Episode Details

Are you a total woman?

We've been waiting literal years for Kristin Kobes Du Mez's new book "Live Laugh Love." And here it is! Just in time for a new season of Saved By the City.

One thing that struck us about Kristin’s new book is how much it centers on consumer products marketed to Christian women. It’s less a history of ideas from the top down and more a history of ideas from the ground up, via the things that white Christian women buy and sell. And so many of those cultural artifacts were familiar to us! Like "Love Comes Softly," by Janette Oke, or "Christy" by Catherine Marshall.

Kristin’s book also features two of our favorite SBTC guests! Beth Moore and Amy Grant, of course.

But as we’ll get into with Kristin, a lot of these cultural artifacts taught women to be happy despite the circumstances – to kind of accept their lot in life with a smile on their faces and to above all make their husbands happy. As Kristin explains, there’s a dark side to this power of positive thinking.

GUEST:

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is the author of "Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made" and the New York Times bestseller "Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation." She is a professor of history at Calvin University.

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