Show Notes
There is a secret history of white Christian women, says historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez (bestselling author, Jesus and John Wayne). And the thread of this history brings together Evangelicals, Mormons, mainline Christians—connecting them to New Thought (a movement emphasizing the power of the mind to shape reality), Hallmark movies, mommy bloggers, and multi-level marketing. In her latest book, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, Du Mez tells the story of a single promise: that total surrender of the will unlocks holiness and happiness. Often masquerading as personal empowerment, the products and slogans of this ideological history elevate the vulnerability and domesticity of women, thereby contributing to systems of manipulation and abuse. In this conversation with Mark Labberton, Du Mez explains how holiness evangelicalism and the secular philosophy of New Thought were braided together to influence women, and how its culture marketed as empowerment created byproducts of self-blame, submission, and control. They discuss Hannah Whitall Smith's feminist defiance; the little-known "deconstruction era" of Elisabeth Elliot; the demonizing of doubt in high-control religion and multi-level marketing; the line running from Christian Reconstructionism to today's rhetoric of "toxic empathy"; and how to return to the gospel of the Christ who relinquishes power. Episode Highlights "There is no sense of the common good. There is no sense of common grace. There's no sense of grace, period."
"The past is always going to be more complicated and more interesting—and I would argue more useful—than the simplistic narratives that we like to tell ourselves."
"Christian literature, she says, is neither Christian nor literature. It's propaganda. Right? It's simply telling evangelical readers what they want to hear, but it is not true."
"When you embrace that theology and ideology, if things don't work out well for you, it's your own fault. It has to be your own fault … within holiness theology and within the philosophy of positive thinking, doubt is literally demonized. Doubt is of the devil."
"She never confused submission to God to submission to men. She was a feminist. She was a preacher. She certainly wasn't going to submit to her husband, who was a jerk."
"… a gospel which is more in line with the gospel of Jesus Christ, one in which Christ divests himself of power and continually disappoints his followers who want that power."
About Kristin Kobes Du Mez Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling historian, professor of history at Calvin University, and a Senior Democracy Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute. Her work sits at the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She is the author of A New Gospel for Women, on the Christian feminist reformer Katharine Bushnell; Jesus and John Wayne; and, most recently, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. She holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and grew up in a Dutch Reformed community in small-town Iowa. Helpful Links and Resources Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, Kristin Kobes Du Mez's 2026 book: https://kristindumez.com/books/live-laugh-love/
Live Laugh Love book club discussion guide (free): https://kristindumez.com/discussion-guides/lll-book-club-discussion-guide/
Jesus and John Wayne, Du Mez's 2020 bestseller: https://kristindumez.com/books/jesus-and-john-wayne/
A New Gospel for Women, Du Mez's first book, on Katharine Bushnell: https://kristindumez.com/books/new-gospel-for-women/
Du Mez CONNECTIONS (Substack): https://kristindumez.substack.com/
Kristin Du Mez on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kkdumez.bsky.social
The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, Hannah Whitall Smith's 1875 classic: https://ccel.org/ccel/smith_hw/secret/files/secret.htm
Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, Luc
More from Conversing with Mark Labberton
How can a Christian humanitarian organization keep Christ at the center of its mission while working in the world's most difficult places, with thousands of staff spread across dozens of countries and cultures? Gary Haugen, founder and CEO of International Justice Mission, and Kevin Jenkins, former president and CEO of World Vision International, both understand their organizations to be foundationally Christian. But even in ministries where you would expect spiritual formation to be at the center, it takes work to help large global teams live up to their mission. Speaking with Mark Labberton before a live audience at International Justice Mission's Cornerstone 2026 event, Haugen and Jenkins link missional success to the slow and unglamorous work of spiritual formation at the individual and relational level. Keenly aware of the gap between what Christians (and Christian organizations) say they believe and what they actually do, they consider how the outward work of ministry connects to the inward work of discipleship to Christ, wrestling with the very idea of a "Christian" organization. In this episode, Haugen and Jenkins consider their own formation as Christians and as leaders; Dallas Willard's definition of belief as acting as if something is true; the risk of prayerless striving that can overtake even the best kinds of work; IJM's daily 11 a.m. prayer pause; Henri Nouwen's concept of moving from solitude to community to ministry; and the long-term accountability friendships that keep leaders honest. Episode Highlights "There wasn't anybody in the world who would identify me as a Christian because of the way I loved other people." (Gary Haugen)
What if the deepest problems in American life were pre-political? It's often said that "culture is upstream from politics"—meaning that what we see in political news, speeches, ads, debates, and elections is symptomatic of a deeper cause. The conflicts, troubles, injustices, and sufferings that many people experience as political are more likely rooted in moral and spiritual crises. This week's episode marks ten years of Conversing, which launched on October 8, 2016. To celebrate, Mark Labberton is joined by David Brooks, a staff writer at The Atlantic and presidential fellow at Yale's Jackson School of Global Affairs. He is also the host of a brand-new podcast, The Permanent Questions. In this episode, Mark and David wrestle with what asking questions actually does to a person and discuss the styles of great interviewers, why schools seem to train curiosity out of children, the human urge to control, how AI hollows us out and dehumanizes the people around us, and what moral formation looks like in a classroom—and a podcast. Episode Highlights "I felt over that time that the problems in our life were pre-political. They were in our culture. They're in our spiritual core."
