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

The “paradigm-influencing” guide (Christianity Right now) that’s essentially reworking our understanding of white evangelicalism in America.

Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist historical past of the final seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have labored to switch the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism―or within the phrases of 1 fashionable chaplain, with “a religious badass.”

As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the important thing to understanding this transformation is to acknowledge the centrality of fashionable tradition in modern American evangelicalism. Lots of as we speak’s evangelicals may not be theologically astute, however they know their VeggieTales, they’ve learn John Eldredge’s Wild at Coronary heart, they usually discovered about purity earlier than they discovered about intercourse?they usually have a silver ring to show it. Evangelical books, movies, music, clothes, and merchandise form the beliefs of tens of millions. And evangelical tradition is teeming with muscular heroes?legendary warriors and rugged troopers, males like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine energy in protection of “Christian America.” Chief amongst these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a misplaced time when males have been uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to inform it prefer it was, and did what wanted to be finished.

Difficult the generally held assumption that the “ethical majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic causes, Du Mez reveals that Trump in truth represented the success, quite than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive international coverage, worry of Islam, ambivalence towards #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ neighborhood. A much-needed reexamination of maybe essentially the most influential subculture on this nation, Jesus and John Wayne reveals that, removed from adhering to biblical rules, fashionable white evangelicals have totally remade their religion, with enduring penalties for all Individuals.

15 black-and-white illustrations