And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes-mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of 'Christian America.' Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done.Д¬hallenging the commonly held assumption that the 'moral majority' backed Donald Trump in 20 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals' most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community.

Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. Many of today's evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they've read John Eldredge's Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex-and they have a silver ring to prove it. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism-or in the words of one modern chaplain, with 'a spiritual badass.'ДЄs acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. I was left unsatisfied and unconvinced - though I think there are some important parts to this book, and some of what du Mez says is correct.The 'paradigm-influencing' book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. In the introduction and conclusion she notes that what she says would not be universally true for evangelicals (given opposition to, e.g., war and patriarchy internal to evangelicalism) but her book essentially ignores this in every other chapter. du Mez ignores counterexamples and differences internal to evangelicalism that would complicate her analysis. In particular, du Mez wants to make a broad generalization about evangelicalism, and at the end of the book I found myself frustrated by those generalizations. But examples simply aren't arguments, and it is her arguments that seem to be lacking. du Mez is certainly correct that there is a large, powerful strange of white evangelicalism that emphasizes masculinity and patriarchy.

After listening to this audiobook, I'm not convinced. The substitle of this book implies that white evangelicals corrupted the Christian faith and lead to severe political consequences. Seems to be missing support for key conclusions Evangelical popular culture is teeming with muscular heroes - mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of 'Christian America.' Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done.ДЄ much-needed reexamination, Jesus and John Wayne explains why evangelicals have rallied behind the least-Christian president in American history and how they have transformed their faith in the process, with enduring consequences for all of us.

Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping account of the last 75 years of white evangelicalism, showing how American evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. How did a libertine who lacks even the most basic knowledge of the Christian faith win 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2016? And why have white evangelicals become a presidential reprobate's staunchest supporters? These are among the questions acclaimed historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez asks in Jesus and John Wayne, which explains how white evangelicals have brought us to our fractured political moment.

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