Research

Books in Progress:

Faithful Dissent: The Feminist Counterpublic on the Margins of Evangelicalism

Based on my dissertation research, this book is a historical and ethnographic study of politically progressive digital communities of post-evangelical feminists in the United States. Well-known authors and actively engaged readers co-created religious communities that challenged dominant evangelical ideologies using blogs, podcasts, and social media networks. Drawing on participant-observation at digital and in-person events, 75 semi-structured interviews, and textual examination of digital media, I demonstrate that digital and social media have enabled women to become religious leaders in online spaces. I argue such digital communities were both a haven away from the dominant evangelical public and spaces to formulate resistance to conservative evangelicalism.

The Life and Legacy of Rachel Held Evans

Rachel Held Evans—in addition to being a blogger, speaker, author, mother, and wife—was a religious leader. Unlike many of her male counterparts, she was not to be found in the pulpit on a Sunday or on the clergy rolls of any denomination. Her congregation was gathered online through her digitally disseminated words, and her influence was geographically dispersed and massive. In a New Yorker article in 2021, Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry claimed that Rachel Held Evans may have been the “Martin Luther” of Christianity’s contemporary reformation. After her death at the age of 37 in 2019 after a short illness, Evans was eulogized in both mainstream media and Christian presses, on Twitter, in Instagram posts, and at that year’s gathering of the Christian conference she founded, Evolving Faith. The biography will explore Evan’s experience as a millennial at the height of evangelical subculture at the end of the twentieth century and demonstrate her role in American Christianity during the proliferation of digital media in the early twenty-first century.

Articles:

“A Calculated Attack on Clergy Abuse: Challenging Patriarchal Power at Willow Creek Community Church,” Theology & Sexuality (2024): 1-18.

“Outposts in the Wilderness: The Role of Digital Media in Creating Post-Evangelical Feminist Communities, 2000-2023.” (Under review)

Public Scholarship:

“Post-Evangelical Feminist Communities on Digital Media w/ Kelsey Hanson Woodruff,” The Classical Ideas Podcast, March 6, 2025.

“Christian Feminists From Abroad Confront US Sexual Politics,” Epicenter, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, November 20, 2024.