Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts. Fundamentalism and Gender: 1875 to the Present. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

In this helpful little book, Bendroth addresses a relationship that can be explosive in contemporary discussions, the relationship between fundamentalism and gender. The contemporary relevance of such an historical study need not be demonstrated but is rather self-evident, and for this reason we are indebted to Bendroth – herself of an evangelical persuasion – for bringing her focused attention into this broad and accessible overview of the subject. Bendroth discovers a fundamentalism for which gender was a central issue in establishing an identity. In this book, fundamentalism’s restrictive views on the role of women were in fact largely innovative and reactionary, a reversal of the trajectory present in the earlier 19th-century evangelical roots of the movement itself.

According to Bendroth, fundamentalism grew out of a late nineteenth-century revivalist tradition that increasingly placed emphasis on the masculinity of the Gospel. The piety of women in that era could virtually be taken for granted, as women were active supporters and attendees of church. Men, on the other hand, were lagging behind in their involvement as well as in moral uprightness. In fact, women’s organizations, contributing greatly to the rise of women’s direct involvement in movements like temperance, suffrage, and social purity, portrayed men as the primary perpetrators of social evils. If masculinity was being assaulted, then Bendroth thinks the revivalists made sure their message appealed to men and gave them a renewed sense of strength. The experience of conversion offers a good example, an experience often considered one of submissive self-negation: “revivalism’s emphasis on victory and power turned this self-negating experience into a dynamic, self-authenticating one” that appealed readily to men in search of renewed manhood (23). The rise of the masculine nature of revivalist religion is also evident in the business-like atmosphere of the Bible conferences and business language throughout – like the “offer” of the Gospel. At the same time, women’s involvement in missions and independent women’s organizations continued to increase and reflected the rise of a “women’s culture” in society at large. Indeed, these proto-fundamentalists could not do without the support of women, as Bendroth concludes: “the popular appeal of fundamentalism was shaped by two opposing forces: a desire to win the hearts of men, and the practical necessity of involving women” (30).

Bendroth follows other scholars in finding the theological roots of fundamentalism in the Princetonian doctrine of inerrancy and dispensational premillenialism. Each of these, in their own way, contributed in the early twentieth century to an increasingly anti-feminist perspective. In the face of higher criticism and some increase in feminist employment of thematic biblical interpretation, inerrantist fundamentalists insisted that every word of Scripture – including those circumscribing women’s roles in church – must be adhered to strictly. For its part, dispensationalism contributed to anti-feminism in three ways: (1) they rooted women’s subordination in the Fall, but in such a way that revealed an original frailty in Eve that is inherent in women’s nature; (2) their pessimistic view of the flow of history led them to denounce the “progress” of women’s roles and often see it is a sign of coming catastrophe; (3) they had an extreme dislike of biblical and societal disorder that led to an assertion of women’s subordination for the sake of maintaining order.

Although Bendroth gives precious little attention to the perceived disorder, she attributes to it the roots not only of dispensational anti-feminism but also fundamentalism’s appeal to many women: “Dispensationalist doctrine was not so much a refuge from change as a way of making sense out of complexity. To women it offered an explanation for their social inferiority that, unlike feminism, required no unrealistic expectations of moral superiority” (52). Fundamentalism may have offered women an attainable way to make sense of their reality, and it apparently offered men a way to ensure order. It this was indeed the case, one would wish for greater attention in the book to the perception of disorder on the part of the fundamentalists. It would, in any case, be until after WWII that the fundamentalist positions on women’s roles in the church would actually meet the concrete reality of life in the church; articulation was one thing, implementation another.

Fundamentalists’ suspicions about the moral stature of women seemed confirmed by the perception that women were in cahoots with the liberals in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Bendroth implies that fundamentalists reacted to the rise in women’s power in denominations as well in society, e.g. through suffrage, by focusing on the moral inferiority evident in their “short skirts and cigarettes.” Far from maintaining the Victorian ideal of women’s moral superiority, by “the end of the twenties, most fundamentalists agreed that women had thoroughly abandoned their responsibilities as the natural allies of religion” (64). If women were theologically shallow and increasingly morally corrupt, fundamentalist men were “projecting an assertive masculinity that gloried in controversy” (65). Men were clearly at the helm of the fundamentalist machinery emerging from the 1920’s.

