This is a weird and kinda sad double-down for many reasons, but one stands out to me, the issue of the reviewer being an outsider, and why that matters. Because it doesn't always, and it doesn't have to, but in this case, it does. 1/x https://twitter.com/revannek/status/1379778659855306762

If you were a guy in an American ev ch in the period covered by J+JW, you can't plead ignorance in the way the reviewer does. This kind of teaching on masculinity was everywhere, and it was dominant. I experienced it in numerous churches in numerous states (and countries!). 2/x

Every guy I've talked to, even the most skeptical, had their a-ha moment when the book's thesis intersected with their experience. J+JW is onto something, and you can't just write it off because, as an outsider, it wasn't your experience. 3/x

2) This doesn't mean you can't comment as an outsider. You do, however, have to do some work to understand the phenomenon before you speak. The author of J+JW did not pull her thesis out of thin air. It stands on a mountain of evidence and decades of secondary scholarship. 4/x

If you know the field, you would see that J+JW draws on numerous threads already extant in the work of scholars such as @KevinMKruse, @JohnFea1, @davidrswartz, @socofthesacred, @ndrewwhitehead, @JDWilsey, @timgloege Daniel K Williams, Joel Carpenter, and so many more. 5/x

That the reviewer has no knowledge of the relevant lit is most clear in her statements about who evangelicals are. Scholars of American ev might seem a humorless lot, but if there is any running joke in their field, it's that they all study something they can't even define. 6/x

Thus, for the reviewer to bust out with a "She doesn't even know who she's talking about" defense, is, well, a little laughable. More problematic for the reviewer, is that they ignore the fact that the author has a long discussion of this in her introduction. 7/x

The author very clearly locates her definition of within the scholarship, and so, even for the uninitiated outsider, the receipts are there for those willing to look. You may disagree with the definition, but you can't dismiss it. 8/x

The same goes for the rest of the book. You may not like what the book says, or even what it says about you, but you have to deal with the receipts, in the form of the evidence presented from both primary and secondary sources. 9/x

That is why in this case, that the reviewer is an outsider matters. You cannot dismiss a piece of serious scholarship simply because it does not align with your experiences or desires. You have to deal with the evidence. J+JW brought the receipts. The reviewer did not. End/x