War has wracked Ukraine for 1,678 days—outlasting both World Wars. In this conversation with Mark Labberton, Fyodor Raichynets—a theologian at Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary, pastor of a church in Bucha, and a military chaplain serving on the front lines in Kyiv—explains what it is like to be under near-constant drone and ballistic attack and how that has affected his faith, memory, and experience of time. War has reshaped the way he loves, forgives, and serves; it has induced a fear even to hope. Together, they discuss trauma as a national condition and the temptation to despair when God seems not to intervene. They also consider the moral wounds soldiers carry from killing, the competing prayers of two mothers inside one congregation, and what it means to see God in the face of the needy—even when the needy include one's enemies. Episode Highlights "'Into your hands I commit my spirit'—and with these words on my lips I go to bed every night ... I go to bed with the thought that I may not wake up in the morning, so I just make sure that my spirit is in his hand."
In a country splitting apart over so much, three words point toward a better way to live: attention, agency, and power. David French returns to Conversing to take up all three. A New York Times opinion writer since January 2023, French writes from a conservative theological background about law, culture, religion, and armed conflict, and has found himself writing directly into the middle of divided hostilities. French comments on how attention, agency, and power took shape in him, and how each gets distorted by partisan fundamentalisms (on both the right and left) built to shut conversation down rather than open it up. He and Mark discuss the courage required to seek out the strongest version of an opposing view, the ways we extend ourselves grace we deny to everyone else, the spiritual danger of believing you must hold power before you can do any good, and the Civil Rights Movement's commitment to "reconciliation over victory" as a promising model for Christian public life today. Episode Highlights "One of the things that was so damaging … was that humility was often seen as inconsistent with conviction."
Underneath all the political polarization, rage-baiting, punditry, and aggression, there is a crisis of civic agency. American citizens feel politically disempowered and undermined. And the effect, over time, will be that we lose our ability to self-govern. What is needed is a path between belligerence and withdrawal. In this episode, Michael Wear (Center for Christianity and Public Life, author of The Spirit of Our Politics) joins Mark Labberton to discuss provocation and political effectiveness; the value of gentleness in public life; concrete signs of hope in local political action; the open horizon of the 2028 primaries; and what it would take to reset America's political "agency quotient." Episode Highlights "Checks and balances is just a longer way of saying agency." "I think gentleness is profoundly underappreciated. I think that people are on guard for being taken advantage of, for being imposed upon, for being manipulated, for being used." "In parenting and in politics … we could really, especially in the moment, delude ourselves into thinking that to get a reaction and to be effective are synonymous." "Christians have an alternative imagination that our politics desperately needs, and we're actually robbing the public of that." "We continue down this crisis of … both a real and perceived lack of agency, in such a way that the project of self governance is made incoherent." About Michael Wear Michael Wear is the founder, president, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, a nonpartisan Washington nonprofit that contends for the credibility of Christian resources in public life, for the public good. He directed faith outreach for President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign and served in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, among the youngest White House staffers in modern history. He is the author of The Spirit of Our Politics and Reclaiming Hope, and co-author of Compassion and Conviction. Helpful Links and Resources Michael Wear's website, with his writing, speaking, and social channels: https://www.michaelwear.com/ The Spirit of Our Politics, Wear's most recent book: https://www.michaelwear.com/spirit-of-our-politics Reclaiming Hope, Wear's first book: https://www.michaelwear.com/reclaiming-hope The Center for Christianity and Public Life: https://www.ccpubliclife.org/ "Politics should not just happen to you": https://theheartofthepublic.substack.com/p/politics-should-not-just-happen-to For the Good of the Public Summit, October 5–7, 2026, Washington, DC: https://www.ccpubliclife.org/summit Settled, the Minnesota nonprofit building church-based Sacred Settlements: https://www.settled.org/ Civic Trust, Matt Harder's participatory budgeting organization: https://www.civictrust.us/ Michael Wear on X: https://twitter.com/MichaelRWear Show Notes Contending for the credibility of Christian resources in public life CCPL turns four this October; the For the Good of the Public summit, Oct 5–7 in DC Why pairing a think tank with intensive leadership formation is personally sustaining, not just strategic Gentleness as an underrated public virtue; bodies relaxing once people sense they won't be imposed upon Parker Palmer on a politics made of brokenhearted people Getting a reaction versus being effective; the diminishing returns of provocation, until the mission's telos shifts unnamed Jesus writing in the sand as an interruption at a moment primed for violence Dallas Willard on formation: not the practices but who you are, on the spot Pope Leo fielding American-frame questions and answering in ways that break the frame's logic The pastor who mistook refreshing RealClearPolitics five times a day for civic involvement A caution against a posture toward the church more dour than reality calls for Settled's church-hosted Sacred Settlements in Minnesota, built on bipartisan zoning reform: https://www.settled.org/ Leaving the Obama White House more hopefu