." As sociologist Nancy Tatom Ammerman concluded
near the end of her participant-observation of a fundamentalist church
community, she concluded:
Christian wives are both powerful and powerless. Within their households,
they have enormous powers of persuasion that are based in part on
their intimate involvement with the everyday details of the family's
life. They may be able to run their homes so smoothly that their husbands
rarely have any decisions to make, and they may discover ways to influence
the decisions their husbands do make.[56]
The "delicate balance of submission and influence" is explored
in greater detail throughout her study, especially as she turns her
attention to the community of women. In an important observation, she
notes that "part of the lore that is passed from older wives to
younger ones is how to keep a husband from making an unwise decision
without appearing to usurp his rightful authority."[57]
Historian Margaret Lamberts Bendroth notes similarly of the women of
fundamentalism's "first wave": "In a sense, by submitting
to their husbands they actually gained moral and psychological leverage."[58]
[25] Influenced by the longstanding Protestant belief that idle time
can lead to laziness or even spiritual weakness, Anne Ortlund's best-selling
Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman provides a long list of ways
for even the most disciplined woman to improve herself and run an efficient
home. Her suggestions:
Exercise...Memorize Scripture...Look over your coming calendar,
and prepare what to wear...Give yourself a pedicure...Write a list
of your blessings...Cook ahead for the freezer...Cream yourself all
over...Read part of an important book...Clean out your cosmetics drawer...Encourage
a Christian friend by telephone, someone you don't usually call...Put
all those old photos into albums...Take a walk in the park...Have
a prolonged time talking with God...Polish the silver...Write a poem...Write
your pastor an encouraging note.[59]
Ortlund presents a combination of spiritual tasks ("Have a prolonged
time talking with God") and worldly ones ("Cook ahead for
the freezer"), of doing for others ("Encourage a Christian
friend by telephone") and pampering the self ("Cream yourself
all over"). The creams, manicures, and pedicures are important
not for vain interest in self-beautification, but as other ways
to draw the distinctions between men and women, which distinctions evangelicals
believed were being elided by the feminist movements.
[26] Paralleling Morgan's approach, Anne Ortlund advocates writing
down one's goals - large and small - and then working deliberately,
day by day, on achieving them. Her list of lifetime goals is Gatsbyesque
in its ambition and scope and arises from a similar urge to reinvent
oneself through mental resolution. Her goals, which remind one of Benjamin
Franklin's 13-item list of virtues to strive for[60]: (particularly his #6 ("Industry"):
"Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off
all unnecessary actions.):
To bring glory to God ...; To bring glory to Ray as his wife...;
To see all four children spiritually settled and fruitful...; To write
three books, each of which will aid the Body of Christ, and help us
retire without penny-pinching...; To write five really successful
songs which will greatly bless the church...; To serve God together
with Ray until we're at least eighty-five....[61]
Ortlund draws attention to her professional career as an author ("to
write three books") but shows how this talent will be used for
God's glory: If she can produce three books, she will not only help
"the Body of Christ," she will also help her husband, the
main provider, as they plan for a comfortable retirement. In this way,
she delicately justifies her temporary role as career woman while
still extolling the virtues of a traditional wife and mother. Almost
every author we discuss here lays out her justification for this apparent
paradox. A few argue, as Ortlund does, that the work is only temporary;
however, most affirm that they have been called by God to help other
women. By heeding that call, they understand that sacrifice will be
required - even, ironically, giving up the domestic lifestyle they celebrate
in their work.
[27] Most authors described in this study were homemakers and mothers
of young children in the years immediately preceding their publishing
successes. Issues of child care and domestic maintenance must have frustrated
these women, many of whom spoke at hundreds of engagements in a single
year. Bestselling author Jill Briscoe, one of the most successful on
the lecture circuit and also a pastor's wife, admits she often had to
push away mental "displays of confusion at home" when she
left to speak. She adds, "Once I'd been away a few times and had
not been met by weeping deprived children, I realized things were fine."[62] This new lifestyle obviously necessitated an
even greater attention to discipline and order within the family than
before. And in the minds of evangelical women, the greatest threat to
family order came from the increasingly more vocal women's liberation
movements.
"Let Me Be a Woman": Evangelical Responses to the "Women's
Libbers"
[28] We began this essay with two quotations that suggest some areas
of common ground between groups of women whose interactions are most
often described in antagonistic terms. As many analysts of the ERA years
have observed, the inability to make use of this common ground played
a large part in the defeat of the amendment and in the subsequent backlashes
against the gains women had achieved.[63] Most authors discussed in this study express
their profound ambivalence about the activities of their feminist counterparts.
On one hand, many applaud the strides towards "equal pay for equal
work" or the attention given to issues like rape, domestic abuse,
and sexual harassment; on the other hand, evangelical authors have strong
reservations about what they see as feminists' degradation of "women's
work." In this section we will examine authors' direct and indirect
references to the actions of the people some call the "women's
libbers."
[29] Attorney and anti-ERA activist Phyllis Schlafly adeptly tapped
into evangelical women's uneasiness in her 1977 The Power of the
Positive Woman.[64] In this work, Schafly warned
of the natural outcomes of equality between the sexes: greater promiscuity
as the sexes intermingle in co-ed gym classes and unisex bathrooms,
and the loss of feminine prerogatives like opened doors, good seats
on busses, and the first lifeboats on a sinking ship. The most devastating,
though, would be the end of courts' natural presumption that mothers
should be their children's primary caretakers following separation or
divorce. The loss of this last privilege, Schlafly claims, would lead
to more cases of divorce (as men initiate divorces and take their chances
with "equality"-minded judges) and to men's abandonment of
their roles as family leaders and breadwinners (as they move freely
from older wives and children to younger, prettier wives).
[30] Perhaps because its emphasis is on political and legal consequences
rather than spiritual ones, Schlafly's book did not appear on the bestsellers
lists; however, evangelical authors share Schlafly's concerns and warnings.
In her book What Is a Family? (dedicated to her husband on their
fortieth anniversary), Edith Schaeffer writes of the long-term consequences
of the feminist movements: "Confusion exists among many girls today
because of some of the things put forth by the women's liberation movement.
There are girls who fear that they are giving in to a weakness if they
show longing or interest in being mothers and homemakers...." As
a result, she says, "homes that were once secure are breaking and
shattering...."[65] The confusion to which she refers stemmed undoubtedly from the
conflicting messages on the subject of marriage, and especially the
notion that Christian women should be submissive.
[31] In her memoir Let Me Be a Woman: Notes to My Daughter on the
Meaning of Womanhood, popular author and evangelist Elisabeth Elliot
writes, as Darien Cooper did, about the joys and privileges associated
with being a woman. Responding to what she views as the main objective
of feminists, Elliot asserts:
"Equal opportunity" nearly always implies that women want
to do what men do, not that men want to do what women do, which indicates
that prestige is attached to men's work but not to women's. Women's
work, particularly the task assigned by Creation exclusively to women,
that of bearing and nurturing children, is regarded not only as of
lesser value but even degrading.... This is a hideous distortion of
the truth....[66]
Let Me Be a Woman is not simply a treatise on womanhood; it
is also a personal letter to Elliot's daughter Valerie on the occasion
of her wedding. As Valerie prepares for her new role as wife, her mother
reflects:
My job is over now.... But His discipline is far from finished....
