Esther's Army: The Christian Women Who Power the American Right

Date: 2 June 2026
Time: 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: Sociology Seminar Room

In Esther's Army, sociologist Katie Gaddini explores how and why right-wing Christian women have risen to the forefront of US politics. For decades, conservative Christian women have been dismissed as naive and brainwashed, victims of political coercion by the men in their lives. Yet that narrative doesn’t explain how they have also become some of the most influential political organizers of our time: the backbone of the modern conservative movement whose strategic efforts over the past six decades have culminated in the 2024 election of Donald Trump.

To understand this unique and growing political force, Gaddini conducted over ten years of ethnographic research, interviewing key players in the field and joining them across the country as they organized, rallied, and celebrated. In this talk, Gaddini shares her findings and the six distinct archetypes she discovered: college idealists, (anti)feminist powerhouses, Black conservatives, MAHA social media influencers, white suburbanites, and “Mama Bears” marching on state capitols to ban books and gender initiatives.

Observing Christian women’s activism from grassroots networks to conservative universities to public politics and jobs at the White House—as they borrow feminist rhetoric to “lean in” to their executive skills while rejecting liberal feminism—Gaddini reveals how these women have turned being underestimated into a strategic force. 

Biography

Dr. Katie Gaddini is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Social Research Institute, University College London (UCL) and a research associate at the University of Johannesburg, Department of Sociology. From 2022-2026 she is a United Kingdom Research & Innovation (UKRI) Research Fellow at Stanford University and UCL. Her writing has been published in TIME magazine, the Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, The Hill and more. She has given expert opinion to media outlets including New York Times, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, BBC, Newsweek, NPR, The i, and international outlets in 13 countries. She is the co-host of the podcast Blessed & Stressed: Religion & Politics Across the Pond.

Katie holds master’s degrees from Boston College and the London School of Economics, and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge.