Changing of the gods: The gender and family discourse of American evangelicalism in historical perspective

A growing number of recent studies have called attention to a series of striking contradictions in contemporary evangelical family relations. This study draws on insights from Michel Foucault's theory of discourse in order to investigate the historical forces which underlie these contemporary contradictions. An indashdepth analysis of various secondary historical sources reveals that contemporary evangelicals are the heirs to a two-century-old religious heritage that is replete with gender and family contradictions, including internecine debates over family relations and normative-behavioral discrepancies in the household practice of gender. This study concludes by-highlighting the connection between these gender and family contradictions, on the one hand, and the ambivalence of evangelicalism toward individualism and modern American culture on the other.