For decades, American popular media have instructed audiences about their roles and significance in the public sphere. In The Faithful Citizen, rhetorical critic Kristy Maddux argues that popular Christian media not only communicate avenues for civic engagement but do so in profoundly gendered terms. Her detailed interrogation of popular Christian movies, books, and television shows—the Left Behind series, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Amazing Grace, 7th Heaven, and the blockbuster The Da Vinci Code—exposes five competing models of how Christians should behave in the civic sphere as their gendered selves. What emerges is a typology that insightfully reveals how these varying faith-based models of engagement uniquely shape public discourse and influence the larger picture of contemporary politics.

Preface

1          Christian Media, Gender, and Civic Participation

2          Genteel Masculinity, the Prophetic Posture, and Legislative Politics

Amazing Grace

3          Violence, Divine Sanction, and Submissive Femininity

The Passion of the Christ

4          Brutish Masculinity and the War against Evil

Left Behind

5          Femininity and Secular Salvation in Social Welfare

7th Heaven

6          Biology, Heterosexuality, and the Privatization of Faithfulness

The Da Vinci Code

7          The Limits and Possibilities of Faith-Based Civic Participation

References

Notes

Index

Kristy Maddux is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. Her work has been published by many journals, including Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Philosophy & Rhetoric, Feminist Media Studies, and Women’s Studies in Communication. She lives in the greater Washington, D.C., area.

For more about Kristy, visit kristymaddux.com