The Divine Institution

Sophie Bjork-James has taken on one of the central dilemmas of contemporary American culture, the stubborn association between white evangelical religious practice and profoundly conservative constructions of ‘family values.’  Using fine-grained ethnographic methods, she brings us close to white evangelicals and enables us to more fully appreciate the complexities of racial politics that unfold in their practices.  Ellen Lewin, author of Filled with the Spirit: Sexuality, Gender, and Radical Inclusivity in a Black Pentecostal Church Coalition

Intersectionality is hard work, but Sophie Bjork-James applies it brilliantly to issues of race, faith, gender, and sexuality. Her study shows the ways in which race and racial supremacy structure and infect white evangelicalism's entire approach to men, women, and children.  Edward J. Blum, co-author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America

What distinguishes Bjork-James’ work, quietly published this past spring, is the ethnographic intimacy of her observations. She shows how familial norms structure the ways evangelicals talk about race, homosexuality, ‘biblical’ issues, and conversion. Bjork-James argues that understanding evangelical family values from the inside is the best way to make sense of white evangelical worlds.'  Religion Dispatches

[The] book stand[s] out from other works on contemporary evangelicalism. As such, The Divine Institution works as a useful and informative starting point to think about the cultural and political divides between secular and evangelical America. Reading Religion

The Divine Institution advances a lively body of scholarship that leaves no doubt: racialization is a foundational problem in the anthropology of religion. [It] richly demonstrate[s] that racialization is not only an analytical problem; it is a lived problem that religious communities self-consciously negotiate. American Anthropologist

Anthropologist Sophie Bjork-James’s The Divine Institution presents a subtle, carefully crafted analysis that traces the intersectional relationships between faith, gender, sexuality, and politics within evangelical sub-cultures....It is in throwing light on these complex liminal spaces between hard categories of difference that Bjork-James’s book is especially impressive. Journal of Contemporary Religion

What distinguishes Bjork-James’ work, quietly published this past spring, is the ethnographic intimacy of her observations. She shows how familial norms structure the ways evangelicals talk about race, homosexuality, ‘biblical’ issues, and conversion. Bjork-James argues that understanding evangelical family values from the inside is the best way to make sense of white evangelical worlds.'  Religion Dispatches

[The] book stand[s] out from other works on contemporary evangelicalism. As such, The Divine Institution works as a useful and informative starting point to think about the cultural and political divides between secular and evangelical America. Reading Religion

Intersectionality is hard work, but Sophie Bjork-James applies it brilliantly to issues of race, faith, gender, and sexuality. Her study shows the ways in which race and racial supremacy structure and infect white evangelicalism's entire approach to men, women, and children. Edward J. Blum, co-author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America

Sophie Bjork-James has taken on one of the central dilemmas of contemporary American culture, the stubborn association between white evangelical religious practice and profoundly conservative constructions of 'family values.'  Using fine-grained ethnographic methods, she brings us close to white evangelicals and enables us to more fully appreciate the complexities of racial politics that unfold in their practices. Ellen Lewin, author of Filled with the Spirit: Sexuality, Gender, and Radical Inclusivity in a Black Pentecostal