Family and Gender

Abstract

Abstract The family has been a central institution in fundamentalist theology and practice from the movement’s beginnings. Fundamentalists’ insistence on maintaining ‘traditional’ gender and family roles has been one of the key ways believers have set themselves apart from shifting mainstream ideals. The hierarchies embedded in the patriarchal nuclear family also offer a concrete representation of fundamentalists’ understandings of God’s intended social order. In churches, parachurch ministries, and fundamentalist subcultures, religious and social activities are often segregated by gender. These homosocial spaces instruct believers in fundamentalist gender ideology but also offer space for expressing difficulties with this ideology and renegotiating its bounds. For fundamentalist women, gender-segregated ministries have fostered spaces for female authority even in a broader religious culture that emphasizes women’s submission. Aspects of fundamentalist ideology on gender and family have shifted over time, but the commitment to conservative, binary, and patriarchal roles has remained consistent.