In the ongoing “culture wars” over gender roles and family forms, conservative Protestants have emerged as the most vocal proponents of ‘traditional” gender relations and a patriarchal family structure. However a burgeoning body of ethnographic and qualitative studies has highlighted disparities between these patriarchal attitudinal commitments on the one hand, and the more egalitarian gender practices of conservative Protestant spouses on the other. My dissertation is designed to investigate more fully this seemingly contradictory relationship between gender ideology and gender practice among conservative Protestant spouses. Drawing on insights from the sociology of knowledge, I explore how conservative evangelicals confront the ideological tensions and practical exigencies associated with adhering to a patriarchal family model in the face of broader, more egalitarian American gender norms. I begin with an analysis of best-selling conservative evangelical family manuals to sketch the contours of the prevailing gender ideology espoused by leading religious conservatives. Then, I utilize data from the initial wave of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) to compare the prevailing gender ideology advanced in these manuals with the actual gender beliefs and gender practices of a large national sample of conservative evangelical spouses. Finally, I draw on ethnographic and in-depth interview data collected from a prominent conservative evangelical church to examine how conservative evangelical gender ideology is constructed at the congregational level, and assimilated or resisted by conservative Protestant spouses. I conclude by outlining this study’s contributions to cultural debates concerning religious values, gender roles, and family life in contemporary American society.