Evangelical women were celebrated for combining feminine beauty with militant combative politics

Evidence

However, for most evangelicals, supporting Palin wasn’t really a lesser-of-two-evils scenario. Raised in nondenominational evangelicalism with a dose of Pentecostalism, Palin was a self-described “Bible-believing Christian,” a down-to-earth candidate (“just your average hockey mom”) who appealed to plain-folk evangelicals, to those tired of being disparaged by “liberal elites.” She was also a creationist, she was staunchly pro-gun and anti-abortion, and she had just given birth to her fifth child, who had Down syndrome. But Palin didn’t only, or even primarily, project a maternal image. A former beauty queen, she embodied an ideal of feminine beauty that had been elevated to a new level of spiritual—and political—significance. She was the ultimate culture warrior, a Phyllis Schlafly for a new generation, a moose-hunting pit bull in lipstick who could give feminists a run for their money, without compromising her sex appeal. In this way, Palin embodied the conservative ideal that “their” women knew how to please men. And Palin delighted in undermining the masculinity of liberal men, especially Barack Obama. Many voters found Palin’s unpredictability and general ignorance of world affairs disqualifying, but to many evangelicals, she was, in the words of Richard Land, “a rock star.” — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 532

Categorization

• XREF: Directly continues the book’s central thread on militant femininity — connects to Du Mez’s earlier chapters on women like Elizabeth Eliot and the feminine submission ideal, and to how Trump-supporting evangelical women reconcile traditional gender roles. — connects to: Black Baptist women fused a rhetoric of war with one of domesticity — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 670