BROADCASTS.com

The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism's Politics of the Family\xa0(Rutgers University Press, 2021)\xa0provides an account of how a theology of the family came to dominate a white evangelical tradition in the post-civil rights movement United States, providing a theological corollary to Religious Right politics. This tradition inherently enforces racial inequality in that it draws moral, religious, and political attention away from problems of racial and economic structural oppression, explaining all social problems as a failure of the individual to achieve the strong gender and sexual identities that ground the nuclear family. The consequences of this theology are both personal suffering for individuals who cannot measure up to prescribed gender and sexual roles, and political support for conservative government policies. Exposure to experiences that undermine the idea that an emphasis on the family is the solution to all social problems is causing a younger generation of white evangelicals to shift away from this narrow theological emphasis and toward a more social justice-oriented theology. The material and political effects of this shift remain to be seen.\nSophie Bjork-James\xa0is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She has over ten years of experience researching both the US based Religious Right and the white nationalist movements.\nShe is the author of\xa0The Divine Institution:\xa0White Evangelicalism\u2019s Politics of the Family\xa0(Rutgers 2021, winner of the the Anne Bolin & Gil Herdt Book Prize from the Human Sexuality and Anthropology Interest Group (HSAIG)) and the co-editor of\xa0Beyond Populism: Angry Politics and the Twilight of Neoliberalism\xa0(2020). Her work has appeared recently in\xa0American Anthropologist, Oxford Bibliographies,\xa0the\xa0Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Feminist Anthropology,\xa0and\xa0Transforming Anthropology.\xa0She has been interviewed on the NBC\xa0Nightly News,\xa0NPR\u2019s\xa0All Things Considered,\xa0BBC Radio 4\u2019s\xa0Today,\xa0and in the\xa0New York Times. She has published op-eds in the\xa0LA Times, Religious Dispatches,\xa0and the\xa0Conversation\xa0among others.\xa0She is a senior fellow with the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right and a fellow with the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism and a board member for the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.\n\nJoseph Gaines\xa0can be reached at jgaines1091@gmail.com\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies