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Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made
From the New York Times best-selling author of Jesus and John Wayne, a revelatory history of white Christian womanhood in the United States.
In Jesus and John Wayne, a book that has changed how countless Americans understand their faith, historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez showed how evangelicals made Jesus into an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. Now she unearths the roots of the glittering, Instagram-ready culture of white Christian femininity.
Opening in the late nineteenth century, Live Laugh Love traces how New Thought, a movement that championed the power of the mind to shape reality, combined with holiness evangelicalism to create the world inhabited by millions of Christian women. Du Mez introduces us to religious innovators who taught that positivity was the secret to spiritual and material success and reveals how they worked through consumer culture: mommy blogs and romance novels, Hobby Lobby aisles and pastel-scripted wall art. Marketed as empowerment, these products and slogans elevate vulnerability and domesticity, and in the process draw women into systems prone to manipulation and abuse. In this brilliant recasting of modern American Christianity, Du Mez unearths the hidden origins of our reactionary moment.
In Jesus and John Wayne, a book that has changed how countless Americans understand their faith, historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez showed how evangelicals made Jesus into an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. Now she unearths the roots of the glittering, Instagram-ready culture of white Christian femininity.
Opening in the late nineteenth century, Live Laugh Love traces how New Thought, a movement that championed the power of the mind to shape reality, combined with holiness evangelicalism to create the world inhabited by millions of Christian women. Du Mez introduces us to religious innovators who taught that positivity was the secret to spiritual and material success and reveals how they worked through consumer culture: mommy blogs and romance novels, Hobby Lobby aisles and pastel-scripted wall art. Marketed as empowerment, these products and slogans elevate vulnerability and domesticity, and in the process draw women into systems prone to manipulation and abuse. In this brilliant recasting of modern American Christianity, Du Mez unearths the hidden origins of our reactionary moment.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 2026
About the author
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
7 books924 followersBorn and raised in Iowa with brief sojourns in Tallahassee, FL, and Ostfriesland, Germany. PhD from the University of Notre Dame, and now I reside in Grand Rapids, MI. I have 3 kids, 1 dog, and I write on gender, religion, and politics.
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April 7, 2026Take all my money
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Alright, let's be honest. You read the entire title for Live Laugh Love by Kristin Kobes Du Mez and probably had feelings. Let me go ahead and cut to the chase and answer what I believe each audience might ask.
I am a devout Evangelical. Is this book just some trashy and targeted takedown of my sincerely held beliefs by taking things out of context?
Absolutely not. Du Mez does not write a hateful screed about Evangelicals. She doesn't attribute everything bad on earth to Evangelicals. That said, you're probably not going to like this book for reasons in my next answer.
I am an Exvangelical. I think the country is going to hell in a handbasket because of this strain of religion. Will I be happy?
No, probably not completely. Du Mez keeps her writing factual and devoid of personal opinion. However, what she chooses to include and the connections she makes says oodles about what side of the fence she would land on if she gave her honest opinion.
I'm none of the above. I want a book that tells me why some things on social media seem strangely coded. What about me?
Ding ding ding! You are the optimal audience for this book and will enjoy it immensely. The other groups might still like it, but your lack of familiarity (or some might say baggage) with the subject means you will get a lot out of this.
Du Mez goes way back in time to show how, specifically, White Christian women of a certain persuasion would create something like the phrase, "Live, Laugh, Love" and make it impossible to miss. As with anything that covers a possibly controversial topic, people may argue about how all these pieces come together. Maybe something like Little House on the Prairie didn't mean as much to the Evangelical movement as Du Mez attributes. However, this is not a hit piece with outlandish connections. I will say that it starts slow. Du Mez needs to condense quite a bit of theology and characters to create the foundation for the rest of the book. Du Mez explains in the introduction that she intended to make a lighter narrative than her previous book, but soon realized she needed to add a lot more. The beginning feels like having to eat your vegetables before your steak. We all know what we want to get to, but the vegetables are important. Blech.
In the end, this is a good book, but be honest about which audience you are and how much you want your worldview challenged (if any).
(This book was provided as a review copy by Liveright Books.)
I am a devout Evangelical. Is this book just some trashy and targeted takedown of my sincerely held beliefs by taking things out of context?
Absolutely not. Du Mez does not write a hateful screed about Evangelicals. She doesn't attribute everything bad on earth to Evangelicals. That said, you're probably not going to like this book for reasons in my next answer.
I am an Exvangelical. I think the country is going to hell in a handbasket because of this strain of religion. Will I be happy?
No, probably not completely. Du Mez keeps her writing factual and devoid of personal opinion. However, what she chooses to include and the connections she makes says oodles about what side of the fence she would land on if she gave her honest opinion.
I'm none of the above. I want a book that tells me why some things on social media seem strangely coded. What about me?
Ding ding ding! You are the optimal audience for this book and will enjoy it immensely. The other groups might still like it, but your lack of familiarity (or some might say baggage) with the subject means you will get a lot out of this.
Du Mez goes way back in time to show how, specifically, White Christian women of a certain persuasion would create something like the phrase, "Live, Laugh, Love" and make it impossible to miss. As with anything that covers a possibly controversial topic, people may argue about how all these pieces come together. Maybe something like Little House on the Prairie didn't mean as much to the Evangelical movement as Du Mez attributes. However, this is not a hit piece with outlandish connections. I will say that it starts slow. Du Mez needs to condense quite a bit of theology and characters to create the foundation for the rest of the book. Du Mez explains in the introduction that she intended to make a lighter narrative than her previous book, but soon realized she needed to add a lot more. The beginning feels like having to eat your vegetables before your steak. We all know what we want to get to, but the vegetables are important. Blech.
In the end, this is a good book, but be honest about which audience you are and how much you want your worldview challenged (if any).
(This book was provided as a review copy by Liveright Books.)
July 16, 2026
Sit up and pay attention because Kristin Kobes Du Mez is here to educate you. 👏
Live Laugh Love is a history of how modern white evangelical womanhood was shaped. It is one of the most thoroughly researched books I’ve read recently, backed by forty-nine pages of endnotes that reflect the depth of archival research and sources behind Du Mez’s observations and arguments.
As noted in the introduction, what began as an “attempt to tease out the roots of popular Christian women’s culture” became “a new genealogy of twentieth-century American religion.” This historical thread is the book’s strength. Rather than presenting isolated events or themes, Du Mez demonstrates how ideas evolved across generations through influential people, bestselling books, publishing houses, churches, businesses, and media. The result is a surprisingly understandable explanation of how an entire culture came to be. (Understandable, and yet, dizzying.)
Du Mez traces how the teachings of holiness theology, New Thought, Fascinating Womanhood, and other movements influenced Christian publishing, retail, purity culture, influencer culture, MLMs, and, well, basically everything else we see in American evangelicalism today. Not many trends have occurred in isolation — they shape one another.
My favorite thread in the book follows Elisabeth Elliot, as Du Mez refuses to flatten her legacy. Elliot emerges as a complex figure whose evolving theology, writings, and life choices challenged and later reinforced the ideals of conservative evangelical womanhood.
Du Mez does not overstate the evidence, but provides a compelling historical record. The stories speak for themselves, the thread becoming stronger over time.
The final chapter of the book is a heavy load, bringing the reader to the present day, covering everything from—well, I started making a list but gave up. This chapter really covers all of *gestures vaguely* this. Every topic feels worthy of its own chapter. Had there been another hundred pages, I happily would have kept reading. Maybe she’s saving it for the next book. 😉
This is not a light read. The substance and the stories will (have I already said it?) make you dizzy. If you’ve spent any time around American evangelicalism, you will see the threads everywhere. You might even look at the Precious Moments figurine collecting dust on your shelf and suddenly understand how it fits into a much larger story.
Excellent book. Definitely want more. Pair this with Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne for an in-depth study of modern American evangelicalism through a cultural framework of masculinity and femininity.
Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy of this title!
Live Laugh Love is a history of how modern white evangelical womanhood was shaped. It is one of the most thoroughly researched books I’ve read recently, backed by forty-nine pages of endnotes that reflect the depth of archival research and sources behind Du Mez’s observations and arguments.
As noted in the introduction, what began as an “attempt to tease out the roots of popular Christian women’s culture” became “a new genealogy of twentieth-century American religion.” This historical thread is the book’s strength. Rather than presenting isolated events or themes, Du Mez demonstrates how ideas evolved across generations through influential people, bestselling books, publishing houses, churches, businesses, and media. The result is a surprisingly understandable explanation of how an entire culture came to be. (Understandable, and yet, dizzying.)
Du Mez traces how the teachings of holiness theology, New Thought, Fascinating Womanhood, and other movements influenced Christian publishing, retail, purity culture, influencer culture, MLMs, and, well, basically everything else we see in American evangelicalism today. Not many trends have occurred in isolation — they shape one another.
My favorite thread in the book follows Elisabeth Elliot, as Du Mez refuses to flatten her legacy. Elliot emerges as a complex figure whose evolving theology, writings, and life choices challenged and later reinforced the ideals of conservative evangelical womanhood.
Du Mez does not overstate the evidence, but provides a compelling historical record. The stories speak for themselves, the thread becoming stronger over time.
The final chapter of the book is a heavy load, bringing the reader to the present day, covering everything from—well, I started making a list but gave up. This chapter really covers all of *gestures vaguely* this. Every topic feels worthy of its own chapter. Had there been another hundred pages, I happily would have kept reading. Maybe she’s saving it for the next book. 😉
This is not a light read. The substance and the stories will (have I already said it?) make you dizzy. If you’ve spent any time around American evangelicalism, you will see the threads everywhere. You might even look at the Precious Moments figurine collecting dust on your shelf and suddenly understand how it fits into a much larger story.
Excellent book. Definitely want more. Pair this with Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne for an in-depth study of modern American evangelicalism through a cultural framework of masculinity and femininity.
Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy of this title!
May 19, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for providing me with an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.
For me and many others “Jesus and John Wayne” was an important and influential book, but “Live Laugh Love” somehow manages to outdo it. Kristen Kobes du Mez dives deep into the history and impact of holiness theology and the philosophy of New Thought on modern day evangelicalism. Along the way, she highlights the ideals of “the fascinating women,” the role of MLMs, purity culture, and the intertwined nature of capitalism and evangelical womanhood.
This is an incredibly well researched piece of work that manages to be utterly engaging and enraging all at the same time. The analysis of how totalising systems, the theology of holiness, and the seven mountains mandate have led to the present day strength of Christian nationalism is illuminating. The book provides a satisfying level of depth and new information even for those of us with a deep personal and academic knowledge of evangelicalism.
I can’t recommend this book more whole-heartedly!
For me and many others “Jesus and John Wayne” was an important and influential book, but “Live Laugh Love” somehow manages to outdo it. Kristen Kobes du Mez dives deep into the history and impact of holiness theology and the philosophy of New Thought on modern day evangelicalism. Along the way, she highlights the ideals of “the fascinating women,” the role of MLMs, purity culture, and the intertwined nature of capitalism and evangelical womanhood.
This is an incredibly well researched piece of work that manages to be utterly engaging and enraging all at the same time. The analysis of how totalising systems, the theology of holiness, and the seven mountains mandate have led to the present day strength of Christian nationalism is illuminating. The book provides a satisfying level of depth and new information even for those of us with a deep personal and academic knowledge of evangelicalism.
I can’t recommend this book more whole-heartedly!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
“The was supposed to be the fun book.” Only the second paragraph in and I knew I was in for a ride. When I read a book like this I always feel compelled to give my credentials: I was homeschooled, I spent most of my life in a southern baptist church (the rest in presby-churches), and I live in the Bible Belt. Though I’ve read Jesus and John Wayne, I felt like someone on the outside looking in, recognizing things but never quite feeling like they touched my life in any drastic way. This book hit a lot closer to home and really shocked me at times (it is very hard to shock me anymore), I confess letting out a few expletives.
