Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

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Synopsis

In Jesus and John Wayne, acclaimed historian and professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez takes a look at seventy-five years of evangelical history to try to answer the question of how a moral reprobate like Donald Trump who can't even name a single Bible verse became the darling of the religious right and won 81 percent of their votes to become president. She takes readers back to a time when the rugged masculinity of John Wayne captured the imagination of Christians who were looking for an antidote to the rising cries of equality for women and minorities. Over time, the kind and compassionate Jesus of the Bible was replaced by an idol of toxic masculinity and white Christian nationalism that worships at the altar of militarism and cowboy audacity, setting the stage for all sorts of mythical warriors to embody to their cause. This ideology then spread through the exponential growth in sales of Christian books and other merchandise. Through her examination of modern Christian history, the author shows, not only why we ended up with possibly the most un-Christian president of all time, but also how, in supporting him and spreading this distorted message, they've also transformed the faith in a way that will have resounding consequences for a long time to come.

Review

Jesus and John Wayne is Christian historian and history professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez's second published book. In it she travels through decades of Christian and American history, starting around the early twentieth century and bringing it all the way through to the initial publication of the book in 2020. She posits that starting around the time of World War I, a version of muscular Christianity that worshiped militarism and patriarchy began to take root. Then in the mid-twentieth century, the rise of preachers like famous evangelist Billy Graham and the prominence of John Wayne's movies started to move the needle even further toward this ideology as both became very popular with Christians. Evangelical support for the Vietnam War was also high during this time. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the "enemy" was communism, and many Christian leaders of the time used their denouncement of this political system to gain followers. Other popular Christian authors and preachers began to condemn the women's rights movement and earlier had more quietly tried to derail the civil rights movement. At the same time, the United States began to see a rise in the Christian publishing, music and entertainment industries, which spread their message like wildfire. The late 1990s eventually saw a slight improvement in the militant patriarchy with the founding of the Christian men's group, The Promise Keepers, which promoted the mentality of a more "tender warrior," but less than a decade later, they, too, reverted to a staunch mindset as the war on terror in the Middle East raged. Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, there was an increase in the number and popularity of ultra-conservative pastors who preached a brand of toxic masculinity that has led to many abuses within the church, some of which were allowed to go on unchecked. Eventually this mentality led to the election of Donald Trump--someone who in years past would have been viewed by Christians as too immoral to hold such a high office--to the presidency, but whom evangelical voters ended up embracing and still largely do to this day.

Admittedly my summary above is an oversimplification of Jesus and John Wayne, but the best I could do within my usual one paragraph. In reality this is a complex book that takes the reader through a decades-long exploration of the growing phenomena of toxic masculinity and extreme patriarchy that has infiltrated the evangelical church culture and how those views have led to the current moment in history where our nation is fractured along political lines. I admit that I've been quite baffled by how people who call themselves Christians could wholesale dismiss a strong, compassionate family man and leader like Barack Obama and then turn around and embrace a morally bankrupt person like Donald Trump. This book actually answered that question in a different way than I might have expected but one not so terribly surprising. Having the historical rise in toxic masculinity and extreme patriarchy in the church being laid out in a linear fashion made me realize that this has been going on for a very long time, and unfortunately, in some ways, it seems to be getting worse, not better--at least not yet. The book is extremely well-written, well-researched and put together in a way that builds on itself to make perfect sense. It's perhaps slightly more dense reading than what I'm used to, but it's still quite accessible to the average person so that the reader doesn't have to be a history professor like the author in order to understand it. I also think that the author did an excellent job of defending her thesis. All that said, this was still a rather tough read for me, because of the massive amounts of militarism and toxicity being detailed in one compact package that could be somewhat depressing and triggering for me personally. Even if it was a bit difficult to get through, I'm very glad that I read it. I learned a great deal from it and would highly recommend it to anyone who's had the same questions I've had or who wants to better understand how the evangelical church and our politics have gotten to where they are today.

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Kristin Kobes Du Mez