Jesus and John Wayne is both really good and not so good. Du Mez’s book ignores the fact that icons of masculinity and strength served a very important cultural function for men who faced or could have faced combat.Ī Fuller Story of Twentieth-Century Evangelicals Thus, John Wayne became an icon of a man who won’t break. The tough man who can withstand the stress and terror and who is strong enough to prevail is a likely hero regardless of how you parse some of the questions regarding conquest and justice. These were democratic experiences that took in giant swaths of the male population. But it’s crucial to note that American men long had intimate familiarity with violence thanks to wars against the British, the Indians (native Americans), a civil war, participation in two world wars, the Korean War, and Vietnam. We all played “Cowboys and Indians” in those days.ĭu Mez’s book decries evangelicalism’s role in supporting and celebrating American masculine identity. Yes, these virtues were in the service of the good old USA, even though they unfortunately were sometimes used against the Native Americans who were commonly cast as the enemy in Westerns. From Wayne, we got toughness, courage, and fortitude. American boys of my era largely formed their view of manhood by looking at John Wayne, Captain Kirk, and various sports heroes. What we cared about was John Wayne’s screen persona. In fact, Du Mez’s book was the first time I learned anything about Wayne’s personal life. The same was true, of course, of political figures such as John F. Unlike today’s ultra-transparent media environment, few knew or cared about celebrities’ private lives. The “Duke” worked primarily in a period when the media did not report negative aspects of Hollywood stars’ lives. The idea that evangelicals nurtured hypocritical affection for Wayne is also hard to maintain given the cultural context of the time. John Wayne fandom was not a uniquely evangelical phenomenon. Having been a child in a non-evangelical setting during the period of Wayne’s greatest fame, I can report that basically everyone who was not a political progressive in the United States loved and lionized John Wayne. “White Christian patriarchy” never is.ĭu Mez places considerable stock in the fact that evangelicals apparently loved John Wayne despite the fact that his lifestyle (divorces, affairs) didn’t fit their ideals. “Religious liberty” is presented in scare quotes. She writes in a highly progressive patois that never leaves any doubt about her sympathies. It seems her goal is to engage in straight polemic. This class of books, therefore, can provide some needed insight into Christianity’s character in the twentieth century.īut, in Du Mez’s book, the overt political agenda overwhelms its scholarly agenda. Though he basically argued that corporate America promoted evangelicals in part to strengthen the hand of the American model over against more collectivist approaches, he gave credit to the people he discussed when due throughout the book, and acknowledged the strength of Christianity’s appeal to average Americans. Despite the subtitle (which I assume was the publisher’s attempt to stir the pot), I found Kruse’s book quite judicious. Kevin Kruse’s One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America falls within this genre. This genre attempts to unmask the twentieth century evangelical Christian experience as more pernicious than it might appear to ordinary eyes. Du Mez is (sometimes rightly) concerned about the about the ways masculine militancy has pervaded evangelicalism’s moral and theological principles at the expense of Biblical integrity.ĭu Mez’s book belongs to a relatively new and evolving genre.
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By tracing the past seven or so decades of evangelicalism’s cultural imagination, she takes aim at what she regards as evangelicalism’s cult of male authority, which has toxic consequences.
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And depending on who’s paying attention, they will probably be either worried or thrilled to see it.įor Christians concerned about the threat of fundamentalism, Du Mez’s book will receive warm welcome. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez is one of those books people will notice if you carry it around the campus of your Christian college.