Something pervasive throughout this history was the influence of New Thought: a movement that pushed the idea of “right-thinking” that can heal, bless, and change a persons life for the better. Now, we may call it “Word of Faith” or “Prosperity Gospel.” Out of that came books like the Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, the Power of the Positive Woman by Phyllis Schlafly, and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie just to name a few. The thinking was that if you just gave up and submitted to God (or to those above you who “represented” God) and thought positively, you would be healthy, wealthy, and wise. Finally living the promised happy life. If you weren’t blessed with the desires of your heart, well, it was your fault for being lazy and negative.
This book covers many more pieces of history like Christian marketing of books and TV shows (Janet Oke novels and Little House on the Prairie), Contemporary Christian Music artists (Amy Grant, Stacie Orrico, Etc), Multi-Level Marketing schemes, Hallmark, and Christian women influencers like Elisabeth Elliot, who was “as close as one could come to evangelical sainthood.” Through recent biographies of Elliot, we find that much of her work came out during her third marriage to an abusive and controlling man. Even when her family tried to help her, Elliot stayed with her husband. Believing that “submission to her husband was obedience to God.” This wasn’t just Elliot’s message. Marabel Morgan, Anita Bryant, and Hannah Whitall Smith all preached a similar message to their ladies. Although it was much easier to preach submission than to live it as Bryant found out. Her husband/manager, pastor, marriage councilor, and all-male board tried to control her money, engagements, and events. When she fought them, they threatened her. Bryant finally divorced her husband, and the world she built came tumbling down around her. A woman who didn’t follow the rules couldn’t be trusted.
My Kindle says that I highlighted 353 passages in this book. It was such a fascinating and horrifying history that, had I read a hard copy, the whole book may now be highlighted. In my opinion, like with Jesus and John Wayne, this is a must-read for the church.
Something pervasive throughout this history was the influence of New Thought: a movement that pushed the idea of “right-thinking” that can heal, bless, and change a persons life for the better. Now, we may call it “Word of Faith” or “Prosperity Gospel.” Out of that came books like the Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, the Power of the Positive Woman by Phyllis Schlafly, and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie just to name a few. The thinking was that if you just gave up and submitted to God (or to those above you who “represented” God) and thought positively, you would be healthy, wealthy, and wise. Finally living the promised happy life. If you weren’t blessed with the desires of your heart, well, it was your fault for being lazy and negative.
This book covers many more pieces of history like Christian marketing of books and TV shows (Janet Oke novels and Little House on the Prairie), Contemporary Christian Music artists (Amy Grant, Stacie Orrico, Etc), Multi-Level Marketing schemes, Hallmark, and Christian women influencers like Elisabeth Elliot, who was “as close as one could come to evangelical sainthood.” Through recent biographies of Elliot, we find that much of her work came out during her third marriage to an abusive and controlling man. Even when her family tried to help her, Elliot stayed with her husband. Believing that “submission to her husband was obedience to God.” This wasn’t just Elliot’s message. Marabel Morgan, Anita Bryant, and Hannah Whitall Smith all preached a similar message to their ladies. Although it was much easier to preach submission than to live it as Bryant found out. Her husband/manager, pastor, marriage councilor, and all-male board tried to control her money, engagements, and events. When she fought them, they threatened her. Bryant finally divorced her husband, and the world she built came tumbling down around her. A woman who didn’t follow the rules couldn’t be trusted.
My Kindle says that I highlighted 353 passages in this book. It was such a fascinating and horrifying history that, had I read a hard copy, the whole book may now be highlighted. In my opinion, like with Jesus and John Wayne, this is a must-read for the church.
September 13, 2026
When I first read Jesus and John Wayne in 2022, I was on my way out of Christian nationalism but didn't yet realize it. My review from back then acknowledges that this historical survey of white evangelical masculinity is deeply researched and solidly cited. I couldn't argue with the problematic nature of the culture du Mez was talking about, given she uses verbatim quotes and historic records to make her case. But I also expressed confusion. This is me she's talking about? Because I was indeed raised on Newsboys and VeggieTales and "conservative family values." But also…not me? Because (for just one example) I believed in a Strong Military [TM] but I didn't see war as a glorious proving ground for masculinity, and I had been pretty sure nobody else in the culture did either. Except according to du Mez, they did. And she had the receipts.
At the end of my review, I said I wished I could get coffee with the author and ask her so many questions. I look back on my 2022 self with compassion now, because I was trying to understand while also resisting the idea that my entire life was built on something toxic and anti-Jesus.
It's hard to fathom that only four years have passed since I finished that book and sat in frustrated, semi-offended confusion. I had a choice to make: either keep digging, keep reading, and keep listening…or double down and write off this incredibly researched book. I'm grateful that I chose the former. I'm proud of the confused woman who didn't hold onto the anger and anxiety she'd been taught were righteousness, and instead was willing to say, "what if my cultural bubble is lying to me about other things too?"
Now I'm alllll the way out of there, and now here is the companion book, an equally impactful historical survey of white evangelical femininity. With impeccable research and a knack for sensible connections, the author weaves a tapestry of purity culture, positivity culture, and consumer culture as they are imposed on white evangelical women. She shows how these thought systems reinforced each other over time, how they became all-encompassing for the women discipled therein. She shows how so many of the culture's enforcers were later victimized by it, and how so many of the culture's victims chose to enforce it for their own power and preservation. From Aimee Semple McPherson to Beth Moore, from Elisabeth Elliot to Janette Oke, from Phyllis Schlafly to Allie Beth Stuckey-as always du Mez lets them tell us in their own words exactly who they are.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. It's a challenge, especially if you're in the place today that I was back in 2022. My challenge to fellow white women who were raised in this: read this book anyway, no matter where you are on the journey right now. Sit with it. Feel the confusion, poke it with questions, keep reading and listening and asking and learning.
At the end of my review, I said I wished I could get coffee with the author and ask her so many questions. I look back on my 2022 self with compassion now, because I was trying to understand while also resisting the idea that my entire life was built on something toxic and anti-Jesus.
It's hard to fathom that only four years have passed since I finished that book and sat in frustrated, semi-offended confusion. I had a choice to make: either keep digging, keep reading, and keep listening…or double down and write off this incredibly researched book. I'm grateful that I chose the former. I'm proud of the confused woman who didn't hold onto the anger and anxiety she'd been taught were righteousness, and instead was willing to say, "what if my cultural bubble is lying to me about other things too?"
Now I'm alllll the way out of there, and now here is the companion book, an equally impactful historical survey of white evangelical femininity. With impeccable research and a knack for sensible connections, the author weaves a tapestry of purity culture, positivity culture, and consumer culture as they are imposed on white evangelical women. She shows how these thought systems reinforced each other over time, how they became all-encompassing for the women discipled therein. She shows how so many of the culture's enforcers were later victimized by it, and how so many of the culture's victims chose to enforce it for their own power and preservation. From Aimee Semple McPherson to Beth Moore, from Elisabeth Elliot to Janette Oke, from Phyllis Schlafly to Allie Beth Stuckey-as always du Mez lets them tell us in their own words exactly who they are.
I can't recommend this book highly enough. It's a challenge, especially if you're in the place today that I was back in 2022. My challenge to fellow white women who were raised in this: read this book anyway, no matter where you are on the journey right now. Sit with it. Feel the confusion, poke it with questions, keep reading and listening and asking and learning.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
“Live Laugh Love is a book about love and fear, longing and greed, about Mary Kay makeup, Christian romance novels, Joyce Meyer Ministries, and Ballerina Farm. Its cast of characters includes true believers and charlatans, well-intentioned people and predators, and it is not always clear who is who. This is also a book about politics.” (KK du Mez, from the Introduction of Live, Laugh, Love)
First of all - thanks to the publisher for this free copy of the book in exchange for this review. I admit I haven’t read Jesus and John Wayne - the book she wrote on white men in evangelicalism… I was too scared. I felt too rattled by everything I was seeing and experiencing at the time and hearing the ending was pretty depressing, I didn’t have it in me. Second of all, I’m writing this as a white Canadian evangelical - so I’m both a participant and onlooker. I’ve lived or recognized all of what she writes about from the 90s on, but many aspects were not as intense or were irrelevant to my life (politics for example). Most importantly, Christianity looks different in Canada because politics was usually kept out of other pulpit unless there was something egregious going on. This has shifted in the last 10 years to look more American.
So back to the book. KK Du Mez begins the book in the mid 1800s and brought us right to the end of 2025.
The broad strokes of the book look at the confluence of New Thought and Holiness Theology, showing how these two concepts would partially define what womanhood was, and how certain key figures in the mid 1900s would refine and continue these ideas until they became deeply entrenched in white evangelical culture.
Part 1 Covers 1800s-1950s, Part 2 covers 1950s-2000s, and Part 3 covers 2000s to 2025. Part 1 felt slow at times for me partly because it was talking about a lot of people I had never heard of, but then it really picked up as we moved closer to the 1900s. There were many people I recognized that not everyone will, and certain organizations came up in the conversation more than I expected to (Campus Crusade). She spends a lot more time on some characters (Henrietta Mears and Elizabeth Elliot get a lot of pages) than others (Beth Moore’s intro was so short it almost seemed like a snub, despite her being later painted as one of the ‘good ones’). She talked way more about counter-communism measures than I expected as well.
I was disappointed by how one-sided it was with little explanation of alternative perspective, or attempt to give the benefit of the doubt to certain people. I think she mostly has it right, though is not always giving some parties as much credit as they maybe deserve. One example is the way she talks about Campus Crusade in the early years. She makes it sound like their only goal was to crush communism, but I think that’s an unfair assessment. I can’t argue that this wasn’t an aspect of the motivation (though it was news to me, despite spending 25 years of my life and counting with the organization), but I’m also confident that the organization was built on a sincere love for the God and desire to follow him. Can both of these things be true? Yes. I think it would have helped her point to show how a deep devotion to God and desire to see as many people know Jesus as possible, combined with a political agenda can lead in a troubling direction.
Another example was showing the negative side of Holiness Theology. This is a main focus of the book and, as someone whose primary experiences have been of the evangelical holiness variety, I felt left with more questions than answers. I appreciate being shown how much white evangelical culture in America is perhaps culturally influenced or influenced by a certain group of influential people, but it only feels partially helpful when no alternative is offered. It reminded me of a parenting book I read that dismantled the use of spanking and time-outs as reasonable tools for parents, and didn’t offer any solutions or direction for the parent. I finished that book feeling less equipped than I had been at the beginning!
Du Mez certainly hints at some solutions, but I think at times her hints are going to fall on deaf ears because of how hard she goes at the end of the book, again, not showing what an alternative there is. Du Mez rests her rifle on the white picket fence of America and takes shots at the gathering Girl Wash Your Face bookclub/Tupperware party. What do white American women have left if their whole value structure is full of rot?
Overall she does a really good job at showing how people like Hannah Whitall Smith, Dale Carnegie, Elizabeth Elliot, and Mary Kay have similar values than anyone might imagine, and how much free-market-capitalism was actually encouraged by key evangelical figures. It shows the problems associated with publishing houses and radio stations that are funded by random christians (as opposed to being connected to a denomination) and shows just how influential one or two very loud voices can be. As an aside, I was both rattled by and low-key proud of how much impact (damage?) one small semi-obscure Canadian Bible college has had on this entire story.
Ex-vangelicals will love this book, left-leaning Christians will love this book, the folks who see major problems with American evangelicalism will find this book alarming with exactly how many of the supposed ‘good guys’ maybe had problematic intentions, and I suspect many people who follow TPUSA and other conservative movements will hear negative reviews (or who is giving positive reviews of this book) and never pick it up. I hope some of the louder voices who are critical of the current problems in evangelicalism don’t talk to loudly about the book - so that it can get into the hands of those who need to read it most.
I hope many white women read this book with an open mind because it really is very interesting, even if she is trying to dismantle a large part of our culture. No culture has it all right but I hope us white women have the eyes to see the ways in which we can turn our backs on our friends of colour in order to protect the imagined ideal of a white picket fence—or maybe how in our present era, protect a life worthy of an “instagram aesthetic.”
