The Return of the Tradwife Gospel

What sounds like virtue and tradition is actually the recycling of old ideologies designed to restrict women’s autonomy and rights.

Erika Kirk—widow of Christian nationalist and Turning Point USA founder, Charlie Kirk—walked on stage on Sunday for her husband’s memorial. Alongside renewed calls for young men to model themselves after her late husband, who was killed during a debate event at a Utah university, Erika Kirk implored the women in the audience and around the country to listen and learn from her example:

“Women, I have a challenge for you too. Be virtuous. Our strength is found in God’s design for our role. We are guardians. We are the encouragers. We are the preservers. Guard your heart, everything you do flows from it. And if you’re a mother, please recognize, that is the single most important ministry you have.” 

Critics were quick to call out what Erika Kirk was advocating for: traditionalist ideals essentializing the roles of women as mothers and spouses. It was especially ironic as the mother of two announced she took over as CEO of her deceased husband’s company, Turning Point USA. While some women who have already bought into tradwife discourse online found their champion in Kirk and a battle cry for traditional values in her speech, many others heard the anti-feminist ideals that will hurt all of us–Erika included. 

Christian nationalism and tradwife philosophy will not spare any of us, even those with the most privilege–namely white cis women like Erika Kirk. There is perhaps no better example than the 19th century Cult of Domesticity, also known as the Cult of True Womanhood. In fact, its four cardinal tenets—piety, purity, domesticity and submission—were at the heart of her remarks. The movement–which exploded in Victorian England and America–glorified the true woman who fulfilled her God-given role of wife and mother, serving solely within the sphere of the home. 

The Cult of Domesticity, targeted at upper- and middle-class women who had the time and money to be sole homemakers and mothers, was first criticized by Barbara Welter in the 1960s. Welter and later historians highlighted how this movement glorified women remaining within their “proper sphere”—the home—and tethered it to a God-ordained separation of the sexes. As Welter wrote in his 1966 chapter of The Cult of True Womanhood: 

“If anyone, male or female, dared to tamper with the complex of virtues that made-up True Womanhood, he was damned immediately as an enemy of God, of civilization and of the Republic. It was a fearful obligation, a solemn responsibility, which the nineteenth-century American woman had–to uphold the pillars of the temple with her frail white hand.”

As the Cult of Domesticity flourished, so too emerged the social purity movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which mobilized social purists (many of whom were women) against alcohol consumption, sex work and the distribution of contraception and abortion. This movement fed into eugenics in the early 20th century that sought to achieve racial purity by policing and protecting white women’s virginity. 

But while eugenics flourished in the 1930s and ’40s—and arguably is experiencing a resurgence today—the Cult of Domesticity conflicted with the growing women’s suffrage movement in the United States. 

Many anti-suffragists argued that women’s sphere remained in the home and as a result, they were not supposed or prepared to vote. 

In the past year, this rhetoric has reemerged among Christian nationalist pastors like Joel Webbon and Doug Wilson, who argue that votes should be allocated to families led by men rather than individuals. Wilson himself argued that the 19th Amendment should be repealed. 

As the Cult of Domesticity and social purity movements revealed, social expectations that essentialize the role and identity of a woman hurt everyone, especially those they victimize and sacrifice for the cause: white, straight women. The social purity movements were built on the protection and preservation of white women’s virginity, so while white supremacy purported to provide some protection for white women, it hurt, imprisoned and sterilized any woman–white women included–that did not serve the goal of white racial purity and dominance. 

Emboldened by Christianity, the Cult of Domesticity and social purity movements sacralized this gender and race-based violence and kept all isolated through economic, social and political control. While many poor women and women of color had to (or were forced to) work outside the home or in another person’s home to survive in the 19th century, women with privilege still did not have the right to divorce their husbands, faced marital rape and domestic abuse without legal recourse, did not have access to reproductive healthcare including legal contraception and abortions, or to cast a vote. 

So when Erika Kirk spoke to women this past Sunday, some were swayed seeing her as a champion for tradwives. But many more recognized that the very gender essentialism she advocated for is not new and not beneficial for any of us, no matter our gender. 

The rights we have today—some of which are under renewed threat, or already stripped—are the hard-won fruits of feminists who struggled throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In fact, the reason that Erika Kirk is even able to serve as CEO of Turning Point USA is a credit to the very feminist movement that she believes devalues women.

It’s ironic given that a day after her speech, far-right pastor Taylor Marshall posted a video claiming that “Erika Kirk just ended the Feminist Movement,” arguing that “true Christianity femininity was on display.” 

Catherine Rottenberg, associate professor at the University of Nottingham, explains, “At a time when normative gender roles and dominant notions of sexuality have been challenged and in flux–while work life feels overwhelming–these ‘traditional’ values might seem like a refuge.” But in actuality, Christian nationalist and far-right movements recruit white women into supporting the very movements that are challenging and removing their rights.