Jessica Cole
Anthropology Department
University of Oregon
Email: jcc@uoregon.edu

Title: Performing sex, spirit, and the nation: methodological implications for studying evangelical Christian women's movements

Traditionalist conservative women who simultaneously claim "empowerment" while practicing "submission" present a thorny problem for conventional feminist methodologies that seek to critique patriarchy and recognize women's "agency" by affirming women's own "voices." Intimate Issues is one such group of women. In its books (Dillow & Pintus 2002 and 1999), Intimate Issues lays out a "Bible-based" evangelical model for reclaiming and maintaining "sexual purity" and increased marital satisfaction through religious conversion. At its conferences, Intimate Issues serves as venue for women's ritual performances of gender, sexuality, and conversion. The case of Intimate Issues raises the question: how do prescriptions for purity, as outlined in Christian ideology, compare with women's actual performances of purity, as described in their personal testimonies? This paper attempts to outline a theoretical framework for such a future study. To do so, it uses anthropological (Turnbull 1990, Griffith 1997, Lawless 1992, and Silverstein 1981) and theological (Coakley 2002) models to analyze previously published ethnographic accounts (Lawless 1988 and Griffith 1997) and personal testimonies (Dillow & Pintus 2002 and 1999 and Lawless 1992) of evangelical women's agency and ritual transformation. It also draws on historical (Watt 1991) and sociological (Williams 1981) models to situate "Bible-based" (fundamentalist) doctrine and "absolutist" ideology (absolute heterosexuality, condemnation of abortion, etc.) in political economic context.
Evangelical women, who claim empowerment by way of absolutist identities that are grounded patriarchal religious doctrines, raise crucial questions about the relevance of anthropological, performance, and feminist research methodologies. Such as, what do women's experiences of spiritual "transcendence" and renewed "purity" or changed "sexual preference" reveal about the fluidity of "heteronormative" sexual and gender identities? Moreover, notions of personal "agency?" Drawing on theological (Coakley 2002) and "Spirit-centered" anthropological models (Turnbull 1990) this paper asks: can secular theories make sense of women's claims about the "Spirit" and "divine grace?" At the same time, how does a model of performance analysis that privileges subjective experience, and, thus relativizes truth, inadvertently work to shield absolutist religious ideology from political criticism? This in mind, is it possible to represent women's performances in a way that is both recognizable to them and critical of their role in reproducing absolutist and nationalist ideologies? If so, what does that suggest about similar universalizing tendencies in modernist feminist theory? Might we be dealing with parallel "patriarchal feminisms?" An adequate answer is beyond the scope of this brief methods essay. However, as I evaluate various research models, I will attempt to outline a theoretical framework for a future ethnographic study of Intimate Issues where I can explore these questions in more detail.
For the purposes of this essay, the terms "fundamentalist" or "evangelical" ideologies and traditions refer to those definitions outlined by political historians Russell Spittler (1994), George Marsden (1991), and David Harrington Watt (1991). For Spittler, fundamentalism refers to one organized reaction to rising religious liberalism, biblical criticism, socialism, and evolutionary theory at the close of the 19th century (107). The ideological definition of "classic fundamentalism" refers to "an unbending literalism in biblical interpretation coupled with a theory of inspiration close to dictation," (111). In the years following WWII, the "new-evangelicalism" emerged as that brand of fundamentalism that incorporated social criticism and political action. Whereas earlier fundamentalist doctrine had centered on apocalyptic narratives, post-WWII evangelicals grounded their critique of society in discourses of the "family," "Focus on the joy and comfort of family life gave evangelicals a new language through which to express the traditional message of fundamentalists' dispensational rhetoric: Christians can find hope in a world careening out of control," (Watt 1991:166). This certainty about personal identity translates into absolutist moral doctrines that dovetail with conservative political ideology. Follow this, fundamentalist and evangelical movements can be conceptualized in terms of the Marxist historian Raymond Williams' notion of "militant particularisms." Like the socialist labor movements William's studies, evangelical and fundamentalist groups "have set out "to make real what is at first sight the extraordinary claim that the defense and advancement of certain particular interests [i.e., Christian morality and lifestyle], properly brought together, are in fact in the general interest [i.e., global salvation]," (Williams 1989[1981]:249). Moreover, as with the "idea of socialism," the idea of salvation "comes not once and for all but many times; is lost and is found again; has to be affirmed and developed, continually, if it is to stay real." That is to say, it must be born again.
By virtue of its associations with groups including Campus Crusade for Christ, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Wheaton College , Intimate Issues clearly falls into that contemporary "network" of Christian organizations associated with the "evangelical mainstream" (Watt 1991:155) or "center-to-left evangelicalism" (Spittler 1994:111). In their books, conferences, and media appearances, Intimate Issues' authors and speakers outline a doctrine for a "Christian lifestyle" which dovetails with mainstream conservatism. That is, they promote "traditional" sexuality (absolute heterosexuality in marriage) as outlined in the Christian Bible, which they believe to be the "fully inspired, fully infallible, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God," (Intimate Issues 1999). As venues for the performance of these traditionalist gender roles, Intimate Issues' national conferences and Bible-studies represent militant particularlisms that link "local expressions" of "human betterment" and "salvation" to "Christ's invisible and universal church," (Intimate Issues 1999). Their mission is expressed in a literal interpretation of the Jesus as "bridegroom" narrative around which they construct doctrine that admonishes Christian women to be "pure" (chaste) in order to hasten the Second-coming of Jesus Christ. Dillow and Pintus address the chaste single Christian woman: "Your small story of obedience on earth becomes a higher, heavenly story. One day you will be at the marriage supper of the lamb. On that day, that glorious joyful day, you will see how your choices contributed to the spiritual bride making herself ready," (2002:201-02). Despite the historical and theoretical fit, terms such as "fundamentalist" and "militant" are pejorative, thus resisted. In an effort to represent women associated with Intimate Issues in a way that is recognizable to them, I will use the labels "traditionalist conservative" (Kintz 1997) and "Bible-based" to describe their doctrine.
In their books for married and single Christian women (Intimate Issues [1999] and Gift-Wrapped by God [2002], respectively) and conference presentations (2002), authors Dillow and Pintus tell personal stories of women, including themselves, who have been healed of past sexual traumas through prayer rituals and a subsequent lifestyle of obedience to "the will of God." What kind of "power" are women experiencing when they claim to be healed or transformed by submitting to a patriarchal religious doctrine?
