June 30, 2026

If I Perish, I Perish: Katie Gaddini on the Army of Esthers Powering the American Right

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“If I perish, I perish.” — the chant Katie Gaddini heard from Esther’s Army at the National Mall, weeks before the 2024 election

Back in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, Margaret Atwood came on the show to talk about The Handmaid’s Tale — her warning of how trad wives, to borrow a contemporary phrase, could be exploited by an evangelical patriarchy. Five years later, the Stanford fellow Katie Gaddini offers a strikingly different vision. Her new book, Esther’s Army: The Christian Women Who Power the American Right (out today), is the product of nine years of research and over 100 interviews with conservative Christian women across 28 states.

These women, this army of Esthers, are not handmaidens, Gaddini concludes. “They are very much in charge. They are politically engaged. They, in many cases, hold political positions of power.”

Gaddini grew up as an evangelical — her father a pastor, with four more pastors in her extended family. She voted for George Bush “naturally,” before discovering she could be a Christian and not a Republican. But she is less a rebel against her upbringing as much as a sociologist with a Cambridge doctorate.

She was living in London when Trump won the 2016 nomination and wondered how it was that Christian women were planning to vote for this most imperfect of men? Nine years and 100 interviews later, the answer turns out to be more complicated than the standard liberal media exploitation tale about handmaids.

The book’s title comes from the women themselves. At a 250,000-person rally on the National Mall weeks before the 2024 election, Gaddini saw women wearing gold-plated Esther necklaces, chanting “If I perish, I perish” from the Book of Esther. Gaddini interprets this as a striking theological shift — away from the forgiveness of the New Testament toward the Manichaean Old Testament narrative of violence, destruction, and an imperfect male figure designed by God to redeem the rest of us. Donald Trump, in this telling, is King David. Or Jehu.

Margaret Atwood better watch out. This Army of Esthers are warriors, not handmaidens, and they are preparing for an apocalyptical war. If you perish, you perish. Another Old Testament-style pandemic.

Five Takeaways

Not Handmaids: Trad Wives Are a Tiny, Overhyped Fringe: Gaddini went into nine years of research expecting to find Atwood-style oppression. Instead: only one of her hundred-plus interviewees follows a trad wife on social media. Trad wives are overpopulated in media attention but represent a much smaller political force than coverage suggests. The women Gaddini actually studied span homeschool moms involved in local politics to Heritage Foundation lawyers to women working at the top echelons of power in Washington DC. They are diehard MAGA supporters and politically engaged — the opposite of passive.

The Hidden History: Women Built the Conservative Movement Since the 1970s: Gaddini’s archival research into the Reagan administration found women — never household names — who drafted legislation that still shapes policy today, including the squashing of federal child care. Phyllis Schlafly was not an aberration but part of coordinated networks of women who strategised together at national conventions, even as Schlafly took the spotlight while others worked behind the scenes. Books about the Christian right’s formation in the 1980s have largely written women out of the story. Gaddini is writing them back in.

Conservative Feminism: A More Complicated Relationship Than Expected: Gaddini expected uniform hostility to feminism, the classic Schlafly-era position. Instead she found a more nuanced split: some women reject feminism as toxic; others embrace a self-styled “conservative feminism,” remapping their politics onto a new understanding of women’s empowerment. They reframe issues the left claims as women’s issues — reproductive rights, birth control — as harmful to women, and argue that capitalism itself benefits women by letting families thrive on a single strong salary. A repackaging of feminist language for a conservative, highly gendered worldview.

If I Perish, I Perish: The Old Testament Shift and the Esther Necklaces: At a 250,000-person rally on the National Mall weeks before the 2024 election, Gaddini saw international attendees — women from South Korea, Brazil, nuns from Nantucket — wearing gold Esther necklaces and chanting the book of Esther’s key line. The theological shift she’s tracking: away from the New Testament and Jesus, toward Old Testament violence, destruction, and imperfect male figures redeemed for God’s purposes — the allegories comparing Trump to King David or Jehu. These women see themselves as warriors, not handmaidens. There is, in their minds, an absolute war going on.

