Raising a Modern-Day Knight

Abstract: This article examines Robert Lewis' Raising a Modern-Day Knight , a pivotal religious conservative text that merged fatherhood, boyhood masculinity, and traditional Christian values. Amid cultural anxieties over feminism and LGBTQ rights, Lewis framed fatherhood as essential to shaping boys into "authentic" men. Using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the article analyzes how Lewis employed knightly imagery and ceremonies to instill patriarchal values and normative masculinity in boys through rituals. Positioned within late 20th-century U.S. culture wars, I argue that Raising a Modern-Day Knight served as a tool for preserving heteropatriarchal norms through the genre of conservative Christian childrearing literature.