“The Kind of People That People Come Out Of:” Reproductive Labor, Redemptive Suffering, and Christian Nationalism

Biological reproduction is central to white evangelical futurity. This paper analyzes the enfleshed labor of childbirth as core to the ends of the evangelical far-right, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. I argue that the birthing body functions as the site that upholds white evangelical visions of salvation in a way that frames the act of childbearing as a form of redemptive suffering toward the end of furthering Christian theopolitical power. I contend that this soteriology of reproduction is furthered by the figure of the child being constructed as the subject that ultimately enacts redemption by securing the future of white evangelicalism. I conclude by turning toward an abortive ethic as a potential resource for disrupting the interlocking of reproductive labor with the expansion of Christian hegemony.