First of all - thanks to the publisher for this free copy of the book in exchange for this review. I admit I haven’t read Jesus and John Wayne - the book she wrote on white men in evangelicalism… I was too scared. I felt too rattled by everything I was seeing and experiencing at the time and hearing the ending was pretty depressing, I didn’t have it in me. Second of all, I’m writing this as a white Canadian evangelical - so I’m both a participant and onlooker. I’ve lived or recognized all of what she writes about from the 90s on, but many aspects were not as intense or were irrelevant to my life (politics for example). Most importantly, Christianity looks different in Canada because politics was usually kept out of other pulpit unless there was something egregious going on. This has shifted in the last 10 years to look more American.
So back to the book. KK Du Mez begins the book in the mid 1800s and brought us right to the end of 2025.
The broad strokes of the book look at the confluence of New Thought and Holiness Theology, showing how these two concepts would partially define what womanhood was, and how certain key figures in the mid 1900s would refine and continue these ideas until they became deeply entrenched in white evangelical culture.
Part 1 Covers 1800s-1950s, Part 2 covers 1950s-2000s, and Part 3 covers 2000s to 2025. Part 1 felt slow at times for me partly because it was talking about a lot of people I had never heard of, but then it really picked up as we moved closer to the 1900s. There were many people I recognized that not everyone will, and certain organizations came up in the conversation more than I expected to (Campus Crusade). She spends a lot more time on some characters (Henrietta Mears and Elizabeth Elliot get a lot of pages) than others (Beth Moore’s intro was so short it almost seemed like a snub, despite her being later painted as one of the ‘good ones’). She talked way more about counter-communism measures than I expected as well.
I was disappointed by how one-sided it was with little explanation of alternative perspective, or attempt to give the benefit of the doubt to certain people. I think she mostly has it right, though is not always giving some parties as much credit as they maybe deserve. One example is the way she talks about Campus Crusade in the early years. She makes it sound like their only goal was to crush communism, but I think that’s an unfair assessment. I can’t argue that this wasn’t an aspect of the motivation (though it was news to me, despite spending 25 years of my life and counting with the organization), but I’m also confident that the organization was built on a sincere love for the God and desire to follow him. Can both of these things be true? Yes. I think it would have helped her point to show how a deep devotion to God and desire to see as many people know Jesus as possible, combined with a political agenda can lead in a troubling direction.
Another example was showing the negative side of Holiness Theology. This is a main focus of the book and, as someone whose primary experiences have been of the evangelical holiness variety, I felt left with more questions than answers. I appreciate being shown how much white evangelical culture in America is perhaps culturally influenced or influenced by a certain group of influential people, but it only feels partially helpful when no alternative is offered. It reminded me of a parenting book I read that dismantled the use of spanking and time-outs as reasonable tools for parents, and didn’t offer any solutions or direction for the parent. I finished that book feeling less equipped than I had been at the beginning!
Du Mez certainly hints at some solutions, but I think at times her hints are going to fall on deaf ears because of how hard she goes at the end of the book, again, not showing what an alternative there is. Du Mez rests her rifle on the white picket fence of America and takes shots at the gathering Girl Wash Your Face bookclub/Tupperware party. What do white American women have left if their whole value structure is full of rot?
Overall she does a really good job at showing how people like Hannah Whitall Smith, Dale Carnegie, Elizabeth Elliot, and Mary Kay have similar values than anyone might imagine, and how much free-market-capitalism was actually encouraged by key evangelical figures. It shows the problems associated with publishing houses and radio stations that are funded by random christians (as opposed to being connected to a denomination) and shows just how influential one or two very loud voices can be. As an aside, I was both rattled by and low-key proud of how much impact (damage?) one small semi-obscure Canadian Bible college has had on this entire story.
Ex-vangelicals will love this book, left-leaning Christians will love this book, the folks who see major problems with American evangelicalism will find this book alarming with exactly how many of the supposed ‘good guys’ maybe had problematic intentions, and I suspect many people who follow TPUSA and other conservative movements will hear negative reviews (or who is giving positive reviews of this book) and never pick it up. I hope some of the louder voices who are critical of the current problems in evangelicalism don’t talk to loudly about the book - so that it can get into the hands of those who need to read it most.
I hope many white women read this book with an open mind because it really is very interesting, even if she is trying to dismantle a large part of our culture. No culture has it all right but I hope us white women have the eyes to see the ways in which we can turn our backs on our friends of colour in order to protect the imagined ideal of a white picket fence—or maybe how in our present era, protect a life worthy of an “instagram aesthetic.”
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thanks to NetGalley & W.W. Norton for the ARC!
Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made is a peculiar follow-up to Jesus and John Wayne, applying scholarly rigor to a subject that seems just beyond its reach.
When I first read Jesus and John Wayne in 2020, it felt cathartic, almost prophetic. It was a robust and reflective piece of insider scholarship that got evangelicals and critiqued them without resentment or feel-good platitudes. It felt like real accountability. Granted, a lot has changed since 2020, but if there was ever a time for Du Mez to apply her insight to the world of Janette Oke, Erika Kirk, and tradwife influencers, it would be now.
Right?
The answer isn’t so simple.
Jesus and John Wayne felt so revelatory because it found deep connections between theology, praxis, and politics. Conversely, Live Laugh Love is almost shockingly superficial, but that doesn’t seem to be a fault of the author. She traces the influence of “New Thought” positive thinking from the 1890s through a range of topics, such as MLMs and purity culture and Amish romance, but she butts up against the fact that “positive thinking” is essentially a refusal to critically engage with the world. As such, its wholesale adoption seems so arbitrary that that it’s strikingly undramatic and resistant to analysis. While John Wayne showcased a stomach-turning, almost conspiratorial grab for political power, this book addresses a disinterest in anything but maintaining the patriarchal status quo. Jesus and John Wayne dissected an implicit argument; Live Laugh Love merely documents tacit acceptance.
Similarly, the book’s premise presents another challenge—how does one center a group whose identity is built on self-imposed marginalization? The patriarchal shadow of complementarianism looms over Live Laugh Love, and Du Mez often turns her attention away from women to focus on the men they follow. When a group’s MO is deference of the “just ask my husband” variety, readers are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time learning about husbands. Unfortunately, this also makes Live Laugh Love feel more like an addendum to Jesus and John Wayne than a standalone work of research. Granted, it’s interesting to see Du Mez pull at the same threads with half a decade of hindsight, but they feel frayed and fatigued in our current milieu. In 2020, we were looking over a tipping point. In 2026, however, Americans live and breathe the reality that the author describes, so it doesn’t feel like there are any real takeaways. This is all just another Tuesday.
By the end of the book, I wondered if scholarly work can really contend with a news cycle predicated on chaos and emotional whiplash. One gets the sense that paragraphs were being added right up until the moment of publication, and while it’s exciting to see an author so engaged, it almost dilutes the book’s thesis by offering evidence that hasn’t had time to settle. I appreciate the inclusion of stories like the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, but their immediacy precludes perspective. These “stop the presses” details also create a bit of an odd patchwork where a person or concept is introduced, seemingly dropped, and then reintroduced later to reflect recent developments.
And yet, Live Laugh Love still feels vital, even if it feels less urgent than its predecessor. It’s heartbreaking to follow the story of Elizabeth Elliot. It’s baffling to see the blurred line between faith as belief and faith as aesthetic. It’s devastating to read about incredible women who surrendered their identities to platform mediocre men. It all still resonates, and I suspect it will be eye-opening for some people deep in the evangelical subculture. Jesus and John Wayne already demanded readers reflect on their complicity, so maybe it’s enough that Live Laugh Love gently invites them out of it.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made is a peculiar follow-up to Jesus and John Wayne, applying scholarly rigor to a subject that seems just beyond its reach.
When I first read Jesus and John Wayne in 2020, it felt cathartic, almost prophetic. It was a robust and reflective piece of insider scholarship that got evangelicals and critiqued them without resentment or feel-good platitudes. It felt like real accountability. Granted, a lot has changed since 2020, but if there was ever a time for Du Mez to apply her insight to the world of Janette Oke, Erika Kirk, and tradwife influencers, it would be now.
Right?
The answer isn’t so simple.
Jesus and John Wayne felt so revelatory because it found deep connections between theology, praxis, and politics. Conversely, Live Laugh Love is almost shockingly superficial, but that doesn’t seem to be a fault of the author. She traces the influence of “New Thought” positive thinking from the 1890s through a range of topics, such as MLMs and purity culture and Amish romance, but she butts up against the fact that “positive thinking” is essentially a refusal to critically engage with the world. As such, its wholesale adoption seems so arbitrary that that it’s strikingly undramatic and resistant to analysis. While John Wayne showcased a stomach-turning, almost conspiratorial grab for political power, this book addresses a disinterest in anything but maintaining the patriarchal status quo. Jesus and John Wayne dissected an implicit argument; Live Laugh Love merely documents tacit acceptance.
Similarly, the book’s premise presents another challenge—how does one center a group whose identity is built on self-imposed marginalization? The patriarchal shadow of complementarianism looms over Live Laugh Love, and Du Mez often turns her attention away from women to focus on the men they follow. When a group’s MO is deference of the “just ask my husband” variety, readers are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time learning about husbands. Unfortunately, this also makes Live Laugh Love feel more like an addendum to Jesus and John Wayne than a standalone work of research. Granted, it’s interesting to see Du Mez pull at the same threads with half a decade of hindsight, but they feel frayed and fatigued in our current milieu. In 2020, we were looking over a tipping point. In 2026, however, Americans live and breathe the reality that the author describes, so it doesn’t feel like there are any real takeaways. This is all just another Tuesday.
By the end of the book, I wondered if scholarly work can really contend with a news cycle predicated on chaos and emotional whiplash. One gets the sense that paragraphs were being added right up until the moment of publication, and while it’s exciting to see an author so engaged, it almost dilutes the book’s thesis by offering evidence that hasn’t had time to settle. I appreciate the inclusion of stories like the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, but their immediacy precludes perspective. These “stop the presses” details also create a bit of an odd patchwork where a person or concept is introduced, seemingly dropped, and then reintroduced later to reflect recent developments.
And yet, Live Laugh Love still feels vital, even if it feels less urgent than its predecessor. It’s heartbreaking to follow the story of Elizabeth Elliot. It’s baffling to see the blurred line between faith as belief and faith as aesthetic. It’s devastating to read about incredible women who surrendered their identities to platform mediocre men. It all still resonates, and I suspect it will be eye-opening for some people deep in the evangelical subculture. Jesus and John Wayne already demanded readers reflect on their complicity, so maybe it’s enough that Live Laugh Love gently invites them out of it.
September 17, 2026
I Lived, I Laughed, I Left.
Twenty-five years ago, I was a college senior preparing to celebrate my 21st birthday. While many of my peers spent their 21st getting dunked in the school fountain after spending a night at clubs downtown, I was at the grocery store picking up a single serving bottle of wine to accompany the dinner I’d planned to make for myself and my husband after he got home from work. At the time, I took pride in being someone with her head on straight, trusting God, and enjoying the fruits of right living. We had shared our first kiss at the altar a few months prior, right after spring semester ended. Our wedding kicked off another busy summer wedding season for the campus ministry we were involved in. Over the summer, I was busy setting up our married-student apartment on campus and volunteering at the local crisis pregnancy center. By fall, I started my final year in school, my husband was starting his dream job at our beloved church as the new Youth Director, and everything seemed like it was going according to God’s plan. The next day was 9/11. We were angry, distraught, and leaned on our faith and conservative talk radio to help us make sense of what was happening in the world.
I guess everyone looks back at certain choices they made in their 20s with some amount of regret. But for the past few years, I have tried to understand what made a #tradwife lifestyle so appealing to me, a woman who did not grow up in an evangelical church. This summer, the puzzle pieces began sliding into place as I read Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
Du Mez traces the history of influential White Christian women in the United States from the early 1800s to present day, weaving the stories of one generation with the next and pointing out the common threads holding them together. As an experienced historian and expert storyteller, she brings them to life on the page. As a reader, I vacillated between feeling compassion for them and frustration with some of the choices they made. By the end of the book, I better understood the history and culture of White Christian women and why it’s not a coincidence that so many of them love Hobby Lobby and view Charlie Kirk as a Christian martyr. Understanding the women helps you see how they shaped both evangelical Christianity and the current political landscape in the United States. So, even if you’ve never heard of them, these women have impacted your life.
