Where Do I Fall?Īs for myself I saw many familiar characters and the story very much resonated with me. The SBC Conservative Resurgence is discussed at length (more on that in a bit) as are the histories of popular books on Biblical Womanhood and Manhood and Christian marriage, and the Moral Majority and Concerned Women for America. In addition to names and places, movements like Quiverfull, the IFB, and Complementarianism are documented. Not to worry if you’re Pentecostal or Charismatic because there are plenty of appearances for you as well in Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and Pat Robertson. If you spent a lot of time in the conservative Christian homeschool movement sphere then you will be reintroduced to Doug Phillips (Vision Forum), Bill Gothard (Institute for Basic Life Principles), and Michael Farris (Homeschool Legal Defense Association and Patrick Henry College. If you spent much time in the Southern Baptist Convention then you will see familiar names like Al Mohler, Paige Patterson, Robert Jeffress, and Russell Moore. If you have spent much time in conservative evangelical spheres you will also recognize names like Jerry Falwell (founder of Liberty University and the Moral Majority), John MacArthur (Grace To You), John Piper (Desiring God), Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill), John Eldregde ( Wild at Heart), Wayne Grudem ( Systematic Theology), Ted Haggard (former president of the National Association of Evangelicals), Tim and Beverly LaHaye (Think “Left Behind”), and James Dobson (Focus on the Family). In between we meet familiar characters from our culture at large like Teddy Roosevelt, Billy Graham, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne (obviously), and Barack Obama.
An Overviewĭu Mez offers a sweeping and fast-paced narrative starting from the end of the Victorian era in American and ending with the COVID era. However, if you were, like me, raised in the conservative evangelical movement and have had to personally reckon with your experiences, then this books sheds a lot of light and connects a lot of dots. Do not come to this book expecting a way forward to be presented. As an historian she is primarily presenting facts, not theology. Kristen Kobes Du Mez is a professor of history at Calvin University and as such the book she has written does not offer solutions on the problems she brings to light. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.As someone who grew up both in the Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) movement and the homeschool movement, this book told the story of my life. 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. The "paradigm-influencing" book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America.