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

Product Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America.
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.”
As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. 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. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. 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.
Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 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. 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. 15 black-and-white illustrations
Review
"[Du Mez’s] astonishing gifting was in the way she took 1000 puzzle pieces and fit them together. I don’t swallow books whole but the evidence for much of what she’s written is staring us in the face."
―
Beth Moore, on Twitter
From the Back Cover
“Paradigm-influencing. . . A very readable page-turner.”―Scot McKnight, Christianity Today
“Jesus and John Wayne is a tour-de-force indictment of the white evangelical cult of masculinity.”―Michael Rea, Salon
“[N]ot only one of the most important books on religion and the 2016 elections but one of the most important books on post-1945 American evangelicalism published in the past four decades.”―Jon Butler, Church History
“I hear people say all the time that Trump’s election was a tragedy for evangelicals, but after reading [this] book, I wonder if it isn’t their greatest victory.”―Sean Illing, Vox
“Brilliant and engaging . . . 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, The New Republic
“It is impossible to do justice to the richness of Jesus and John Wayne in a short review, but one of the key points the book stresses is that as Christian nationalists, the vast majority of white evangelicals believe that our country’s flourishing depends on aggressive male leadership. The pervasive abusive patterns of white evangelical subculture replicate themselves on a large social scale in the Christian Right’s politics. Since understanding this will be crucial if Americans are to have a functional democratic future, Jesus and John Wayne is a book that America needs now.”―Chrissy Stroop, Boston Globe
“A much needed and painstakingly accurate chronicle of exactly ‘where many evangelicals are,’ an