Du Mez’s first book, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation,” helped me put together the puzzle of why evangelicals embraced Trump, thinking of him as just the right hero to fight for the Christan cause. Her New York Times bestseller brought clearer focus on the spiritual motives behind conservative political alliances and why 81% of White Evangelicals supported him. As part of the 19% who didn’t, my husband and I struggled to understand how our brothers and sisters not only voted for him but saw him as a first choice not a last resort. We sat stunned in our staff ministry team meeting the day after the election as our boss seemed giddy and made us all watch the coverage on TV while our administrative assistant joked that “the Trump had sounded.” I don’t think we realized how much we had changed in the previous decade. A few years after 9/11, my husband stopped listening to Rush Limbaugh because he noticed it just made him angrier and he felt like it wasn’t good for his soul. In 2011, we began working for a ministry to internationals and contact with more diverse people expanded our understanding of what the global church looked like outside of US evangelicalism. We enjoyed Christian hip hop and some of the artists we liked began speaking up about their experience of racism and we listened. After the election, my husband and I were confused by and disillusioned with fellow Christians because of their support for Trump. Reading Jesus & John Wayne a few years later was like finding a pile of missing puzzle pieces on the floor and everything began to make more sense.
Where her first book traced how the idea of “Biblical Manhood” was commandeered for political purposes, Live Laugh Love details how “Biblical Womanhood” was similarly misappropriated. This latest contribution continues to trace the link between Christianity and conservative politics by explaining the influence of the Seven Mountain Movement, how it led to Project 2025, and why many are happily cheering on a rightward trajectory of government, hoping for a Christian theocracy.
If you are an outsider looking in, bewildered by this trend, both her books should be on your TBR list. If you are an insider to Christian culture like me, this book will read like a familiar story (although even I could have used a cheat sheet or index of women to keep them all straight). For everyone, it’s important to understand how we got to where we are today and examine the impact so we can make course corrections. The encouragement I’m taking from the book is that White Christian women have a lot of power and influence. As a White Christan woman myself, I want to leverage that power to advocate for change that will benefit those who may not have the same cultural capital.
Next month, the college ministry that my husband and I were a part of, Campus Crusade for Christ (now CRU) will celebrate the 60th anniversary of being at our alma mater. Because I had often heard Bill and Vonette Bright’s origin story, I understand why college campuses were considered a strategic mission field for the gospel. Because of Live Laugh Love, I am now able see how the closely the crusade for Christ was linked with a conservative political mission and how women like Vonette facilitated that movement.
I often wonder about my friends from college. I know several marriages were over before we even had our first child and many since then have left Christianity altogether. My husband and I are still #blessed and still practicing Christians, but we are not the same people and not sure if we even consider ourselves evangelicals anymore. Would we have much in common now with people at the reunion? In some ways, reading Live Laugh Love helped me to understand some of the choices I made back then, like joining a multi-level marketing company and becoming a stay-at-home mom, a reflection of the ideals put forth by the women in this book and promoted by the women in my home church.
The prohibition against women in ministry leadership meant women had to find other ways to utilize their God-given gifts. I believe God had called me to ministry, and I was following that call in the best way I could, by being a pastor’s wife. My husband probably stayed in ministry longer than he felt called to it because I wanted to keep “minister’s wife” as a part of my own identity. Six years ago this month, I joined the staff of our beloved church because they wanted to have a woman’s voice at the leadership table. I also started seminary and my convictions around complementarianism came crumbling down as I realized I had been shaped by Christian culture rather than what the Bible said about women. Finally, four years ago today we left our beloved church because as I found my voice and used it at their table, they silenced it and put me out.
Like Du Mez, I am concerned about the trajectory of our nation and evangelical Christianity in the US. Live Laugh Love was supposed to be the “fun book,” she says. However, it ends at a moment in time where future White Christian women must decide if we want to continue to continue repackaging the 1800’s version of “Fascinating/Biblical Womanhood” or whether we will go back even further to the Bibe itself. From there we can find role models in the women whose stories have been ignored and suppressed. Will we aspire to be like Phoebe, who Paul entrusted with his most important theological treatise, the book of Romans? Will we learn how the apostle Junia was made into a man to obscure the role women played in early church leadership? Will we keep relying on what pastors and books have told us about the Bible or will we investigate it for ourselves?
Live Laugh Love connects the dots and once you’ve seen the connections, you can’t unsee them. Will we take the blue pill and ignore this history so we can continue to embrace ignorance and comfort? Or will we take the red pill, embracing our freedom in Christ and looking reality in the face. Instead of continually scapegoating feminism and liberals as the root of all evil, it’s time that Christian women take a long look in the mirror at our own history and recognize how we have been complicit in our own subjugation, causing harm to the body of Christ and suppressing the good news of the gospel. And then decide, what do we do want to do next?
Twenty-five years ago, I was a college senior preparing to celebrate my 21st birthday. While many of my peers spent their 21st getting dunked in the school fountain after spending a night at clubs downtown, I was at the grocery store picking up a single serving bottle of wine to accompany the dinner I’d planned to make for myself and my husband after he got home from work. At the time, I took pride in being someone with her head on straight, trusting God, and enjoying the fruits of right living. We had shared our first kiss at the altar a few months prior, right after spring semester ended. Our wedding kicked off another busy summer wedding season for the campus ministry we were involved in. Over the summer, I was busy setting up our married-student apartment on campus and volunteering at the local crisis pregnancy center. By fall, I started my final year in school, my husband was starting his dream job at our beloved church as the new Youth Director, and everything seemed like it was going according to God’s plan. The next day was 9/11. We were angry, distraught, and leaned on our faith and conservative talk radio to help us make sense of what was happening in the world.
I guess everyone looks back at certain choices they made in their 20s with some amount of regret. But for the past few years, I have tried to understand what made a #tradwife lifestyle so appealing to me, a woman who did not grow up in an evangelical church. This summer, the puzzle pieces began sliding into place as I read Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
Du Mez traces the history of influential White Christian women in the United States from the early 1800s to present day, weaving the stories of one generation with the next and pointing out the common threads holding them together. As an experienced historian and expert storyteller, she brings them to life on the page. As a reader, I vacillated between feeling compassion for them and frustration with some of the choices they made. By the end of the book, I better understood the history and culture of White Christian women and why it’s not a coincidence that so many of them love Hobby Lobby and view Charlie Kirk as a Christian martyr. Understanding the women helps you see how they shaped both evangelical Christianity and the current political landscape in the United States. So, even if you’ve never heard of them, these women have impacted your life.
Du Mez’s first book, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation,” helped me put together the puzzle of why evangelicals embraced Trump, thinking of him as just the right hero to fight for the Christan cause. Her New York Times bestseller brought clearer focus on the spiritual motives behind conservative political alliances and why 81% of White Evangelicals supported him. As part of the 19% who didn’t, my husband and I struggled to understand how our brothers and sisters not only voted for him but saw him as a first choice not a last resort. We sat stunned in our staff ministry team meeting the day after the election as our boss seemed giddy and made us all watch the coverage on TV while our administrative assistant joked that “the Trump had sounded.” I don’t think we realized how much we had changed in the previous decade. A few years after 9/11, my husband stopped listening to Rush Limbaugh because he noticed it just made him angrier and he felt like it wasn’t good for his soul. In 2011, we began working for a ministry to internationals and contact with more diverse people expanded our understanding of what the global church looked like outside of US evangelicalism. We enjoyed Christian hip hop and some of the artists we liked began speaking up about their experience of racism and we listened. After the election, my husband and I were confused by and disillusioned with fellow Christians because of their support for Trump. Reading Jesus & John Wayne a few years later was like finding a pile of missing puzzle pieces on the floor and everything began to make more sense.
Where her first book traced how the idea of “Biblical Manhood” was commandeered for political purposes, Live Laugh Love details how “Biblical Womanhood” was similarly misappropriated. This latest contribution continues to trace the link between Christianity and conservative politics by explaining the influence of the Seven Mountain Movement, how it led to Project 2025, and why many are happily cheering on a rightward trajectory of government, hoping for a Christian theocracy.
If you are an outsider looking in, bewildered by this trend, both her books should be on your TBR list. If you are an insider to Christian culture like me, this book will read like a familiar story (although even I could have used a cheat sheet or index of women to keep them all straight). For everyone, it’s important to understand how we got to where we are today and examine the impact so we can make course corrections. The encouragement I’m taking from the book is that White Christian women have a lot of power and influence. As a White Christan woman myself, I want to leverage that power to advocate for change that will benefit those who may not have the same cultural capital.
Next month, the college ministry that my husband and I were a part of, Campus Crusade for Christ (now CRU) will celebrate the 60th anniversary of being at our alma mater. Because I had often heard Bill and Vonette Bright’s origin story, I understand why college campuses were considered a strategic mission field for the gospel. Because of Live Laugh Love, I am now able see how the closely the crusade for Christ was linked with a conservative political mission and how women like Vonette facilitated that movement.
I often wonder about my friends from college. I know several marriages were over before we even had our first child and many since then have left Christianity altogether. My husband and I are still #blessed and still practicing Christians, but we are not the same people and not sure if we even consider ourselves evangelicals anymore. Would we have much in common now with people at the reunion? In some ways, reading Live Laugh Love helped me to understand some of the choices I made back then, like joining a multi-level marketing company and becoming a stay-at-home mom, a reflection of the ideals put forth by the women in this book and promoted by the women in my home church.
The prohibition against women in ministry leadership meant women had to find other ways to utilize their God-given gifts. I believe God had called me to ministry, and I was following that call in the best way I could, by being a pastor’s wife. My husband probably stayed in ministry longer than he felt called to it because I wanted to keep “minister’s wife” as a part of my own identity. Six years ago this month, I joined the staff of our beloved church because they wanted to have a woman’s voice at the leadership table. I also started seminary and my convictions around complementarianism came crumbling down as I realized I had been shaped by Christian culture rather than what the Bible said about women. Finally, four years ago today we left our beloved church because as I found my voice and used it at their table, they silenced it and put me out.
Like Du Mez, I am concerned about the trajectory of our nation and evangelical Christianity in the US. Live Laugh Love was supposed to be the “fun book,” she says. However, it ends at a moment in time where future White Christian women must decide if we want to continue to continue repackaging the 1800’s version of “Fascinating/Biblical Womanhood” or whether we will go back even further to the Bibe itself. From there we can find role models in the women whose stories have been ignored and suppressed. Will we aspire to be like Phoebe, who Paul entrusted with his most important theological treatise, the book of Romans? Will we learn how the apostle Junia was made into a man to obscure the role women played in early church leadership? Will we keep relying on what pastors and books have told us about the Bible or will we investigate it for ourselves?
Live Laugh Love connects the dots and once you’ve seen the connections, you can’t unsee them. Will we take the blue pill and ignore this history so we can continue to embrace ignorance and comfort? Or will we take the red pill, embracing our freedom in Christ and looking reality in the face. Instead of continually scapegoating feminism and liberals as the root of all evil, it’s time that Christian women take a long look in the mirror at our own history and recognize how we have been complicit in our own subjugation, causing harm to the body of Christ and suppressing the good news of the gospel. And then decide, what do we do want to do next?
August 29, 2026
Live, Laugh, Love by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, gave me an eye-opening walkthrough of the Christian women’s cultural landscape of roughly the last fifty years. Du Mez examines how ideas about Christian womanhood have been shaped not only by theology and churches, but also by popular culture, publishing, music, television, home and lifestyle media, inspirational fiction, parenting culture, and the broader Christian marketplace. I found the book especially interesting because it shows how these seemingly ordinary forms of entertainment and advice can communicate powerful assumptions about what women should value, how they should behave, what their families should look like, and what constitutes a successful Christian life. Rather than presenting this history as a simple story of oppression or conformity, Du Mez explores the complicated ways women have participated in, embraced, negotiated, and sometimes resisted these expectations. I appreciated that approach because it made the subject feel more nuanced and human. One of the most eye-opening aspects for me was seeing how the Christian women’s marketplace evolved alongside larger cultural changes, including feminism, postfeminism, consumer culture, changing ideas about motherhood, and shifting expectations surrounding work and family. The book also helped me understand how products and media marketed as wholesome or inspirational can carry broader cultural and political assumptions. I found Live, Laugh, Love both engaging and thought-provoking, and I came away with a much better understanding of the world of Christian women’s popular culture and how it has developed over the past several decades. More than anything, I appreciated the way Du Mez encouraged me to look beyond individual books, songs, shows, and trends and consider the larger cultural system connecting them.
