A Conversation About Live Laugh Love

(Make sure you check out my two articles exploring the themes of Live Laugh Love - “Whose voice is coming out of your mouth?” and “Worship Music, Christian Aesthetics, Mommy Bloggers, and the Prosperity Gospel.” )

One thing that just keeps coming up for me is the way that hyper-individualism has gotten into our understanding of the Christian faith. And that’s so much what’s at the root secretly of MLM culture and a lot of what goes along with biblical womanhood. A lot of it is just 1950s consumer culture: “How can I manifest myself by buying things?”

Then that gets transferred into your faith walk, where you practice your Christianity by buying a product from a particular business. And that’s not what we ever see in the Bible. - Rachel Darnall

I was excited to be joined this week by Rachel Darnall, to interact with Live Laugh Love and to riff on the themes we encountered in the book. We move through a host of topics, exploring the origins of many ideas about biblical womanhood that still dominate evangelicalism today, the theology behind multi-level-marketing schemes, and how our culture shapes our reading of scripture and our understanding of God.

Key topics

* The influence of 19th-century holiness theology on modern culture

* Connections between biblical womanhood and historical movements

* The fallacy of ‘I’ve never heard of this person, so I can’t be influenced by them’

* The impact of consumer culture and marketing on Christian life

* How social media influences and commodifies relationships and faith

I would highly recommend listening to a previous conversation I had with Rachel about Patriarchy and Purity Culture, and you should ABSOLUTELY check out her YouTube channel and subscribe to These Troubled Times.

Rachel’s Bio: Rachel Darnall is the host and creator of These Troubled Times, an audio and visual road trip through the history, theology, and culture of Christian fundamentalism. Rachel covers the rise, fall, and resurgence of Christian fundamentalism in America, from revival tents and “Old-Time Religion” to “the culture wars” and January 6th, 2021. She completed her MA in Theological Studies from Westminster Theological Seminary in 2024.

In addition to her scholarship and media creation, Rachel is a Curriculum Developer for the Anastasis Center (Shout out to our friend Mako!)