Every evangelical needs to wrestle with this book.īut I also think Jamie Carlson‘s largely critical, often courageous, and honest review of the book at Mere Orthodoxy raises some great points. I sung the book’s praises in my interview with Du Mez in Episode 73 of The Way of Improvement Leads Home Podcast and I stand by those words. It’s a strong book that says things about the recent history of American evangelicalism that should have been said a long time ago. He became, in the words of his religious biographers, “the ultimate fighting champion for evangelicals.If social media is any indication, everyone loves Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book Jesus and John Wayne. Try as they might-and they did try-no other candidate could measure up to Donald Trump when it came to flaunting an aggressive, militant masculinity. Evangelicals were looking for a protector, an aggressive, heroic, manly man, someone who wasn’t restrained by political correctness or feminine virtues, someone who would break the rules for the right cause. But in truth, evangelical leaders had been perfecting this pitch for nearly fifty years. The first African American president, the sea change in LGBTQ rights, the apparent erosion of religious freedom-coupled with looming demographic changes and the declining religious loyalty of their own children-heightened the sense of dread among white evangelicals. Leaders of the Religious Right had been amping up their rhetoric over the course of the Obama administration. Communism, secular humanism, feminism, multilateralism, Islamic terrorism, and the erosion of religious freedom-evangelical leaders had rallied support by mobilizing followers to fight battles on which the fate of the nation, and their own families, seemed to hinge. It was a tried-and-true recipe for their own success. For decades, the Religious Right had been kindling fear in the hearts of American Christians. “Why Trump, many wondered, including many evangelicals themselves. Among evangelicals, high levels of theological illiteracy mean that many “evangelicals” hold views traditionally defined as heresy, calling into question the centrality of theology to evangelicalism generally.” But the problem goes beyond sloppy categorization. Frustrated with this confusion of “real” and “supposed” evangelicals, evangelical elites have taken pollsters and pundits to task for carelessly conflating the two. In recent years, evangelical leaders themselves have come to recognize (and frequently lament) that a “pop culture” definition has usurped “a proper historical and theological” one, such that today many people count themselves “evangelical” because they watch Fox News, consider themselves religious, and vote Republican. In truth, what it means to be an evangelical has always depended on the world beyond the faith. “when evangelicals define themselves in terms of Christ’s atonement or as disciples of a risen Christ, what sort of Jesus are they imagining? Is their savior a conquering warrior, a man’s man who takes no prisoners and wages holy war? Or is he a sacrificial lamb who offers himself up for the restoration of all things? How one answers these questions will determine what it looks like to follow Jesus. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation He was the latest and greatest high priest of the evangelical cult of masculinity.” He was a hero for God-and-country Christians in the line of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Oliver North, one suited for Duck Dynasty Americans and American Christians.
Unencumbered by traditional Christian virtue, he was a warrior in the tradition (if not the actual physical form) of Mel Gibson’s William Wallace. He was the reincarnation of John Wayne, sitting tall in the saddle, a man who wasn’t afraid to resort to violence to bring order, who protected those deemed worthy of protection, who wouldn’t let political correctness get in the way of saying what had to be said or the norms of democratic society keep him from doing what needed to be done. Donald Trump was the culmination of their half-century-long pursuit of a militant Christian masculinity. “Evangelicals hadn’t betrayed their values.