Reviews with content warning for Racism - Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

There was a deluge of information, and I'm unsure I processed or retained a lot of it. I listened, and had to go back again to catch a lot of what Du Mez said. Notably, there were a lot of players -- both individuals and organizations -- that contributed to the coalescence of white conservative evangelicalism and christian nationalism, and it was difficult sometimes to get a picture of how they all fit together. It starts with Billy Graham, and John Wayne, and moves to Oliver North and James Dobson and Jerry Falwell. I think Du Mez did the best she could to make a cohesive narrative out of it, but I'm still reeling and can't express the things I learned from it.

At times, I wanted to breathe fire. For example, with Marabel Morgan's "Total Woman," which set women back by a century, or the purity circles, or Chapters 16 which was on how Christian evangelical patriarchy self-justified abuse (major content warning on that, about victim-blaming). A lot of the tools that crystallized the cultural movement were the same through 1960, 1980, and 2010: a focus on a (fragile! They emphasized that the male ego was fragile and needed assuaging!!) male ego, with a docile/submissive femininity that needed protection (but who will protect women from self-aggrandizing, power-hungry patriarchs?).

Some of it hit close to home, as Du Mez mentioned Mormonism on occasion, and the same scandals in evangelicalism and Catholicism have occurred.

I... I have so much less sympathy for the culture of evangelicalism. It is divorced from any sense of religion. And, it drives home the point that Trump's election was a litmus test of our political and cultural climate: that a swathe of white males are frantic about losing their position in society. (It really is all about racism -- which Du Mez acknowledged briefly, but not enough). Very interesting to read this on the heels of Wilkerson's "Caste" and Haidt's "The Righteous Mind": definitely evangelicals/conservatism appeals to Authority/Order, Sacredness (ish?).

Like, I still don't know what to do with this book, y'all.

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katyallred's review against another edition

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dark informative medium-paced

4.25

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lovelybookshelf's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.5

How do I start? Where do I start? There is so much in this book, and it got more and more infuriating with every page.

In Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Kobes Du Mez outlines exactly what brought white American evangelicalism to the profound state of corruption we see today, and why it's so easy for people to be carried along with it.

A heads up: This book may be intensely triggering if you have past church trauma or you've been on the receiving end of religious hate.

Du Mez takes us through the past 75 years of American history, culture, and politics to help us understand what brought us to this point and why. Get ready for a nauseating look into Christian consumer culture, patriarchal gender traditionalism, militarism and fear-mongering, militant white masculinity, submissive femininity, Christian nationalism, and political power plays, all forged along the path of American imperialism.

What I found especially terrifying was how easy it was for evangelicals to take legitimate fears Americans had due to world events, and stoke that anxiety so that they could dive in and be the protector. James Dobson had an enormous influence on inserting evangelicalism into the American military, resulting in the dominionist ideals we see in many politicians today.

She covers the close ties between fundamentalism and evangelicalism, which explains why it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between the two. She helps us see how evangelicals played the long game through their branding, "replacing traditional denominational authorities with the authority of the market and the power of consumer choice." This helped them appeal to a wide audience, winning people over and gaining more followers. This is why you see members of mainline (or even progressive) denominations consuming, for example, books by evangelical authors.

So yeah, Jesus and John Wayne is a difficult book to read, content-wise. I felt sick to my stomach most of the time. But it's an important read, and if you've ever wondered why there are people who are okay with all of this, you'll gain a whole lot of insight.

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sarahholliday's review against another edition

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challenging informative

4.25

An impressive analysis of the insidious influence militant masculinity, patriarchy, and white supremacy have had on American evangelicalism and American culture more broadly. The evidence is abundant and the arguments convincing, though I wish de Mez would've drawn explicit connections between these systems and abuse earlier in the work, rather than leaving the bulk of that particular discussion for the final chapter.

Overall, I loved this much-needed work and want to put it into the hands of everyone I know.

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kaitlinlovesbooks's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

It’s going to take me awhile to form a coherent review. This is an incredibly well-researched, eye-opening book like nothing I’ve read about Evangelicalism before.

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drusilla_reads's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

5.0

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j_sherrill's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

As someone who has grown up sort of on the fringes of evangelical Christianity in America and as someone who is perplexed by the evangelical obsession with Donald Trump, I felt this was an important book for me to read. I did not expect it to be as challenging as it was. To me, at times this book felt pretty dry and dense and I found myself zoning out. I was just bored at times. In spite of this, I feel like this is an important book for any evangelical Christian to read and it is well worth the time and effort required to read it.

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