In a reflexive essay about his experience studying the molimo musical instrument and ritual of the Mbuti people of the Ituri Forest (Zaire), anthropologist Colin Turnbull makes the case for subjective or experiential analysis of the liminal state. According to Turnbull, it is only once he "gives himself over" completely in performing the ritual that he is able to understand the nature of the power of the molimo ritual, wherein, all inconsistency and incongruity are resolved through the "curative" ritual transformation (1990:71-72). Moreover, when he calls for a new "Spirit" centered anthropology, Turnbull suggests that the curative properties of the liminal state he experienced among the Mbuti and the subjective performance-based method he used to document it, are universally applicable (74).
"Sarah" suffered from the memory of being raped as a young child. According to Dillow and Pintus, although "Sarah wanted to trust God … she secretly doubted His ability to help her," (1999:169). As a result, she suffered severe depression as a young adult. During college, Sarah was "healed" of her trauma when her friends came together and prayed for her for "three and a half hours." Sarah describes her experience:
I had not connected my attempted suicide to the rape, but as my friends prayed for my depression to life, I suddenly found myself transported back in time to the garage where the rape took place … Suddenly Jesus was there. He was mad! He ordered the clouds [of lust and anger] away. Then He reached for the chain that bound the boy and girl together and snapped it in two. With the clouds gone and the chain broken, all that remained were two innocent and frightened children. (Sic, Dillow and Pintus 1999:170)
In scene described above, the symbolic value of the characters, and the relationship between them, is transformed: the power dynamic is inverted in the liminal state. "Natalie," and her husband "Joe," experience a similar transformation through their total submission to "God" in the sexual act. Both victims of extreme childhood sexual abuse, Natalie describes how she and Joe were "made to feel as virgins" on their wedding night:
After the official wedding ceremony, we sat alone together on the couch and shared communion … Then we invited HIM [God] into our marriage bed. Slowly we undressed each other and took a shower together-literally washing each other in words of love, patience, gentleness, kindness, care, commitment, and prayer. As we made love, the presence and sweetness of God was like a gentle rain, hovering over us and pouring out His love, pouring out His peace and joy, cleansing and healing, and pouring out His gift of lovemaking for us. We lay in each other's arms, thrilled, in awe of God and HIS GIFT TO US. We felt no shame, no guilt, no ugliness, no pain, no terror, and no fear. (Sic, Dillow and Pintus 2002:63).
The above examples are journal excerpts that Sarah and Natalie have shared with Dillow and Pintus. Reading them, I am disarmed by their ability to express such extreme vulnerability and hopefulness. I find that Turnbull's argument for extreme relativism offers a kind of optimism in the face of stories of feminist anthropologists who, despite their attempts to "empower' their traditionalist conservative women informants, have further alienated them with their "wrong grids" (feminist theoretical frameworks) (Lawless 1992). Despite this, I am both politically and theoretically wary of embracing what I understand to be Turnbull's methodology of the experiential analysis of performance.
Linda Kintz (1997) documents how Right-wing women political activists strategically cultivate intimacy or "familiarity," (96). This familiarity works to normalize women's moral agendas and deflect political critique. Moreover, as the linguistic anthropologist Michael Silverstein (1981) in has demonstrated in the realm of language use, by relying solely on informants' analysis of their own experiences, researchers run the risk of missing crucial observations. This is the case because when native speakers describe and analyze their own language (or experience), they are inherently limited by the very structures of that language (or experience). In the case of Intimate Issues, for example, women's abilities to analyze their experiences are inherently limited by their religious convictions. Anthropologist Elaine Lawless documents this phenomenon in her principle informant, "Sister Anna" in her ethnography Handmaidens of the Lord (1988). According to Lawless, Anna "does not (cannot?) believe she is strong or powerful or independent. She has composed a script for herself that is in alignment with her sociocultural surroundings," (1992:310). When Anna takes back her husband because "it was the only way [she] could maintain the position of pastor in her church and hold on to the authority she had worked hard to acquire," (170), does her version of "passive submission" problematize the kind of vulnerability that Sarah and Natalie describe in Dillow and Pintus (1999 and 2002, respectively)? That is, do these moments of ritual empowerment translate into day-to-day performances? According to feminist Christian theologian Sarah Coakley, answer lies in a critical engendering of religious and divine powers that does not collapse all instances of submission into self-negation:
[I]f our fundamental and practised dependence is on God, there is a fulcrum from which our (often necessary) dependencies on others may be assessed with critical discernment and the assumed binary gender associations of such dependencies called into question. (Coakley 2002:xx)
In dialogue with Judith Butler (1990 and 1993) are her concept of "performativity," Coakley outlines a model for analyzing practice that is grounded in the theological tradition and envisions the possibility for the "transcendence" of gender through the act of "contemplation." Coakley outlines a distinctly feminist albeit "Spirit" centered model for critiquing absolute gender binaries such as those reproduced by Intimate Issues.
When women associated with Intimate Issues share their own testimonies and listen to or read the testimonies of others, they are participating in powerful rituals that solidify their connectedness to other Christian women across denominational, generational, and socioeconomic boundaries. Moreover, these performances of suffering (reliving the grief associated with their trauma[s]) and healing (through prayer), serve as models for the audience. Marie Griffith documents a similar phenomenon at conferences sponsored by the evangelical women's prayer organization, Aglow International. According to Griffith, the ritual performance of healing from sexual trauma deeply impacts how women in the audience think of themselves. Such women, in turn, "reconstruct their life stories and refashion themselves according to these available forms," (i.e., the "forms" performed by the speakers). In doing so, women affirm the divinely-inspired origins and powers of such "forms," which are "flexible enough to allow variant meanings yet sufficiently restricted to sustain the authority of the narrative itself, elicit correct attitudes and feelings and produced disciplined religious selves," (Griffith 1997:58).
In the above essay, I have begun to outline a theoretical framework for documenting the "disciplined religious selves" of women associated with Intimate Issues. In doing so, I raise questions about the limits of feminist paradigms, models of political economic critique, and modes of subjective analysis. My analysis will also be limited by my data gathering opportunities: participant observation and interviews. After documenting women's experiences of empowerment and transformation in ritual (by attending and participating in group performances at Intimate Issues conferences), I must evaluate these performances against women's day-to-day gendered performances (as they describe them in interview settings). There is much work yet to be done.