The way you keep your house, the way you organize your time, the care
you take in your personal appearance, the things you spend your money
on all speak loudly about what you believe.... A disordered life speaks
loudly of disorder in the soul...."[67]
Elisabeth Elliot's involvement in women's issues spans the period before,
during, and after the ERA years, and her perspective is still sought
by young and old alike. Let Me Be a Woman appeared on the bestseller
lists from August through December of 1976, a relatively short period
of time. However, the book has undergone over fifteen printings, and
Elliot has earned an esteemed position in evangelical circles. She remains
a popular speaker whose writings are still used as inspiration by evangelical
authors one-fourth her age.[68] Because of the time period in which it was
produced, Let Me Be a Woman necessarily draws a contrast between
God's ordering of the world and the perceived agenda of the 1970s women's
movements. Though her style is not directly hostile towards her feminist
counterparts, Elliot's readers would have understood the import of this
passage:
One thing that makes a marriage work is the acceptance of a divine
order. Either there is an order or there is not, and if there is one
which is violated disorder is the result - disorder on the deepest
level of the personality. I believe there is an order, established
in the creation of the world, and I believe that much of the confusion
that characterizes our society is the result of the violation of God's
design.[69]
Most evangelical books on marriage openly worry about the "violation
of God's design" and therefore take up the task of reminding readers
about the essential differences between masculinity and femininity.
In insisting upon such strong gender differences, often illustrated
with lists or comparison charts, these authors work conscientiously
towards the restoration of Biblical ideals at a time when feminists
urged the deconstruction of these and other binary categories. Tim LaHaye
bemoans these actions. "In a day when almost every newspaper in
the country gives front page space to the inane, harmful pronouncements
of the women's libbers," he writes in the foreword to Darien Cooper's
book, "it is refreshing to hear an attractive, godly woman speak
up."[70]
[32] LaHaye's wife Beverly agrees: "So many women get 'testy'
when discussing [submission]," she writes. "All they can think
of is their downtrodden rights. Has it ever occurred to you that God
would never have asked you to submit to your husband unless he had a
need for your respect and admiration?"[71] A wife's refusal to submit is associated with rebellion against
God's order and rejection of the discipline imposed for a woman's own
fulfillment and protection. Thus, a wife who is "Spirit-led"
demonstrates faith in God through her submission, an act all
the more profound if her faith in her husband is shaky. LaHaye's The
Spirit-Controlled Woman addresses a major concern among evangelical
women then and now: whether they are scripturally bound to submit to
an unsaved husband.[72]
In the tradition of The Total Woman and The Fascinating Woman,
LaHaye argues that a man can actually be changed by his wife's changes
in behavior. Writes LaHaye: "Your unbelieving husband has a great
need for understanding and companionship - don't compete with him. He
certainly doesn't need a nagging wife; he needs a positive and creative
woman by his side." In a plea for family unity, she adds:
[D]on't constantly remind your husband about God - instead remind
God about your husband.... [Obedience] may mean that you have to give
up your involvement in a Bible class or even your church attendance.
Remember, your obedience and submission when done in the right spirit
will do more to win him to Christ than your attendance at a Bible
study.[73]
This is an extraordinary sacrifice to ask of a Christian woman: to
be willing to suspend her own spiritual growth (by giving up Bible study
or church attendance) in order to be with and care for a husband who
rejects the message of Christian salvation she prizes. As the Bible
shows repeatedly, however, one must be willing to lose in order to gain.
Marie Griffith notes of the evangelical women she studied:
Conservative evangelical women who believe that their true liberation
is found in voluntary submission to divine authority consider this
a bold surrender, an act of assuming the crucial role God has ordained
women to play in the making of history, especially in these last days....
Believing that power issues from vulnerability - or, paradoxically,
that vulnerability recreates itself as power - these women avow their
capacity to remake all creation.... As women teach it to each other,
Christian submission is a flexible doctrine intricately attached to
control - of self or other - and freedom, rather than a rigid blueprint
of silent and demoralizing subjection....[74]
The most successful long-term evangelical authors promise eventual
fulfillment but still acknowledge attendant feelings of doubt, pain
and even rejection even as they promise eventual fulfillment. Few and
far between are the authors who write with such unabashed enthusiasm
for submission as Beverly LaHaye does in this hymn to homemaking:
I wasn't just picking up dirty socks for my husband; I was serving
the Lord Jesus by doing this, so I had to do it heartily as unto Him....
It was almost a time of devotion each day as I lovingly picked up
those blessed dirty socks. I thanked God for my loving husband who
was so faithful and who provided for me and who loved God with all
this heart. I knew there were many women who would give anything to
be able once again to pick up socks after their husbands. And I was
still able! Would you believe that those beautiful dirty socks began
to disappear without any word spoken[?] One day he just decided to
be more careful and to pick up after himself. Oh, how I missed those
socks. I still get to take them from the clothes hamper and put them
into the washing machine. May I do it heartily as unto the Lord![75]
Housewife and former English teacher Maxine Hancock addressed this
kind of rhetoric in her bestseller, Love, Honor, and Be Free.
Addressing men's insensitivity to their wives' situations, she writes:
"Even Mother's Day sermons I find a bit hard to take. There's just
something about hearing a man - any man - extol the virtues of
dishwashing, nose-wiping, and floor mopping, as though an annual pat
on the back will keep us quiet and 'in our place' for another year."[76]
Gini Andrews likewise acknowledges the realities of marriage. "Yes,
singleness can be lonely at times," she acknowledges, "but...[w]ould
you exchange your loneliness for the lot of the woman whose husband
sleeps around or comes home drunk every night only to criticize? You
think you're lonely?"[77] In a similar passage, Andrews
asks, "Have you realized that you are often the envy of your married
sisters? They see you as living unfettered lives, able to spend your
money on clothes, travel, or a new car; able to expand with study while
they are tied down with diapers and laundry."[78]
[33] Andrews' ambivalent feelings about marriage and singlehood emerge
throughout her book. "Social pressure [to marry] is tremendous,"
she acknowledges, "and a single woman can be made to feel quite
definitely that she hasn't 'made it.'" Then she adds curiously,
"This may be shifting somewhat under the impact of Women's Lib."[79] This is not her only concession
to the "women's libbers." Even as she criticizes their selfishness
and their misunderstanding of homemakers, she compliments the younger
generation. "Your generation thinks a great deal about issues that
my generation didn't bother with until years later...: war, civil rights,
women's rights...," she writes, "[b]ut you are enmeshed, surrounded,
suffocated by an atmosphere of complete permissiveness...."[80] Colleen Townsend Evans, a contract actress
for Twentieth-Century Fox who left the motion picture industry to become
a pastor's wife and mother, likewise assesses "plusses" and
"minuses" of the "women's libbers." In her 1973
A New Joy, she writes: "I'm all for the gals who can [work
on worthy causes], but not all of us can be protestors...or crusaders...or
teachers...or artists. Not all of us can juggle a home and a career
without fumbling. Many of us will seek fulfillment right where we are...and
that's usually at home." She adds, "When I think of being
fulfilled as a woman, I think of being needed...the two, at least for
me, are inseparable."[81] Such ambivalence about the 1970s
women's movements surfaces in almost every text in this study. Most
authors seek to strike a balance between what they see as two extremes:
on the one hand, Christian women who fancy themselves (as Gini Andrews
humorously puts it) "God's little sunbeam...spreading sweetness
and light"; on the other, the "women's libbers" who "rant
about the 'vacuity of the lives of many housewives,' as if the housewives
were mindless robots with neither the will nor the imagination to brighten
their own lives."[82]
[34] As Anne Ortlund had done for married readers in Disciplines
of the Beautiful Woman, Andrews reminds her single readers to stay
busy. Since they are "unfettered," single women have more
time to read the Bible and minister to the sick, the hungry, or the
lonely. Writes Andrews, "There are children, old people, young
drifters, your contemporaries, harried housewives lonely in the midst
of humdrumness. God is looking for channels. Anyone of any age of any
race of any education can be a pipeline for the flow of His love."[83] In the next section, we consider titles that address this sentiment
more emphatically. Although these works speak to the concerns women
have in their marriages, they focus more on a woman's lifelong relationship
with God.
"Something More": Submitting to the Will of God
[A]s the twentieth century has progressed men have found the truth
that God cares about each one of us increasingly difficult to believe....
The individual has come to feel lonely.... Yet whenever we are emboldened
to accept and act on Jesus' revelation of the Fatherhood of God, always
and always we find solid ground beneath our feet.
-Catherine Marshall,
Something More: The Search for a Deeper Faith [84]
[35] These words of reassurance come from Catherine Marshall's 1974
autobiography Something More: The Search for a Deeper Faith.
During the 1940s, Marshall and her husband, pastor and Senate chaplain
Peter Marshall, had been prominent figures in the evangelical community.
When, in 1949, Peter died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of forty-nine,
34-year-old Catherine was left with a young son and a tiny pastor's
pension. Trusting in God's providence, however, she continued to tithe
and was soon asked to edit Mr. Jones, Meet the Master, a collection
of her husband's most famous sermons.[85]
As soon as this project was completed, she began to write A Man Called
Peter, the story of her husband's life, which was made into a movie
by Twentieth-Century Fox in 1955. She went on to produce several more
bestsellers, in spite of never having had "a single course in the
craft of writing and almost no practice except scribbling in personal
diaries and journals."[86]
She describes the Holy Spirit as her writing coach, a patient teacher
who helped infuse her text with emotion.[87] In references to her own writing,
Marshall describes the excitement and anxiety many evangelical women
shared during the tumultuous struggles of the 1970s. By producing these
works just as Christian literature was exploding in the marketplace,
they were certainly conscious of their own role as history-makers and
contributors to an increasingly significant literary canon.
[36] Consider the staggering successes enjoyed by women who pushed
the limits of evangelical Christian teachings on the divine ordering
of the world. One of the most popular authors on the National Religious
Bestsellers lists during the 1970s was minister's wife and "prayer
crusader" Evelyn Christenson. Whereas Beverly LaHaye, Jill Briscoe,
and the other pastors' wives in this study were brought into the public
eye because of their husbands' successes, Evelyn Christenson achieved
fame in her own right through her work on the power of community-wide
prayer. After launching an enormously successful series of prayer groups,
first at her husband's church in Rockford, Illinois, and later in St.
Paul, Minnesota, Christenson became a celebrity almost overnight. A
whirlwind tour of television and radio interviews was followed by a
book contract. A bestseller for thirty-two months, What Happens When
Women Pray affirms the power of intercessory prayer and describes
ways in which women can change their outlook on life even when they
feel powerless to implement changes in their situation. Using testimony
after testimony, Christenson empowers otherwise meek and timid women
to take their concerns boldly to God and promises they will be astonished
by the results.[88]
[37] In her other bestseller, Lord, Change Me, Christenson shows
how divided congregations and rocky marriages have found healing through
purposeful prayer. While she embraces evangelical ideology on the leadership
of men in their churches and families, Christenson also delivers forceful
critiques of "chauvinistic" men who act out of ignorance.
For example, in response to those who criticized her for speaking in
public or overshadowing her husband's ministry, she provides a series
of scriptural references that support women's activism in the church.
She discusses the several misinterpretations of Genesis and points out
the tendency of some ministers to introduce preconceived notions of
male superiority into their explication of the Bible. Given all the
misinformation out there, Christenson says, "it is easy to get
a lopsided view of women staying home and being keepers at home, whereas
many of the Apostle Paul's co-workers were women...and the four Gospels
abound with women traveling with Jesus...."[89]
Christenson is not afraid to attribute such "lopsided" thinking
to the many books that encourage women's "manipulation":
Many women have shared with me how they have allowed someone's [opinions]
to thwart their usefulness and to render them almost subhuman. Bookstores
are filled with women's books, some advocating total submission to
men, others suggesting ways a wife may manipulate her husband to "keep
him happy and save the marriage".... Few topics of late have
been so popular - or so polarizing....[90]
The inclusion of the word "total" is surely a reference to
Marabel Morgan; the quotation "keep him happy..." recalls
Morgan's suggestion to "adapt to him." Christenson delivers
one more critique of the Total Womanhood program before she closes:
One husband whose wife had been following step-by-step a course of
study finally exploded, "Honey..., I loved you the way you were.
Will you please stop this idiotic behavior? I can't stand you this
way...." And many husbands have been insulted and embarrassed
that men in their social circles or neighborhood have all been receiving
the same planned treatment each week....[91]
In response to oversimplification of gender roles by both men and
women, Lord, Change Me challenges readers to pray about their
needs and then listen as God advises the correct, individualized course
of action.
[38] Evelyn Christenson's celebrity did not come without struggle and
self-doubt. Some within the evangelical community questioned the ways
in which she pushed the boundaries of appropriate feminine behavior.
Even before What Happens When Women Pray, her husband's parishioners
whispered disapprovingly when she wore pants to church during the winter,
conduct unbecoming a pastor's wife; and as her celebrity increased,
she writes, "the jabs started - not at me, but at my husband -
from fellow pastors and friends. 'Hey, I saw your wife on television
last night.' 'How does it feel to be the husband of Mrs. Christenson?'...
It became so embarrassing that I was the most crushed wife you could
possibly imagine...."[92]
Christenson says she considered abandoning what she believed to be her
true calling; however, through intense Bible study and prayer, she realized
that "[God] told me to continue speaking and teaching...."
And, she adds affectionately, "My final affirmation to this came
last fall from my husband himself when he said to me, 'Honey, I'm your
greatest fan.'"[93]
[39] Jill Briscoe's Bible studies had led her to the same conclusion
in spite of her similar feelings of self-doubt. In her bestseller There's
a Snake in My Garden, she describes all the "snakes" Christians
face as they try to live according to Biblical principles. In one chapter,
Briscoe describes her public humiliation at a Christian conference for
which she was slated to speak on overseas evangelizing successes. When
she rose to share her story, male students in the audience walked out
in protest over a woman's speaking before a mixed audience. In spite
of her hurt over that event, Briscoe has continued to lecture and teach.
