And evangelical 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.Ĭhallenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 20 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex?and they have a silver ring to prove it. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism?or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.”Īs acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism.
United States - Church history - 21st century.The “paradigm-influencing” book ( Christianity Today ) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America.A revelatory account of a uniquely influential subculture, Jesus and John Wayne incisively reveals why evangelicals have rallied behind patriarchal power and the least- Christian president in American history"- Read more. Jesus and John Wayne : How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. To be an evangelical, according to the National Association of Evangelicals, is to uphold the Bible as one’s ultimate authority, to confess Usually I will stay away from books on religion. /rebates/&252fjesus-and-john-wayne. As historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez demonstrates, American evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism-or, in the words of one modern chaplain, with "a spiritual badass." Trump is hardly the first flashy celebrity to capture evangelicals' hearts and minds, having followed the path blazed by, among others, John Wayne, Oliver North, and Mel Gibson. For a title like Jesus and John Wayne, I broke my rule. While we assume the religious right has pragmatic reasons for backing Trump, in truth he represents the fulfillment of evangelicals' most deeply held values. Yet in 2016 he won 81 percent of the white evangelical vote, and continues to rely on white evangelicals as his base of support. "A scholar of American Christianity answers perhaps the most bewildering question of our time: Why are evangelicals "the Donald's" most fervent supporters? Donald Trump is a libertine who lacks even basic knowledge of the Christian faith.
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