#LiveLaughLove #NetGalley
#LiveLaughLove #NetGalley
September 16, 2026
Summary: A look at women in Evangelical Christianity and how they have influenced and been influenced by the culture.
I read Jesus and John Wayne not long after it first came out. And then I read it again with a book club in 2023. The history in Jesus and John Wayne and now in Live Laugh Love is largely familiar to me. I have read the books and known about the people and followed the news and even met a couple of the people who are mentioned.
I think one of the problems that Mark Noll identified in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, and that which I have heard Pete Enns and many other Christian academics expand on, is the problem of the role of intellectualism within Evangelicalism. To tell the story of evangelicalism from a slightly different tack from Du Mez, Neo-evangelicalism's founders were trying to break away from the fundamentalism's antagonism toward not only culture, but the tools of the culture. And fundamentalism fought back against evangelicalism with the charge that it was trying to make culture like it and build clout. But over time, those who were fundamentalist in orientation against the broader culture, adopted the evangelical label and many of those who would have been apart of the original neo-evangelical orientation either were pushed out, or left in disgust.
I have seen a number of people dismiss Du Mez broadly over the past week or so with some version of "she is just a marxist." Early in the book she says, "Ultimately, this book is about power--about women's power to define their own lives, men's power over women, and the power women wield over one another. It is about discipleship and devotion, authority and submission, manipulation, cruelty, and control." (I read a prerelease version provided by Netgalley for purposes of review so I will not give a page number to the quote because my version is likely not paginated as the released version.)
That quote rightly says that she is studying how power impact Christianity. That is not to say that the only thing in the book is power, but to pretend that post-marxian scholars cannot do look at power without being "marxist" is like saying that post-Adam Smith economists cannot look at the role of wealth without being capitalists or that biologists can't look at biological change without being darwinists. Once the a tool has been released into the world, that tool exists and to not use it because of a fear of a label is exactly the type of anti-intellectualism that Noll was rightly concerned about in evangelicalism.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez knows how to write a narrative. She weaves together historical threads that tell a compelling story. If every historian was as good of a writer as Du Mez, I think a lot more people would read more history. But what I think is important to say here for the non-historian (I am not a historian by training, but I have read a fair about about historiography) is that being a historian is not simply telling a story that has connection to historical facts. A historian is researching connections and through-lines and how things are connected. The historian is not just forming a narrative, but trying to explore the connections that already exists and reveal them to the reader. Where historians will disagree is the weight given to various connections or if there are other connection that have more explanatory power, etc.
One of the clearest examples of the connections that already exist, but need pointing out, is that Hannah Whitall Smith's The Christian Secret of a Happy Life (1875) was cited by Marabel Morgan who wrote The Total Woman in 1973, which was very clearly a repackaging of the Fascinating Womanhood self improvement class, which she had taken and was a facilitator for. Fascinating Womanhood, book and the classes, were written by Helen Andelin, a Mormon, which were inspired by Fascinating Womanhood booklets which were by Elizabeth Towne (also Mormon) in 1922. So one of the best selling Evangelical women's books in history explicitly cited Hannah Whitall Smith, but then also largely plagiarized Towne and Andelin for the main content of the book without citation.
When Smith's teachings were mixed with EW Kenyon teachings, which appropriated "New Thought" teachings and the holiness revival movement which had some influence on those who came out of the Pentecostal Azuza Street revival, the result was a type of prosperity gospel. One of the weaknesses of the book, or at least one of the areas where I wanted more, was that Hannah Whitall Smith was oriented toward how the use of the will allowed one to overcome sin. But over time there was a cultural shift which shifted the orientation from seeking after God's will to change our will to a more amorphous idea of feelings which we then shared with God for what we want. That is a subtle shift, but an important one. Expanding on it would have helped draw connections to why what can too casually be labeled as prosperity gospel is so influential, while being something that almost no one will claim for themselves.
I am going to be too brief here, but the "will" is about aligning ourselves to God and in the Ignatian sense the individual or group of Christians may work toward something they feel called to, but the main orientation is toward seeking after God's will not their own. In English, the term from Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises is usually translated "indifferent" which isn't quite right in modern usage. But that problem of translation is part of what I think needs to be explored more here because in all of these books there is no "indifference' toward our own will or feelings. Instead these books seek to help people understand their desires so that they can bring them about.
One of the main threads of the book is how this "New Thought" movement mixed in with evangelical theology and practice. New Thought was trying to imagine a result and that act of imagination would bring it about. This the what underlies "The Power of Positive Thinking" or "The Secret." You can see how Ignatius understanding of indifference to our own will in the light of God's will, and then Hannah Whitall Smith's Quaker upbringing prioritized her inner voice, which kept morphing in the 150 years since it was written.
I can't summarize the whole book but I think there are two threads in Live Laugh Love that are worth attention. The first is how common women's ministry has emphasized an ideal that the main proponents did not live. Many of the women in this book became rich and/or influential selling their ideas and that required work outside of the home. But many of the ideas being sold were about why women should seek after a domestic ideal. The "prosperity gospel" aspects of this, "if you do this, then God will bless you," were quite often not present in the lives of many advocates. There is a very good long section on Elizabeth Elliot whose Passion and Purity helped to launch the modern purity movement. She spoke about submitting to God and her husband. But her first husband was a martyred missionary. Her second husband died fairly young with health issues. And her third husband was emotionally and physically abusive starting almost immediately after their wedding was over. She advocated leaning into an ideal of womanhood and family, both because she thought it was the right thing to do, but also because she thought that it would bring about good results in this life in a way that she didn't experience herself.
The second thread is that there really is a desire in not just Evangelicalism, but both US culture and I think all of humanity, to assume that simple formulas will bring about the results that we desire instead of grappling with the reality that formulas don't work. Reality is much more complicated and while there is value in doing the right thing for its own sake, doing the right thing will not get us what we want every time. Where I think the "prosperity gospel" label is unhelpful is that there really is value in doing the right thing. And sometimes our mixing of "do the right thing" with "so you will get..." is where the problem lies. As Du Mez shows over and over again, formulas almost never work for most people. But those who sell formulas, often make a lot of money. Those who use the formulas, rarely find the results that they want.
In an interview with The Holy Post, Du Mez was directly asked if she thought many of the people who were profiting off of the ideas discussed in the book were simply grifters. She said that she knows that there are grifters in this world. And that there are true believers who are simply attempting to follow what they think is God's direction. But she can't get to the internal motivation that would distinguish between the two. She can only point to the results.
There will be lots of complaints about Live Laugh Love (like Bonnie Kristian's review at Christianity Today) which complain about Du Mez being too negative about Evangelical Christianity. But I think we really do need to grapple with why so many people want the simple formulas for how to live life that are discussed in the book. Those who didn't like Jesus and John Wayne are unlikely to like Live Laugh Love. But I do think that Live Laugh Love is a more nuanced and mature book. And I hope it finds just as large of an audience as her earlier book did.
This was originally posted to my blog at https://bookwi.se/live-laugh-love/
I read Jesus and John Wayne not long after it first came out. And then I read it again with a book club in 2023. The history in Jesus and John Wayne and now in Live Laugh Love is largely familiar to me. I have read the books and known about the people and followed the news and even met a couple of the people who are mentioned.
I think one of the problems that Mark Noll identified in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, and that which I have heard Pete Enns and many other Christian academics expand on, is the problem of the role of intellectualism within Evangelicalism. To tell the story of evangelicalism from a slightly different tack from Du Mez, Neo-evangelicalism's founders were trying to break away from the fundamentalism's antagonism toward not only culture, but the tools of the culture. And fundamentalism fought back against evangelicalism with the charge that it was trying to make culture like it and build clout. But over time, those who were fundamentalist in orientation against the broader culture, adopted the evangelical label and many of those who would have been apart of the original neo-evangelical orientation either were pushed out, or left in disgust.
I have seen a number of people dismiss Du Mez broadly over the past week or so with some version of "she is just a marxist." Early in the book she says, "Ultimately, this book is about power--about women's power to define their own lives, men's power over women, and the power women wield over one another. It is about discipleship and devotion, authority and submission, manipulation, cruelty, and control." (I read a prerelease version provided by Netgalley for purposes of review so I will not give a page number to the quote because my version is likely not paginated as the released version.)
That quote rightly says that she is studying how power impact Christianity. That is not to say that the only thing in the book is power, but to pretend that post-marxian scholars cannot do look at power without being "marxist" is like saying that post-Adam Smith economists cannot look at the role of wealth without being capitalists or that biologists can't look at biological change without being darwinists. Once the a tool has been released into the world, that tool exists and to not use it because of a fear of a label is exactly the type of anti-intellectualism that Noll was rightly concerned about in evangelicalism.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez knows how to write a narrative. She weaves together historical threads that tell a compelling story. If every historian was as good of a writer as Du Mez, I think a lot more people would read more history. But what I think is important to say here for the non-historian (I am not a historian by training, but I have read a fair about about historiography) is that being a historian is not simply telling a story that has connection to historical facts. A historian is researching connections and through-lines and how things are connected. The historian is not just forming a narrative, but trying to explore the connections that already exists and reveal them to the reader. Where historians will disagree is the weight given to various connections or if there are other connection that have more explanatory power, etc.
One of the clearest examples of the connections that already exist, but need pointing out, is that Hannah Whitall Smith's The Christian Secret of a Happy Life (1875) was cited by Marabel Morgan who wrote The Total Woman in 1973, which was very clearly a repackaging of the Fascinating Womanhood self improvement class, which she had taken and was a facilitator for. Fascinating Womanhood, book and the classes, were written by Helen Andelin, a Mormon, which were inspired by Fascinating Womanhood booklets which were by Elizabeth Towne (also Mormon) in 1922. So one of the best selling Evangelical women's books in history explicitly cited Hannah Whitall Smith, but then also largely plagiarized Towne and Andelin for the main content of the book without citation.
When Smith's teachings were mixed with EW Kenyon teachings, which appropriated "New Thought" teachings and the holiness revival movement which had some influence on those who came out of the Pentecostal Azuza Street revival, the result was a type of prosperity gospel. One of the weaknesses of the book, or at least one of the areas where I wanted more, was that Hannah Whitall Smith was oriented toward how the use of the will allowed one to overcome sin. But over time there was a cultural shift which shifted the orientation from seeking after God's will to change our will to a more amorphous idea of feelings which we then shared with God for what we want. That is a subtle shift, but an important one. Expanding on it would have helped draw connections to why what can too casually be labeled as prosperity gospel is so influential, while being something that almost no one will claim for themselves.
I am going to be too brief here, but the "will" is about aligning ourselves to God and in the Ignatian sense the individual or group of Christians may work toward something they feel called to, but the main orientation is toward seeking after God's will not their own. In English, the term from Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises is usually translated "indifferent" which isn't quite right in modern usage. But that problem of translation is part of what I think needs to be explored more here because in all of these books there is no "indifference' toward our own will or feelings. Instead these books seek to help people understand their desires so that they can bring them about.
One of the main threads of the book is how this "New Thought" movement mixed in with evangelical theology and practice. New Thought was trying to imagine a result and that act of imagination would bring it about. This the what underlies "The Power of Positive Thinking" or "The Secret." You can see how Ignatius understanding of indifference to our own will in the light of God's will, and then Hannah Whitall Smith's Quaker upbringing prioritized her inner voice, which kept morphing in the 150 years since it was written.