The Fracture Lines: Iran, MAHA, and the Jesus Selfie: Gaddini’s research captures real fault lines opening in 2026: the Iran strikes alienated Trump voters who wanted America out of foreign wars; MAHA women — anti-vax homeschool moms alongside liberal Bay Area “crunchy” mothers, an unlikely ideological alliance forged through RFK Jr.’s endorsement — are furious about pesticide regulation rollbacks; and Trump’s social media image styled as Jesus (he said it was meant to be a doctor) did not land well even with his base. Nobody Gaddini interviewed thinks Trump is a good Christian. They believe his policies align with their vision of America. That, for them, is what matters.

About the Guest

Katie Gaddini is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, Associate Professor of Sociology at the Social Research Institute, University College London, and a UKRI Research Fellow at Stanford and UCL (2022–2026). She is the author of Esther’s Army: The Christian Women Who Power the American Right (W.W. Norton, June 30, 2026) and The Struggle to Stay: Why Single Evangelical Women Are Leaving the Church. Her writing has appeared in TIME, The Huffington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Hill. She hosts the Podium and the Pulpit podcast and Substack.

References:

Esther’s Army: The Christian Women Who Power the American Right by Katie Gaddini (W.W. Norton, June 30, 2026).

• Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale — referenced at the opening; Atwood previously appeared on KOA.

• Phyllis Schlafly — the 1970s conservative organiser; previously covered on KOA.

• Delano Squires, The Vanishing Black Family — referenced; Heritage Foundation fellow, recent KOA guest.

• Arlie Russell Hochschild, Stolen Pride — referenced as a sociological influence and fellow Bay Area scholar; ...

00:31 - Introduction: Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Esther’s Army

01:46 - These women are very much in charge

02:04 - Have liberals gotten trad wives all wrong?

02:32 - Trad wives are a fringe: only one of 100+ interviewees follows one

03:41 - Katie’s background: growing up evangelical, voting for Bush

05:13 - Not a rebel: sociological curiosity from a place of distance

06:06 - The f-word: are these women feminists?

07:28 - Do women really power the American right?

09:33 - Why are you one of the first to say this?

10:42 - Phyllis Schlafly was not an aberration

11:34 - What makes them right rather than left?

13:05 - The geography of Esther’s Army: 28 states

14:02 - Race, class, and the surprising gains with Latina voters

15:34 - Has ICE and immigration enforcement changed Latino support?

16:27 - Responding to progressive critics

17:52 - What can the left learn from this?

19:07 - Where are the generals? Is it an army without generals?

21:44 - The fracture lines: Iran, evangelicals, the Jesus image

22:42 - Recognising Trump’s contradictions and hypocrisy

23:38 - Esther’s Army: the term, the rally, the necklaces

24:56 - If I perish, I perish: warriors, not handmaidens

25:17 - MAHA women and the RFK Jr. fracture

26:36 - Arlie Russell Hochschild and ethnographic inspiration

27:40 - How is the book landing in the Bay Area?

29:51 - How will conservative circles receive the book?

30:38 - The Podium and the Pulpit: how is it landing with the church?

31:59 - The theological shift: Old Testament over New Testament

33:52 - Where is the female in the Old Testament narrative?

34:38 - A very Christian narrative

35:13 - What does this tell us about America’s uniqueness?

36:13 - Conclusion: the next study, on transnational connections

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's Tuesday, 06/30/2026. More than five years ago, Margaret Atwood came on the show to talk about her great novel, The Handmaid's Tale, which, of course, at least in her words when we spoke, was about how, trad wives, shall we say, to use a contemporary phrase, could theoretically at least be exploited in a futuristic patriarchy. Some people think that Handmaid's Tale is very prescient, but others, I think, are a little more ambivalent about all that. There's a new book out today. It's by my guest, Katie Gaddini. It's called Esther's Army, the Christian Women Who Power the American Right. And I think it has slightly different take on what we might think of as traditional Christian women. Katie is joining us from, Northern California, just down the bay from me, where she's currently a research fellow at Stanford University. Katie, is that a fair way to describe Esther's army? I'm curious to what you think of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.


