Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts 1954-

views updated

BENDROTH, Margaret Lamberts 1954-

PERSONAL: Born August 5, 1954, in Rochester, NY; daughter of Robert Lewis (a physicist) and Margaret (a homemaker; maiden name, Van Mouwerik) Lamberts; married Norman Bendroth (a minister), December 16, 1978; children: Nathan Robert, Anna Elizabeth. Education: Cornell University, A.B. (with distinction), 1976; Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, M.A. (magna cum laude), 1979; Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D., 1985. Religion: United Church of Christ. Hobbies and other interests: Playing piano, organ, and violin.

ADDRESSES: Office—Calvin College, Department of History, Hiemenga Hall 488, 3201 Burton St. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546. E-mail—mbendrot@calvin.edu.

CAREER: Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria, instructor in history, 1983-86; Northeastern University, Boston, MA, adjunct member of philosophy, religion, and history faculty, 1987-92; Divinitas Books, Cambridge, MA, assistant manager, 1992-93; Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Center, MA, adjunct lecturer in church history, 1993—. Center for Urban Ministerial Education, Boston, adjunct faculty member, 1992—; Women and Twentieth-Century Protestantism, project codirector, 1995-98. Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith, project member; Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, professor of history, 1994—.

MEMBER: American Society of Church History, American Academy of Religion.

AWARDS, HONORS: Book Award, Christianity Today, 1995, for Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present; grant from Pew Foundation, 1995-98.

WRITINGS:

Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1993.

(Editor, with Phyllis Airhart) Families: Past, Present, and Future, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville, KY), 1996.

(Editor, with Phyllis D. Airhart) Faith Traditions and the Family, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville, KY), 1996.

Growing Up Protestant: Parents, Children, and Mainline Churches, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 2002.

(Editor, with Virginia Lieson Brereton) Women and Twentieth-Century Protestantism, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 2002.

Contributor to books, including Reclaiming Our Global Heritage, Volume 2, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 1989; Religion, Feminism, and the Family, edited by Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen and Anne Carr, Westminster John Knox Press (Louisville, KY), 1996; and Religion in the Mass Media: Judeo-Christian Audiences and Adaptations, edited by Daniel A. Stout and Judith M. Buddenbaum, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1996. Contributor to scholarly journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Professor of history and researcher into religious questions, Margaret Lamberts Bendroth has published scholarly titles on religion, family life, and gender. "For the last ten years I have been, partly by choice and partly by necessity, an independent scholar in the world of academia. That means I can have considerable freedom to write about subjects of my own choosing," Bendroth once told CA. Even so, she has coedited a trio of essay collections because, as she continued, "in another (mostly financial) sense, however, I often end up writing for projects that other scholars have designed. That isn't all bad, of course. In the end, every piece of information gained on any project moves my thinking ahead and helps me in my own work."

In her 1993 study, Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present, Bendroth treats two subjects of great interest to her. As she once explained to CA, "I have written about fundamentalism, not because I am, or ever was, a fundamentalist (a question I am often asked). I was, in fact, raised in a conservative Dutch Calvinist denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, and am married to a mainline Congregationalist pastor. I have written and continue to write about fundamentalism for a variety of reasons. Its history holds important clues about the current role of women in conservative evangelical subcultures; it seemed to be asking some questions that other Protestants chose to avoid; and it presents wonderful examples of the pain and paradox of living out a thoroughly supernatural faith in a secular world."

"I write about academic subjects that intersect with my own interests and concerns: family life, religion, and gender," she continued. "This does not mean that I will only write out of my own relatively narrow experience, but that, whether I like it or not, my inner self always rises to address the academic, intellectual issues presented by my work." For example, Growing Up Protestant explores the lives and beliefs of mainstream Protestant families in America.

Bendroth is also the coeditor of several compilations of essays on Protestant families: Faith Traditions and the Family, which resulted from the Family, Religion and Culture Project based at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and Women and Twentieth-Century Protestantism. In the former, the various authors offer specific denominational perspectives representing a wide range of congregations on diverse family-related topics, ranging from mothering roles, homosexuality, divorce, and remarriage. According to R. Marie Griffith of the Christian Century, this "volume as a whole provides a much needed window onto the attempts by religious groups to deal both with family breakdowns and with new, nontraditional reconfigurations of family life." Although Griffith also praised Airhart and Bendroth's introduction to the work, remarking that it "cuts to the heart of these issues with admirable precision," she noted several errors of omission, such as discussions of childcare. The "important set of essays" in the latter collection, to quote Choice critic J. F. Findlay, addresses the ways women have impacted Protestant denominations through their leadership of church-related organizations. Adair T. Lummis noted in Sociology of Religion that this topic has been treated elsewhere. Yet, he concluded, "this volume [made up of fourteen essays] is the most comprehensive to date," and thus it "will be of lasting value for its lively, well-researched histories of a variety of women's Protestant organizations and groups."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

American Studies, spring, 1996, Doug Rossinow, review of Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present, pp. 190-192.

Choice, September, 2002, D. Jacobsen, review of Growing Up Protestant: Parents, Children, and Mainline Churches, p. 117; November, 2002, J. F. Findlay, review of Women and Twentieth-Century Protestantism, pp. 488-489.

Christian Century, September 7, 1994, R. Scott Appleby, review of Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present, p. 819; August 26, 1998, R. Marie Griffith, review of Faith Traditions and the Family, pp. 798-800.

Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, September, 1998, David Fillingim, review of Faith Traditions and the Family, pp. 173-174.

Journal of Law and Religion, summer, 2001, Charles Eric Mount, Jr., review of Faith Traditions and the Family, pp. 483-497.

Sociology of Religion, summer, 2003, Adair T. Lummis, review of Women and Twentieth-Century Protestantism, pp. 273-274.