Intimate Issues and its authors and speakers are connected to evangelical institutions and groups including, Dallas Theological Seminary, Wheaton College, Campus Crusade for Christ, and the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Authors Linda Dillow and Lorraine Pintus (2002 and 1999) base much of their Biblical interpretation on the theological models of Jody Dillow (1977) who was trained and maintains ties with Dallas Theological Seminary. Intimate Issues "singles session" speaker, Nancy Barton, also trained at Dallas Theological Seminary, currently serves as Director of Women's Ministries at Christian Church associated with Wheaton College. Linda Dillow worked for many years with and is currently endorsed by the Christian college missionary organization, Campus Crusade for Christ. Linda and Jody Dillow's B.E.E. Ministries missionary organization is accredited and endorsed by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith
1990 Gender Trouble. NY: Routledge.
1993 Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of "sex." NY: Routledge.

Coakley, Sarah
2002 Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Dillow, Linda and Lorraine Pinuts
2002 Giftwrapped by God: Secret Answers to the Question "Why Wait?" Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press.
1999 Intimate Issues: 21 Questions Christian Women Ask about Sex: Woman to Woman. Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press.

Griffith, Marie
1997 God's Daughters: evangelcial women and the power of submission. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Intimate Issues
2002 Intimate Issues Conferences. Audio Tapes. Monument, CO: Intimate Issues.
1999 Statement of Faith. Electronic document, www.intimateissues.com/conference/statement.htm, accessed June 5, 2003.

Kintz, Linda
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