00:01:46 Katie Gaddini: I certainly would not characterize the women in my book as being Handmaid's Tale figures. They are very much in charge. They are politically engaged. They, in many cases, hold political positions of power.


00:02:04 Andrew Keen: Wow. So is the argument essentially in, in your new book, which as I said is out today, Esther's army, that, that liberals have got trad wives all wrong or that the Christian women who are increasingly central to the American right, are misunderstood by the liberal establishment in The United States?


00:02:32 Katie Gaddini: Yeah. Somewhat. So trad wives are a really fringe element of the women that I study. And in fact, after doing nine years of research and speaking to over a 100 women, only one woman told me that she actually follows a trad wife on social media. So I think that they're overpopulated in the media and attention wise, but they actually represent a much smaller political impact in the country. The women I talked to are sort of diehard MAGA supporters, Trump supporters. They're very politically engaged as I mentioned, but they also cover a broad range of women. So there was everything from homeschool moms who are involved in voting and local politics to women who are lawyers for the Heritage Foundation. I interviewed some women who work in DC and represent some of the top echelons of power. So, really, I tried to cover the range to show how women have been consequential not only in our current moment, but also over the past fifty five years.


00:03:41 Andrew Keen: Tell me a little bit about your background, Katie. I know, your narrative and maybe your own biography are in some ways connected.


00:03:50 Katie Gaddini: Yeah. So I grew up evangelical in The US. My dad was a pastor. There are four other pastors in my extended family, all evangelical. And when it came time to register to vote, I naturally registered as a Republican and voted for George Bush. I say naturally because this is what everybody in my community and milieu was doing. And it wasn't until I left my sort of very insular evangelical community that I realized that you could be a Christian and not be a republican. So I have very deep ties to the community that I researched. I have a lot of friends and family who are still, Republicans, conservative, and Christian, even though I'm no longer.


00:04:40 Andrew Keen: We've done a number of shows actually with people who've written books like yourself who grew up in an environment, not environmental, evangelical family and rebelled against it. But it sounds to me as if you're not a rebel against your background. Maybe you're a bit more ambivalent. Maybe you think of yourself more in academic objective terms. But, would that be fair to say that you don't think of yourself as someone who rebelled against your upbringing?


00:05:13 Katie Gaddini: Yeah. I definitely had a rebellion period, but that came earlier. By the time I started this project, I came at it from a place of genuine curiosity. You know, I was living overseas. I was in The UK for almost a decade. So I also had that detachment when Trump was the Republican nominee in 2016. I was living in London. And for me, it was a sociologist curiosity of how is it that this candidate is the one that Christians are planning to vote for and even more so that Christian women are planning to vote for. And that's when I started the project. So I have definitely an investment still in Christianity and, politics that it partners with, but I also have the distance of time in having lived abroad.


00:06:06 Andrew Keen: As I said, you're a fellow at Stanford. You're there. You when you speak about being abroad, you're associated also with University College in London. So you've had a glittering academic career. In terms of, these women, these Christian women who power the American right, what's their take on, quote, unquote, the f word, feminism? Are they can one be, a Christian woman who powers the American right and be a feminist?


00:06:40 Katie Gaddini: This was one of those surprises in my research because I went into it very much thinking that these women were gonna be anti feminist. You know, this was the classic motivating factor for right wing women like Phyllis Schlafly in the seventies and some of the women that came after her. And instead, what I found is a more nuanced and complicated relationship with feminism. So there were certainly the women who opposed feminist feminism and thought it was, you know, toxic in the downfall of society, But there were also women who embraced feminism and even argued for conservative feminism and thought that their politics could be mapped onto a new version or a new understanding of feminism. So, yeah, this was a surprising finding.


00:07:28 Andrew Keen: As I said, the subtitle of the book is the Christian women who power the American right. So you're not pulling your punches on this one. Many people see the American right as male dominated as an attempt to rebuild a patriarchy. Where's your argument that these Christian women actually power the American right? I mean, from my recollection, and please correct me if I'm wrong, more women certainly voted for Joe Biden than for Donald Trump. And, certainly, when it comes to the politics of gender, more men are supportive of the new right than women.


