Abstract

The Evangelical Women’s Caucus (EWC) established an unprecedented relationship between evangelicals and feminists in the United States, the impacts of which persist today. In the 1960s and 1970s, many Americans viewed the emerging second-wave feminist movement as ideologically incompatible with evangelicalism. Pioneering biblical feminists, however, believed the Bible confirmed that God created women and men equally in his image. In 1974, biblical feminists came together and built the EWC to advocate gender equality, bringing the “secular” feminist fight against sexism and sex-based discrimination into evangelical communities and churches. This dissertation examines how, despite representing ideologies often in tension, pathfinding biblical feminists built and sustained a coalition (the EWC), which grew into a movement (biblical feminism) that has transformed feminism, evangelicalism, and the broader American landscape. Drawing on extensive archival research, this dissertation traces the trajectory of the EWC from its inception to its current iteration as the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women’s Caucus – Christian Feminism Today (EEWC-CFT). By examining the EWC’s construction, maintenance, successes, schisms, and failures, this dissertation highlights the ongoing and reciprocal relationships between biblical feminists, evangelicals, and feminists throughout this history. The EWC exposed intersections, overlaps, and conflicts between the feminist and evangelical movements and incited new discourses around broader cultural questions about appropriate gender roles, reproductive rights, homosexuality, and race. Bridging evangelicalism and feminism, biblical feminists created a new identity that challenged existing ideological, political, and social binaries. Through the lens of the EWC’s coalition-building project, this dissertation reinterprets the history of biblical feminism, emphasizing its fluid, reciprocal, and interactive characteristics. This relational focus better reflects the complexities and nuances of biblical feminists’ lived realities. Although this dissertation examines biblical feminist history, the discourses, challenges, conflicts, and repercussions that biblical feminists instigated, navigated, and, ultimately, have survived remain part of the contemporary narrative of polarization in American culture. Revisiting this past through a new lens can help scholars and activists understand and navigate the present.