Scan barcode
A review by leviofmichigan
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
5.0
This book explains my life. If you're considering purchasing or reading this book, push everything else aside for a bit and do it. If you've come from a background similar to mine, this book is therapy. Or, intensely triggering. Definitely be aware of that going in.
I was born to an Evangelical pastor, and most of the names discussed in this book were part of regular conversation.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez does what so many authors on White Evangelicalism fail to do: thread the needle of gender (and, unfortunately, patriarchy) throughout every nuance and turn of the movement. In all corners of Evangelicalism, pastors and Christians are judged for validity based on how seriously they take "the difference between men and women," the non-existence of "genuinely" trans individuals, and the inability for two people of the same gender to marry. For my parents, the Jenga tower of theology that would fall were they to accept my queerness as G-d-given is built entirely out of outdated concepts regarding gender--not, in any sense, on their biblical convictions. And, of course, the Evangelical support of Donald Trump proves this perhaps more than anything else in the storied past of White Evangelicals.
I was born to an Evangelical pastor, and most of the names discussed in this book were part of regular conversation.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez does what so many authors on White Evangelicalism fail to do: thread the needle of gender (and, unfortunately, patriarchy) throughout every nuance and turn of the movement. In all corners of Evangelicalism, pastors and Christians are judged for validity based on how seriously they take "the difference between men and women," the non-existence of "genuinely" trans individuals, and the inability for two people of the same gender to marry. For my parents, the Jenga tower of theology that would fall were they to accept my queerness as G-d-given is built entirely out of outdated concepts regarding gender--not, in any sense, on their biblical convictions. And, of course, the Evangelical support of Donald Trump proves this perhaps more than anything else in the storied past of White Evangelicals.