00:08:11 Katie Gaddini: Yeah. So, certainly, when we look at national studies and we look at discrete numbers of voters, women tend to vote in very broad brush strokes for the Democratic candidate. Men tend to vote more Republican. But there is some complications to that. So for example, in 2024, Trump gained with women voters across almost every subcategory, white suburban, Latino women, black women, gen z women, even though the broader picture still trends more to the left. What I show in the book is that women have had a really formidable and foundational role in the conservative movement from the seventies. So, for example, I did archival research looking at women who worked for the Reagan administration. They're not household names. They never held positions that, you know, everyday people heard about, but they were instrumental in drafting legislature, which made its way into key policies and that still exists today. For example, squashing any form of federal child care. So these women, I argue, are often not necessarily visible, although now they certainly are more, but they've still had a very key role in the organizing, the engagement, and the initiatives behind the conservative movement.


00:09:33 Andrew Keen: Why are you, Katie, one of the first people to be saying this? Some people might be listening and thinking that maybe this is, a convenient truth or untruth that the liberal consensus has ignored or avoided for the last thirty years?


00:09:51 Katie Gaddini: Well, I think, you know, precisely what you mentioned. When we think of women on the right, we think of Handmaid's Tale. We think of women as being really oppressed. We think of, women's issues being incompatible with the conservative agenda. And I think that stereotype's been really hard to break down. On the other hand, especially when we take a historical perspective, those women have been really missing from academic literature. So there have been so many books written about the Christian right and how it got its start, its formation, its growth in the eighties, the infrastructure it built, the institution building that it did. And yet women's role within that has largely been missing. You know, this is a tale as old as time when it comes to history and women being written out of processes when they're not the figurehead. And I'm trying to rewrite women into that story and also show their contemporary relevance.


00:10:42 Andrew Keen: In other words, Phyllis Schlafly, who you mentioned, I think, earlier, we've done whole shows on her. She's not an aberration then.


00:10:51 Katie Gaddini: Exactly. And then, you know, she was part of networks. She was part of teams of women who were working in different corners. Maybe they had different issues that they were attending to, but they were contemporaries of Phyllis Schlafly. They all would gather together at national conventions. They strategize together. They had their own sorts of, areas that they would disperse to, but there was a real coordination that was happening. She's got a lot of attention. I think, you know, I did some oral history interviews, and some of her contemporaries say that she really was a great, orator, and she liked the limelight. And they were happy for her to kind of get the praise even though they were doing a lot of behind the scenes work as well.


00:11:34 Andrew Keen: But she certainly was a great organizer. So I'm curious, Katie. If these Christian women are, shall we say, different kinds of feminists from traditional liberal feminism, and they're the ones who power the American right, what is it about them that puts them on the right rather than the left? What can one make some generalizations about how they think of the world, what their ideology is?


00:12:05 Katie Gaddini: Yeah. So for example, they would attach issues such as, reproductive rights. We would call that on the left. They would attach that to being a woman's issue that concerns conservative women, and they would say that is you know, abortion is harmful to women. It is harmful to their sense of identity. It's harmful to their bodies. It's harmful to their identity as a mother. Some would even say birth control is harmful. So they would take issues that have been understood by the left as being women's issues, and they would rearticulate it for a conservative mindset. Economics is another one. They would argue that capitalism is really good for women. It benefits women because it allows them to look after their family and maybe stay home from work if, the economy is thriving, if men are able to make a really strong salary. So there's a lot of repackaging that happens, and there's a lot of, understanding the world through this Christian, conservative, but also very highly gendered lens.


00:13:05 Andrew Keen: What about the geography of Esther's army? Can we find it mostly in smaller towns, in the South, in the West?


00:13:13 Katie Gaddini: So I interviewed women from 28 states, even Alaska, actually, and had a pretty good geographical spread. I really looked for that spread. So I interviewed women on cattle ranches in Texas. I interviewed women in DC, in Capitol Hill, college women in Virginia, Midwestern women. I really tried to get the spread to show that this was not sort of one type of voter to break that reductive stereotype. I also tried to understand differences in patterns across cities versus rural communities, suburban communities, racial differences, age differences, denominational differences so that I could have a as complete a picture as possible on what these women want and what it's like to be them.


