Persuasively arguing that the evangelical dismissal of Trump's flaws is the culmination of believing that 'God-given testosterone came with certain side effects, ' Du Mez closes with a bruising chapter on recent evangelical leaders' abuses and sex scandals. engaging history of the shifting ideal of Christian masculinity. This is a searing and sobering book, one that should be read by anyone who wants to grasp our political moment and the religious movement that helped get us here.-Darren Dochuk, author of Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America It turns out that the opposite is true: for generations, white male evangelical leaders and their supportive wives have been building a movement of brazen masculinity and patriarchal authority, with hopes of finding a warrior who could extend their power to the White House. Wielding supreme command of evangelical theology, popular culture, history and politics, as well as rare skill with the pen, Kristin Kobes Du Mez explodes the myth that evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in spite of his crude machismo. An evangelical-focused anti-Trump book that carries academic weight.
Readers not on the fringe right will find it difficult to take issue with her arguments. The well-researched narrative is reasoned and dispassionate. An extraordinary work.-Reverend Richard Cizik, President of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good Those who legitimately ask 'How can evangelicals support Donald Trump?' need to read this book to understand why. I endorse Kristin Du Mez's lively and readable account of evangelical political history, having personally seen it from the inside during nearly three decades with the National Association of Evangelicals. Sure to be controversial, the author's closely reasoned argument is thoughtful and provoking.-Michael Cart I hear people say all the time that Trump's election was a tragedy for evangelicals, but after reading book, I wonder if it isn't their greatest victory.-Sean Illingįascinating. A very readable page-turner."-Scot McKnight Across chapters ranging from 'John Wayne Will Save Your Ass' to 'Holy Balls, ' Du Mez peppers her text with entertaining (and sometimes horrifying) examples.-Matthew Avery Sutton Clutterbuck-Cook, Library Journalīrilliant and engaging. This timely exploration helps readers place President Trump and his supporters in the context of white Christian America's reaction to mid-20th-century social justice activism.-Anna J. 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.Īn insightful examination of white Christian masculinities from the era of Billy Graham and John Wayne to Mark Driscoll and Donald Trump. 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.