I can't summarize the whole book but I think there are two threads in Live Laugh Love that are worth attention. The first is how common women's ministry has emphasized an ideal that the main proponents did not live. Many of the women in this book became rich and/or influential selling their ideas and that required work outside of the home. But many of the ideas being sold were about why women should seek after a domestic ideal. The "prosperity gospel" aspects of this, "if you do this, then God will bless you," were quite often not present in the lives of many advocates. There is a very good long section on Elizabeth Elliot whose Passion and Purity helped to launch the modern purity movement. She spoke about submitting to God and her husband. But her first husband was a martyred missionary. Her second husband died fairly young with health issues. And her third husband was emotionally and physically abusive starting almost immediately after their wedding was over. She advocated leaning into an ideal of womanhood and family, both because she thought it was the right thing to do, but also because she thought that it would bring about good results in this life in a way that she didn't experience herself.
The second thread is that there really is a desire in not just Evangelicalism, but both US culture and I think all of humanity, to assume that simple formulas will bring about the results that we desire instead of grappling with the reality that formulas don't work. Reality is much more complicated and while there is value in doing the right thing for its own sake, doing the right thing will not get us what we want every time. Where I think the "prosperity gospel" label is unhelpful is that there really is value in doing the right thing. And sometimes our mixing of "do the right thing" with "so you will get..." is where the problem lies. As Du Mez shows over and over again, formulas almost never work for most people. But those who sell formulas, often make a lot of money. Those who use the formulas, rarely find the results that they want.
In an interview with The Holy Post, Du Mez was directly asked if she thought many of the people who were profiting off of the ideas discussed in the book were simply grifters. She said that she knows that there are grifters in this world. And that there are true believers who are simply attempting to follow what they think is God's direction. But she can't get to the internal motivation that would distinguish between the two. She can only point to the results.
There will be lots of complaints about Live Laugh Love (like Bonnie Kristian's review at Christianity Today) which complain about Du Mez being too negative about Evangelical Christianity. But I think we really do need to grapple with why so many people want the simple formulas for how to live life that are discussed in the book. Those who didn't like Jesus and John Wayne are unlikely to like Live Laugh Love. But I do think that Live Laugh Love is a more nuanced and mature book. And I hope it finds just as large of an audience as her earlier book did.
This was originally posted to my blog at https://bookwi.se/live-laugh-love/
Review of advance copy received from Author
Calvin University Professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez does it again with a deep dive into the conservative Christian historical movement that has brought us to where we are. This supplement to "Jesus and John Wayne" focuses on white women specifically and the many influencers (in a historical sense) who have published, spoken, filmed and sold their perspectives, some with great financial profit. Kristin is not just a historian; she's a storyteller with thick enough skin to know she's going to ruffle up some feathers to bring this important material to light.
As a boy raised in the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, to a father raised in a Swedenborgian community, I can totally relate to so many elements of this book. From heavy doses of "Little House on the Prairie" and its libertarian ideology, CCM, 1980s church youth group, the Focus on the Family media empire (including a puberty/sex ed teaching I attended at a local Southern Baptist church around 7th grade), purity culture and a heavy list of dos and don’ts to prove how good a Christian I was... this book seemed to sum up much of what I lived through and have been dealing with as I try to find a more healthy version of this Christian journey.
I received an advance copy to prep for a podcast episode recording of "Awkward Christian Questions" where the show host Drew Dyck and I interviewed Kristin yesterday. Our topic will focus on deconstruction. Looking forward to seeing how this book makes a mark and helps those who are grappling with their own spiritual journeys.
As a boy raised in the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, to a father raised in a Swedenborgian community, I can totally relate to so many elements of this book. From heavy doses of "Little House on the Prairie" and its libertarian ideology, CCM, 1980s church youth group, the Focus on the Family media empire (including a puberty/sex ed teaching I attended at a local Southern Baptist church around 7th grade), purity culture and a heavy list of dos and don’ts to prove how good a Christian I was... this book seemed to sum up much of what I lived through and have been dealing with as I try to find a more healthy version of this Christian journey.
I received an advance copy to prep for a podcast episode recording of "Awkward Christian Questions" where the show host Drew Dyck and I interviewed Kristin yesterday. Our topic will focus on deconstruction. Looking forward to seeing how this book makes a mark and helps those who are grappling with their own spiritual journeys.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Like Jesus and John Wayne, Live Laugh Love was scrupulously researched and brilliantly written. Kobes Du Mez connects the dots regarding how white Christian women have been complicit in offering both a false hope (e.g., prosperity gospel) and a watered-down gospel for generations. This is both tragic and maddening. Tragic because in settling for Holy Crap (the title of chapter 11 which includes Amish romance novels and Precious Moments figurines) and perpetuating multi-level marketing schemes, we dumb ourselves down and miss the power and the import of the true gospel message. We also end up harming those who don't have access to power or who are not white. This is all part of why we find ourselves in a country that esteems and fights for Christian nationalism (IOW, racism and patriarchy) rather than actual Christian values where everyone flourishes and racial/gender hierarchies are abolished. It's a difficult, but important read.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thanks to NetGalley and Liveright for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
This book was a great followup to Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, as plenty of others have attested.
I particularly appreciated the writing style: Du Mez kept the story tights even as she covered dizzying amount of people, organization, and marketing jargon. She kept the prose tight, and the summary sections at the end of each chapter brought the streams together in coherent fashion. One can also come across phrases or parenthetical comments that will strike you hard in the chest: some make you laugh, other make you cry, but they all make you think.
My favorite parts of this book included sections that weren't expected: Elizabeth Elliott's complexity, the use of communist brain-washing techniques by Christians and Mormons, etc.
American Christian women will likely have other parts that stand out to them, so I'll leave those for another reviewer. For me, this just spoke much-needed context into the conversation about hierarchy, power, and profit that infects so much of contemporary American evangelicalism.
This book was a great followup to Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, as plenty of others have attested.
I particularly appreciated the writing style: Du Mez kept the story tights even as she covered dizzying amount of people, organization, and marketing jargon. She kept the prose tight, and the summary sections at the end of each chapter brought the streams together in coherent fashion. One can also come across phrases or parenthetical comments that will strike you hard in the chest: some make you laugh, other make you cry, but they all make you think.
My favorite parts of this book included sections that weren't expected: Elizabeth Elliott's complexity, the use of communist brain-washing techniques by Christians and Mormons, etc.
American Christian women will likely have other parts that stand out to them, so I'll leave those for another reviewer. For me, this just spoke much-needed context into the conversation about hierarchy, power, and profit that infects so much of contemporary American evangelicalism.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
It took me a while to know what I wanted to say about Life Laugh Love.
I finished Jesus and John Wayne on January 6th, 2021, and it felt as if what I was watching on television was the result of everything that book was building to. I told folks that nothing in that book was a surprise to me, and none of it was new, but I appreciated how she'd woven the story together.
Live Laugh Love was different - the first half(ish) is slow as Du Mez is putting together some of the less obvious narratives. Where Jesus and John Wayne was urgent, this felt more methodical. The thing is, this book is about white Christian women's culture, so a lot of it is less visible and much of it still had to center around men. I still found plenty of my girlhood in its pages, though. Throughout, you see how white evangelical Christian women are set up to fail when they can't reach the standard of cheerful perfection and are consumed and used up in pursuit of that goal.
There were occasionally things that I'd think, "Why didn't she include _____," and then she would include it a few pages or chapters later. This is a very thorough account of how white women are complicit victims in our current moment.
I finished Jesus and John Wayne on January 6th, 2021, and it felt as if what I was watching on television was the result of everything that book was building to. I told folks that nothing in that book was a surprise to me, and none of it was new, but I appreciated how she'd woven the story together.
Live Laugh Love was different - the first half(ish) is slow as Du Mez is putting together some of the less obvious narratives. Where Jesus and John Wayne was urgent, this felt more methodical. The thing is, this book is about white Christian women's culture, so a lot of it is less visible and much of it still had to center around men. I still found plenty of my girlhood in its pages, though. Throughout, you see how white evangelical Christian women are set up to fail when they can't reach the standard of cheerful perfection and are consumed and used up in pursuit of that goal.
There were occasionally things that I'd think, "Why didn't she include _____," and then she would include it a few pages or chapters later. This is a very thorough account of how white women are complicit victims in our current moment.
September 22, 2026
"Patriarchy, white supremacy and violent religious nationalism are one hell of an unholy trinity".
I was a missionary child and grew up Christian. My parents had a lot of American colleagues. Apparently none of these subscribed to the evangelical Christianity as presented in this book. The wives were mostly equal and most of them certainly did not seem submissive. As a result, I have struggled to understand how evangelical Christians, much less evangelical Christian women, could vote for a convicted rapist and pedophile who was caught on tape saying "grab them by the pussy".
This book tries its best to explain how. It's actually not that hard. Christian women are used to submitting to male hierarchy, and from their churches they are used to accepting male sexual violence. Women who have tried to stand up against abuse have been frozen out of their churches, pressured to forgive and/or to retract. Basically, the evangelical Christian woman is supposed to submit to her husband in all things, be grateful and remember to smile. She must think positive thoughts and if she does this well enough, good things will come. God wants his sheep to prosper! If you do not, then it is your own fault. Certainly not a result of systemic injustices, racism or misogyny.
Empathy is toxic, because showing mercy to someone who is not prospering is evil because it is disserving to god's purpose. This is pretty hard to swallow for someone who grew up fed on Bible stories that "the meek shall inherit", that it is difficult to get into heaven if you're rich, and that you must love your enemies. The christian faith sold in the United States has a distinct neo liberalistic flavor. Complete with multi level marketing companies, selling their ponzi schemes to the unwary.
It's pretty exhausting, trying to wrap my secular, atheistic world view around all of this. Any failure is on me and not the author.
Detour:
I'm a guerilla cross-stitcher and one of my ideas is to stitch the bible and under it "the goat herders’ guide to the galaxy". Although this would apply only to the old testament, as the new testament is more "greek scholar's interpretation of christianity". Another stitch is a nativity scene and underneath "abstinence doesn't even work in fairytales".
The book also covers purity culture. It is of course important to indoctrinate the women young, get them married as virgins as soon as possible, before they develop any own thoughts or sexuality. Shame is something that is shared in abundance. Except for the pastor perpetrators of course, god's anointed must not be accused of straying.
If anything, this book reinforces the dangers of religion and of thinking that one's own world view is the only correct one. The author is not derogative towards christianity as far as I can tell, only against the white nationalist variety. I, however, think all of it is shite. If you believe, you're misinformed and I feel sorry for you. But please, let the rest of us live our lives without imposing your ideas on us.
I was a missionary child and grew up Christian. My parents had a lot of American colleagues. Apparently none of these subscribed to the evangelical Christianity as presented in this book. The wives were mostly equal and most of them certainly did not seem submissive. As a result, I have struggled to understand how evangelical Christians, much less evangelical Christian women, could vote for a convicted rapist and pedophile who was caught on tape saying "grab them by the pussy".
This book tries its best to explain how. It's actually not that hard. Christian women are used to submitting to male hierarchy, and from their churches they are used to accepting male sexual violence. Women who have tried to stand up against abuse have been frozen out of their churches, pressured to forgive and/or to retract. Basically, the evangelical Christian woman is supposed to submit to her husband in all things, be grateful and remember to smile. She must think positive thoughts and if she does this well enough, good things will come. God wants his sheep to prosper! If you do not, then it is your own fault. Certainly not a result of systemic injustices, racism or misogyny.
Empathy is toxic, because showing mercy to someone who is not prospering is evil because it is disserving to god's purpose. This is pretty hard to swallow for someone who grew up fed on Bible stories that "the meek shall inherit", that it is difficult to get into heaven if you're rich, and that you must love your enemies. The christian faith sold in the United States has a distinct neo liberalistic flavor. Complete with multi level marketing companies, selling their ponzi schemes to the unwary.
It's pretty exhausting, trying to wrap my secular, atheistic world view around all of this. Any failure is on me and not the author.
Detour:
I'm a guerilla cross-stitcher and one of my ideas is to stitch the bible and under it "the goat herders’ guide to the galaxy". Although this would apply only to the old testament, as the new testament is more "greek scholar's interpretation of christianity". Another stitch is a nativity scene and underneath "abstinence doesn't even work in fairytales".