00:14:02 Andrew Keen: And what kinds of generalizations can one make on the race front, for example, or on the economic front, on class?


00:14:11 Katie Gaddini: Yeah. So in terms of race, this was another one of those really surprising findings. Because when I set out to do the study when I started in 2016, Trump was not very popular with black female voters and certainly not with Latina women voters as well or East Asian voters. And this is something that's changed over the nine years of doing the research. So in 2024, he made gains with all three of those groups, but most noticeably with the Latino women. And this there's a lot of media headlines about Latino men, but, also, there were a lot of Latino women who jumped on the MAGA side. So that is one of those changes, and I noticed it at rallies. You know? When I was going to events in 2016 and 2017, it was a lot wider. When I was going to events in 2024, there was a lot more racial and ethnic diversity, and that's been one of the huge successes of the MAGA coalition is pulling in those voters that are aligned with the Democratic Party historically. In terms of class, I certainly saw that with more working class voters, the concern was the economy. It was putting food on the table. It was paying for the price of gas as you could expect. Even though the economy was a top concern across social classes. The way it was understood, the way it was so directly related to Trump, was a lot more prominent for those voters.


00:15:34 Andrew Keen: And the Latino support that you know, has that changed at all since Trump too and his more overt, focus on immigration, ICE police, Minnesota, and all the rest of it?


00:15:53 Katie Gaddini: So these the women I met, the Latino women I met who were voting for Trump in 2024 knew that he had draconian immigration policies. That did not bother them. Some even liked it. They were very convinced by Trump because of the policies he was proposing around gender and sexuality. That mattered more to them than immigration. So I would be very surprised if his actual immigration stance, which has been even lighter than what he promised, has put them off.


00:16:27 Andrew Keen: Your argument, as you, I'm sure, know better than I do, is gonna drive some people on the left, some progressives mad. They're gonna be very angry. They're gonna say you're wrong. Well, how would you respond to that general notion that, it's not possible that what you call Esther's army, these Christian women who power the American right, almost deserve to be treated so seriously?


00:16:55 Katie Gaddini: Well, I already have a lot of experience with it. I've been giving talks, public talks on this topic since before the twenty twenty four election and then a whole glut of them right after. And so I have certainly received my fair share of critique. Most of it, as you rightly mentioned, has come from the left. I've had a lot of disgruntled audience members who think that right wing women are not do not deserve to be studied, that they are still brainwashed. Why should we even take them seriously? Why am I giving any airtime to them? And, you know, to those disgruntled democrats, I say, you know, this movement is running your country. Like, your strategy that you've taken, which is to sort of dismiss them or, not want to learn about the MAGA movement, that's not working. And so, you know, maybe try another approach.


00:17:52 Andrew Keen: What could it teach perhaps progressives who were also like the right struggling to reinvent themselves in the late twenty twenties?


00:18:03 Katie Gaddini: I hope you know, one of the themes that came out in the research is how much, right or wrong, how much the conservatives that I met feel that they are under attack. Now I know there's a whole long lineage of this rhetoric being energized in The US by the right. However, they have felt an uptick in this sort of condescension and in this sense of being looked down upon since they started supporting Trump. And this has radicalized them. I mean, some of the young women I met who were bullied in high school because they were Trump supporters or they were conservatives, that radicalized them. They are now dedicating their lives to a very far right iteration of Republican party. So if nothing else, I think that's really important for Democrats to know about whether or not they think that they deserve to be bullied, which I've heard people say that too. It is fueling their politics, and it's fueling the movement.


00:19:07 Andrew Keen: I'm very intrigued with your argument, Katie. But I wonder when I look at, certainly, MAGA and Trump, his administration, his senior people, they mostly seem to be men. I mean, one thinks of Erika Kirk, perhaps, but then she's the widow of a prominent, white Republican who was assassinated. Where is the evidence that Esther's army have any generals? Where are the generals in Esther's army, or is it an army without generals?


