When the Church Library is Bad for You: The Rigidity of Evangelical Women’s Fiction

In 1891, Thomas Hardy's Tess Durbeyfield expresses what was considered a primary function of the English novel in the nineteenth-century: to educate women with principles to live virtuously. In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the titular character speculates that because she was not educated according to the right books, she does not have the resources to protect herself from a wanton man who rapes, impregnates, and ruins her. As Tess explains to her mother, "ladies know what to fend hands against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance o' learning in that way."1 In this passage, Tess implies that novels, of all things, could have saved her — perhaps Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) or the popular American seduction tale, Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette (1797). Although many early novels published in English are concerned with women's virtue, particularly their chastity, these books nevertheless contain subversive messages in support of women's independence and equality. For example, Foster's The Coquette implies that the heroine Eliza Wharton's seduction, pregnancy, and shameful death could have been prevented if she had been given more freedom and agency earlier in her life, an idea that anticipates Tess's complaint about her impoverished education. When the female leads in Sense and Sensibility (1811) are both hurt and humiliated by impulsive and devious men, Jane Austen suggests that men cannot be unequivocally trusted to lead relationships responsibly, and as a result, women must take it upon themselves to practice self-discipline and regulate their emotions. In her depictions of men who are significantly less prudent than women, Austen challenges cultural norms pertaining to male leadership. 

In contrast to the dissident messages of works such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Coquette, or Sense and Sensibility, evangelical fiction for women can hardly be said to contain a subversive edge. Such novels, instead, largely emphasize conformity to the evangelical community's practices and religious beliefs, especially when it comes to gender norms. In her historical study of evangelical publishing from 1789-1880, Candy Gunther Brown observes: "Rules for evaluating evangelical texts differed from the standards of secular literature," particularly in that "new publications gained entrance to the canon if they [ . . . ] reinforced the same values as texts previously recognized as canonical."2 Jan Blodgett's work on the formulas of evangelical fiction since 1980 underscores Gunther Brown's findings when she asserts that "all the novels remain clearly within the evangelical framework," and "they provide a vision of the world as it should be and delineate rules of behavior and shared values."3 As a result, widely-read novels that have been featured in evangelical church libraries in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries present readers with character traits and plotlines that ostensibly teach women how to avoid danger and partake of the good life. Nevertheless, in spite of evangelical writers' efforts to produce fiction that leads women into greater embodiment of freedom and human flourishing, these writings, as Gunther Brown and Blodgett demonstrate, tend to reflect the narrow practices and beliefs of the community to which they are written, thus ultimately constraining and devaluing women's lives.

Janette Oke's Love Comes Softly (1979) is a foundational example of an evangelical women's novel that has influenced current cultural norms regarding women's lives through its adherence to what Blodgett calls "the evangelical framework." Written by a mother of six and avid reader who noticed she could not find a romance novel that incorporated Christian faith into the plot, Oke wrote a groundbreaking book that Daniel Silliman argues "would shape the evangelical imagination."4 He adds, "it would sell more than one million copies, inspire countless new authors, and launch an industry of religious fiction."5 Love Comes Softly depicts the struggles and triumphs of Marty Claridge, a young, pregnant pioneer woman who was traveling West with her husband when an accident claims his life. She quickly meets Clark Davis, a widower with a young daughter, and he proposes a marriage of convenience, given that his daughter lacks a mother and Marty is in need of a man's protection and provision on the Western frontier. The romance that unfolds between the two characters is also the story of Marty's conversion to Clark's strong evangelical Christian faith. Clark instructs Marty in the beliefs and practices of his religion both through words and actions. As he helps her give her life to Christ, Clark and Marty fall in love. This book set the stage for evangelicals to imagine and express their vision for women's lives through fiction in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a vision that reflects the broader assumptions common to evangelicals, which is that an individual's alignment with and submission to the community's practices and beliefs will ensure one's eventual achievement of happiness. 

