Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation - Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Notes)

 

[These notes are a summary of Kristin’s thesis based on a podcast interview with her, not the book itself.]

Kristin Du Mez, professor at Calvin University was inspired to write her book when her students handed her a copy of Wild at Heart written by John Eldredge in 2001, who encouraged a rugged and militant masculine Christian faith. Rather than looking to the Bible, he looked to Hollywood, military men, cowboys, Braveheart, and mythological heroes and called that “biblical manhood.” He said God is a warrior God and man is made in his image, so every man has a battle to fight.

By 2005 dozens of books promoted similar images of rugged masculine Christianity. We were in the midst of the Iraq war in 2006 when these books came out, and polls showed that white evangelicals supported the Iraq war, pre-emptive war, condoned the use of torture, and embraced aggressive foreign policy.

Is this a fringe dark underbelly of evangelical Christianity or mainstream? Eldredge sold 4 million copies of Wild at Heart. Mark Driscoll in the 2000s was also wildly popular, and he preached a masculine, militant, crass Christianity. Du Mez collected numerous examples of abuse of power, sexual abuse, and protecting abusive colleagues among Christian leaders promoting this kind of masculinity.

Du Mez noticed how many white evangelicals got behind Trump. By fall of 2016 more than 80% of white evangelicals supported him. After the Access Hollywood tape of Trump’s sexual abuse and misogyny and lying, saying it wasn’t him on the tape, they continued to support him all the more. There is a habit in evangelical circles of enabling this kind of masculinity and looking the other way. They weren’t holding their noses when they voted, but were drawn to Trump’s alpha masculinity. Robert Jeffress said he didn’t want someone meek and mild, he wanted the meanest, toughest son of a bitch in the White House.

In the Nineteenth century we see genteel, respectful, self-restraint defining Christian masculinity. White men were seen as empowered to discipline women, children, and slaves. By the time of Roosevelt in the 1920s, we see rugged, rough, tough individualism, linked to whiteness and American power. By World War II, liberal Christians were more militaristic, but evangelical Christians weren’t. Evangelicals believed that a nation didn’t have a soul, people did, so America couldn’t be a Christian nation. That view among evangelicals would come later in their culture wars.

By the 1940s, evangelicals and Protestants attempted to unify and take back America through pop culture—magazines, books, radio, TV. This led to the rise of Billy Graham and eventually televangelism. During the Cold War in the 1950s, communism is identified as atheistic anti-God, anti-family, and anti-American. It’s a military threat that must be defended against with the military. America needed to be Christian and kept Christian, so faith and patriotism was linked to fight communism.

In the 1960s we see Civil Rights movements challenging southern white Christians, the feminist movement disobeying what were believed to be God’s commands for gender roles, and Vietnam and the anti-war movement. Evangelicals became increasingly pro-war, pro-military, and pro-gender roles: men were to be strong, tough protectors and women were to be weak, meek, and submissive. This increased the evangelical opposition to acceptance of LGBTQ acceptance and abortion.

John Wayne became the model of Christian masculinity for evangelicals. He was a cowboy, individualist, war hero, and a good guy who uses violence to defeat bad guys. Like Eldredge, this kind of Christian masculinity depends on fictional characters not formed by Christian virtues like loving your enemy as yourself.

If every man is made for a battle, then every man needs a battle, and that battle is the conservative evangelical culture war. Donald Trump comes along and is seen as the masculine strong man who is going to fight the enemies of the evangelicals, so they embraced him.

Fifty-five percent of evangelical women supported Trump, but they also help support patriarchy and believe in their own role of being a wife and mother who submits to patriarchal authority, which supports the strong man as protector. God gave men testosterone to have the strength and aggression to protect their home, faith, and country, so men must be very masculine and women very feminine. Women must be ready to meet their husband’s needs and not tempt other men.

The Cold War ended in the nineties, so Promise Keepers arose to answer the question: “What does it mean to be a man?” The warrior motif was there, but it was a tender warrior; a soft patriarchy. It got too soft, so a number of books released in 2001, like Wild at Heart, called for a militant, testosterone-filled, rugged Christianity. When September 11th happened, they became best sellers. We all have a battle to fight, and now we know who the enemy is: radical Islam.

Large conservative evangelical organizations like Focus on the Family promoted former Muslim terrorists who converted to evangelical Christianity and warned that Muslims wanted to come to America and kill us. There were numerous speakers, and they all turned out to be frauds. These evangelical ministries, knowing they were frauds, continued to promote them anyway because the ends justify the means.

Evangelicals were afraid because their leaders stoked their fear. Fear is a requirement to sustain militancy. They become Islamaphobes as a spate of books were written about the dangers of Islam. They believed they had to be ruthless and kill them first before they came here and killed us.

Many American evangelical organizations have global reach, so this masculine evangelicalism is exported all over the world where different cultures assimilate these ideas, leading to heartbreaking abuse.

Christians know Trump isn’t a Christian, but he promised to protect them and charge into battle on their behalf better than Rubio, Cruz, Carson, because Trump is tough, unconstrained by political correctness, civility, or rule of law, and desperate times call for desperate measures.

James Dobson said Trump was a baby Christian. Evangelicals tried to baptize Trump because they believe he is on their side, if not one of them. How could they support a man who was so morally reprehensible? The ends justify the means.

White evangelical values are deeply racialized. Christian nationalism says we were founded as a Christian nation and things were great until they went bad in the 1960s. Only white Christians can say that, not noticing their supremacy and privilege, completely ignoring the black experience in America.

Trump helped spread the narrative that Christians are persecuted while at the same time promising to privilege them. Evangelicals tell themselves that Democrats like Obama and Clinton are not true Christians, but actually hate Christianity. They are enemies who want to destroy your faith. But no matter how terribly Trump behaves, they see him as one of them.