The James Vardaman Lecture ft. Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Beth Allison Barr, the James Vardaman Endowed Chair of History, is thrilled to announce New York Times bestselling historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez as the 2026 Vardaman Lecture. Speaking at the Fudge Family Auditorium in the Hurd Welcome Center at 5:30 p.m. Monday, September 14, Du Mez will speak on her groundbreaking new book, Live Laugh Love: The Secret World of White Christian Women and the World They Made. Live Laugh Love explores a world intimately familiar to millions of American women: Christian bookstores and radio, Hallmark movies, multilevel marketing companies, and contemporary lifestyle brands. Combining sweeping cultural history with intimate storytelling, Du Mez explains how theological exclusion led women to build their own brand of Christianity, rich in cultural influence if thin in formal doctrine. Ultimately, Live Laugh Love explains how a powerful yet elusive vision of womanhood has shaped lives, families, and politics for more than a century now―and how it has brought us to our reactionary moment. As Barr wrote in her endorsement for Live Laugh Love, “Du Mez stands apart for how she centers the stories of women—those who were complicit and those who weren’t. By honoring the courage, truth-telling, and resilience of women like Christa Brown and Rachel Held Evans, Du Mez shows us the real story of hope. It will captivate you.” 

This is the second Vardaman lecture, launched by Barr as holder of the Vardaman chair, and co-sponsored by the Baylor History department. The Du Mez lecture follows the inaugural Vardaman lecture given in 2024 by Carolyn Muessig, Chair of Christian Thought at the University of Calgary. 

The lecture will be held on September 14th, 2026, at the Fudge Family Auditorium, Mark & Paula Hurd Welcome Center, 901 S University Parks Dr., 5:30 - 7:00 pm. 

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History at Calvin University, as well as a Senior Democracy Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute. Her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS and the BBC, among other outlets. Kristin holds the William Spoelhof Teacher-Scholar-in-Residence Chair at Calvin University, where she also served as Department Chair. She is a Distinguished Associate at the Institute for Christian Studies (Toronto) and served as a Fellow at the University of Notre Dame's Center for Philosophy of Religion from 2024 to 2025.