The assumption that one's adherence to certain practices and beliefs will undoubtedly yield a positive outcome underlies what Lynn S. Neal calls the "evangelical romance formula," which is that "boy plus girl plus conservative Protestant Christianity equals a happy marriage."6 As Silliman concludes of Love Comes Softly, "love, at the end of the narrative, overcomes all obstacles. Submitting to it and trusting it empower one to live triumphantly and abundantly."7 He furthermore specifies that the romantic couple in this book "live[s] happily ever after, a version of eternity in the here and now."8 Like the proponents of American exceptionalism who believe, in Deborah L. Madsen's words, that they "are special, exceptional, because they are charged with saving the world from itself," and that they "must sustain a high level of spiritual, political and moral commitment to [their] exceptional destiny," writers of evangelical romance novels reinforce the claim that is touted both directly and indirectly in sermons, Bible studies, and other popular media produced for this community: evangelical Christians have an exceptional destiny in relation to marriage.9 Partaking of the correct practices and beliefs promises to deliver a superior marriage and one in which male leadership and female submission is nothing short of harmonious. Accordingly, the characters in Love Comes Softly regularly read the Bible, pray, refer to their faith in everyday situations, and inhabit traditional gender roles. As Blodgett notes, "evangelical novels offer very concrete models for the day-to-day practice of religion," and in women's fiction, those practices are directly connected to a Christian couple's happiness together.10

For example, in Lori Wick's Jessie (2008), Seth and Jessie Redding are a young newlywed couple with no interest in God — to the chagrin of their evangelical community — and they subsequently find themselves struggling with their marriage. They have countless arguments over the small business they run together and the care of their fussy baby until Seth abandons his family for a life of promiscuity and criminal activity. Several years later, he has a conversion experience in prison and resolves to return to his family and repent of his sins. Seth goes to church, memorizes Scripture, earnestly and faithfully prays for his estranged wife's salvation, listens to sermons about male headship, takes his children to church and teaches them the basics of Christianity, and eventually facilitates his wife's conversion. By the end of the novel, Seth and Jessie have both changed for the better and their relationship is strong and peaceful. The novel makes clear that the characters' alignment with the evangelical faith (with an emphasis on the man's faith) brought about these positive changes. A similar plotline unfolds in Wick's earlier novel, Promise Me Tomorrow (1997), in which the male lead learns to be a devoted and attentive father after he has committed himself to the evangelical faith. Beyond Oke's and Wick's bodies of work, versions of this narrative proliferate in evangelical women's fiction, such as Francine Rivers's The Scarlet Thread (1996), which features a couple who separate and reconcile amidst the drama of the wife's conversion to evangelicalism, prompting her husband to renew his own faith. The narrative pointedly explains that "it was going to take God to get them back together again and make their marriage work."11

Evangelical Christians thus effectively advertise through their fiction that adherence to what they consider the correct religious practices and beliefs sets those individuals apart from other communities and models of marriage. They resemble the philosophical optimist who, in Thomas J. Elliot's words, holds that "life for the mass of humanity may be wretched or meaningless, but a person with the right amount of energy and courage can always achieve personal 'salvation.'"12  In evangelical culture, then, optimism perpetuates the myth that evangelical Christians are exceptional and thus exempt from ordinary and perpetual hardships at the same time that they are entitled to remarkable levels of success and happiness in various aspects of their lives. Even if they struggle and experience deep sorrows, their version of Christianity encourages them to expect deliverance and positive outcomes from their trials. As Seth Redding's pastor-mentor explains, he cannot "promise" that Seth "would have no pain or heartache," but "obedience was always blessed."13 Optimism encourages evangelicals to persist in the particular practices and beliefs of the community in order to achieve extraordinary levels of success and happiness, even when the desired outcome is irrational and unlikely. In Cruel Optimism (2011), Lauren Berlant argues that such persistence "involves a sustaining inclination to return to the scene of fantasy that enables you to expect that this time" your efforts will result in success, and thus it is the fantasy itself that "actually makes it impossible to attain the expansive transformation for which a person or a people risks striving."14 Love Comes Softly, Jessie, and other similar novels expertly present the fantasy, prevalent in a multitude of spheres within evangelical culture, that not only ensures evangelicals' conformity to the particular values of the community but, as Berlant suggests, cruelly motivates them to continue striving for an unattainable outcome, such as a conflict-free marriage or a constantly benevolent spouse.

