A male leaders’ network unified around gendered authority above doctrinal differences.

Evidence

United in their concern about gender and authority, conservative evangelical men knit together an expanding network of institutions, organizations, and alliances that amplified their voices and enhanced their power. Wilson invited Driscoll to speak at his church; Piper invited Wilson to address his pastor’s conference; leaders shared stages, blurbed each other’s books, spoke at each other’s conferences, and endorsed each other as men of God with a heart for gospel teaching. Within this network, differences—significant doctrinal disagreements, disagreements over the relative merits of slavery and the Civil War—could be smoothed over in the interest of promoting “watershed issues” like complementarianism, the prohibition of homosexuality, the existence of hell, and substitutionary atonement. Most foundationally, they were united in a mutual commitment to patriarchal power. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 463

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism by which the network amnesties differences over slavery and doctrine in favor of complementarianism and patriarchal power is the load-bearing core of Du Mez’s continuity thesis — a dense specification of how a cultural apparatus functions.
• XREF: Directly relevant to evaluating whether this represents a dominant strand versus a strand of evangelicalism; also connects to institutional-amnesty dynamics seen in Milgrom’s law-merchant literature about reputation networks. — connects to: Both dominant and subordinate castes prefer to seek authority from the male master. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1939; The Institute’s patriarchal fund control undercut its image as a united community. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1085; The black church simultaneously united and divided men and women by gender — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 702 (+4 more)