It may seem ironic, then, that in the 1930’s and 40’s the role of women in the machinery of the fundamentalist movement actually surpassed the role of women in the mainline denominations during the same period. The trajectories were opposite in the two groups, for reasons Bendroth does not detail. Fundamentalists were adamant, though, that women’s roles were crucial, and women maintained a voice in leadership especially by being Bible teachers and missionaries. This really does make one wish for more detail, wondering just how sweeping the fundamentalist assessment of women in the 1920’s actually was, and how prominent a role it actually played in defining fundamentalism in that era. If women in fact increase in prominence in the fundamentalist churches, this would seem to indicate that the objections made in the 1920’s were objections based on something larger than the gender issue itself. In other words, despite selective rhetoric to the contrary, perhaps they vilified liberal women because they were liberal, not because they were women.

In any case, Bendroth’s narrative describes a fundamentalism whose gender roles shifted significantly around the time of WWII. Public perception of the clergy in the 1940’s was in decline, thought to be a weak vocation, and to bolster the image fundamentalists increasingly stressed the manliness required for the task. When new mission fields opened after the War, men expressed “some jealousies and rising frustrations” that women far outnumbered men in the mission field (89). The role of women in the home was emphasized, being a “career woman” began to be discouraged, and renewed emphasis was placed on the Apostle Paul’s prohibitions of women engaging in certain ecclesial tasks.

The post-War decline in social morality found fundamentalists stressing the virtues of the nuclear family, as was widely popular. However, there was a peculiar emphasis on God-ordained strict hierarchy in the home, behind the fundamentalist position. The father was “like a kind of god,” and “women occupied a weaker, clearly secondary role” (107). Again, that women’s role was in the home was a matter increasingly stressed, and that the home was a primary place in which conservatives could battle liberals was stressed as well. While the popular culture of the 1950’s presented new dangers, a solid upbringing was the only solution to protect children from the devil’s temptations that were sure to come when they left home. Fundamentalists met this challenge with much more force than did the mainline churches, where discussions of morality were increasingly timid. Bendroth should be credited for attempting again to understand women’s willingness to go along with such an arrangement: “Indeed, women showed few signs of rebellion; the arrangement appeared to promise them a modicum of power. In a sense, by submitting to their husbands they actually gained moral and psychological leverege” (113). This statement clearly picks up on the theme that would be elaborated in future years by R. Marie Griffith’s God’s Daughter’s: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission.

Bendroth’s work here is provocative and provides a solid contribution to this field of study. She is able to address the issues without a dismissive attitude toward what she clearly thinks are insufficient bases for fundamentalist positions on women’s role in the church. As we have noted, she is not condescending toward those women who willingly endorsed the positions taken by fundamentalist men; this empathic reading of the historical record on this issue is admirable and relatively unusual. She also takes the fundamentalists’ intellectual framework seriously, even if pointing out that those working within that framework were not aware of its culturally-conditioned nature.
The size of the work is a serious limitation, however. The disorder/order dynamic in its relation to the role of gender, dispensationalism, and the rise of fundamentalism is significantly under-developed. We do not hear much about the perceptions of disorder in the 1920’s, nor do we hear how the penchant for order among dispensationalists was any more pervasive than that long abiding in the Calvinist tradition (e.g. Bendroth jumps too easily from dividing up the Bible to dividing up society or the household, etc.). The peculiar tie between dispensationalist “order” and gender is not convincing as here set out.

It is also rather curious that she presents a hierarchical understanding of reality as a dispensationalist innovation, along with their view of sin as “disorder”; this has been a staple of Christian thinking since the first centuries of its development (especially in the Augustinian tradition). In addition, it must be said that she (at the very least) implies that a number of other ancient theological positions – such as a severe view of the Fall, the social importance of the family or the very fact of denying women ordination – were fundamentalist innovations. Bendroth could perhaps strengthen her argument by making the point, with greater clarity and much greater specificity, that fundamentalists were induced by their reactions to cultural changes to put their own spin on teachings that they could legitimately claim as the dominant Christian heritage (whether those positions are ultimately right or wrong). This is all to say the subordination of women and the doctrinal systems under-girding it were not peculiar to a movement conditioned by late nineteenth-century Victorian morality.

Despite these theological shortcomings, the book provides us with a good framework in which we may continue to ask questions of fundamentalism and gender. One of many interesting approaches to the intellectual side of the issue would be historical-exegetical. On the passages relating to women’s role in the church and family (e.g. 1 Cor. 14, 1 Tim. 2, Eph. 5, or Old Testament figures like Deborah), how much development can one find between the proto-fundamentalists of the 1880’s, the emerging fundamentalists of the 1920’s, and those post-WWII? One could also isolate the question of “order” among dispensationalists by comparing their exegesis of such passages to fundamentalists of the Calvinist persuasion. This would have the added benefit of approaching the issues from the self-understanding of the fundamentalists, who were convinced that their own positions were determined on biblical rather than cultural grounds. Bendroth provides us with a general framework in which such future studies can be undertaken.