Bush, and Donald Trump.ĭu Mez’s central argument with this book is that the Evangelical Christian movement influenced right-wing politics with their ideas of family, nationalism, and masculinity shaping their own subculture, which in turn, linked with the ideology of social conservatism. This topic she explores is centered in the continental United States ranging in the decades from the mid-1940s through 2020, assessing the importance of prominent figures and archetypes such as John Wayne, evangelical leaders like James Dobson and Billy Graham, and Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. The book assesses how white evangelical Protestants forged their own political alchemy of Christian nationalism in the United States based on chauvinism, masculinity, and religious fundamentalism. Her new book under review, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright, 2020), likewise combines the frameworks of religious, political, cultural, and gender history.
These topics inform her writing, including her first book The New Gospel for Women: Katherine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism (Oxford, 2015). Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a professor of History at Calvin University, specializing in gender, religious, and political history while also teaching social and cultural history. I was left unsatisfied and unconvinced - though I think there are some important parts to this book, and some of what du Mez says is correct.By Kristin Kobes Du Mez. In the introduction and conclusion she notes that what she says would not be universally true for evangelicals (given opposition to, e.g., war and patriarchy internal to evangelicalism) but her book essentially ignores this in every other chapter. du Mez ignores counterexamples and differences internal to evangelicalism that would complicate her analysis. In particular, du Mez wants to make a broad generalization about evangelicalism, and at the end of the book I found myself frustrated by those generalizations. But examples simply aren't arguments, and it is her arguments that seem to be lacking. du Mez is certainly correct that there is a large, powerful strange of white evangelicalism that emphasizes masculinity and patriarchy. After listening to this audiobook, I'm not convinced.
The substitle of this book implies that white evangelicals corrupted the Christian faith and lead to severe political consequences.
Seems to be missing support for key conclusions
Evangelical popular culture is teeming with muscular heroes - mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of "Christian America." Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done.Ī much-needed reexamination, Jesus and John Wayne explains why evangelicals have rallied behind the least-Christian president in American history and how they have transformed their faith in the process, with enduring consequences for all of us. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping account of the last 75 years of white evangelicalism, showing how American evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. How did a libertine who lacks even the most basic knowledge of the Christian faith win 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2016? And why have white evangelicals become a presidential reprobate's staunchest supporters? These are among the questions acclaimed historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez asks in Jesus and John Wayne, which explains how white evangelicals have brought us to our fractured political moment.