Romancing the new evangelical woman.

Abstract

This project examines women’s Christian historical fiction romance novels in order to understand the evangelical identity and the rise of the Christian Right. The chapters are interlocking essays that could be published as separate articles. Chapter One identifies the emergence of the marketplace phenomenon of Christian historical fiction romance novels within the evangelical print media marketplace and argues that these books should be taken seriously within historical scholarship. Chapter Two reanalyzes the source material of the first chapter through the lens of women and gender theory to amplify the voices of women within the research. Chapter Three utilizes the theory in Chapter Two to analyze Family Values from the perspective of women as they helped cement the rise of the Christian Right. This thesis adds new sources and angles of analysis to the scholarship on the rise of the Christian Right.