She resolves the questions of women's public speaking by concluding
that the "scriptural prohibition appeared to be the principle of
usurping the authority of the man." She says that if "the
men of a fellowship in whom the care and oversight of the flock had
been entrusted invited me to exercise my spiritual gift among them,
I could know I would not be usurping their authority."[94]
[40] Margaret Hardisty was also criticized by fellow Christians. "I
have often been amused by those who are worried that I neglect my family
and husband to do these things," she writes. "Some have even
hinted that if I'm not careful, I might lose him...."[95] However, Hardisty, like Christenson,
proudly acknowledges her husband's support and approval. She explains
that he has always "eagerly encouraged me in my singing, acting
and writing. He feels that when I am creating, whether it be in concerts
or radio or directing a play, I am an exciting person.... He makes sacrifices
so I can pursue these activities, just as I make sacrifices so he can
pursue his work."[96]
Christenson, Briscoe, and Hardisty are profoundly aware the connection
between their husbands' support and their own success. Margaret Hardisty
acknowledges, "...[P]erhaps because of male ego (insecurity) or
fear that she will neglect the family and house, or because he wants
her at his beck and call," a man is often frightened by his wife's
participation in "such things as professional performing, public
speaking, executive positions, jobs that pay more than his, managing
major money matters or anything where she gets the limelight more than
he."[97] Most authors described here inevitably confronted
the apparent paradox of their own professional activity and their idealization
(through their writings and lectures) of the role of traditional
wives and mothers. Joyce Landorf, one of the most successful long-term
authors on the lists, emphasizes that a woman's professional activity
should be understated and should fall within her husband's expectations
for a wife. Referring to her own prominent position in the Christian
music and publishing industries, Landorf writes:
My husband is always being asked how it feels to be married to the
"famous" Joyce Landorf. His self-image is so balanced by
the Lord that Dick is not threatened in any way by any type of success
I might achieve. When he is sometimes introduced as Mr. Joyce Landorf,
it does not wound his ego because his ego is surrendered to the Lord
and his self-worth is God established, not man established.... He
is not only unthreatened by my speaking, singing, and writing successes,
but he is my most inspiring encouragement.[98]
Having this blessing and encouragement is vital. In the face of criticism
from others in the evangelical community, a woman who works in the public
domain must be able to rely on her husband's support. Women who
published bestsellers of the 1970s were most likely to enjoy long-term
success if they had support and approval at home, both of which were
more easily gained if their husbands also worked in Christian ministry.
About half the authors we have discussed were married to pastors or
evangelists at the time of their literary successes. In fact, the only
"big-name" successes whose husbands worked outside the ministry
were Marabel Morgan (an attorney's wife) and Joyce Landorf (a banker's
wife); and whereas Morgan's The Total Woman has long been out
of print and Joyce Landorf has fallen out of favor, ministry wives have
enjoyed longer periods of popularity and have continued to expanded
their ministries.
[41] Joyce Landorf authored over twenty-five books, nine of which made
it onto the bestsellers lists between 1974 and 1985.[99]
Her career came to a crashing halt, however, when she and Dick Landorf
were divorced in 1985 after 32 years of marriage. In a book she wrote
after her depression, recovery, and second marriage to former editor
and long-time friend Francis Heatherley, she told her loyal readers:
"If you have read any of my books you know that I have tried to
reveal life and relationships as openly and candidly as possible. I
need to tell you that I wrote the truth of my life.... I did not make
up or even exaggerate the stories I told about my family, myself, my
personal life, or marriage."[100]
However, she admits, she made the grave mistake of idealizing
her marriage and her family situation to such an extent that she actually
missed the signs of the "insurmountable and multiplying private
agonies" that lay hidden behind her writings on marriage and femininity.[101] In an obviously painful chapter on her separation and divorce,
Joyce Landorf Heatherley muses about the "double-world" in
which public figures must live, a world where intimate experiences are
recorded and consumed, and private heartaches become the source of gossip,
shame, and public chastisement.
[42] After the breakup of her first marriage and her subsequent "excommunication"
from the arena in which she had made her living, Heatherley faced ridicule
and criticism from once devoted readers. When her separation and divorce
became public news, her speaking schedule, which had been booked solid
for almost two years into the future, suddenly became clear. And whereas
her previous books had been the showcase titles for such evangelical
publishing powerhouses as Word, Revell, and Zondervan, her post-divorce
memoir was published by Harper & Row. There were rumors that her
frequent traveling and public ministry had in fact caused the breakup
of the marriage. During her separation, she writes, one pastor friend
had suggested she return to her husband and work harder at keeping the
vows she had made on her wedding day - before her life had become full
of book contracts and lecture dates. Her tearful reply: "I just
can't believe that Christ died on a cross at Calvary for marriage
vows."[102]
Gini Andrews, who was widowed at a young age and living on her own by
the time she wrote Your Half of the Apple, is similarly sober
about marriage in the "real world." "Keep in mind,"
she cautions girls who are eager to walk down the aisle, "that
you may lose a great deal of your individuality in marriage."[103]
[43] In one of the most poignant sections of Something More,
Catherine Marshall describes the loss of individuality she experienced
when she decided to remarry. After regaining her footing as a young
widow and mother, she says she marveled at the sudden and unexpected
success she found in writing, the new demands this career placed on
her time, and her pride over having raised a Christian son alone. When
Peter left for college, she poured her energy into building a new home
in suburban Washington, D.C., the most treasured feature of which was
to be a room of her own in which she would work on upcoming writing
projects. She was already preparing notes for what would become her
most successful book of all, Christy, a novel based upon her
mother's young adulthood.[104] In spite of her excitement over this new
project, Marshall spent more than twice as long in writing it as she
had originally intended. The reason: she met and married Leonard LeSourd,
editor of Norman Vincent Peale's Guideposts magazine and father
of three young children. She sold her new house, moved to New York,
and adjusted to the new role of stepmother. This move might have meant
the end of Marshall's writing career; however, LeSourd's own publishing
experience worked in her favor. In 1971, the two (together with John
and Elizabeth Sherrill) became founders of their own publishing house,
Chosen Books, the first release for which was the phenomenon bestseller
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom.[105]
Catherine Marshall continued to produce books (some for Chosen and some
for other houses) and was finishing the manuscript of another novel,
Julie, when she died in 1983. Today, the combined sales from
all Marshall's books have exceeded eighteen million copies.[106]
[44] The direction of the writing and speaking careers of other authors
discussed here is related to both their initial reception by mainstream
media and the level of support they received from their husbands. Helen
Andelin's books have all been out of print for at least twenty years.
After her brief period of success and a steady stream of interviews,
she disappeared from the media spotlight around 1975 to finish raising
her eight children but has continued to oversee the Fascinating Woman
seminars and lessons inspired by her books. According to her website,
this work has been especially difficult since the death of her husband,
businessman Aubrey Andelin in 1999.[107]
After raising her children, Maxine Hancock went back to graduate school
and earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Alberta. Her academic
works on practical theology have received critical acclaim. Today she
is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Spiritual Theology at
Regent College in Vancouver. Gini Andrews, Darien Cooper, and Margaret
Hardisty have virtually disappeared from public activity.
[45] Two of the most notorious women, in the secular media at least,
have virtually disappeared. Marabel Morgan stopped her public appearances
in the mid-1980s. She and her husband, a retired attorney, still live
in Miami. Anita Bryant continued to sing at her theater in Branson until
she and second husband Charlie Dry were forced to sell it, having filed
for bankruptcy in 1997 under the pressure of several million dollars'
worth of debt.[108]
[46] The remaining women still work in the industry that made them
famous. Jill and Stuart Briscoe serve on the Executive Board of his
church in Wisconsin and have been active in their Telling the Truth
ministry, a worldwide evangelistic organization. She has been a prayer
leader at several Billy Graham Crusades and is founder and editor of
Just Between Us, a magazine for women in Christian ministry.[109]
Evelyn Christenson continues to speak about the power of prayer to change
lives at conferences around the country. In 1998, she was named "Lay
Person of the Year" by the National Association of Evangelicals.
