The conservative Christian women turning moral urgency into political power

(RNS) — “If I perish, I perish.”

That’s the chant sociologist Katie Gaddini heard echoing from the National Mall in October 2024, weeks before President Donald Trump was elected a second time.

Raised an evangelical, Gaddini knew the reference — Esther 4:16, a Bible passage in which the Jewish Queen Esther prepares to risk her life to save her people. But to the thousands of conservative Christian women gathered for a prayer rally that fall day, the declaration had taken on a different meaning.

“In the retelling, they were Esther, they were the warrior queens,” Gaddini explained to RNS. “God had called them to save the nation from destruction — that being the left, or what they call woke indoctrination.”

Gaddini said the chant was indicative of how conservative women viewed the stakes of the 2024 election. To them, the nation’s morality was on the line.

In her latest book, “Esther’s Army: The Christian Women Who Power the American Right,” Gaddini distills 10 years of ethnographic research on conservative Christian women into six chapters, each exploring an archetype: college students, “Mama Bears,” political powerhouses, social media influencers, Black conservatives and…