The book also covers purity culture. It is of course important to indoctrinate the women young, get them married as virgins as soon as possible, before they develop any own thoughts or sexuality. Shame is something that is shared in abundance. Except for the pastor perpetrators of course, god's anointed must not be accused of straying.
If anything, this book reinforces the dangers of religion and of thinking that one's own world view is the only correct one. The author is not derogative towards christianity as far as I can tell, only against the white nationalist variety. I, however, think all of it is shite. If you believe, you're misinformed and I feel sorry for you. But please, let the rest of us live our lives without imposing your ideas on us.
August 24, 2026
This was my introduction to Du Mez (though Jesus and John Wayne has been on my tbr since it released), and wow what an intelligent, well researched, well written woman. I am blown away at the depth of her research and the ability she has to take all she has learned and her findings and then write it in a way that is digestible for the reader. While this did read a bit like a History textbook (not a critique I think it was a perfect format for the content), especially the earlier chapters for the time periods I was not around for, it was engaging and got to the root of the information quickly but thoroughly. There was a lot that was in the book that gave structure to things I have had wonderings about, such as the link of capitalism and evangelicalism/prosperity gospel, or positive thinking and how Christianity could benefit from it. Also, having grown up steeped in purity culture, diet culture, and hearing so many teachings on what a "woman of God" should look like, it was so eye opening to see the roots of these ideals traced back even further than I imagined they went, and also to see how these things played a bigger part in the whole of the "system". Once we got into the last 30 or so years, the information and references started to look much more familiar. Some that I knew and much that I didn't. This is bound to end up a banned book, which is exactly why you should have it on your shelf.
I think one critique that I anticipate will be shared by a few or by many is it could seem one sided or that all the people/organizations/etc. mentioned are horrific and should be avoided at all costs. While I see how it could be read that way, I would remind the reader of the possibility for "nuance" and that while things may have been established for underlying motivations or that messages were twisted to have a specific impact on people or culture, it doesn't mean that it only did harm, or that anyone who has ever worked for these organizations or spoke similarly to those mentioned have had ill intent or were seeking to cause harm. This book, in my opinion, was written exactly as it should have been, it is then on the reader to hold the information well and to remember that things are nuanced and multiple things can be true at one time, but it doesn't make the information here any less accurate.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book, it was an honor to get to read prior to release!
I think one critique that I anticipate will be shared by a few or by many is it could seem one sided or that all the people/organizations/etc. mentioned are horrific and should be avoided at all costs. While I see how it could be read that way, I would remind the reader of the possibility for "nuance" and that while things may have been established for underlying motivations or that messages were twisted to have a specific impact on people or culture, it doesn't mean that it only did harm, or that anyone who has ever worked for these organizations or spoke similarly to those mentioned have had ill intent or were seeking to cause harm. This book, in my opinion, was written exactly as it should have been, it is then on the reader to hold the information well and to remember that things are nuanced and multiple things can be true at one time, but it doesn't make the information here any less accurate.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book, it was an honor to get to read prior to release!
September 23, 2026
4.25 for that conclusion. Writing excellent. Content anxiety inducing
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for providing me with an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.
“Live Laugh Love” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a well-researched and thought-provoking book. Du Mez explains that after writing "Jesus and John Wayne", she initially intended to write a lighter book about Christian women's culture ... Christian romance novels, Hallmark movies, "Fixer Upper", homemaking blogs, and women's conferences. But as she dug deeper, she discovered that these seemingly harmless cultural products were connected to much larger questions of authority, gender, power, and politics.
The result is an insightful examination of some of the cultural forces that helped bring us to where we are today. "Live Laugh Love" argues that twentieth-century evangelical women's culture was never merely about decorating homes, improving marriages, raising children, or cultivating personal faith. Beneath the surface lay a powerful network of ideas about happiness, authority, gender, success, capitalism, and national identity. Beginning with Hannah Whitall Smith's promise of happiness through surrender and ending with Christian nationalism in the Trump era, Du Mez traces how these ideas shaped generations of women and modern American evangelicalism.
Those who have spent time in evangelical culture may recognize many of the influences she describes, including the role of multi-level marketing, the commercialization of faith, and the gatekeeping surrounding figures such as Elisabeth Elliot when aspects of their views did not fit accepted narratives.
Du Mez concludes that the same cultural currents that produced “Live Laugh Love” spirituality also helped create the conditions for Christian nationalism and authoritarian politics. The book culminates in an unsettling final chapter that invites readers to reflect on how seemingly ordinary cultural practices can have far-reaching consequences.
"Live Laugh Love" offers a compelling and important examination of the ideas, institutions, and assumptions that have shaped evangelical culture over the last century. It is an illuminating read for anyone seeking to better understand the intersection of faith, culture, gender, and politics in modern America.
“Live Laugh Love” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a well-researched and thought-provoking book. Du Mez explains that after writing "Jesus and John Wayne", she initially intended to write a lighter book about Christian women's culture ... Christian romance novels, Hallmark movies, "Fixer Upper", homemaking blogs, and women's conferences. But as she dug deeper, she discovered that these seemingly harmless cultural products were connected to much larger questions of authority, gender, power, and politics.
The result is an insightful examination of some of the cultural forces that helped bring us to where we are today. "Live Laugh Love" argues that twentieth-century evangelical women's culture was never merely about decorating homes, improving marriages, raising children, or cultivating personal faith. Beneath the surface lay a powerful network of ideas about happiness, authority, gender, success, capitalism, and national identity. Beginning with Hannah Whitall Smith's promise of happiness through surrender and ending with Christian nationalism in the Trump era, Du Mez traces how these ideas shaped generations of women and modern American evangelicalism.
Those who have spent time in evangelical culture may recognize many of the influences she describes, including the role of multi-level marketing, the commercialization of faith, and the gatekeeping surrounding figures such as Elisabeth Elliot when aspects of their views did not fit accepted narratives.
Du Mez concludes that the same cultural currents that produced “Live Laugh Love” spirituality also helped create the conditions for Christian nationalism and authoritarian politics. The book culminates in an unsettling final chapter that invites readers to reflect on how seemingly ordinary cultural practices can have far-reaching consequences.
"Live Laugh Love" offers a compelling and important examination of the ideas, institutions, and assumptions that have shaped evangelical culture over the last century. It is an illuminating read for anyone seeking to better understand the intersection of faith, culture, gender, and politics in modern America.
September 27, 2026
Reading this book reminds me why learning history is so valuable, because there are so many teachings and Christian beliefs that I just take for granted and think they have been around forever, when in reality, they are not that old and were deeply influenced by a few specific people (and have their roots in secular philosophy, who knew??)
I really enjoyed the breadth that Du Mez covers, from before the first movement of wives submitting to their husbands to the modern trad wife influencer culture. I have heard so much of the history of women in fundamentalist Christian circles like the SBC, but hearing this broader account of American Christianity was so fascinating and made so many things about that later history of the SBC make sense.
I feel like this book could have been twice as long, because there were a few gaps that I wish she would have talked more about, especially about women in the church. But the through-line that she uncovered of believing in a prosperity gospel was fascinating and I will be thinking about it for a while.
I really enjoyed the breadth that Du Mez covers, from before the first movement of wives submitting to their husbands to the modern trad wife influencer culture. I have heard so much of the history of women in fundamentalist Christian circles like the SBC, but hearing this broader account of American Christianity was so fascinating and made so many things about that later history of the SBC make sense.
I feel like this book could have been twice as long, because there were a few gaps that I wish she would have talked more about, especially about women in the church. But the through-line that she uncovered of believing in a prosperity gospel was fascinating and I will be thinking about it for a while.
September 27, 2026
I think I enjoyed LLL more than Jesus & John Wayne. Readers may need to jot a few notes to remember the various women mentioned as they are often returned to. Once we got to the 1980s I was familiar enough with names to keep up but had trouble keeping track before that. I was struck by how Holiness Theology was the through line that permeated all the female Christian trends - I didn't see that coming. I would have loved a chapter solely on influencers. The majority of the kinds she mentioned were tradwife - there are plenty who don't fit that mold but participate in this dynamic in a huge way. It would have been an easy segue from mommy bloggers. Maybe it'll be its own book 😁 highly recommend
September 27, 2026
Fascinating! I’m going to be thinking about this for a long time. I’m already noticing verbiage in articles that she directly links to how these messages became so mainstream. Not sure if I’ll ever think of Love Comes Softly, Hallmark channel, Target, Hobby Lobby the same. The New Thought theory reminds me of life coaching today but I do think coaches don’t pound the religion as much but it still feels like it’s under the MLM/prosperity gospel she is referring to. Lots to think and discuss on.
September 26, 2026
Wild stuff.
While reading, I was constantly amazed at how so many wide-spread American Christian ideas only originated recently. And I was also amazed at how much consumerism fueled those ideas.
While reading, I was constantly amazed at how so many wide-spread American Christian ideas only originated recently. And I was also amazed at how much consumerism fueled those ideas.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
I want to preface everything by saying that I love the ideas within this book and appreciate the thoroughness in enlightening me on this fascinating phenomenon within American culture.
With that said, this was one of the most difficult books I've read in a long time. I slogged through it two or three pages at a time, through all the references to the thousands of names, and all the dense, page-long paragraphs. The blurbs about this book and even the introduction got me excited for a compelling, witty, eye-opening take on white Christian women in our modern world, but this was very much like reading an encyclopedic history book in school. The beginning of the book focused on men for an exhaustingly long time. I understand why, but I thought this author already wrote a book about men... And then there were the random references to more modern figures/ideas but just when I thought the narrative was about to get juicy, we'd move onto the next thing. I feel insane to say that such a lengthy book also somehow feels like it barely scratched the surface in some ways.
Again, I appreciate the immense research that must have gone into a book like this, and maybe I'm not the target demographic, but this book needed a more aggressive editor to take a crack at it.
I want to preface everything by saying that I love the ideas within this book and appreciate the thoroughness in enlightening me on this fascinating phenomenon within American culture.
With that said, this was one of the most difficult books I've read in a long time. I slogged through it two or three pages at a time, through all the references to the thousands of names, and all the dense, page-long paragraphs. The blurbs about this book and even the introduction got me excited for a compelling, witty, eye-opening take on white Christian women in our modern world, but this was very much like reading an encyclopedic history book in school. The beginning of the book focused on men for an exhaustingly long time. I understand why, but I thought this author already wrote a book about men... And then there were the random references to more modern figures/ideas but just when I thought the narrative was about to get juicy, we'd move onto the next thing. I feel insane to say that such a lengthy book also somehow feels like it barely scratched the surface in some ways.
Again, I appreciate the immense research that must have gone into a book like this, and maybe I'm not the target demographic, but this book needed a more aggressive editor to take a crack at it.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
"Jesus and John Wayne" rocked my world in 2021, tracing the connections between militant masculinity, patriotism, and evangelicalism, and how they've coalesced into the MAGA world we now find ourselves in.
"Live Laugh Love" throws the spotlight on white Christian women, following the threads of New Thought and prosperity gospel from the 19th century into the present. As a white woman in her mid-30s who grew up steeped in conservative evangelicalism, this book hit even closer to home than its predecessor.
As before, I was impressed by the thoroughness of Kristin Kobes Du Mez's research, as well as its accessibility. "New Thought" wasn't a concept I was familiar with before picking up this book — at least, not by name — but she grounded it in the stories of the women and men instrumental in uniting this "power of positive thinking" philosophy with evangelical Christianity, in ways that were often used to minimize women under the guise of empowering them.
I had heard of Hannah Whitall Smith, but many of the other people mentioned in the first couple chapters were new to me, as were some of their theologies. I learned a lot from this foundational material, but it wasn't until the narrative moved into the 20th century that it really started to come together for me, and I began to recognize the origins of many of my lived experiences. For example, I knew of Elisabeth Elliot as mainly the wife of Jim Elliot and the author of "Passion and Purity," a stalwart in conservative Christian circles, but hadn't known that in the years following Jim's death, she began to grow dissatisfied with the platitudes and easy answers of evangelical culture, to the point where she was at risk of losing her insider status within that world — until she remarried and reversed course, re-embracing absolutes and gender hierarchies.
