Gina Welch on WETA’s “The Book Studio”

Here’s a nine-minute segment from an interview Gina Welch did on WETA, a PBS station in the Washington DC area.

There’s some fairly standard stuff here: Welch and host grapple with the terms “fundamentalist” and “evangelical” and discuss but don’t name “separatism,” instead using the undefined terms “big-F fundamentalism” and “little-F fundamentalism.” They also namecheck Francis Schaeffer and briefly mention his influence on Jerry Falwell.

Unfortunately the second half of the interview is kind of tainted by what Pearl Buck called “the stink of condescension,” suggesting that the glories of big-P progressivism and feminism have passed evangelical culture in general and women in particular by, and that at Thomas Road young women consider themselves future mothers first and foremost. Along the way Welch also mentions that she visited Thomas Road in part because she was so appalled by the reelection of George W. Bush, and the fact that her grandparents on one side were Communists.

I honestly don’t recognize her characterization of these women; the women I knew at Liberty who would say their career plan was to become a wife and mother were few and far between when I was there. Maybe Welch and I traveled in different circles.