1. The Faithful Citizen: Popular Christian
Media and Gendered Civic Identities
Kristy Maddux. The Faithful Citizen: Popular Christian Media and Gendered
Civic Identities. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010. 282 pp. $22.76. ISBN:
160258253X
The Faithful Citizen is an intertextual analysis of the ways in which Christian-themed popular
media texts model forms of civic participation for Christian viewers. Kristy Maddux pays close
attention to the construction and deployment of gender in each of her major case studies,
which include films, a popular Christian fiction series, and a hit family television show. Break-
ing from the social scientific model of analyzing faith-based civic participation through mea-
sured reception studies, Maddux uses rhetorical criticism as well as feminist theory and close
textual analysis to find “five conflicted images of civic engagement with five different ideolo-
gies of gender, which, taken together, suggest the richness of contemporary ideals of civic par-
ticipation” (6). To Maddux, these models of civic participation include narrow definitions of
citizenship, shifting impulses between moral reform and social justice, and the influence of
new media in making visible new ways of participating in civic life (6–7).
Maddux organizes her book around media texts and their corresponding notions of gen-
dered civic participation. Amazing Grace (chapter two) illustrates “genteel masculinity” in
William Wilberforce’s fight for abolition; The Passion of the Christ (chapter three) models
“feminine submission” and valorizes suffering, while blurring the lines between liberation the-
ology and perceived (white) victimhood; Left Behind (chapter four) idealizes “brutish mascu-
linity” in the novel’s apocalyptic setting; 7th Heaven (chapter five) depicts the Camden
family’s “feminine charity,” suggesting that faith communities can (and should) provide for
the welfare needs of their neighbours when the federal government cannot; and The DaVinci
Code (chapter six) depicts “civic nonparticipation,” or the relegation of human sexuality and
religious faith to the private sphere. Maddux’s final chapter explores the limitations and impli-
cations of each model of gendered participation for other identity categories, such as race.
It is important to note that Maddux does not treat these texts as repositories of “ideas”
but, rather, as texts that “construct, disseminate, and popularize these ideologies and identi-
ties” (24). Maddux seeks to identify what these texts “do in their social world, not simply what
they mean about their social world” (24). By performing close readings and parsing out the
various conventions at work, Maddux not only makes notions of gendered civic participation
explicit but also legible to readers.
One example of this kind of legibility is found in Maddux’s chapter about The DaVinci
Code where she clearly deciphers how gender, religion, and “civic nonparticipation” intersect
in a popular text, which many leaders of Christian denominations viewed as being radically
feminist. While The DaVinci Code’s historical narrative and surface-level plot celebrate “the
sacred feminine,” Maddux contends that its focus on women’s capacity to engage in heterosex-
ual reproduction and motherhood is made “at the expense of any other feminine qualities”
(160). Rather than being a true feminist text, Maddux argues, The DaVinci Code presents a
model of “civic nonparticipation” that leads The DaVinci Code into “a celebration of the pri-
vate sphere, which has more affinity with the conservative moral reform tradition than any
The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 24:1, Spring 2012 doi:10.3138/jrpc.24.1.178

2. feminist platform” (160). By demonstrating how sexuality is linked to the privatization of
reproduction, Maddux makes an interesting argument about how heterosexuality and mother-
hood become “the natural [expression] of faithfulness” and a form of civic “nonparticipation”
that is relegated to the private sphere.
The strength of Maddux’s argument lies in the project’s intertextuality. By choosing an
archive of texts that span both medium and genre, Maddux covers important ground. The his-
torical, political, social, and theoretical contexts she intertwines throughout each chapter con-
nect material and discursive realities in ways that either capture important debates or speak
back to them in important ways. And Maddux cogently depicts how ideas about Christian
civic participation, gender, and popular media are woven together to create a story about what
kinds of bodies and behaviours make someone a true “citizen.” However, feminist readers
might be critical of the ways in which Maddux privileges gender over other important identity
markers. Maddux’s incorporation of race in her final chapter subordinates race to gender and,
thus, misses an opportunity to critique how race (and whiteness) is constructed in these texts.
A second weakness in the book is Maddux’s assumption about the political effects of the
texts she analyzes. Maddux does not treat these texts as repositories of “ideas” but, rather, as
texts that “construct, disseminate, and popularize these ideologies and identities” (24). She
seeks to identify what these texts “do in their social world, not simply what they mean about
their social world” (24). The conjecture that the political power of “Values Voters” has been
diffused and rendered non-threatening does not take into account the category of Christian
conservatives, which includes right-wing evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and Mormons
and their institutional apparatuses. Although it may be true that Christian conservatives as
well as more politically moderate Christians make use of the gendered strategies Maddux out-
lines, the absence of a theory or empirical data on the reception of these representations
means that Maddux cannot demonstrate how, by whom, and to what ends these strategies for
civic participation are used.
Overall, Maddux’s The Faithful Citizen illustrates an interdisciplinary approach to
research and is a must-read for scholars doing work on visual representation, religion, and
women and gender studies.
Amanda Rossie
The Ohio State University
amanda.rossie@gmail.com
Reviews
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