You might think that the people who most fundamentally believe in humanity’s fallen, sinful nature — Calvinists — would also be the most reticent to concentrate power in a small sect of humans.
But often, as Kristin Kobes Du Mez told me in our interview, Calvinists are one of the Christian groups on the front lines of movements where power is concentrated in singular leaders, singular expressions of Christianity, or singular heads-of-households. Kobes Du Mez, a historian at Calvin University , finds this baffling, but can’t deny that the movements are linked. As she sees it, Christian patriarchy, Christian nationalism, and anti-democracy movements are connected by their approach to power.
In a new documentary short, For Our Daughters, Kobes Du Mez and director Carl Byker address the connection of these movements through the stories of sexual abuse victim-advocates: Rachael Denhollander, Cait West, Christa Brown, and others tell the stories of how sexual abuse was allowed, ignored, or covered-up in their communities while analyzing what Christianity has to say about it.
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