Today she and her husband live in St. Paul, where he works as an administrator
at Bethel College and she serves on the Executive Boards of the National
Prayer Committee, an interdenominational evangelistic association, and
her own United Prayer Ministry.
[47] Elisabeth Elliot, twice a widow, is married to third husband Lars
Gren. She recently retired from her position of host of "Gateway
to Joy," an inspirational program broadcast over radio and the
internet. She continues to make public appearances, where she receives
long and loud standing ovations. Her 1984 Passion and Purity,
the story of her romance with missionary and martyr Jim Elliot, reappeared
on the bestsellers list in August of 2001. Colleen Townsend Evans, who
gave up a film career to marry Louis H. Evans, Jr., works for the Presbyterian
Ministers Fund. Her husband is pastor of the National Presbyterian Church
in Washington, D. C., where she serves on several social service boards.
[48] Beverly LaHaye is chairman [sic] of Concerned Women for
America (CWA), a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying and activist organization
she founded in response concern about the ERA in 1979. She returned
to the bestseller lists in the 1980s, this time for her fiction.[110]
Joyce Landorf Heatherley wrote several more books after her divorce
in 1985, but none appeared on the bestseller lists. In the mid-1980s,
she and her second husband Francis (who had been her editor at Word
Publishing) formed Balcony Publishing, whose website markets titles
produced both before and after her divorce.[111] She continues to speak at
small church functions. Anne and Ray Ortlund are founders of Renewal
Ministries in Anaheim, California. She had one more bestseller in the
1980s. Edith Schaeffer continues to be associated with L'Abri, the retreat
and evangelism center she and husband Francis Schaeffer (who wrote the
Foreword to Gini Andrews' Your Half of the Apple) founded in
Huemoz, Switzerland, in 1955. The Schaeffers returned to the United
States permanently in 1978 so Francis could undergo cancer treatments
at the Mayo Clinic. She has lived in Minnesota since his death in 1984.[112]
[49] When the National Religious Bestsellers lists were restructured
in December of 1979, significant changes were made. Most noticeably,
the list title was changed from "National Religious Bestsellers"
to the more accurate "Best-selling Christian Books." Up-and-coming
male authors such as James Dobson (future founder of Focus on the Family),
and Pat Robertson (future presidential candidate and founder of the
Christian Broadcasting Network), would soon outperform women in every
category. Most books discussed in this study disappeared from the lists
by late 1980 and are now out of print. Following their disappointment
in the presidential administration of born-again favorite Jimmy Carter,
evangelical Christians were mobilized during the election of 1980 and
worked tirelessly to deliver Ronald Reagan's victory. The ERA fell three
states short of ratification by its (extended) deadline of June 30,
1982. While evangelical women continued to produce books on marriage,
they would not again enjoy the large-scale successes of the 1970s and
would begin searching for other ways to communicate with their readers.
Many continued the longstanding tradition of writing women's prayer
books and devotional literature, the most celebrated of which had been
Streams in the Desert, a series of daily devotionals compiled
by missionary Lettie Burd Cowman in 1925.[113]
[50] Instead of the fiery rhetoric of books by Anita Bryant and Beverly
LaHaye (which now seem dated because of their inextricable link to the
issues of their times), authors of the 1980s would return to the soothing
style of Catherine Marshall, a woman who was compelled to write only
after an early widowhood. Marshall remains one of the most beloved authors
today because she addresses what readers see as the more universal concerns
that touch women - married, single, divorced, or widowed. Although she
does speak to the particular experiences of marriage, Catherine Marshall
subsumes all worldly troubles under a committed faith in the hereafter.
In 1974, just as the National Religious Bestsellers lists were gaining
momentum and Marabel Morgan was beginning her Total Woman seminars,
Catherine Marshall quietly acknowledged the secular world's changing
expectations for women. Her words comfort and inspire readers by reminding
them of Christ's imminent return. She writes:
You and I are living in rough times. We must make our way through
minefields of evil, booby traps of deception, brush fires of sickness
and disease, wastelands of economic disaster, burning deserts of disappointment.
"I won't take you out of this world," Jesus told us. "But
don't be afraid.... I promise to be with you always...." It is
true. He is here. We who in moments of desperation have asked, "What
can I do? What is there left?" have felt His answering presence
and experienced His help...We know now always He holds out to us the
exciting promise of something more.[114]
In language similar to her nineteenth-century predecessors[115], Catherine Marshall articulates
some of the concerns of her feminist counterparts.
[51] The housewives in Friedan's anecdotes and at evangelical seminars
alike seem to wonder: "Yeah, my husband's great, my kids are great,
my house is great; so why am I still depressed?" As lesbians and
women of color were already beginning to argue, most women's movement
leaders had, if unintentionally, assumed a white, married, suburban,
and literate audience, who could, with Friedan, acknowledge "that
voice within...that says: 'I want something more than my husband
and my children and my home.'" Though Catherine Marshall has something
different in mind when she speaks of the "promise of something
more," both authors found audiences of women who, though polarized
by the Equal Rights Amendment, were remarkably homogeneous.
[1] Marabel
Morgan, The Total Woman (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Revell, 1973),
17-19.
[2] Betty Friedan, The
Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1974 [1963]), 15.
[3] A 1992 demographic
study by the Christian Booksellers Association (a trade organization
described in greater detail throughout this article) identified Christian
bookstore customers as primarily white (90%), female (75%), and married
(cited in Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and
Popular Culture in America [New Haven: Yale, 1995], 256).
[4] The most recent examples
of books in this genre include Stormie Omartian's The Power of the
Praying Wife (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House, 1997), which has been
the #1 title on the CBA bestsellers lists (paperback) for almost two
years and Laura Doyle's The Surrendered Wife: A Practical Guide to
Finding Intimacy, Passion, and Peace with a Man (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 2001), which has been marketed towards a secular audience.
[5] Morgan, The Total
Woman, 38-39.
[6] R. Marie Griffith,
God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission
(Berkeley: Univ. of California, 1997). See also Brenda E. Brasher, Godly
Women: Fundamentalism and Female Power (New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Press, 1998) and Michael Lienesch, "Women: The Paradox of Power
Through Powerlessness" (64-77), in Redeeming America: Piety
and Politics in the New Christian Right (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1993).
[7] Referring to a movement
or a worldview rather than a particular religious organization or denomination,
the word "evangelical" is used in this study to describe Protestants
who believe in literal interpretation of the Bible and for whom the
experience of being "born again" is necessary for entry into
heaven. The primary goal of most evangelicals is to win souls to salvation
before the imminent Second Coming of Jesus Christ described in the book
of Revelation. Thus, as their name affirms, they are focused on spreading
the Good News (evangelion) of salvation for all through Christ's
death and resurrection. Because evangelical Christians can be found
as a subgroup within established religious denominations; in separate
congregations under labels such as "evangelical," "Bible,"
"fundamentalist," or simply "Christian"; or as members
of an interdenominational or parachurch organization such as the Promise
Keepers or Women's Aglow International; their numbers are difficult
to determine. However, Gallup polls over the last twenty years have
consistently identified about 30% of Americans as evangelical, or born-again,
Christians (see George Gallup, Jr., and Jim Castelli, The People's
Religion: American Faith in the 90's [New York: Macmillan Publishing
Company, 1989], 93). Because of their connection to the evangelical
movements of the nineteenth century, the Christians described here are
sometimes referred to as "neo-evangelicals"; in the media
they are often described as "Christian conservatives" or the
"New Christian (or Religious) Right." However, most evangelicals,
if they do not identify with a larger denomination, would probably describe
themselves as "just Christian." For this group of believers,
the Bible is the unchanging and infallible word of God - the cornerstone
of the worship service as well as the guidebook for godly living. The
Scriptures contain inspiration, prayer, and literal historical narrative,
but they also provide instructions on every aspect of human affairs
from choosing church leadership to regulating individual behavior. See
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping
of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 (Oxford: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1980), and Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1991).
