The women who made MAGA possible

Live, Laugh, Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women And the World They Made

Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Liveright Publishing Corporation
2026.

What to make of the high percentage of evangelical Christian women continuing to support Donald Trump, even after a sexual assault conviction, the Epstein files and evidence of enriching himself from tax dollars? Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez traces the development of a particular notion of femininity and Christian womanhood in a book complementing her best-seller, Jesus and John Wayne, which charted the history of masculinity in the evangelical world.

A happy Christian woman

Du Mez, a Calvin University professor, identifies a significant cultural shift stemming from 1800s holiness theology and the positive thinking movement, later associated with Norman Vincent Peale. Both movements promoted the power of one’s will to shape reality. Such writings about the secret of happiness were mixed with fundamentalist, Pentecostal and Calvinist themes to define how women should live, culminating in Marabel Morgan’s book, The Total Woman (which sold more than 10 million copies in the 1970s). Happiness for women, in this worldview, is composed of: joyful submission to a God-ordained male hierarchy; maintaining an attractive, orderly home with disciplined children; and supporting leaders and policies that reinforce such Christian womanhood.

The heart of Live, Laugh, Love is stories of notable women from 1875 to 2025, including: Catharine Marshall, Elizabeth Elliott, Marabel Morgan, Phyllis Schlafly and Amy Grant. She also colourfully details cultural elements that reinforced such views: Christian romance novels; popular Amish books; Little House on the Prairie; Christian radio and pop music; beauty products; and home décor (for example, Precious Moments figurines). In recent years, blog posts, Facebook groups, Instagram photos and TikTok videos, including tradwife content, have perpetuated such visions of women.

Roots and reinforcements

Du Mez skillfully connects dots with larger movements: the prosperity gospel, purity culture and the commodification of Christianity. In this totalizing world, conformity is rewarded and questioners like Beth Moore and Rachel Held Evans are ostracized. Communism, secular feminism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion are vilified.

She highlights the role of direct marketing businesses and small groups. Tupperware parties, Amway sales networks and Mary Kay Cosmetics gave women opportunities to earn money, while socializing a vision of family life, good housekeeping and free enterprise. Front-line saleswomen, often ill-treated, seldom complained, believing that life rewarded obedience and fitting into the group.

Most interesting is the role of cell groups and small groups to reinforce conformity, “disciplining” women who dared to be different, maintaining control and linking women into Christian Right political campaigns.

Agency and abuse

At one level, this is a story of women finding a way to be happy in a male-dominated world. Some women helped create conditions for accepting authoritarian leaders, delivering support networks for the MAGA political machine. Many actively perpetrated the social torture of other women, especially any who challenged or diverged from accepted social norms. This focus on women’s agency recognizes but does not just blame patriarchy; neither does it gloss over the prevalence of abuse of power, coercive control and harm done to women.

Du Mez reminds us that history cannot predict the future but can inform choices that add up to shape the future. Understanding how we got here is an important step and Du Mez makes that a good read.