00:19:40 Katie Gaddini: Well, they would very much consider themselves all to be the generals. They look to the story of Esther in the old testament, which is, about this warrior queen who saved the Jews from destruction. They see themselves as these warrior queens who are saving the nation from destruction or saving children from destruction, saving the nation from the left, saving the nation from woke indoctrination, you know, various different threats. So they would see themselves as the heroines of the story, firstly. When Trump 2.0 started, he actually appointed more women to his cabinet than previous Republicans had, not compared to Democratic presidents, but compared to Republican ones. This caused a lot of women that I met to say he is such a pro woman president. He doesn't have a sexism problem after all. Since then, you know, several of those women have been dismissed. I'm thinking of Kristi Noem and others. But he has made those appointments, partly to help his image problem, which is that he has a problem with women. So we can look to some of those figureheads. Amy Coney Barrett, the justice on the Supreme Court is seen as a role model that a lot of younger women aspire to be. And I think, you know, time is really gonna show with where this next generation goes, the generation that was radicalized during the pandemic, that aspires to this career in politics, and that now as women have all these doors open to them in this right wing pipeline.


00:21:12 Andrew Keen: Katie, Amy co Coney Barrett, who you just mentioned, her relations with, with the Trump administration as a supreme court justice seem frayed, sometimes rather tense on some issues at least. You've written, and contributed to the debates on the rifts on the right. As some of the behavior of Trump 2.0, perhaps his foreign policy, has that alienated some of these Christian women who power the American right?


00:21:44 Katie Gaddini: Yeah. There've been a few things since this year that have really caused some fault lines, some fractures. So one is certainly the war with Iran. A lot of Trump voters, men and women, voted for Trump because they wanted to be out of international wars. They wanted the focus to be on nativism, America first, immigration, all the resources to be allocated for those policies. So that's caused some big divides. And two is he's made some real gaps with evangelicals in recent months. You know? He put a picture on social media of himself, which looked like he was portraying himself as Jesus. He later said it was him as a medical doctor. That was not popular. That did not go down well, especially even with some of his biggest followers. Critiques with the pope has also not gone down well. So we are seeing some riffs happening, and it remains to be seen how kinda how that's gonna play out longer term.


00:22:42 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I mean, some people might say that Trump is self evidently not a man of the church. We did a show recently with Pete Wehner, who's a very prominent Christian critic of Trump. Is it in some ways, Katie, that these that Esther's army want to believe in Trump, whereas they recognize some of the profound contradictions and perhaps hypocrisy in him and his politics.


00:23:14 Katie Gaddini: Absolutely. I mean, there nobody that I spoke to thinks that he's an of a Christian. There was differing, justifications or understandings for where he fit with Christianity. Ultimately, they felt his policies aligned with their vision of America, and that is what mattered.


00:23:38 Andrew Keen: Tell me a little bit more about this Esther's army term. Is that, a term that they use? You mentioned that the word itself is borrowed, of course, from one of the heroines of the Old Testament.


00:23:51 Katie Gaddini: Mhmm. So what I noticed was that a lot of women refer to themselves as these modern day Esthers. I went to a huge rally at the National Mall a few weeks before the twenty twenty four election. There were estimated 250,000 people there, mostly women, international. I saw met women from South Korea and Brazil. I met some nuns from Nantucket who had come down. So it was a very diverse group. I saw women with necklaces, gold plated necklaces that said Esther, and the verses from the book of Esther were repeatedly brought up during the day. You know, one of the key verses is if I perish, I perish. It's something Esther says in the book named after her, and that's something that the women were chanting. And that really showed me that not only are they relating to this old testament story and transposing it onto modern day contemporary politics, but that the stakes are so high for them. I mean, if I perish, I perish. They're talking about they will stop at nothing to realize their political project.


00:24:56 Andrew Keen: So they're warriors. They think of themselves as warriors.


00:25:01 Katie Gaddini: Absolutely. You know? And that really also flies in the face of this notion of them being kind of handmaidens to go back to the earlier point. You know? They are warriors in their minds, and there is an absolute war going on around them in their minds.


00:25:17 Andrew Keen: Warriors rather than warriors, although they seem to be worrying at least about, food and health. Of course, there's the make America great again movement and the make America healthy again movement, which is spearheaded by RFK Jr. How important is that? I know that there's a strong female component to Maha.