Whereas the perspective of exceptionalism and the related ideology of optimism are harmful to evangelicals in general, their application to marriage and gender roles results in particularly dangerous situations for women. Evangelical women's fiction depicts various trajectories for women, in which some of them focus on making homes and caring for children while others have robust professional lives, and yet these stories contain a striking rigidity regarding the centrality and infallibility of male authority. Blodgett explains, "the heroes are usually devout Christians eager to see the heroine develop a new faith. The pattern of a man guiding his future wife to faith clearly reflects the Evangelical community's ideal of husbands serving as the head of the family in all matters."15 As we have already seen, Clark Davis of Love Comes Softly — who anticipates heroes in evangelical romances that follow such as Seth Redding of Jessie — is a quintessential evangelical who prays, reads the Bible, and presents the Christian religion to his female counterpart as a personal relationship that entails an individual's conversion. In the scene of Marty's conversion, she says to herself, "I've given myself to be a knowin' Clark's God," a statement that is preceded by her emotional acknowledgment that Jesus "personally took the punishment for her sins."16 Clark steadily models an exemplary evangelical faith, which prompts Marty to "[wonder] if she dared to approach Clark's God in the direct way that Clark himself did" and involves Clark discussing scripture with Marty, "explain[ing] about the promises to the Jewish people of a Messiah who would come" and who offered them "freedom from self and sin."17 This evangelical faith is presented in Love Comes Softly — and in a multitude of novels written by and for evangelicals in the following decades, including those by Wick, Rivers and others — as the reason Clark is suitable for and entitled to a special leadership role in the family and the foundation of his and Marty's happy, harmonious marriage. 

Christopher Douglas argues that "an anti-democratic authoritarian strain" lurks in the evangelical subculture, evident in the fiction produced by and for this community.18 In particular, the evangelical romance novel not only fails to prepare women for the "tricks" to which Tess Durbeyfield falls prey but shapes them to participate in their own abuse, a dynamic that contributes to the militant, authoritative, and seemingly hypocritical qualities that have puzzled onlookers of evangelicalism in recent years. Although male Christian leaders are not portrayed in evangelical women's fiction as in themselves abusive, the rigidity of Neal's formula ("boy plus girl plus conservative Protestant Christianity equals a happy marriage") is itself problematic, putting women in a vulnerable position where they have a dearth of spiritual and intellectual resources with which to protect themselves against abusers.19 In stories such as Love Comes Softly or Jessie, a man's trustworthiness and suitability for marriage is determined by his avowal of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and affirmed by his habit of reading the Bible. This litmus test is the single-most important aspect of building an evangelical marriage, and it is furthermore presented as a kind of "money-back-guarantee" for women seeking a happy marriage with a good man. Marry a man who talks to Jesus as a friend and reads the Bible every day and you will have an exceptional marriage, the deal promises. To my knowledge, no evangelical women's novel exists that allows for the failure of this formula without significant hedging. A man's failure to function as a trustworthy leader is often explained by his subsequent abandonment of the Christian faith, a plot twist that suggests his faith was not genuine. 

In Rivers's And the Shofar Blew (2003), for instance, Pastor Paul Hudson's faith is revealed to be inauthentic when he is seduced away from the evangelical lifestyle by power and fame, an abandonment of the faith that finds its highest expression in an extramarital affair. One sign of his inauthentic faith is his weak, entertainment-driven preaching, which is only loosely based on Scripture. He offers his congregation "morsels without nourishment" and "white bread and soda pop instead of the Bread of Life and the Living Water."20 This superficial preaching contrasts with the more robust sermon he gives at his resignation, in which he speaks about matters foundational to evangelicalism. In this sermon, "he talked about the love of God, who gave His only begotten Son so that all who believed in Him would have eternal life."21 Paul Hudson's internalization and articulation of a characteristically evangelical faith, a staple of the women's fiction written in this community, is presented as proof of his repentance and the reason he was able to restore his marriage. No framework appears to exist in this literature — indicative of the thinking of the evangelical subculture itself — for women to process the possibility that a man who professes an evangelical faith can, at the same time, behave in abusive, manipulative, and power-hungry ways.

