Superstars and Misfits: Two Pop-trends in the Gender Culture of Contemporary Evangelicalism

Authors

Kelsy Burke, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Amy McDowell, University of PittsburghFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

Spring 2012

Citation

Published in The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 24:1 (Spring 2012), pp 67–79.

doi:10.3138/jrpc.24.1.67

Comments

Published by the University of Toronto Press. Used by permission.

Abstract

This paper examines gender in two forms of mediated contemporary Protestant evangelicalism in the United States: a male-dominated punk network, called Misfits United, and a women’s group studying Beth Moore’s Bible study, It’s Tough Being a Woman (ITBAW). While the appearance and performance styles of these two groups are drastically different, both support gender hierarchies in similar ways. Misfits United and Moore’s ITBAW present the gender of their Christian God as flexible, even transformative, and in effect open up discursive space to conceptualize gender on non-traditional grounds. Paradoxically, however, both reinforce traditional gender roles by emphasizing what distinguishes God from His creation: the gendered constraints of human biology.