[8] For a contemporary
analysis, see Judith Stacey and Susan Elizabeth Gerard, "'We Are
Not Doormats': The Influence of Feminism on Contemporary Evangelicals
in the United States," in Faye Ginsburg and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
(eds.), Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 98-117.
[9] Two excellent studies
of nineteenth-century women's writings on marriage are Nicole Tonkovich,
Domesticity with a Difference: The Non-Fiction of Catharine Beecher,
Sarah J. Hale, Fanny Fern, and Margaret Fuller (Jackson: University
Press of Mississippi, 1997) and Jeanne Boydston, Mary Kelley, and Anne
Margolis, The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters of Women's
Rights and Woman's Sphere (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1988). These writings both draw from Kathryn Kish Sklar's Catharine
Beecher: A Study of Domesticity (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1973). For more on the gendered worlds of religious experience, see
Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere in New England,
1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale, 1977); Barbara Welter, "The Feminization
of American Religion: 1800-1860," Clio's Consciousness Raised:
New Perspectives on the History of Women, Mary S. Hartman and Lois
Banner, eds. (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 137-157; Ann Douglas,
The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977);
and Linda L. Kerber, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's
Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," The Journal of American
History 75 (June, 1988), 9-39.
[10] The Total Woman
also appeared regularly on the New York Times Bestsellers lists
and was named Bestseller of the Year for 1974. It has been translated
into sixteen languages (Helen Kooiman Hosier, 100 Christian Women
Who Changed the Century [Old Tappan, New Jersey: Revell, 2000],
55).
[11] Writes Dworkin,
"Conservative women see the system of sex oppression - about which
they are not stupid - as closed and unalterable...." She adds:
"Right-wing women are...pornography...as Marabel Morgan recognized
in The Total Woman.... [A]nd what they do - just like other women
- is barter" (Right Wing Women [New York: Perigree, 1983],
232-233). Germaine Greer responded to Morgan's arguments in her The
Whole Woman (New York: Knopf, 1999), a title intentionally similar
to Morgan's. More recent feminist commentaries have taken a different
tone. For example, in God's Daughters, Marie Griffith writes
of Dworkin's analysis:
The persistence of [Dworkin's] uncompromising outlook...betrays a
rude gap in what I take to be a central feminist task: focusing with
thorough mindfulness on women previously ignored or hidden from view,
including - perhaps especially - those who challenge prior assumptions
within feminist thought or who patently reject feminist tenets altogether....
[S]urely there is adequate space within a feminist agenda for careful,
empathic reconsideration of what might actually be at stake for those
women who, for religious reasons and perhaps other reasons as well,
persistently repudiate what they take to be established feminism.
(204-205)
[12] Hosier, 100
Christian Women Who Changed the Century, 56.
[13] Morgan, The
Total Woman, 80.
[14] Anita Bryant,
Bless This House (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Revell, 1972), 44.
A beauty contest winner, soloist, and sometime television commercial
actress, Anita Bryant returned to the spotlight for her political activism
in 1977. Having indirectly supported the nomination of a Miami city
councilwoman who later drafted an ordinance in favor of gay rights,
Bryant was embarrassed and then propelled into action. In her 1977 The
Anita Bryant Story: The Survival of Our Nation's Families and the Threat
of Militant Homosexuality (Revell), Bryant described her private
campaign to convince the councilwomanto drop the proposal and the decision
to reenter public life as an "anti-homosexual" activist. Buoyed
by their unexpected success in Miami, she and husband-manager Bob Green
continued to work on "pro-family" issues until their divorce
in 1980. In 1990, she married NASA engineer Charlie Dry, and the two
worked on restoring her career by opening the Anita Bryant Theater in
Branson, Missouri. It has since closed.
[15] Morgan, The
Total Woman, 71.
[16] Ibid.,
45.
[17] For the connection
between evangelical Christian ministries and the "self-help"
movements, see Wendy Simonds, Women and Self-Help Culture: Reading
Between the Lines (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers, 1992); and
Roy M. Anker, Self-Help and Popular Religion in Modern American Culture:
An Interpretive Guide, vols. 1 and 2 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood,
1999); Carol George, God's Salesman: Norman Vincent Peale and the
Power of Positive Thinking, Religion in America (New York: Oxford,
1993); and Donald Meyer The Positive Thinkers: Popular Religious
Psychology from Mary Baker Eddy to Norman Vincent Peale and Ronald Reagan
(Middleton, Connecticut: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1988).
[18] Morgan, The
Total Woman, 55.
[19] Ibid.,
58.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Lienesch, Redeeming
America, 65.
[22] Morgan, The
Total Woman, 69-70.
[23] Betty DeBerg describes
the way the "separate spheres" notion was used in popular
magazines as a way of regulating women's sexual behavior and their increasingly
bigger roles in the churches. See her Ungodly Women: Gender and the
First Wave of American Fundamentalism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990).
See also Welter, "The Feminization of American Religion: 1800-1860,"
and Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture. In her essay
"Women's History Is American Religious History," Ann
Braude challenges the Welter/Douglas narrative and argues instead that
women's roles in religious activism remained virtually constant throughout
the nineteenth century, and that the so-called feminization of this
role happened only after men sought to regain moral ground they had
lost after the Great Awakenings of the eighteenth century (Thomas A.
Tweed, ed., Retelling U.S. Religious History [Berkeley, University
of California Press, 1997], 87-107).
[24] Morgan, The
Total Woman, 71.
[25] "Preferring
One Another" (Christianity Today, 10 Sept., 1976, 15). Cited
in Lienesch, Redeeming America, 70.
[26] Total Joy (Old
Tappan, New Jersey: Revell, 1976); The Total Woman Cookbook (Berkley:
Berkley Publishing Group 1981); The Electric Woman: Hope for
Tired Mothers, Lovers, and Others (Waco, Texas: Word, 1985). Total
Joy appeared on the NRB list for only one month (July/August 1977)
and ranked at #13.
[27] Morgan, Total
Joy, 16.
[28] Ibid.,
190-191. Morgan's language and tone reflect the writings of popular
nineteenth-century novelists like Susan Warner, author of The Wide,
Wide World. In Warner's novel, a Christian stranger advises the
young heroine Ellen Montgomery:
"Come to Jesus. Do not fancy he is away up in heaven out of
reach of hearing - he is here, close to you, and knows every wish
and throb of your heart. Think you are in his presence and at his
feet, -even now, -and say to him in your heart, 'Lord, look upon me
- I am not fit to come to thee.... I give [my heart] and myself into
thy hands, oh dear Saviour [sic].'" (Susan Warner, The
Wide, Wide World [New York: Feminist Press, 1987], 73-74)
In addition to the striking similarities between this passage and Morgan's,
the older spelling of "Saviour" is retained in each, as it
is in the King James Bible (translated in 1611 and taken by many evangelical
Christians to be the only authoritative translation). Little Ellen,
whose circumstances worsen considerably throughout the novel, does well
to remember advice ("Think you are at his feet.");
she will be powerless to change her external circumstances, but will
instead draw upon her internal strength, or the "power of positive
thinking." Novels such as Warner's have recently enjoyed greater
attention from feminist scholars and evangelical Christians alike. The
former have used the texts to explore women's messages of power through
powerlessness, while the latter have reintroduced the novel to young
girls. The Wide, Wide World and other works with similar themes
(e.g., Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple and Maria Susanna Cummins'
The Lamplighter) are increasingly on the "must read"
lists for evangelical schools and appear in several home school curriculum
guides.
[29] The idea that
Christ, the bridegroom, should sacrifice himself for the church, his
bride, comes from Ephesians 5:25-31. Martin Luther explicates this passage
from Christian Liberty: "[Another] incomparable benefit
of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united
with her bridegroom. By this mystery..., Christ and the soul become
one flesh.... Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul
is full of sins, death, and damnation" (Harold J. Grimm, ed.; W.
A. Lambert, trans. [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1957], 14). The subjugation
of sexual urges through spiritual surrender is a common theme in the
medieval writings of mystics and martyrs; this theme also appears in
Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians and the Confessions of
Augustine of Hippo.
[30] Janice Radway,
Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature
(Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina, 1991 [1984]), 212.
[31] I am aware of
the many challenges made to this "traditional" interpretation
of the second Genesis creation story. I have chosen, however, to render
the interpretation promoted by the authors I have studied. Therefore,
here and elsewhere, I will use masculine pronouns when referring to
the Deity and will not comment on competing interpretations of Scriptural
texts (except in cases when the authors themselves have done
so). For an excellent discussion of alternative interpretations of the
Genesis stories, see Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent
(New York: Random House, 1988), Harold Bloom's The Book of J
(David Rosenberg, trans., New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), and John
Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks
the Meaning of Scripture (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), and Born
of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins,
1992).
[32] Lienesch, Redeeming
America, 64.
[33] Beverly LaHaye,
The Spirit-Controlled Woman (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House, 1976),
49.
[34] Tim and Beverly
LaHaye, The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1976).
[35] Tim LaHaye, Foreword,
Forever My Love by Margaret Hardisty (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest
House, 1975), n.p.
[36] Helen B. Andelin,
Fascinating Womanhood (New York: Bantam , 1980 [1964]), 221-223;
emphasis hers.
[37] Beverly LaHaye,
The Spirit-Controlled Woman, 51.
[38] Ibid.,
50; emphasis mine. Taking a cue from the authors, I use terms such as
"feminism," "women's liberation," and "women's
movements" interchangeably and without stipulating definitions.
In the writings of the authors described here, the definitions are assumed
to be self-evident; little or no distinction is made among these terms.
[39] Gini Andrews,
Your Half of the Apple: God & the Single Girl (Grand Rapids,
Michigan: Zondervan, 1972), 44.
[40] Ibid.,
101; emphasis hers. A comparison of this passage from Andrews with the
passage from LaHaye in the preceding paragraph suggests evidence of
the level of intertextuality among authors during this period of mass
production of "anti-feminist" writings.
[41] Helen Andelin,
Fascinating Womanhood, 160. Recall Marabel Morgan's 4-step plan
(accept him, admire him, adapt to him, appreciate him), which nearly
parallels Andelin's.
[42] Ibid.,
144.
[43] Ibid.,
237-238; emphasis hers.
[44] Tim LaHaye, Foreword,
You Can Be the Wife of a Happy Husband, by Darien Cooper (Wheaton,
Illinois: Victor, 1985 [1974]), 8.
[45] Cooper, You
Can Be the Wife of a Happy Husband, 17; emphasis hers.
[46] Ibid.,
36. This advice recalls Helen Andelin's "Tell him, 'I am glad I
have a strong man to protect me." The apparent "scripting"
of intimate moments between a husband and wife is a common tactic among
authors discussed here and in men's books as well. This reinforces the
evangelical belief in the stark differences between men and women that
render communication particularly difficult.
[47] Ibid.,
52.
[48] Ibid.,
79.
[49] Ibid.,
154.
[50] James Dobson,
What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women (Wheaton: Tyndale,
1975); Larry Christenson, The Christian Family (Minneapolis:
Bethany, 1977). Larry Christenson is not related to Evelyn Christenson,
whose work is discussed later in this article.
[51] Tim LaHaye, Foreword,
Forever My Love, n.p.
[52] Hardisty, Forever
My Love, 17. Note the use of Helen Andelin's "fascinating woman"
and Marabel Morgan's assumptions about both where the responsibility
for change ultimately lies and what "goodies" will certainly
result.
[53] Ibid.,
58.
[54] Ibid.,
58.
[55] Ibid.,
9.
[56] Nancy Tatom Ammerman,
Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World (New Brunswick,
New Jersey: Rutgers, 1987), 139-40.
[57] Ibid.,
140.
[58] Margaret Lamberts
Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender 1875 to the Present (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 113. Both Bendroth and Betty DeBerg
note the connection between the beginnings of American fundamentalism
and the women's movements of the turn of the century. The resurgent
evangelical/fundamentalist movements of the 1970s and 1980s likewise
are linked to the rise of "second-wave" feminism, as this
article attempts to demonstrate.
[59] Anne Ortlund,
Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman (Waco, Texas: Word, 1977),
65-66.
[60] Franklin's goal
#6: "Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut
off all unnecessary actions.
[61] Ibid.,
54-55.
[62] Jill Briscoe,
There's a Snake in My Garden (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan,
1975), 112.
[63] For an excellent
analysis, see Jane Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986). Elizabeth Fox-Genovese looks at
contemporary issues in "Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life":
How Today's Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch with the Real Concerns of
Women (New York: Doubleday, 1996).
[64] Phyllis Schlafly,
The Power of the Positive Woman (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington
House), 1977. Schlafly's book was re-released in 1981 as The Power
of the Christian Woman.
[65] Edith Schaeffer,
What Is a Family? (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975), 44-45; emphasis
hers.
[66] Elisabeth Elliott,
Let Me Be a Woman: Notes to My Daughter on the Meaning of Womanhood
(Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale, 1981 [1976]), 159-160. Notice how closely
her words parallel the concerns of "cultural" or "maternal"
feminists, who reject the equal opportunity arguments of their liberal
feminist counterparts and promote the re-valuing of "women's work."
[67] Ibid.,
45-46.
[68] In his phenomenal
best-selling book on courtship as an alternative to dating, Boy Meets
Girl: Say Hello to Courtship (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah, 2000),
Joshua Harris writes:
Elisabeth Elliott, a woman I deeply respect, wrote to her nephew
Pete, "The world cries for men who are strong - strong in conviction,
strong to lead, to stand, to suffer...." I want to be that kind
of man. I have a long way to go. I fail more often than I succeed.
I let my sin, my fear, and my laziness get the best of me. But I want
to change. I know that God has made me a man for a reason. (112-113)
[69] Elliot, Let
Me Be a Woman, 121.
[70] Tim LaHaye, Foreword,
You Can Be the Wife of a Happy Husband, 7.
[71] Beverly LaHaye,
The Spirit-Controlled Woman, 79.
