In general books in this latter category serve as nothing so much as signposts for a growing Evangelical Protestant tendency to idealize and fetishize the Amish and similar sects on the basis of perceived commonalities in relatively ancillary areas, such as sexual purity--a sort of perverse-mirror image of social libertine tendencies to idealize and fetishize the culture of Amsterdam, or democratic-socialist tendencies to idealize and fetishize Scandinavia or Canada.
If 'Team USA' Evangelical Protestantism was a literal person, it should be taken out back and shot in the head. It's the theological equivalent of 'grey goo' and is generally affronted by anything that is culturally or theologically different than itself. If it at least tries to self replicate itself in culturally diverse and different areas then it creates genuine crimes against culture (see South Korea)
I know exactly about the books you are talking about and I've gotten about half way through one of them. It's representations of masculinity and femininity in 'traditional' culture is as close to the ideological pap about the noble savage that permeated Victorian and Edwardian low to high class literature. Except this is a hundred years later. They also write about historic Scotland too which seems to be a land of high church Anglicans, rural Catholic pockets and Presbyterianism striped of it's context.
Poll
