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

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020) by historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a nonfiction history and political commentary detailing the rise of the conservative evangelical Christian political movement, commonly called the Religious Right, in the US and how it contributed to President Donald Trump’s election. Du Mez particularly focuses on how conservative evangelicals fashioned a culture intertwined with theology, politics, consumerism, race, and a specific, narrow view of masculinity and women’s roles. Jesus and John Wayne received the 2021 NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language (the Orwell Award for short), which is given to books and media deemed to positively contribute to public discourse.

This study guide is based on the 2021 reprint, which contains a new preface by Liveright Publishing.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism, antigay bias, and sexual violence.

Summary

Kristin Kobes Du Mez begins by contemplating, from her perspective as a Christian professor who teaches at an evangelical Christian college, how Donald Trump won the conservative evangelicals’ vote and continued to enjoy their support despite not being a good model for family values. To find the answer, Du Mez examines how “manhood seemed in question” (15-16) at the end of the 19th century: More men (especially white Protestant men) engaged in office work rather than physical labor. In response, President Theodore Roosevelt presented a masculinity that provided a model for the entire nation. In addition, many believed that Protestant Christianity needed an infusion of masculinity. During the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, evangelical Protestant pastor Billy Graham promoted Christian masculinity and traditional family values and gender roles as a way to protect against communism. When the civil rights and social movements of the 1960s and 1970s emerged, evangelical Protestant leaders like Phyllis Schlafly opposed civil rights reforms like the Equal Rights Amendment on the grounds that women would achieve their rights only by accepting an evangelical model of womanhood and the family and that government interventions in social problems infringed on the authority of fathers over their families.

The US loss in the Vietnam War and the social change and unrest of the later Cold War era were seen by conservative evangelicals as failures of masculinity, morality, and discipline on both an individual and national level. At the same time, conservative evangelicals idealized the archetype of the American cowboy, who was strong, crude, and willing to resort to violence to defend his family and community. This led evangelicals to rally behind an aggressive foreign policy and the Republican Party, especially political figures like Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan—despite how the personal lives of such politicians often failed to fit the moral expectations that conservative evangelicals preached. Politicians like Reagan “projected the rugged, masculine leadership they believed the country so desperately needed” (106). This fixation on masculinity among conservative evangelicals reached the point that they rejected what they viewed as the feminine and gentle interpretation of Jesus Christ, preferring instead the idea of Jesus as a warrior.

After the Cold War and under the Democratic presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, conservative evangelicals continued to have influence, perhaps even more than they did during Republican presidential administrations, because they “always thrived on a sense of embattlement” (248). Nevertheless, during the 1990s, evangelical leaders and groups like the Promise Keepers forged an understanding of masculinity that struck compromises between traditional gender roles and the emotional needs of men. However, the 9/11 attacks in 2001 provoked conservative evangelical militants to reassert themselves, identifying Muslims as the new threat to the US. This militancy fed into a distinct conservative evangelical culture that was characterized by whiteness and alienation from many Black evangelical Christians. In addition, it evolved according to the community’s rigid notions of gender roles; anxiety over the presumed threat posed by Black, Middle Eastern, and Hispanic communities; an authoritarian interpretation of Christian theology; and the marketing of books, toys, music, and other items. Motivated by this distinctive culture, large numbers of conservative evangelicals came to support Donald Trump, finding him to represent the crass, domineering masculinity that their culture had valorized for decades.