Soft Patriarchs

A conversation with Brad Wilcox.

Interview by Michael Cromartie | posted 9/01/2004

2 of 2

You suggest that conservative Protestant institutions have continued to chart a path largely defined by resistance to family modernization. But you also note that you have seen a number of accommodations and innovations in their family-related ideologies. You put it this way: "What is striking about many of these changes, and especially the expressive strategy of encouraging men to be more engaged and affectionate with their families, is that they represent innovative efforts to shore up the family as an institution. Thus conservative Protestant institutions have adopted progressive means in the service of traditional ends." Explain that.

What we see when we look at the religious scene in the United States is that the churches in which you are most likely to hear about men's responsibilities in the family are evangelical churches. This is fairly innovative; it would not necessarily have been the case as recently as 30 years ago. I think what's happened is a recognition among evangelical clergy and laity that the family is in trouble and that one of the key ways, if not the most important way, to respond to the fragility of family life in the contemporary United States is to get men more engaged with their own families. So that's one way in which things are more innovative in evangelical congregations.

Over the same period, there has been a new focus on the emotional domain—especially an innovative focus on women's emotional needs and potential coming from key family leaders like Gary Smalley and James Dobson. You have Smalley, for instance, talking about 122 ways in which men can be more sensitive to the needs of their wives.

I'm a bit more ambivalent about this focus on emotional needs, which may work against a recognition that marriage as an institution has a lot of purposes—foremost among them, the spiritual life of the couple and their children. Those purposes can get lost in the emotional focus that we see in some discourse from evangelicals. But the bottom line here is that, I think, because evangelicalism is intent on protecting the family, there is also room to adopt some techniques, messages, and strategies that are in many respects quite innovative. So you have both innovation and defense of tradition.

Can you outline the major differences between what you call the "golden rule liberalism" of mainline Protestant families and the "expressive traditionalism" of conservative Protestant families? What makes them distinct from each other?

In the mainline, you have a view of Scripture certainly as God's word, but the literal word of Scripture is not necessarily seen as a concrete guide for family life. So you have to try to uncover a certain spirit of the New Testament, if you will, which will then guide family life. That is more a liberal theological approach. When it comes to family, mainline Protestantism has been intent on signaling its cultural liberalism, its commitment to affirming family diversity, its openness to same-sex marriage, and its commitment to meeting people where they're at, in terms of their family status. That's their formal level of discourse.

But at the practical level, if you go to your average mainline congregation, what you'll find is that they're really reaching out to married couples with kids, and they're doing that by basically preaching the golden rule both to adults and, most importantly, to kids through Sunday school, programs, and children's worship. There's a kind of two-step dance, where formally they're in favor of family diversity but when you actually look at who's in the congregations, you'll find mostly very conventional families. So people basically want to think of themselves as liberal yet live a fairly conventional family life.

Conservative Protestants, on the other hand, actually have a higher percentage of single parents, step-parents, single adults among them. I think there is a higher percentage of non-traditional families in evangelical congregations for a number of reasons. But one reason is that the kind of intensive experience and community they offer is attractive to people who are in a difficult family situation and are looking for a community that will help them get through their life. And often they're also looking for an ideal model of the family, which they haven't necessarily encountered in their own lives—the ideal that is held up in a pastoral way in the evangelical context. There's a certain irony here: evangelicalism holds up a traditional ideal of the family and yet has more non-traditional families, whereas mainline Protestantism holds up a more liberal ideal and yet has more traditional families in their pews.

Michael Cromartie directs the Evangelical Studies Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

first page |

2 of 2

share this page