00:25:39 Katie Gaddini: Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that because this is another one of the these fracture lines that are developing right now, where a lot of women who joined the MAGA coalition because they were fans of Maha, and RFK Jr. Dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump. He brought those MAHA women with him, and they have not been pleased, the way that Trump, has dealt with the MAHA agenda, especially regulations on pesticides. So this is a really interesting group of women. It blends together these conservative Christian homeschool moms that are anti vaxx with these liberal, crunchy, Democrat voting women who would are ideologically, normally very opposed to each other. I mean, I live in the Bay Area. There are a lot of Maha women, liberal Maha women around me, and their politics are now lined up with a group that they previously couldn't stand.


00:26:36 Andrew Keen: Another Bay Area woman, I'm sure you're familiar with her work, is Arlie Russell Hochschild, very influential sociologist. You're also a sociologist. I'm sure you've read some of her books. Her latest book is Stolen Pride. She's often been on the show. She lives over in Berkeley, teaches or used to teach in the sociology department at Berkeley. Kate, did you see yourself in Hochschild's tradition of, so to speak, reaching over the aisle?


00:27:07 Katie Gaddini: What has inspired me about her work is the deep ethnographic approach that she's taken. So she has embedded herself in communities and really sought to understand their viewpoint, to understand their beliefs, you know, asking this key ethnographic question, which is, you know, what is it like to be you? So I find that really inspirational. And she's then translated her understandings for a popular audience. And I'd say in those ways, I've I've looked to her work as inspiration.


00:27:40 Andrew Keen: How does your, in terms of embedding yourself and representing this argument that you put forward in Esther's army, how is it going down in the Bay Area? You're talking to me now, from the North Bay. You teach or you're a research fellow at Stanford. The Bay Area, of course, is probably, along with New York City, the most intense stronghold for progressive politics. How are people treating your arguments in Esther's army, in the Bay Area?


00:28:11 Katie Gaddini: I've had a mixed reaction. You know, I've had a lot of people when I give public talks that are genuinely interested in MAGA followers. They don't know anyone who is, MAGA because they live in the Bay Area, and they are in a very blue bubble. So they are grateful for this opportunity to kind of have a glimpse into a world that is very foreign to them and yet important and consequential in their lives. And then as I mentioned, there are certainly folks who are frustrated. They're they're frustrated with the country. They're frustrated with the political situation they find themselves in. And at times, that gets directed to me. And, it also, yeah, comes with it comes with the territory. So I've I've had a little bit of everything.


00:28:59 Andrew Keen: And how is your work and your argument being treated amongst traditional conservatives? Couple of weeks ago, we had a fellow from the Heritage Foundation, Delano Squires. He has a new book out called The Vanishing Black Family, How Welfare and Feminism Made Marriage Optional and Children Vulnerable. Very traditional conservative critique of feminism. I'm guessing I don't know whether you know Squires' work. I'm not sure if he's read, Esther's army. But I'm wondering whether people like Squires might be ambivalent about the argument you make in Esther's army about this empower use even using the word army, militarizing this political movement might make some traditional conservatives of places like the Heritage Foundation uncomfortable.


00:29:51 Katie Gaddini: Yeah. I could certainly see that. Although I did interview a few women who work for Heritage, past and present. I hope that the women who read my book, who were in my study feel that I've authentically communicated their stories. Several of the women I met were so happy I was doing the study. They felt like, the media representations on conservative women were really flat and very two dimensional, and they wanted, an account that spoke more to their sort of the complexity of their views. So, yeah, I actually don't know how it's gonna go down with conservative circles. I know that a lot of center right folks, I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from that population.


00:30:38 Andrew Keen: And then what about the church itself? Your substack is called the podium and the pulpit. You have a podcast called the podium and the pulpit. How is the arguments in, in Esther's army? How are they going down in or on the pulpit amongst, traditional, particularly male, Christian evangelical figures?


