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

Kristin Kobes Du Mez describes how, after a lecture on masculinity and President Theodore Roosevelt, her students recommended that she read the 2001 book Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul by John Eldridge. It was “a mainstay in evangelical churches and on Christian college campuses” (xiii). At the same time, many white evangelical Christians backed the US’s invasion of Iraq, leading Du Mez to wonder about how ideas of evangelical masculinity influenced that support. This type of evangelical masculinity also manifested in popular culture—for example, in the support of the reality TV show Duck Dynasty.

In 2016, 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. Commentators questioned why evangelicals would vote for a man who seemed to be “the very antithesis” (xiii) of family values. However, Du Mez believes that no contradiction existed because “Trump embodied an aggressive, testosterone-driven masculinity that many conservative evangelicals had already come to equate with a God-given authority to lead” (xiv).

Of course, not all evangelical Christians support Trump or his politics. However, both evangelical leaders and average people have felt pressure to not speak out against Trump. Du Mez also describes how, since the original publication of Jesus and John Wayne, she received hundreds of letters and emails from evangelical Christians discussing their own experiences dealing with the aggressive masculinity inherent to white evangelical culture.