Recent historical and sociological studies of evangelicalism, however, strongly affirm that abusers can indeed articulate evangelical beliefs. Kristin Kobes Du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne (2020), for example, explores the eighteen-year empire of Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll, who "preached a verse-by-verse literal reading of the Bible and promoted conservative social teachings," but who eventually resigned from his church after multiple accounts of his "abusive leadership style" and descriptions of his "lacking [in] self-control and discipline, of being arrogant, domineering, quick-tempered, and verbally violent."22 In the aftermath of disasters such as the implosion of Driscoll's Seattle church, many investigators wonder how a man so unapologetically abusive was affirmed and kept in power for so long and by so many people. A common response among the people who were complicit in or silent about Driscoll's abuse recalls the evangelical narrative prevalent in women's fiction written for this community: Driscoll prayed, read the Bible, had a personal relationship with Jesus, and was passionate about male leadership. His stated beliefs and spiritual practices were consistent with those of Clark Davis or the converted version of Seth Redding, and his sermons were much more theologically potent and Scripturally-based than Paul Hudson's watered-down preaching. A few years prior to the implosion of Driscoll's ministry in Seattle, Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, justified Driscoll's behavior to individuals concerned about his "crudeness" because "wherever the gospel is to be found, we need to be happy about that."23 The victims and witnesses to this pastor's abuse were, then, primed to endure or dismiss it, given that the dominant teaching in this community proclaims that certain practices and beliefs point to a man's exceptionalism and appointment by God. After all, the narrative that many evangelicals internalize — the narrative so prevalent in evangelical women's fiction — makes no allowance for Driscoll's professions of faith to exist in tension with his reprehensible behavior. Given that evangelical teaching, in women's fiction and beyond, forecloses the possibility that an abuser could profess evangelical faith, the women in this community are in a plight similar to Hardy's Tess Durbeyfield, who laments that she did not have access to the resources that would have alerted her to the "tricks" of a devious man.  

Despite the gentle heroes that populate women's evangelical fiction, a marked rigidity therefore underlies these narratives, which are reflective of the mores of the community itself.24 Marilynne Robinson expresses exasperation with this rigidity when she delineates evangelicals' "requirements for salvation," in their grand narratives, which are "being 'born again,' as they understand the phrase; being baptized at a certain age, under certain conditions, in a particular state of belief; being a member in good standing of a particular church; accepting the authority of a doctrinal system without comprehension of it."25 By including the qualifiers "as they understand it," "under certain conditions," "a particular state of belief," and "a particular church," Robinson effectively captures the narrow constraints by which evangelicals make decisions, evaluate others, and comprehend good and evil. In particular, evangelical women making decisions about marriage and submission to male authority lack essential resources to consider what good character consists of beyond a specific profession of faith, and thus they become victims of their community's rigid narratives at the same time that they participate in perpetuating them. When Robinson consequently excoriates "a culture of Christianity that does not encourage thought," she gestures toward the evangelical community's impoverished narratives, which specifically fail to provide women with opportunities to develop creativity and ingenuity as they imagine their own flourishing and encounter complex problems, especially in the realm of marriage.26

Since its development in the eighteenth century, the English novel has long been a vehicle of formation for women, providing warnings against ruination and demonstrating possible paths to independence and happiness, among other instructions for life. Evangelical culture has continued this tradition, especially through the prevalence of church libraries and the community's overall endorsement of certain books and authors that align with their values. Recent theological and cultural criticism has affirmed the power of narrative in a person's formation and orientation to the world. Marilyn McEntyre insists, for example, that "there are certain kinds of understanding that we have no access to except by means of story." For McEntyre, we "derive our basic expectations from the narrative patterns we internalize — the hope of a happy ending, the recognition of the need for sacrifice, a sense of how communities work, an understanding of family. Stories provide the basic plotlines and in the infinite variations on those plots help us to negotiate the open middle ground between predictability and surprise."27 James K.A. Smith expresses a similar position more succinctly when he writes that "our hearts traffic in stories."28 Women's evangelical fiction, however, is far from providing "infinite variations" to help women "negotiate" their experiences. Rather, the narrowness and rigidity of evangelical women's novels, which reinforce the customs and values of the community's practices, participates in preventing readers from obtaining essential resources for their own health, freedom, and flourishing. These rigid narratives, which are presented to women both in real life and in fiction, leave them vulnerable to manipulation and abuse. Samantha Ellis, in How to Be a Heroine: Or, What I've Learned from Reading Too Much (2014), expresses a reader's regret that likely parallels those of evangelical women when she writes of the characters in novels she loved and thus modeled herself after when she was young, bemoaning, "if only I'd spent my twenties trying to be more like Neely than Anne. If only I'd read other books."29 Given the perfidious messages lurking in women's evangelical fiction, combined with their perpetuation of what Robinson calls a "Christianity that does not encourage thought," readers in this community will profit both morally and intellectually if they stop perusing the church library for good books.30

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Rachel B. Griffis (@rachel_griffis) is an Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, where she teaches literature and writing courses. 

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