00:31:03 Katie Gaddini: So a lot of the ones I've been speaking to recently are center right Christian leaders, I have to say. And they are ones that are Republican, but do not like Trump. And they, I think, what they really appreciate about the book, and my editor was so good at pushing me on this, is that I bring in the theology. So I bring in how these women connect their faith to their politics instead of taking it for granted that you know? Because a lot of women would say to me, like, oh, yeah. I'm a Christian and so I'm a Republican. I asked them to make it explicit for me. Like, what is it about your Christian faith that you feel lines up with this policy? And I write about that in the book, and I think that for Christians, especially center right Christians that don't support Trump, they appreciate that to understand that sort of theological element and how that's influencing or at least justifying politics for those who follow, Donald Trump.


00:31:59 Andrew Keen: And what is that theology? Should it be thought of as Christian mumfluences? You've you've written about them too. I mean, what is essential about the thinking of Esther's army when it comes to Christianity? What are they finding in the bible that doesn't make them just trad wives and yet, on the other hand, doesn't make them liberal feminists?


00:32:22 Katie Gaddini: In contemporary politics, I'm finding they're really harkening back to the old testament, and that's an interesting shift. So there is less mention of the new testament and particularly Jesus, and there's a lot more mention of Old Testament characters, stories, the sort of violence in the Old Testament that is being energized a lot more and related to the contemporary political signs. I mean, it's the allegories that we hear about Donald Trump being like King David or being like, Jehu. You know? The those sorts of stories, and I find that shift really interesting that the Old Testament is being drawn upon more than the New Testament, because I think you could definitely make an argument, you know, that Donald Trump is a very different character than Jesus.


00:33:12 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I don't think anyone would argue that even his greatest supporters, even himself, or maybe he might, but nobody else would confuse him


00:33:19 Katie Gaddini: With Jesus. I mean, he did he did put that image out there. So


00:33:22 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I think he yeah. Well, that's another show, another story, another book. Katie, I'm curious on this idea of the Old Testament because the Old Testament is the most patriarchal of texts. I mean, god in the Old Testament is distinctively male, certainly much more male than the god in the New Testament. So where I understand that Esther's army are not feminists, but where's the female in the Old Testament?


00:33:52 Katie Gaddini: I don't you know, that's not being exercised as much, apart from, of course, Esther, which is a huge component that they're drawing upon. It's more the translation of the old testament stories of violence, of destruction, of saving, the sort of stakes being really high, of God using this imperfect male figure for good redeeming ends. And Trump is the figure in that story. The destruction is caused by the democrats, wokeness, you name it. And then the heroes of the story are the Christians themselves. And that's the sort of reformulation that I'm seeing happening.


00:34:38 Andrew Keen: So it's a very Christian narrative.


00:34:43 Katie Gaddini: Yeah. And I have to say as well, I started out this study wanting to just look at evangelicals because they were so supportive of Trump after 2016. And I ended up widening it to look at mainline Christians and Catholics as well because I saw that denominational differences were being cast aside and Christians were joining together in pursuit of the MAGA movement. So when I use Christian, I use that as expansively.


00:35:13 Andrew Keen: And what does it tell us about America, Katie? We did a show a few months ago with another scholar who wrote a book about American Christianity or the American republic basically arguing that it's a Christian republic. What does it tell us about America itself and its uniqueness in the twenty first century? Are you finding the equivalent of Esther's army in The United Kingdom where you live or France or Germany or Australia or Japan?


00:35:41 Katie Gaddini: That's my next study, actually. I've just started looking at the transnational connections and the formations of women's activism on the right in these different countries where we have either a far right party in power or in strong ascendancy like in The United Kingdom. I saw this in my own research, these transnational linkages that we're developing and that we're sharing strategies and ideas and discourse. And now I wanna understand the extent to which women are part of those movements elsewhere.


00:36:13 Andrew Keen: We have to come back on the show, Katie, when that next study is done. The current book is out today. It's called Esther's Army, the Christian Women Who Power the American Right. Very intriguing, very controversial argument, but important, I think, given some of the hysteria on the left, everything associated with the right. Katie Gaddini, congratulations on the new book, and, I hope you'll come back on the show. Thank you so much.


00:36:39 Katie Gaddini: Thank you.