Copley, Rachel

White evangelical culture is investigated here regarding the ways that its fundamental theological beliefs propagate and maintain patriarchal assumptions surrounding women. These beliefs further function to legitimate men’s sexual abuse of women and girls. While official theological evangelical beliefs may seem benign, and perhaps commendable to some, a closer examination suggests the mobilization of those beliefs create the foundation for enslavement and destruction of women. The fundamental beliefs undergirding evangelicalism propagate internalized oppression through patriarchal colonialism of women’s bodies, minds, and souls. Tactics of spiritual rape within White evangelical purity culture enact violence, control, and manipulation to appropriate and profit from the sacred power within the spirit of another.
My analysis of #ChurchToo tweets demonstrates how formerly-evangelical women exorcize internalized patriarchal identities by reversing patriarchal myths, reclaiming, renaming and becoming Holy Haggard Hags who enact Righteous Fury through the Rage of Dreadful Women. Through the process of renaming and reclaiming, the confiscated and distorted power of the four Great Hags of Our Hidden History are recovered. The Myth of Evil Eve becomes “Ezer Kěnegdô,” Bathsheba the Innocent Lamb dethrones King David, Jezebel returns as a Confident, Clever, and Powerful Woman and her Spirit exorcises Satan’s Agents and Devouring Wolves, and Tamar the Trickster reappears as a Prophetess, with gifts to symbolize the collective power of sisterhood.