“The term ‘feminism’ has been hijacked by the secular feminist movement,” says Betsy Hart, a syndicated columnist for Scripps Howard News Service and author of It Takes a Parent. “Many people – including Christians and a lot of young, secular women – associate traditional feminism with very angry, men-hating, strident, unattractive and unhappy women.”

But today, Christian women like Palin and Bachmann are redefining a feminist as a woman who is conservative and pro-life, who has a calling in the workplace, but who also embraces her role as a Christian wife and mother.

In a 2010 speech, Palin drew a connection between herself and feminists, but reconfigured the term to mean a self-sufficient, pro-life Christian who believes...