Elliot's story and many others were eye-opening for me, especially in the context of the "gospel of success," capitalism, and reactions against feminism, but when the focus shifted to MLMs, Little House on the Prairie, and Contemporary Christian music, I was even more locked in. Companies, authors, and musicians who had been a part of the scaffolding of my upbringing and young adulthood materialized before me on the page, rearranging themselves from well-meaning pastiche to indicators of larger trends that often came with a dark side.
I can't recommend "Live Laugh Love" enough, and I'm already looking forward to rereading it. Du Mez certainly brings the receipts in this hard-hitting book, and I hope it proves revelatory for many readers.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
"Live Laugh Love" throws the spotlight on white Christian women, following the threads of New Thought and prosperity gospel from the 19th century into the present. As a white woman in her mid-30s who grew up steeped in conservative evangelicalism, this book hit even closer to home than its predecessor.
As before, I was impressed by the thoroughness of Kristin Kobes Du Mez's research, as well as its accessibility. "New Thought" wasn't a concept I was familiar with before picking up this book — at least, not by name — but she grounded it in the stories of the women and men instrumental in uniting this "power of positive thinking" philosophy with evangelical Christianity, in ways that were often used to minimize women under the guise of empowering them.
I had heard of Hannah Whitall Smith, but many of the other people mentioned in the first couple chapters were new to me, as were some of their theologies. I learned a lot from this foundational material, but it wasn't until the narrative moved into the 20th century that it really started to come together for me, and I began to recognize the origins of many of my lived experiences. For example, I knew of Elisabeth Elliot as mainly the wife of Jim Elliot and the author of "Passion and Purity," a stalwart in conservative Christian circles, but hadn't known that in the years following Jim's death, she began to grow dissatisfied with the platitudes and easy answers of evangelical culture, to the point where she was at risk of losing her insider status within that world — until she remarried and reversed course, re-embracing absolutes and gender hierarchies.
Elliot's story and many others were eye-opening for me, especially in the context of the "gospel of success," capitalism, and reactions against feminism, but when the focus shifted to MLMs, Little House on the Prairie, and Contemporary Christian music, I was even more locked in. Companies, authors, and musicians who had been a part of the scaffolding of my upbringing and young adulthood materialized before me on the page, rearranging themselves from well-meaning pastiche to indicators of larger trends that often came with a dark side.
I can't recommend "Live Laugh Love" enough, and I'm already looking forward to rereading it. Du Mez certainly brings the receipts in this hard-hitting book, and I hope it proves revelatory for many readers.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
September 25, 2026
I so appreciate this book and Du Mez’s work, in general. I found this to be an easier read than Jesus & John Wayne (which took me a year because I had to keep taking breaks), but there were still some parts that I had to work to follow because there were so many people involved and connected with each other.
I especially appreciated learning about how influential holiness ideas have been on evangelicalism. My dad was raised in the Holiness Church, but I’d always thought that was sort of a fringe movement. I had no idea how entwined it was with much of the ideology I absorbed from non-denominational charismatic churches.
This book gave a lot of context for things I’ve deconstructed (like purity culture and an overemphasis on positivity, which I would say leads to spiritual bypassing). So often, our very personal pain is tied to larger systems. It’s validating to see the connection and recognize that our struggles are not solely due to personal failure.
DuMez does a great job providing context and allowing lots of nuance for the complexity of people and how they shift and change over time. Her framing helped me see that what all the women in the book had in common was recognizing and feeling deeply the “not-rightness” of living as a woman in a world that that doesn’t seem to have been made for us. Where the divergence lies is what we attribute the “not-rightness” to and how we go about responding to it. Ultimately, it left me with deeper compassion for all women as we navigate a world that harms, devalues, and objectifies us.
I felt that it ended a little abruptly, which left me wanting more. I think that’s the sign of a good book.
Thank you to the publisher for my ARC of this important book.
I especially appreciated learning about how influential holiness ideas have been on evangelicalism. My dad was raised in the Holiness Church, but I’d always thought that was sort of a fringe movement. I had no idea how entwined it was with much of the ideology I absorbed from non-denominational charismatic churches.
This book gave a lot of context for things I’ve deconstructed (like purity culture and an overemphasis on positivity, which I would say leads to spiritual bypassing). So often, our very personal pain is tied to larger systems. It’s validating to see the connection and recognize that our struggles are not solely due to personal failure.
DuMez does a great job providing context and allowing lots of nuance for the complexity of people and how they shift and change over time. Her framing helped me see that what all the women in the book had in common was recognizing and feeling deeply the “not-rightness” of living as a woman in a world that that doesn’t seem to have been made for us. Where the divergence lies is what we attribute the “not-rightness” to and how we go about responding to it. Ultimately, it left me with deeper compassion for all women as we navigate a world that harms, devalues, and objectifies us.
I felt that it ended a little abruptly, which left me wanting more. I think that’s the sign of a good book.
Thank you to the publisher for my ARC of this important book.
August 31, 2026
📱Thank you to NetGalley and Liveright for a free, advanced reader’s e-book copy of Live, laugh, love.
Kristin’s first book, Jesus & John Wayne, was such a pivotal book for me. Her second book is just as important for learning about Christian history and culture over the past few hundreds years, but centered on white, Christian women.
I found this one more dull to read than Jesus & John Wayne (there are a lot of facts here and Kristin speeds through them in a dense 432 page book) but the facts are so important for understanding how white women have aligned themselves with a worldview that is seemingly against their own interests.
What struck me the most about this history is how much culture outside of religion has influenced evangelical Christianity in a syncretic way. So much outside influence that mormon women and evangelical women share quite a lot in common, as Kristin points out. The trad wife aesthetic and advice to both groups of women share some surprising, common origins.
This book takes some wild turns that aren’t immediately intuitive, like the history of MLMs and Christian women or how a large group of evangelical women latched on to Amish romance novels right after the Great Recession, for example. Kristin’s research is thorough and she let the research speak for itself even as she found herself in unusual territory. She admits in the introduction that “this was supposed to be the fun book.” Unfortunately, the way that a large group of religious women were indoctrinated in insidious ways to bow to the patriarchy and to a capitalistic flavor of Christianity is more sobering than fun. This culture has done real damage to the political and societal landscape of America.
If you’ve read the book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (2015) some of Kristin’s book will feel repetitive. The 1950s Christian nationalism craze did a lot to blend capitalism with evangelicalism but Kristin goes deeper into how women specifically impacted this cultural shift.
The most unique and shocking discovery in this book to me personally was the history of Little House on the Prairie. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, Rose (who helped her write the book), was “fundamentally opposed to democracy and to anyone advocating or defending democracy.” Little House on the Prairie was based on Laura’s life but so many liberties were taken stretching the truth that the book ended up serving as libertarian propaganda to serve up an explicitly anti-democratic agenda.
This book is worth the read, but it is quite dense and takes a lot of concentration to read. Because I grew up in evangelical culture, none of this was too surprising or shocking to me. In fact, much of this book was just explaining the why behind the bizarre culture of white evangelical women and why it feels like such an amalgamation of so many things blended into one and marketed as “Christian.”
If Jesus & John Wayne was groundbreaking for you, this book is an excellent sequel.
Kristin’s first book, Jesus & John Wayne, was such a pivotal book for me. Her second book is just as important for learning about Christian history and culture over the past few hundreds years, but centered on white, Christian women.
I found this one more dull to read than Jesus & John Wayne (there are a lot of facts here and Kristin speeds through them in a dense 432 page book) but the facts are so important for understanding how white women have aligned themselves with a worldview that is seemingly against their own interests.
What struck me the most about this history is how much culture outside of religion has influenced evangelical Christianity in a syncretic way. So much outside influence that mormon women and evangelical women share quite a lot in common, as Kristin points out. The trad wife aesthetic and advice to both groups of women share some surprising, common origins.
This book takes some wild turns that aren’t immediately intuitive, like the history of MLMs and Christian women or how a large group of evangelical women latched on to Amish romance novels right after the Great Recession, for example. Kristin’s research is thorough and she let the research speak for itself even as she found herself in unusual territory. She admits in the introduction that “this was supposed to be the fun book.” Unfortunately, the way that a large group of religious women were indoctrinated in insidious ways to bow to the patriarchy and to a capitalistic flavor of Christianity is more sobering than fun. This culture has done real damage to the political and societal landscape of America.
If you’ve read the book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (2015) some of Kristin’s book will feel repetitive. The 1950s Christian nationalism craze did a lot to blend capitalism with evangelicalism but Kristin goes deeper into how women specifically impacted this cultural shift.
The most unique and shocking discovery in this book to me personally was the history of Little House on the Prairie. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, Rose (who helped her write the book), was “fundamentally opposed to democracy and to anyone advocating or defending democracy.” Little House on the Prairie was based on Laura’s life but so many liberties were taken stretching the truth that the book ended up serving as libertarian propaganda to serve up an explicitly anti-democratic agenda.
This book is worth the read, but it is quite dense and takes a lot of concentration to read. Because I grew up in evangelical culture, none of this was too surprising or shocking to me. In fact, much of this book was just explaining the why behind the bizarre culture of white evangelical women and why it feels like such an amalgamation of so many things blended into one and marketed as “Christian.”
If Jesus & John Wayne was groundbreaking for you, this book is an excellent sequel.
September 24, 2026
Listen, if you've spoken with me for more than five minutes it's likely I've mentioned Jesus and John Wayne because to put it plainly, it changed my life. I think I was expecting the same visceral reaction when I read this book, but that didn't happen.
Don't get me wrong, this is an excellent book and totally worth the read, but as someone who grew up right in the center of this culture and movement it just didn't feel as eye-opening and connective as J&JW.
My strongest critique is that I think the first half of the book could have been edited down a bit and the last half could have been fleshed out more. The last several chapters felt a bit like being in front of a fire hose as name after name of Christian influencers were flooding through. I would have loved for some of those mentioned to have had a bit more detail and space in the book.
I appreciated that current events were mentioned, but it seemed like they were added at the last minute with no real connection with the main point of the book.
I love that the book ended with a Rachel Held Evans quote, "Patriarchy, white supremacy, and violent Christian nationalism are one hell of a holy Trinity," but it was a really blunt ending and I think it could have used a final thought from the author. Overall, I will still hold Kristin Kobes Du Mez in very high esteem, and please do read this book, it just wasn't as world changing as I was hoping.
Don't get me wrong, this is an excellent book and totally worth the read, but as someone who grew up right in the center of this culture and movement it just didn't feel as eye-opening and connective as J&JW.
My strongest critique is that I think the first half of the book could have been edited down a bit and the last half could have been fleshed out more. The last several chapters felt a bit like being in front of a fire hose as name after name of Christian influencers were flooding through. I would have loved for some of those mentioned to have had a bit more detail and space in the book.
I appreciated that current events were mentioned, but it seemed like they were added at the last minute with no real connection with the main point of the book.
I love that the book ended with a Rachel Held Evans quote, "Patriarchy, white supremacy, and violent Christian nationalism are one hell of a holy Trinity," but it was a really blunt ending and I think it could have used a final thought from the author. Overall, I will still hold Kristin Kobes Du Mez in very high esteem, and please do read this book, it just wasn't as world changing as I was hoping.
September 22, 2026
Just read Jesus and John Wayne in August 2026 with my book club and we decided to pick this one up for September 2026. I’m definitely excited to discuss this one
I think this is as just as important as Jesus and John Wayne, BUT you need to know going in that the first 30-40% ish drags and it’s more focused on men than women unlike the premise and rest of the book
Overall I enjoyed it and I tabbed a ton of facts.
I think this is as just as important as Jesus and John Wayne, BUT you need to know going in that the first 30-40% ish drags and it’s more focused on men than women unlike the premise and rest of the book
Overall I enjoyed it and I tabbed a ton of facts.
September 27, 2026
A bit meandering in terms of its thesis, women often seem more like side characters than the main focal point of the book, but puts forth a lot of fascinating history nonetheless. Does an excellent job of explaining the intertwining of capitalism, patriarchy, and toxic positivity that has become what Christianity is largely associated with today. Filled in a lot of gaps for me. I hope she writes next on how we can deprogram these people.
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