[72] Evangelical theology
teaches that salvation comes from Jesus Christ, the Savior whose suffering
expiated the sins of all who would admit that they are sinners and accept
the gift of salvation. At the apocalypse, Christ will call the "saved"
home to heaven but abandon all who have rejected salvation. The salvation
experience, the profound moment at which one recognizes this truth,
is also called the "born-again," or regeneration, event. For
an excellent look at salvation narratives, including some by authors
discussed here, see Virginia L. Brereton, From Sin to Salvation:
Stories of Women's Conversion, 1800 to the Present (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991).
[73] Beverly LaHaye,
The Spirit-Controlled Woman, 78.
[74] Griffith, God's
Daughters, 199-202.
[75] Beverly LaHaye,
The Spirit-Controlled Woman, 63-64.
[76] Maxine Hancock,
Love, Honor, and Be Free (Chicago: Moody, 1975), 9.
[77] Andrews, Your
Half of the Apple, 157.
[78] Ibid.,
66.
[79] Ibid.,
106.
[80] Ibid.,
73-74.
[81] Colleen Townsend
Evans, A New Joy (New York: Pillar [Revell]), 1973), 60.
[82] Andrews, Your
Half of the Apple, 12, 76. Her quotation comes from Time magazine's
August 31, 1970, cover story, "Who's Come a Long Way, Baby?",
which credited Friedan's The Feminine Mystique with exposing
"the vacuity of many suburban housewives' lives" (17).
[83] Ibid.,
136.
[84] Catharine Marshall,
Something More: The Search for a Deeper Faith (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1974), 17. Something More and Colleen Townsend Evans' A New
Joy are the only two biographies included in this study because
they attempt to speak more generally to women about their own marriages.
Celebrity biographies (by both men and women) were extremely popular
on the lists. Female autobiographers included actress Joan Winmill Brown;
singers Dale Evans Rogers, Maria von Trapp, Ethel Waters and Norma Zimmer;
and celebrity wives Evelyn (Mrs. Oral) Roberts and Shirley (Mrs. Pat)
Boone.
[85] Most evangelical
congregations (and many other denominations as well) encourage tithing,
or giving 10% of one's income to the church for ministries and mission
work. This practice is based on their reading of Leviticus 27:30.
[86] Marshall, Something
More, 272.
[87] Catherine Marshall's
other best-selling titles during the 1970s, The Helper (Waco,
Texas: Chosen, 1978) and Adventures in Prayer (Waco, Texas: Chosen,
1975), focus more directly on this relationship with the Holy Spirit.
[88] Evelyn Christenson,
What Happens When Women Pray (Wheaton, Illinois: Victor, 1980
[1975]).
[89] Evelyn Christenson,
Lord Change Me (Colorado Springs: Victor, 1993 [1977]), 143.
[90] Ibid.,
144.
[91] Ibid.,
155.
[92] Ibid.,
10.
[93] Ibid.,
26.
[94] Briscoe, There's
a Snake in My Garden., 114.
[95] Hardisy, Forever
My Love, 96-97.
[96] Ibid.,
96.
[97] Ibid.,
90-91.
[98] Joyce Landorf,
The Fragrance of Beauty (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor, 1975 [1973]),
98.
[99] The Fragrance
of Beauty (Victor, 1973); The Richest Lady in Town (Zondervan,
1973); Mourning Song (Revell, 1974); I Came to Love You Late
(Revell, 1977); Joseph (Revell, 1979); Change Points:
When We Need Him Most (Revell, 1981); Irregular People (Word,
1982); He Began with Eve (Word, 1983); Balcony People (Word,
1984).
[100] Joyce Landorf
Heatherley, Unworld People (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987), 80.
[101] Ibid.,
83.
[102] Ibid.,
113; emphasis hers.
[103] Andrews, Your
Half of the Apple, 106-107.
[104] Because of
the longstanding suspicion among male Christian leaders that novels
can promote vice and invite moral degradation, Marshall initially faced
resistance over the idea of "Christian fiction." In spite
of this resistance, Christy became a phenomenal success and was
made into a movie, a television series starring Tyne Daly, and, most
recently, a musical. Today, Christian fiction is a recognized category
in the CBA bestsellers lists, and the CBA honors top authors in the
category with its annual "Christy" awards. Catherine Marshall
was not the first American author of Christian fiction. Grace Livingston
Hill (1865-1947) produced over seventy novels with total sales numbering
over three million (Charles H. Lippy, Becoming Religious, American
Style: A History of Popular Religiosity in the United States [Westport,
Connecticut: Praeger, 1994], 183-184). Writes Lippy:
Most of Hill's novels center around a female figure who confronts
some sort of adversity in life or high adventure.... Regardless of
the tragedies that loom and the forces that would thwart any heroine's
achieving happiness (albeit usually within the parameters of acceptable
culturally defined gender roles), she always triumphs through her
faith in the power of God.... Usually by the conclusion..., the heroine
has met and married or plans to marry a Christian (Protestant) husband
who will provide her with a secure location in the social order. (183-4)
For more on Hill, see Jan Blodgett's incredibly thorough Protestant
Evangelical Literary Culture and Contemporary Society (Contributions
to the Study of Religion 51 [Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1997]).
Since the inception of the CBA bestsellers lists in 1972, the most
successful author in this genre has been Janette Oke, whose "prairie
romances" routinely appear on the lists. Beverly LaHaye has ventured
into this genre as well, having produced a series of novels about the
family lives and struggles of suburban Christian women.
[105] Arguably, the
best-selling book in the list's history, The Hiding Place was
at the number-one position on the paperback lists for 18 (non-consecutive)
months from January of 1974 to May of 1976 and made into a television
movie (by World Wide Pictures, part of the Billy Graham Evangelical
Association) in 1975.
[106] Hosier, 100
Christian Woman Who Changed the Century, 49.
[107] According to
her website, http://www.fascinatingwomanhood.net.
[108] Anita Bryant
chronicled the story of her divorce and its aftermath in A New Day
(Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1992).
[109] The Briscoes'
website is: http://www.tellingthetruth.org.
[110] Mrs. LaHaye's
early activist years are chronicled in an excellent section of Susan
Faludi's Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
(New York: Doubleday, 1991) entitled "A Spirit-Controlled Woman...Or
a Control-Seeking Spirit?" (247-256). The CWA was recently honored
by Attorney General John Ashcroft for its work on behalf of his nomination,
which was opposed by many liberal groups and most Democratic senators.
Tim LaHaye, in collaboration with sportswriter Jerry B. Jenkins, has
enjoyed a publishing renaissance during the 1990s with the books in
his apocalyptic-themed Left Behind series. CWA's website is http://www.cwfa.org. Tim LaHaye's
books are promoted at http://www.leftbehind.com.
[111] See http://www.balconypublishing.com.
[112] Hosier, 100
Christian Women Who Changed the 20th Century, 333. The
official L'Abri website is http://www.labri.org.
[113] Streams
in the Desert, a series of devotionals for each day of the year,
has appeared regularly on the bestseller lists since they began
in 1972 and has never been out of print. Zondervan has released an updated
version featuring more contemporary language. For an excellent analysis
of this perennial favorite, see Cheryl Forbes, "Coffee, Mrs. Cowman,
and the Devotional Life of Women Reading in the Desert," David
Hall, ed., Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 116-132.
[114] Marshall, Something
More, 292.
[115] For example,
compare Marshall's words to the Warner passage in note 28.
