Kristin Du Mez presents Live Laugh Love at HAUMC

Join scholar Kristin Kobes Du Mez (author of Jesus and John Wayne) for a conversation with Rev. Angela Denker at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church.

6pm Doors

7pm Book Talk

This is a free event, but RSVPs are required.

There is an option to pre-purchase the book, which is the best way to guarantee your copy! Books will also be available for sale at the event.

About the Book: In Jesus and John Wayne, her “paradigm-influencing” (Christianity Today) bestseller that has changed how countless Americans understand their faith, historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez showed how evangelicals made Jesus into an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. Now, in her new book, she unearths the roots of the glittering, Instagram-ready culture of white Christian femininity.

Live Laugh Love explores a world intimately familiar to millions of American women: Christian bookstores and radio, Hallmark movies, multilevel marketing companies, and contemporary lifestyle brands. This consumer culture might appear trivial, but Du Mez demonstrates that it has an unlikely and revealing history that stretches all the way back to the late nineteenth century and the emergence of New Thought, a movement that championed the power of the mind to shape reality. It was this idea, Du Mez shows in her recasting of American Christianity, that brought together disparate traditions, including Mormonism, holiness evangelicalism, and holiness theology’s charismatic offshoots. Usually seen as distinct, these creeds in fact overlapped, and in the process gave rise to prosperity theologies and to the philosophy of positive thinking.

Combining sweeping cultural history with intimate storytelling, Du Mez explains how theological exclusion led women to build their own brand of Christianity, rich in cultural influence if thin in formal doctrine. Live Laugh Love ultimately explains how a powerful yet elusive vision of womanhood has shaped lives, families, and politics for more than a century now—and how it has brought us to our reactionary moment.

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is professor of history at Calvin University. She is currently a senior democracy fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute. She has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post and been interviewed on NPR, PBS, and the BBC, among others outlets. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Rev. Angela Denker is an award-winning author, ELCA Lutheran pastor, and veteran journalist. She is a former columnist for the Minnesota Star Tribune and has written for many publications, including Sports Illustrated, the Washington Post, and FORTUNE magazine, and has appeared on CNN, BBC, SkyNews, and NPR to share her research on politics and Christian Nationalism.

Pastor Angela lives with her husband, Ben, and two sons in Minneapolis, where she is a sought-after speaker on Christian Nationalism and its theological and cultural roots. She also serves Lake Nokomis Lutheran Church in Minneapolis as Pastor of Visitation and Public Theology.

Seating: Please note that seating in this space is first-come, first served. If one of your party needs accessibility accomodations, please email [email protected] AFTER reserving your space, and appropriate seats will be reserved for your party.