David 's Reviews > Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

This book is a history of white American evangelicalism and its highly readable while managing to pack in a lot of history. Its also highly depressing and frustrating. I feel I grew up in the best of white American evangelicalism but as I look around, I fear the worst has won out in the end.

I grew up in American evangelicalism, though I was not conscious of that until I left home for college. My church growing up was certainly evangelical, but most of the focus from the pulpit was on living as a follower of Jesus. I do not recall sermons on the sorts of things this book mentions, though James Dobson’s Focus on the Family’s bulletin inserts showed up each month. My understanding of a wider evangelical culture began near the end of high school as I made friends in other churches, then grew as I attended Christian music festivals and attended other churches while at college.

Thankfully, the seminary I attended, though probably evangelical, did not press these ideas. Sure, most probably voted Republican. But we were more into reading the church fathers or contemporary apologetics than books on how to be real men (perhaps all our reading and studying meant we weren’t hunting and shooting things, so we weren’t “real men”? Hmm...).

I was basically steeped in this evangelical subculture then from about 1998-2004. I read both I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Wild at Heart. Thus, that part of the book was especially intriguing for I recall living through it.

Reading the rest of the book made me thankful I got out of it.

Perhaps that’s not fair. I still work in the evangelical world, as uncomfortable I am with the term. I suppose we could fault the author for not speaking of other aspects of evangelicalism, like the aforementioned apologetics. When I think of “evangelical” I think of William Lane Craig’s arguments for God’s existence. I think of the influence of Ravi Zacharias. So someone might argue that evangelical is wider than how she defines it.

Yet, she does address this and I think she is largely correct - however we might like it, the fact is to the majority of people both inside and outside the movement, “evangelical” now means “political, conservative Republican, support of Trump.”

The best thing about this book is that by documenting the history of hyper-masculinity and the love of John Wayne type heroes, she manages to show how the overwhelming support for Trump is not hypocrisy by evangelicals but the logical conclusion of decades of work. Back in the 90s it was clear that for many men, Braveheart’s William Wallace was more interesting than the Jesus of the Bible. Jesus might save your soul but John Wayne and William Wallace and Ronald Reagan and Duck Commander and the rest will save your ass.

What amazed me most was the level of deception and fragility throughout this story. I began to notice how often men were considered to possess a “fragile ego” by writers like Dobson. The message seemed to be that men had fragile egos which women had to prop up. I lost track of how many times this idea came up. But it does explain why men in the movement are so resistant to women in leadership - they have fragile egos. The solution they offered for decades, putting the onus on one to submit, is the problem. To be blunt, if you’re a man with a fragile ego and threatened by strong women and you need women to serve you to make you feel better, you’re not a proverbial “real man.”

Along with that, its amazing how easily duped white evangelicals have been. Perhaps we should not be surprised so many are impressed with a president who demonstrates he’s patriotic by waving a flag and demonstrates he’s Christian by doing a photo op with a Bible. It seems white evangelicals have been impressed by blowhards and big talkers for years. Yet, like Trump, most of these men were revealed to be hypocrites or frauds.

That leads to the most depressing part of the story. So many of these men who preached toughness and protection of women turned out to be abusers. Even Ravi Zacharias, lionized at his death a few months ago, was an abusive man (this was known by some at his death but drowned out in the cacophony of praise; more stories have since come out).

White evangelical Christianity has long been steeped in racism (as documented in books such as Robert Jones’ White No More and Jemar Tisby’s Color of Compromise). Du Mez’s book shows how the movement’s views on men and women grew and influenced not just evangelicalism but the entire nation. These ideas have moved into the military and the highest halls of power.

I will still never understand how white evangelicals have largely chosen to throw away any sort of moral compass or leadership to bow at the alter of a narcissistic madman like Trump. This book helps as it shows a long history of loving strongmen as well as being duped by fake strongmen. Maybe I should understand by now. But growing up in this world, in the best of this world, and seeing the worst of it take over, I am just sad.

Overall, this is a must read book for any who want to understand white American evangelicalism.