In her Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2021), Kristin Kobes Du Mez offers a sweeping critique of the transformation and decline of white evangelicalism in America between the 1920’s and the 2016 presidential campaign that culminated in the election of Donald J. Trump. The book is dedicated to explaining how eighty-one percent of white evangelicals could have supported Trump in light of behaviors that stand in stark contrast to Biblical norms and standards (xiv), and what brought them to that point. Kobes Du Mez finally attributes this to “the culmination of evangelicals’ embrace of militant masculinity, an ideology that enshrines patriarchal authority and condones the callous display of power, at home and abroad” (3). However, is this an accurate assessment of white evangelicalism in 2024?
The proposed paper will critique Jesus and John Wayne and examine whether Kobes Du Mez’s evidence supports her claims concerning white evangelicalism. The paper will conclude that, while specific examples of evangelical men behaving badly are undeniable, militant Christian masculinity neither represents nor explains the complexities of the movement as a whole as well as that Kobes Du Mez’s thesis may not be entirely supported by the evidence.
Kobes Du Mez is by vocation a historian, and Jesus and John Wayne reflects this. However, Kobes Du Mez is also writing as an activist whose desire is to “dismantle” or deconstruct white, American evangelicalism (304). Presumably, this extends to a reconstruction as well, but what might that look like? As Kobes Du Mez does not interact with the Biblical text in her volume, it is difficult to tell. It is for this reason that Kobes Du Mez’s theological assumptions and commitments must be identified and evaluated as well.
The paper’s primary conversation partners, besides Kobes Du Mez, are Thomas S. Kidd’s Who Is an Evangelical? The history of a Movement in Crisis (2019), and Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, and George M. Marsden’s edited volume Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be (2019), both written in the same cultural context as Kobes Du Mez’s book. Relevant Biblical materials will also be considered.